Graham started revealing himself to me. He told me that he believed that he was misunderstood, that he was a good guy but that many people seemed to be insecure around him, almost in awe of his education and coaching talent. What he hated most, he said, was having to dumb himself down in certain circles to be accepted. He was frustrated that he was in many ways a loner dedicated to making the game of hockey better. He never understood how sportswriters, especially Jack Matheson of the Winnipeg Tribune, could keep their jobs after supporting goon hockey. He thought it was unfair that sportswriters, who, he said, generally knew nothing about hockey, had the right to comment about anything to do with the game. He believed they were hurting the game, and once told me that the definition of a sportswriter was somebody who had failed English but could remember the winner of the last twenty Stanley Cups.
That was Graham. He would say anything to make a point that served his immediate interests and made him look better than everybody else. He was trying to get me to see that he was smarter and funnier than everyone else while appealing to my intellect and my sense of humor.
It worked. More and more I wanted to be like him.
Graham sympathized with me, saying that people like my father, who had dropped out of school before high school, could never understand people like us, people who lived a different life inside our heads. One night at dinner, my dad was talking about somebody’s son who was in engineering at university. He couldn’t understand why somebody would go to university to learn how to work on a train. I just nodded and looked away. But I laughed with Graham about it, thinking that he understood me and cared about me. I laughed with my eventual abuser about a perceived shortcoming in my dad. I can’t ever take that back.
Graham told me he could help me develop to the point where he could get me a scholarship to an Ivy League school. He could develop me. He could get me something. It was now all about what he could do for me and how I needed him to get what I wanted. Except, there’s no such thing as an athletic scholarship to an Ivy League school, not that I knew anything about that at the time (there is need-based financial aid, which often amounts to virtually total funding when a student-athlete comes from a family with a low income like mine). A simple sentence, but one with so much embedded in it, designed to position him between me and my dreams. Yet, all I could see at the time was that he was encouraging me to chase my goals.
Near the end of one of our meals at the restaurant he was very clear: “Look me in the eyes. Look hard. I believe in you. You can do this. It doesn’t just have to be a dream. But it will require commitment. You’re going to need a lot of help. Nobody makes it without a lot of help. But I believe in you. You have every right to succeed, no matter who doesn’t believe you can do this, no matter who believes this is beyond what somebody like you can achieve. I believe in you. We can do this.”
No matter who doesn’t believe in me?
No matter who believes this is beyond me?
Somebody like me?
I felt panic. My body tightened and my ears started to ring. What didn’t I know about myself that he knew? Who was he speaking with who had told him I wasn’t good enough? Maybe my dad had been right all along.
But at the same time, I could see in his eyes that he believed in me, that my goals were attainable, that he accepted me, that he understood me. I was starting to believe that maybe I had found my place, that here was someplace I belonged, that I had finally found my true home.
I didn’t see the dead eyes of a shark hunting its prey. Instead, I saw the compassionate eyes of somebody who knew what was going on inside my head because, in his telling of his story, he too had been a brilliant student and a top athlete, and nobody but people like us could understand just how difficult it is to be a jock in a geek’s world and a geek in a jock’s world.
“People like us”—those words haunt me still.
Maybe the problem was that I wasn’t enough of a jock to truly be a jock? Maybe I wasn’t enough of a geek to truly be a geek? Maybe I was nowhere, lost, and without his help and guidance I would always be lost, alone, one of a kind? Maybe I was just nothing special? He understood me, he knew what it was like to be caught between two worlds, he would help me with both worlds. I was one of a kind, but he was too, so the two of us would be one of a kind. “People like us have to stick together to help each other,” he said.
“People like us…”
After a short while, everything he said made perfect sense to me. He was increasingly becoming the major voice and guiding light in my life, and I was slowly becoming isolated from the people closest to me. My coaches couldn’t know, my family couldn’t know, the others on my team couldn’t know about our relationship, and that was pretty much it for me at that time. If any of them ever found out, it would be all over.
And Graham was dangling a pretty big carrot in front of me for immediate gratification. The older team in our area that Graham coached, the Midget (sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds) St. James Canadians, was in contention to represent Manitoba in the Air Canada Cup (now Telus Cup), the national Midget hockey championship. Graham told me that if his team qualified, it would have an expanded roster for the tournament. He thought I should be added, given the potential need for a third goalie for the tournament and his belief in my abilities. I was shocked, as that would mean he’d be lifting me two levels, bypassing the two AAA goalies in the age group ahead of where I was playing, two goalies who were also highly regarded.
Graham’s team did qualify for the Air Canada Cup. It was held in, of all places, Winnipeg that spring of 1979. I’ll never know whether he was telling me the truth, but he told me he tried to get permission to add me to the roster and was denied because he wasn’t allowed to bypass the boys who were older than me. Graham told me he protested. The three players (none of whom were goalies) he called up from the team a year older than mine were James Patrick, a defenseman who went on to star in the NHL; Dave Farnfield, who ended up playing at Yale; and Rob Scheuer, who ended up captaining the Princeton hockey team.
