Are You Afraid To Start Writing?

How a dive into the deep end helped cure me of fear and how it can cure you as well — no matter what the fuck you fear!

Let me tell you about fear.

In my early years my family decided that it was high time to sign me up for swimming lessons. There was a river running through our town. A half-assed playground — with two swing-sets, one roundabout, and one slide — and a long wooden dock.

I walked down and waited in line upon the dock — a little girl of about seven years old — when some heavy-chested, mouth-breathing, this-is-all-the-fucking-summer-job-I-could-get so-called swim instructor threw me arse-over-tea-kettle into the swallowing wet grasp of the river.

You have to understand that this was a long time ago — back when a large percentage figured that this was an acceptable way to teach kids how to swim.

I remember going under.

I remember looking up and seeing kicking feet.

I remember wondering why these people were trying to kick me back down under the water.

And then I stood up and my feet found the bottom and I walked out of the goddamn river and never looked back.

For years afterwards I was terrified of swimming. I loved to stand around in the water up to my chest on hot days, but my feet were glued to the dirt at all times.

Then, at the age of thirty, I decided that it was time to stop fucking around.

I signed up for a YMCA beginning swimmers course for adults that was entitled “Swimming for yellow-bellied spineless fear-paralyzed chickens” or some such shit.

I had a great instructor. Better yet, I was his only student.

Shoot, there’s an erotica story here that I ought to be writing, but fuck it, we’re going to stick with the theme of conquering fear.

“You’re never going to learn to swim until you stop standing on the bottom of the pool.”

See, that was my problem. As long as my feet touched bottom as I was happy as a clam.

(Who says clams are happy anyway? I mean, I know they always seem to be grinning, but sooner or later somebody’s going to drop them into a pot of boiling water with some garlic, butter and beer and that’s all they’ve got to look forward to).

“Maybe you ought to get up onto the diving board,” my instructor suggested.

At the end of the pool was one of those big old diving platforms with three different levels. Now, I had never tried to use a diving board before this, but I said “What the hell?”

Or, in the words of Yosemite Sam I said “I paid my two bits to see the high-diving act…”

So I walked over to the platform. I don’t really remember if, at the time, I knew that he was talking about that low diving board, but I walked over to the tall ladder and clamber grimly up the ladder until I was standing about thirty feet above the water.

See, what I knew about myself was there was no way that I was going to take a chance on bouncing on that little bitty diving board and maybe catching my face on the end of it. So I walked out on that high platform and stood there, maybe for forever or two, staring at my feet and that long yodeling fall that waited below. This wasn’t going to be as easy as it had looked on that Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“I’m going to die,” I thought.

Then — “What the fuck. Everybody’s going to die sometime or other.”

And then I just stepped off the edge and dropped like a fucking kamikaze lunatic speed-diver.

I mean, I freaking plummeted.

I hit the water with a crotch-numbing splash and forgot completely about where the bottom was. My feet just started instinctively kicking and I’ve been swimming ever since.

I was freaking Johnny Weismuller or maybe Jane, swimming like the fucking Man from Atlantis. I was Namor and Aquaman and Flipper all rolled together in one.

Now tonight, I spent about a half an hour staring at this computer screen wondering just what the hell I was going to write for FUCK NICHES.

(And I fucking love that title — I mean, the way I like to write about every goddamn topic on the planet I often say “Fuck niches!”)

And then, after staring at the screen for a hundred-year half hour I jumped in feet first and wrote this story.

Next time you’re stuck just jump in and yell KOWABUNGA!

Hi! My name’s Ginger Bangs. I’m new here in Medium. I usually write erotic fiction, but I also the occasional poem or article on writing. Every weekend I like to throw in a recipe of some sort.

I guess I write like I cook. No rules, no real structure, I just like to tell stories, is all.

Please follow me. I promise you I will not bite. At least not unless you want me to.

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You better go and read another story of mine before I start passing out the collection plate.