My Swimming Trunks Have Been Sucked Off

The trunks, so far as they were concerned, were undertaking their own excursion. They drifted like any flotsam, floating on a personal trajectory that was at once private and public. I imagined them carrying away a small, secret history — the drawer they’d come from, the hands that’d folded them, a summer of sitting on hot tiles. Objects retain an archive of the lives they’ve touched, and even a pair of swim shorts has a narrative if you look hard enough.

After the first flinch, the body adapts. Cold, embarrassment, adrenaline — they reconfigure into an odd kind of clarity. Standing waist-deep in the sea with less fabric than intended, I felt both smaller and freer. There’s a certain stripping power to the experience: it removes not just clothing but the small, ornamental constraints people drape over themselves. For a moment I was as elementary as the salt and light around me, exposed and improbable. My Swimming Trunks Have Been Sucked Off

The first sensation was ridiculous and slow — an awareness, like someone had tucked a cold finger into the back of my waistband. Then a downward pull. For a second I thought I was imagining the whole thing, because the world has long been trained to prefer the literal to the absurd. Then the fabric cleared the crest of the water and the absurd announced itself in a clean, humiliating arc. The trunks, so far as they were concerned,

The next morning I walked by the water again, more cautiously and with a new respect for the sea’s sense of humor. The trunks had been recovered — found tangled on a buoy, waves making them obstinate in a tiny, textile-sized rebellion. They smelled of brine and sun, a smell that now carried the faint metallic tang of embarrassment and the light sweetness of a story survived. I tossed them back into the drawer with a little more fondness and a marginally better folding technique. Objects retain an archive of the lives they’ve

I had only meant to cool off. The trunks were nothing special: a thrift-shop kind, faded stripes, the kind you buy because they fit and you like the way they don’t take themselves too seriously. They had been reliable up until that moment, which is to say they had never told me who they were or what they could do. Their elastic was the sort you trust without thinking about it. I hoped the tide was the same.

Misadventures like that teach you, in small, persistent ways, the generosity of absurdity. The world can be officiated and serious and dignified, but it can also surprise you into humility. Sometimes that humility is public and bracing. Sometimes it leaves a line of salt on your skin and a good joke to tell at dinner parties. Either way, there is a bright, irreducible honesty in being caught off guard.