Portrait of Pam Anderson as Drowning Fish

by Matilda Berke
 
 
i.
The average American’s surface struggle
lasts 20-60 seconds & goes unnoticed: 
to fatal effect. In lifeguard class,
we watch a little boy drown
two feet from the stand. We count the 
seconds – 20, nothing, 30, nothing, 50.
Nothing. We know how it ends
& keep praying anyway. His body
gets pulled out of the pool around 120.
His parents won their suit
with this security-cam footage,
Coach says. 
But they had to watch it.
 
ii.
I see Pam for the first time
in Borat. She plays herself, but stupid. 
Someone says she got famous
from running down a beach in a red swimsuit,
& someone else laughs,
then Borat pulls a sack over her head.
I can’t help wondering
if she was in on the joke.
 
iii.
I catch a tuna two miles from the Pacific Palisades:
all muscle, undiluted Malibu blue & iron. Strong
as undertow. I watch it thrashing 
riptides through its heartbeat, gasping 
the way drowners do onscreen. I look away
so I don’t see it happen,
not like that will stop it happening,
but like in the movies
when you close your eyes before the jump-scare
& the tape just keeps on rolling.
 
iv.
If you’re here because of Baywatch,
know that lifeguards never dive into anything,
Coach says on the first day of class.
& ladies, no dressing like Pamela. Actually,
that goes for us gents too.
Here we grin. It’s 2017
& high-cut swimsuits are back in fashion
with the advent of the movie
my best friend Sammy goes to see in theaters. 
God-dam, he says, shaking his blond head, those hot white girls –
that came out wrong. He laughs
& I say nothing.
 
v. 
There is nothing so clean as a mounted kill.
You can walk down a corridor of mackerel
& never smell the sea they came from,
place your hand between a tiger’s teeth
without feeling the sweat of its breath.
They always clean the blood off for the hero shot,
blot out the skin’s history of conquest.
 
vi. 
In bubblegum-pink, the front of a tabloid blares
PAM’S ALWAYS CHANGING FACE NEVER CEASES TO SURPRISE US. 
Those shifting savannahs of skin
tan enough to fly a biplane over,
pockmarked with rain & hoof-thunder so wild
a wildebeest falls with a bullet in its chest.
When Pam was twelve, her father came home 
with a carcass slung across his back:
the first time she smelled blood,
she swore it off for the rest of her life.
 
vii.
Coach teaches us several different ways 
to break a victim’s grip. 
We practice sneaking up on each other 
in the pool: submersions, chokeholds.
We joke that we’re learning to
preserve life or take it away
& keep scanning the surface. 
Drowning is only half 
as violent as the rescue.
 
viii. 
We, bone-weary, soaked in chlorine,
huddle by the pool on the last day of class
like damp stones. Too sore to stand.
Coach looks us in the eyes & says You are here
because you have some hero in you, so remember –
red is just a color you wear;
 
ix.
There are five stages of drowning
just like there are five stages of grief.
Except one ends in acceptance 
& one ends in death.
 
x.
We study strokes in the second week of class
& Ben’s had three in the last three months,
which makes him an expert on the subject.
He can’t stop correcting the textbook.
When he fails the same rescue a fourth time
& the girl in the next lane swims out to help,
Coach turns to her. Says Red 
is just a color you wear; this means 
there are some people you will never save.
We see Ben for the last time that night.
 
xi.
Sink or swim.
 
xii.
On the cover of People,
Pam Anderson opens a vegan restaurant
in the south of France. She is as blonde
as a champagne cocktail, shimmers like oil
gone to smoke in the Mediterranean sun.
She waves at the paparazzi someone paid 
to hang their Nikons off a balcony
smiles a hundred kilowatts at the bottles of peroxide 
leering from the soundstage –
they’ve all made it to heaven & this 
is what heaven looks like –
 
but I like to think it’s out in Malibu
running the longest beach 
with all the wind behind.