On an unusually chilly Friday evening, Culver City's public pool bustled with activity. Dozens of swimmers kicked and splashed as bundled-up coaches called instructions from the deck. At one end of the pool, Joe McCauley swam a lap of freestyle. His arms circled slowly, deliberately. His torso popped out of the water like a jack-in-the-box with every breath.
"I'm still last in the slow lane," McCauley, 38, said after his lesson late last year. But that was progress: Only a couple of weeks earlier, "I couldn't even make it to the end of the pool."
For most of the last three decades, McCauley has been gripped by a paralyzing fear of swimming in open or deep water.