pool boy blues

a glimpse into the opinions of my 21yo frat boy coworker, and how they make me feel as a woman-loving, not-yet-passing trans guy

There’s no feeling quite like the anticipation of your first shift with a new coworker. In the past I’ve been one to type the first and last name of every employee on my scheduling app into Instagram to best prepare myself for the vibe of the 7 or so hours I’ll be spending with them. At my new job I’ve opted to play roulette, not making a dossier of mutual followers or assumptions based on a random person's social media expression. Maybe it’s because I enjoyed the surprise of strangers being thrust upon me in Survivor, or because judging how someone titles their story highlights doesn’t give you good insight to what they’ll be like sitting outside from 9-5 as a pool boy, my newest hospitality hat.

Vaughn walked in while I was winding up the umbrellas to the hum of a cordless pool vacuum. He looks like Tommy Bracco from Big Brother 21 and me after a few T-injections and the 75 hard challenge. He wordlessly began to strip the lounge chairs of their covers. We exchanged the briefest hello, and when our separate opening tasks coincided I heard Symphony by Zara Larson playing from his phone speaker. I lingered nearby, hoping it would fade out into a podcast or that maybe it was just an ad. The song played on.

Vaughn somehow knew I was on Survivor. Maybe he’s still neurotically plugging names from “Sling” into Instagram before work.

“Yeah, my ex loves that show so I think it’s funny we’re working together.”

My first instinct was, aw he was dating a reality tv gay, those are my favorite people. Look, obviously I know it’s bad to assume sexuality, but we do it. We all do it. He’s got the vocal fry of a 50-something stand- up comedian making fun of gen z vocal fry. I saw him hand-pluck his eyebrows in the Snapchat camera. The judgy way he said, ew, the pool water is … murky, reminded me of my best friend Greg. Need I remind you, Symphony by Zara Larsen.

He told me he was 21 and a senior at Rutgers. Right there I knew we could fill the rest of the hours talking about my alma mater, favorite place and what I like to call Disney for 20-year-olds. We started spitballing addresses of the most disgusting old houses that have been passed down to drunk Jersey Italians for generations. When he said he’s living at 56 this year, I pulled up videos of me shotgunning a Red Bull can half-filled with Tito’s on the roof outside his bedroom. I could see him loosen up as he realized I knew ball, in this case ball being the knowledge that the TDX house is now the DPHI house. The way he looked at me changed as he realized that, despite my Luffy haircut in this pool boy uniform, I wasn’t Sergeant Sock of the woke police. And boy, the very instant he discerned he wasn’t being policed, my whole day changed.

Our Rutgers lore shifted at a pace I cannot describe to you without including a text I sent my girlfriend in real time:

He’s trying to impress me I think idk tell me how it’s been 2hrs w him and I’ve now seen a video of him doing blow off a girls ass

And no warning either. This forgotten yet familiar feeling came back. The liminal space of happiness that a guy is treating me just like he would another guy. And also the horror that comes with hearing what one guy says to another about women when there’s nobody else around to hear it.

While I’m checking the online reservation list, a whisper in my ear:, “The bikinis they wear here… just string.”

Our boss walks away and he waits a beat, staring off into the direction of a group of ladies tanning, “There’s a lot of girls with BBLs… that’s my favorite.”

The worst of them all, out of thin air, prompted by nothing, and breaking a peaceful 90 second silence between us, he goes “Innie or Outie?” Nope, not inquiring about which type of belly button I have. Yup, he has taken it upon himself to assume that I have a preference in deeply personal female anatomy.

The absurdity of his comments about girls felt both like I hit an anthropological gold mine and also like I was in an episode of Undercover Boss and he was the token problem employee who I’d air out and fire at the end of the week. He was talking about women like he’s a closeted side character on The Sex Lives of College Girls. I haven’t seen Overcompensating, but I would imagine all the scenes of Benito Skipper pretending to be straight sounded a lot like Vaughn.

The more amusement that spread across my face, the more he believed I was agreeing with him. In fact I was just trying to collect as much data as I could so I could report back to the gay people in my phone that this type of person is walking around and telling all of this TO ME. My excitement with his scriptlike objectification reached a fever pitch and suddenly my phone was recording.

“I think she has, like, a huge crush on me. This isn’t even me tryna like be, like, full of myself, I can just tell. She’s just like, ugly.”

I interjected to tell him that I don’t stand for him calling girls ugly.

“What do I call them then?”

I think the better question is why does it make you so angry and mean when you see a woman that you don’t want to have sex with, I said.

If my bewilderment were to be graphed, the 90 degree downward curve started right there. Oh, he really hates women. Was it repressed gayness? Is it straight incel? How many more hours of sitting here will it take to decide?

