It’s unlike the fleeting highs of Lillis’s past the heroin, the barbiturates, alcohol, prostitutes, stealing cars and still, he says, without swimming he would quickly revert to those vices.
“Swimming is like going back to the womb, it’s nice and warm,” Lillis says one Thursday afternoon outside the YMCA pool on Hastings Drive. As he speaks, his cloudy blue eyes, guarded by hooded eyelids and glasses, stare toward the water. “If I go into the water it takes longer, it’s not a quick fix.
“You get that warmth and it’s like a freedom, the craving is gone.”
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In Silver Spring, as he had done sporadically in New York City, Lillis began driving cabs. He latched on to the sex trade around 14th Street in Washington, D.C., chauffeuring many of the prostitutes to and from their tricks.

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