While the first of those names is what hockey people will focus on, it is the second and third names that were relevant to me, as they were recruited by and eventually accepted at Ivy League schools. To me that indicated that Graham was able to deliver on his promises. The reality, of course, is that Graham had nothing to do with their being recruited by Ivy League schools. But I didn’t know that back then.
GRAHAM HAD GOTTEN to know me very well. He understood what I wanted to achieve and had positioned himself as ideally suited to help me achieve my dreams. He saw that I was particularly vulnerable because I was a bit of a loner caught between two worlds. I looked to Graham and not to my dad—a man who, I am sure, loved me but just couldn’t show it—for guidance. I opened up to Graham. I let him in.
A goaltender has an interesting perspective on the game of hockey. In many ways the game unfolds in front of the goalie, its patterns revealing themselves sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but usually in recognizable ways. An adept goalie adapts and reacts to the moving parts, most often without even consciously thinking about what is happening. The goalie is said to be “in the zone,” and the pucks are stopped, controlled, and redirected with ease.
I thought I was on my game. I was in the zone, a dominant player on my team, in my league, and I was now being tutored and mentored by a leading figure in the game. I thought I could see everything in front of me, that everything was finally coming my way. It all looked so promising, so attainable, so very real.
But in reality, I couldn’t see anything.
THREE
ATTACKED
THERE WAS NEVER a clear start to what he was doing, never a moment to look back on where I could say to myself, “There, it’s so obvious what he was doing, I should have never let it happen.” But then again, when I look back on all of this, all I can see now is that every single interaction with him was just such a moment, when “Of course, it’s all so clear what he was doing. How could I have be
en so weak, so stupid, to let this all happen?” is the only possible response.
In a sense, our relationship just evolved from our initial meetings. I devoured Graham’s progressive theories about hockey systems and his love of fast-skating defensemen and speedy forwards who went deep into their own end to win back possession of the puck. I craved the attention he gave me in our meetings, being treated as a peer, as an adult, as somebody more than I was at home. I felt fortunate that he was willing to help me progress with my hockey and my academics, that he was willing to mentor me and bring out the best in me. So, when he suggested that we meet not at a restaurant but at a school field for a training session, I was ecstatic.
Graham started setting up training sessions where he would show me various stretching exercises and body-positioning techniques to incorporate into my own off-ice workouts. This was in addition to the reading material he brought to our meetings which confirmed my belief that Graham was indeed a most different type of hockey coach. I was already completely captivated by his detailed analysis of the shortcomings of North American hockey and the benefits of learning Swedish and Soviet systems. Those systems were known for their focus on off-ice learning, so it was only natural for him to move on to dryland (off-ice) training, something they focused on and which at the time was still seen as somewhat revolutionary.
I was the perfect willing subject. Beyond wanting to excel at hockey and take advantage of what Graham had to offer me, I was still, deep inside, the insecure, overweight young boy who in my own mind needed to work extra hard on my physical conditioning. No matter how tall, strong, and athletic I had become by age fourteen, in my mind I was still the uncoordinated, pudgy boy who hadn’t yet grown into his body.
Graham had picked up on that, and he was very good at taking the stories of my past and using them to home in on my insecurities to convince me that I needed his training methods.
“You know, a guy like you with big legs has to work hard to keep up with the play.”
“You know, a guy like you has to fight for everything you’ll ever get, because nobody’s ever going to help you like I will.”
“You know, coaches hate smart players, because they fear they can’t control them, they can’t teach them.”
“You know, just because you’re smart and you know what to do doesn’t mean your body is going to do it all on its own.”
I was hearing the echoes of “book smart, worldly stupid.” I was once again seeing myself as an uncoordinated, overweight young man. Neither could have been further from the truth, yet both were the reality I inhabited.
Graham would never participate in any of the physical exercises or drills, blaming his asthma (or a hernia or an arm in a sling or some other excuse). I have no idea why it never dawned on me back then that these ailments would in no way have prevented him from, say, at least doing some of the stretching with me. I guess I was just so caught up in the moment and what I was doing that I never even noticed that he preferred to just lean back and stare at me. I would stretch, I would do squats, I would do push-ups and sit-ups, all under his watchful eye. I would mimic a goaltender’s stance and shuffle side to side and lunge laterally back and forth and back and forth until my thighs ached. I was always a model student for him. I viewed this as my opportunity to learn from an expert and impress a leading figure in the hockey community, one who could give me everything I had ever dreamed of.
