deeppleasurepoolclub

[deeppleasurepoolclub]

 #1: Philip & Bruno 

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Philip and Bruno met at a spa and have been in love with each other and temperature-controlled water ever since. They enjoy midnight moons and expensive sunsets (the screensaver kind). Their home is stylish and technologically advanced. 

Two winters ago, after a heavy snowfall, they felt the urge to build a snowman in their back yard. The snowman was well-shaped and looked like he worked out. When they were finished sculpting, they placed a shovel in one of its hands, which Bruno said made it look like the figure had built himself, and which Philip said made it look like it was a pool boy cleaning out a pool of ice. Both interpretations were mutually well-received and soon they had finalized a deal with Deep Pleasure Pool Club for a customized pool. The men enjoyed articulating their particular taste, focusing in no small part on the selection of sculpted hands and fists in all the right places. 

Designing the pool was one thing, to maintain and make good use of it, was something else. While Philip wears his socks inside out because he feels the ‘good’ side should be enjoyed by the foot rather than by the rest of the world, Bruno is perpetually facing out. When they play a game, Philip will enjoy himself while Bruno will most likely win. He is also a tech guy and as such it did not take long before he brought home various tools to push himself to his submerged athletic limit. Even though both men aim for timelessness, they are not against going with the times and tides as the pool requires. 

A pool boy, they agreed, was not only an essential part of the pool’s genesis and appeal but would also be convenient to keep the pool in good shape. Auditions were held, tears rolled down fuzzy cheeks and a cat nearly drowned; all events that would eventually lead up to the discovery of the perfect candidate. When the right fellow was found, the couple took it as a sign proving that a large body of water can indeed bring people closer together. Evidently, this was true even for people who, in all likelihood, would not have met wearing blue swimming trunks. The pool boy went on to become a dear friend, going so far as to occasionally enter the house. 

excerpt from IRL by Merel Schoonen

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* Click ♥ to visit Pool 1 on 3D showroom  

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[deeppleasurepoolclub]

 #2: Anette & Marteinn

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“Will you take out the lawn mower, dear?” A question expressing one action while inhabiting another. It always does the trick. Marteinn pushes the machine out of the garage while Anette sits by the pool, listening to music. She asks and he obliges, that’s the way it’s always been with them.

⠀ Truth is, he would have gladly mowed the lawn even without her articulating the question. He loves being outside, in the garden, planting, pruning, watering, making sure every plant and animal has a place to live. Marteinn likes the forest and river that surround their house. Anette likes the fact that it’s undoubtedly ecologically correct. As he is mowing, some of the freshly cut grass is blown into the pool. The chopped leaves float side by side, bright green stripes on a black surface; a coincidental zebra crossing for tiny creatures, still unknown, to dance to the other side.

He wants to grow a beard, but she will not let him. He enjoys her refusals.

The pool was his idea, although he prefers to think of it as a man-made-pond, rather than a swimming pool. Neither of them likes to swim, and naturally, the design would reflect their preference. See, their intention was never for anyone to jump in the water. People would always be pushed in. It is for this reason that the pool is pitch black and as deep as legally feasible. So deep in fact, that no one quite knows how deep exactly, or if it has a bottom at all. Here is lain a blackness so vast that every action it shells is instantly obscured. As requested, the water is cold enough to cool off heated encounters, be they of the pushing or the pulling kind. There are no monsters here, only humans. True utopia is a place where water will never run out, where it is carefully cherished and kept, where it will live longer than any owner who has ever claimed it.

Some would argue private pools are made for private parties. Some would also argue that these parties are better kept from daylight, pulling light and strings in the opposite direction.

Most days, Anette sits by the pool in her favorite chair, overlooking her favorite black hole and her husband, working. The chair allows her to be immobile and alone, leaving her to her own mind while around her, all is growing and flourishing, grounded. The chair feels like a warm embrace, a safe cocoon to hold her while simultaneously appearing to strangle her.

Where would it float to? In the end, with the current.

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excerpt from IRL by Merel Schoonen

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* Click ♥ to visit Pool 2 on 3D showroom  

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[deeppleasurepoolclub]

 #3: Lutèce, Léo & Robin

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The young friends felt the urge to go for a swim and left for the South of France. One of the friends was locked up in Paris, and as such was unable to join.

By the sea, the friends spent most of the summer at the beach reading, sunbathing, drinking, and yes, swimming. Even though their friend from Paris was unable to accompany them, they decided to include him in their story by drawing him in. They pictured him floating in the water, performing a perfect butterfly stroke, going on a deep dive, or catching some fish. To make sure these drawings were substantial, weighty and aquatic, they made them on stone and mailed them over to him.

The friend responded with a rough sketch for a shared pool in Paris and sent along a couple of ladder handles, which the friends welcomed as both a token of their strong friendship and an encouraging omen for their future endeavor.

In the evenings, while their swimsuits were dripping salty water from the clothesline, the friends would discuss their dreams for the pool. Inspiration struck easily and was all the more beautiful when proclaimed in the middle of a field of lavender. In order to solve budgetary matters, they decided to sell their initial plans and drawings. One idea would be sold to fund another.

Eventually, in a collaboration beyond their wildest imagination, the pool was realized and ready for use. It was sent to the friend in Paris, who installed it – for the time being – on a steep hill in his studio.

At times, it looks as if the pool is moving. Not the water in it; the entire pool. Sometimes it moves a little uphill or downhill, a twitch to the right or the left, depending on the hour and the mood of the moment. One day, it may leave altogether, simply heading off to a new place, flowing with its owners, like a book or a dog.

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excerpt from IRL by Merel Schoonen

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* Click ♥ to visit Pool 3 on 3D showroom  

[deeppleasurepoolclub]

 #4: Eva & …

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One day, in an overheated apartment in an overcrowded city, two roommates had an inspired idea. Both longed for a pool but had neither the resources or the space to put one. They did, however, have Wi-Fi.

Their skillsets were diverse and unspecified enough to successfully build a pool. Eva could write a website and her roommate could write about the smell of wet towels. They decided the most strategic place for the pool would be the roof.

Once settled on the roof came the question of shape. How to design anything that would hold its own in a region so formed by inherited algorithms and ingrown glitches. Most gates have snakes behind them. Heads throbbed and they landed on a heart like shape, with a matching color to finish.

The pool never closes, and everyone is invited. One by one, accessories were added to make the space feel like home. That’s where the real money is. Floaties in space. Coordinated tattoos. Unsinkable delicacies. Eva was confident they had made a place where the sun will truly never go down.

People hang around the pool, chilling. They can see it, float it, swim it. It is so perfect it is decidedly unreal and very realistic. In due course it becomes clear that the solution to everything is to believe that vapor is water, imagined. This in itself sounds absolutely fake or absolutely true to form.

A few weeks later, the roommate suddenly disappears. Eva is worried and sends her a message, asking where she is. The roommate responds, eventually, bluntly, obviously: ‘In Real Pool’.

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excerpt from IRL  by Merel Schoonen

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* Click ♥ to visit Pool 4 on 3D showroom