Charlie and the Divorced Men's Swimming Club

Charlie and me
And a few other guys
Started this club

We called it the Divorced Men's Swimming Club

It was not a team
It was a club

We even had t-shirts

They didn't say anything on them
But we would only wear them
Exclusively to DMSC

We'd go to the Y every week
On Tuesday mornings
When it's pretty much dead
And we'd have the pool to ourselves

There were about five of us
But Charlie and I were the only ones
Who stuck with it
Over the years

Some of the other guys would change cities
Or get remarried
Or decide that they needed to move on with their lives
And we would just keep on swimming

The point was to have something to do
Somewhere to go

A woman gets divorced and everybody has to make sure she's okay
Take care of her
Support her

Her girlfriends take her out drinking
And they all dance around her living room
To Chaka Khan

A man gets divorced
And everybody assumes
He's just fine

That he's going to go off
And marry some girl half his age
And buy a new car
And go right on living

But you know, not all of us do

Some of us get...stuck

Charlie got stuck

The second divorce hit him
And it stuck

My third one was the same way

The first two I took in stride
But when my third wife left me
Well...

When a woman leaves you
You can blame the guy she left you for

When another woman leaves you
You can blame the woman

But when a third woman leaves you
You just gotta blame yourself

Eventually the group came to an end

It ended up just being me and Charlie one day

Floating around in the pool

Waiting for the Mommy and Me Go Swimming Class
To kick us out

I remember floating by Charlie
And feeling okay in that moment
Really okay

As okay as you can feel
With all the shit that goes on
In your life, you know?

I remember lifting my head up
To tell Charlie about
About how okay I was feeling

And that was when I noticed he was crying
He was on his back
Floating and crying

And the tears were coming down his face
Right into the water
And I swear I could see them
Fall down to the bottom of the pool
The chlorinated water not wanting anything
To do with them

'I miss her,' Charlie said, 'I miss her'

I meant to put a hand out
To pat him on the shoulder
Tell him it would be all right

But he kept drifting away
Inch by inch

Until it was too late

Too late to tell him
We were both going to be
Okay