I had let him get too far already. There was no end in sight of his unloading on me. My moral compass had already come into question before he told me about the girl he never spoke to again after she “made a weird noise” during sex. Some part of me wanted to be the underground reporter here, like that woman who pretended to like Trump so red-pilled guys would tell her all their most evil beliefs. Some part of me wanted to make him a project, teaching him how to respect women and sending him back to Rutgers in September as a new man. Some part of me wanted to dig so much deeper, find the gay porn on his phone, ask him about his childhood. I settled on all three.

It’s 3 p.m. The shallow end of the pool is closest to us at the host stand, and it’s also where a group of ten women decide to talk about Love Island for two hours. For some reason, this makes Vaughn visibly angry. He doesn’t understand how they can be this invested in Love Island. I tell him he is saying that to a literal reality TV contestant. He says that’s different. If only this guy knew the amount of hours per week I dedicate to Survivor.

Every silence between us is interrupted by him pulling up a new girl’s Instagram to show me, and more than anything I am fascinated by the unchanging presences of Rutgers sorority girls online. Just a few years ago my friends stood right there, and I feel a fondness for the evolution of these young women, knowing full well that behind this carousel of photos outside the Phi Sig house before formal there are a hundred side plots and that the girl he’s showing me who “played him all fall semester” is probably hilarious and right.

He calls a woman who removed her bathing suit strap from around her neck weird. He wonders if she did that on purpose or is just stupid and doesn’t know how to wear the bathing suit.

“She just doesn’t want tan lines, Vaughn, she obviously knows how to wear the bathing suit,” I say.

“Well it’s making her boobs look saggy,” he literally scoffs.

“I gotta tell you dude, what she’s got going on is the hottest thing here right now,” and trust me if you were there you’d agree.

His blatant sexism eroded me more than the 90-degree heat. I was breaking everything on the deck down as if someone was chasing me with a gun so I could clock out and go tell my roommate everything. While I was carrying a heap of towels to the linen bin I saw one of the pool patrons, a gay guy around my age, approach Vaughn and then run out of the pool club.

Before he could even tell me, I saw it. A slip of paper with a name and number. And with another 8-hour shift with Vaughn the next day, it felt like I struck gold.

I watched as the note traversed between the top of the desk, to the cabinet underneath, to the heap of Vaughn’s belongings while we finished breaking down, my mind whirring with an undeserved fearlessness to invade his mind with questions like I’m freaking Orna.

“Have you ever thought about guys like that?” I wondered aloud the next morning as we wheeled out the laundry bin of towels.

“Well, yeah, when everyone kept calling me gay I was like maybe I’m gay, but I’m definitely not.”

Pings of sympathy coursed through me. I grew up pretending to be straight for a while with my best friend Greg doing the same. He had to deal with so many more accusations and names and questions than I ever did, and for a while it hardened him. In that moment I felt a younger Greg activating his defensive talk tracks, and I felt the shame of pushing him too hard when he is so clearly not ready.

As I’ve gotten older and have come out so many times in so many ways, I sometimes struggle to be around people who I can sense are repressing their truth. It’s like I am salivating for the treat of connection being dangled above my head. Being unable to shake this person into seeing how it can be better on the other side. Knowing it isn’t my place to dictate someone’s timeline or to label someone. Having to face the part of me that wants to do that even though I know how it feels.

And maybe my speculation is just me being hopeful that he is gay, because some part of me can’t comprehend that straight guys feel this way about women. I’ve loved women my whole life. Through all the confusion and crises of identity, the one certainty is my admiration for and attraction to women. I know what it’s like to suppress it, to express it, to discuss it, and all of the ways Vaughn has chosen to do those things feels gross and calculated and devoid of love.

Two beautiful girls my age came to the pool last week, and Vaughn asked for one of their numbers, a confident and bold move which to my bewilderment worked out. So, as I went around winding down the umbrellas at 4:50, I eavesdropped on his conversation with the girls.

“You think all girls are insane?” She asked him, clearly in response to him making that claim.

I dropped to my knees laughing as his game absolutely unraveled and these two girls started to pick up on his ideologies about women. Their attention shifted to me, and the friend of the girl who Vaughn hit on pointed.

“See, SHE’S cute. I told you to get HER number, this is why.” The compliment, especially because it doubled as an insult to Vaughn, felt as good as it could. This innocent misgendering was served on a plate of affirmation that the three of us, me and the two girls, were on the same team. And though she got my pronouns wrong, I felt happy that there was a clear way for her to know I was different from Vaughn. It’s a complicated feeling as I begin to start hormones this week.