In other words, no one is hassling you for water-side photos.
“Can I do this?
Is this all right?”
he said, laughing, as he tried to avoid flashing.
“I’ve put both legs in one leg, classic start.”
I wore a swimming cap and goggles.
“All right, Michael Phelps,” Styles goaded as I dived in.
He kept his Gucci sunglasses on and swam a refined breaststroke.
We did two lengths (130 yards) and emerged pink and giddy.
“That’s the thing with a swim,” he said.
“It’s the one thing you never regret.”
The corresponding live shows, Love On Tour, were due to start in April 2020.
“Suddenly, the screaming stopped,” he said.
Now Styles was stuck in L.A. for months with nothing to do.
“It was the first time I’d stopped since I left my mum’s,” he said.
He bubbled with a group of friends and for about six weeks did “practically nothing.”
Didn’t write any music.
He was suddenly just another young guy in a house-share trying not to bug his roommates.
Styles came to realize that his past schedule had facilitated avoidance.
So he used lockdown to commit to being a better friend, son, brother.
He pushed himself to confront things he hadn’t brought up, had many long, honest chats.
You realize that when you stop for a minute," he said.
So he tried to see what he was doing as open, speculative.
It’s so self-absorbed," he said.
He was visibly shaking.
“Two lengths was too much,” he agreed.
We set off in search of heat.
Almost anyone who meets Styles will tell you how polite, breezy he is.
Few interviews go by without mentioning his charm.
You’re done now").
Surely a mask, you are thinking.
No one that fancied can be that sweet.
I asked Styles this myself: Is he actually pleasant, normal, sane?
I feel like everything else has been a bonus, and I am so lucky."
That said, both Styles and his therapist have questioned why he cares quite so much about being likable.
This is one of the things he thought about a lot in his big pandemic reflection.
In part, it’s a choice, he explained.
“Why do I feel like I’m the one who has done something wrong?”
He thought about how, when good things happenedsay, a No.
1 albumhe wouldn’t feel happy, just relieved.
“I felt free,” he explained.
“I thought it meant that you were broken,” he said.
“I wanted to be the one who could say I didn’t need it.”
Recently Styles began to work through issues related to intimacy, dating, love.
“For a long time, it felt like the only thing that was mine was my sex life.
The life of aboy band memberis something of a Ken Doll existencea smooth nothingness where sex should be.
One must be flirtatious (swoon!)
without ever being seen to have sex, let alone casual sex.
“At the time, there were still the kiss-and-tell things.
Working out who I could trust was stressful,” Styles said.
“But I think I got to a place where I was like, why do I feel ashamed?
I’m a 26-year-old man who’s single; it’s like, yes, I have sex.”
Styles has come to fame at a complex time for the idolized.
“I think we’re in a moment of reflection,” Styles said.
He has been thinking a lot recently about autonomy, ownership, privacy.
Around the time ofFine Line, he faced scrutiny around his sexuality.
This expectation is, to him, bizarre, “outdated.”
But Styles does not want to appear ungrateful or defensive, or even angry.
It is, he said, about “metamorphosis.”
About when you look back on life, and on your past selves, and barely recognize them.
About when you realize everything has transformed, irrevocably.
About when you grow up, change, begin to move on.
Watching herso talented, so buzzy, so newwas a turning point for him, he explained.
When I did my first solo thing, I was still like the young guy,” he said.
“I’m not like an old man now, but she’s just a different generation.”
“you might’t win music.
It’s not like Formula One,” he said.
So, get comfortable with finding something else that makes you happy.
I just found that so liberating."
Styles told me that he seesHarry’s Houseas a similar watershed.
“You’ve never felt that way before?”
He said, “Honestly, I don’t think I have.”
He called it “bowling with the bumpers up, playing it safe.”
