"Care and feeding of a mermaid"

When I was little - post-Disney's "The Little Mermaid" - I was obsessed with mermaids. I made up stories about them. I wanted to be one. When I went swimming, I lived a fantasy mermaid life - half girl, half fish.

A few months after I first moved to Austin, I met my first real-life mermaid. Her name was Rusty. She swam in the community pool by my house, with a shimmering green fin and matching bikini top, which she made herself. The pool was small, and she used the two lap lanes, by the side of the pool. Two little kids ran along the edge of the pool as she swam, as if they were seeing a dolphin at Sea World.

When Rusty shimmied out of the pool (a difficult maneuver when your legs are bonded together in a uni-fin), I could not avoid my desire to talk to her. Predictably, she was eccentric. Rusty told me that she split her time between Austin and New York. In New York, she worked as a mermaid, diving in giant, glass tubs in a club. In Austin, where there are no mermaid clubs, she acted in the Rocky Horror every weekend. She bemoaned the decline of the mermaid club - quite popular during the 60s.

This video reminded me of Rusty, who I always hoped to see when I went to that pool many times over the summer, but I never saw her, or another mermaid, there again.




Via Flickr Commons