Join DiveBuddy.com

Meet new scuba divers, maintain a virtual dive log, participate in our forum, share underwater photos, research dive sites and more. Members login here.

Diving is not a sexy sport
Pixel - 2/17/2009 3:17 AM
View Member Articles
Category: Other
Comments: 0
Diving is not a sexy sportFound the following at:
http://www.learnarchaeology.com/scotfed/scotdive/rapture.html
I think it’s hilarious. I might be wrong. :P

RAPTURES OF THE DEEP END or THE VIRGIN DIVER

by Susy Worzencraft

Cartoon by Evelyn Short

So there we were, alone at last, bare legs entwined, hands grasping at each other’s scanty clothing, as we gazed deep into each other’s eyes. In my mind, I heard again his soft, sibilant lisp as he murmured: ‘Two breaths for you, two breaths for me.’ With fearful, yet longing anticipation, I held my breath, near to swooning, as his hard, cold, wet body pressed mine against the rough grouting and cracked white tiles at the bottom of the local swimming pool

Now if that’s not a great introduction to a new game, I don’t know what is. And to think it started from such a demure newspaper article - offspring of the Sports Council and the Woman’s Institute, no less, to get us sweet stay-at-homes to lead a more active life. Well, I’d leave carpet bowls and croquet for my declining years, I thought, and signed up for diving and gliding. Gliding was something else, but diving - ahh! the deeper I dive, the higher I get!

Meanwhile, back to that night of my initiation, and to the necessary preparations beforehand that brought it to such a thrilling climax. Never was a virgin diver so full of maidenly shyness as she soaped and showered, and waxed and tweezed, and applied unguents and fake tan in generous quantities to all parts of her body, seen and unseen, in her efforts to appear her best when as her most exposed. What I didn’t then know, is that long-drawn-out foreplay - er, lengthy preparation, I mean - of some sort is a feature of diving, which in itself is over in a matter of minutes.

At the pool, eyelashes clotted with waterproof mascara, and clutching a towel to the matronly bosom, I sidled out of the ladies changing rooms, only to find purdah (and my towel) cast aside with sudden vengeance, as I was paired off with something young and tasty. At last, a justification for encroaching middle age, to be, perforce, in acceptably close proximity to a nearly naked man, nearly (not quite!) young enough to be my . . . well, young enough, anyway.

Buddying fantasies were soon smartly nipped in the water when a nonchalant duck dive resembled more the death throes of a whale thrashing its last gasp on the surface Oh, the shame of having a personality so buoyant, it needs more lead than a balloon to make it sink like the Titanic. My ego, if not my body, was slightly deflated. But diving, in the confines of a small, crowded pool, was literally out of this world. I did ungainly forward rolls and lurching back flips; I chickened out of mask clearing, but took to buddy breathing (see first paragraph!) with aplomb. I heard that hollow bubbling sound, familiar from old Hans and Lotte Hass films, but this time it was the real thing, and I, too, could breathe underwater. I - and to their horror, subsequent buddies - also found out that I can still talk as much as ever, even with a mouthful of rubber plug.

I’m now (some years later) a fervent addict of diving - the whale was hooked that first wild exotic evening - but it hasn’t been without major personal traumas in a struggle to overcome my fears of water, and to be accepted into the world of boys’ own games but that’s yet another story . . .