It must have been a very difficult time for him. Having identified me, having taken steps to bring me under his wing and groom me to be receptive to his thoughts and desires, and having isolated me from my family, coaches, and friends, and having made himself the most important force in my life, he now had to test my boundaries and assess whether the time was right for him to make his move on me. Would I be compliant? When could he safely take tentative steps to find out? How could he move forward without fear of getting it wrong and potentially opening himself up to being found out?
Because he did not have constant exclusive contact with me, he would have to be very careful in making his next move, for while he had won my trust, there was no natural setting for him in which he could physically take advantage of me since I was still living at home with my parents. He only had our meetings and these workouts.
But Graham was brilliant in his own way, the Rhodes Scholar of sexual predators.
One night during a training session, he pushed me until I was exhausted. I had worked my legs so hard that I could already feel them stiffening as I sat down, leaned back, and gulped for air. I was sweating hard, my shirt was soaked, and stopping felt so good. The intense exertion gave way to the usual post-workout euphoria that I craved so much and that felt so good, so intoxicating. I loved to give my all to the task at hand and work to the point of utter exhaustion. That had always been my reputation in everything I did. I was the guy who worked the hardest in all the drills, the one who never stopped short in the skating drills but went all the way to the end of the rink and slammed the boards with my stick, who always stopped on the line, never before it. That’s just who I am. Or rather, who I was before him.
Graham started going on about the physiology of a hockey player. He noted that a hockey player was required to perform everything on skates, two small edges of steel.
“A hockey player looks with the eyes, which starts everything. Power to move where needed comes from the core and torso, and this power must be transferred to the hips and down to the legs. From there, all of that power has to be carried by the feet in the skates, which each sit on top of the ice on thin edges of steel, which transfer all of that power to the ice. A hockey player requires very strong feet, very special type of feet that can withstand the enormous forces. Can I take a look at your feet?”
Not a demand. Not a command. A request. A simple request that at the time made enormous sense to me.
“Sure.”
I reached down and took off my socks. I leaned back and put my feet in the air for inspection. He took one foot and cradled it, stroked it. He squeezed it, twisted it slightly, ran his palm from heel to toes. He pressed into the arch. He released the first foot and grabbed the other. Same thing, an inspection, a slow, deep analysis of my foot. He stared at each foot for what seemed like a long time. It all seemed so scientific, so analytical.
“You’ve got good feet. Big, strong feet. They’re perfect. Perfect.”
The physical barrier was broken.
From then on, post-workout foot massages became part of the routine. It didn’t seem strange to me but instead made perfect sense after what he’d told me about the physical mechanics of hockey. My feet felt so good after his massages, and I’d thank him for making me feel better and helping me recover from the pain of the drills.
Said another way, I thanked him for touching me.
The pattern was repeated. He made it the new reality as my training continued, despite any injury he might at the time have—a bandaged hand, an arm in a sling, whatever might have otherwise stopped a less persistent and less needy connoisseur of feet. So now, in addition to being my mentor and my friend, he was my massage therapist. He had already broken me down intellectually and emotionally. Now, finally, he had made his first physical move.
This new pattern of foot massages continued for several months. Some foot massages lasted longer than others, some involved wedging a foot against his chest when he could use only one arm because of injury, some seemed a little different from the rest, but nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to me to be at all inappropriate or anything other than a foot massage.
But of course, Graham wanted more, and eventually “more” happened.
“MORE” STARTED OUT as a training session just like the rest. Only this time he wanted to show me a book about hockey theory, Tarasov’s Hockey Technique. We talked a bit about it, nothing out of the ordinary.
“How do you feel? Tired? Sore?”
“Of course.”
“Here, why don’t you lie down and I’ll work the pain out of you
r feet.”
A foot massage, but this time, it wasn’t like the others. I sensed something was different even as he started normally, with my feet. He seemed different, a bit aloof, not completely present. He had shown me the book, but we hadn’t spent much time looking at it, and I sensed it had been a pretense for something else. Maybe these thoughts are something that I’ve created to make myself seem smarter about what eventually happened, or maybe I always knew that this was going to happen. I don’t know.
He started to move beyond my feet and slowly work his way up my legs. I froze. I did nothing but lie there, my eyes closed, wondering what was going on. I was afraid. I was confused. I opened my eyes, trying to get my bearings and understand what was happening. But all I caught was a glimpse of him, his face, his eyes.
It’s his eyes that I remember the most. His dark, dead eyes, the kind of eyes that show absolutely no emotion at all, that seem to look right through you as if you aren’t there—the eyes a shark has, cold, searching eyes that see without engaging, eyes that are always on the hunt for prey. I will never forget those eyes. I can never forget those eyes.
He moved slowly up my legs, never saying a word. I kept my own eyes shut as much as I could after seeing those eyes. They scared me. But it was too late. I had seen his eyes, the dead eyes, and they would be with me for the rest of my life.
I had no idea what was happening. I mean, I knew exactly what was happening, but I had no idea what was happening.
I Am Nobody Page 5
