Truth, Pride, Victory, Love

by David Connor

“Damned good, actually. Great, in fact.”

  “And you can’t wait to do it again, because I’m completely irresistible?”

  “You’re all right.”

  I huffed, amused by the way he’d said it. “Gee, thanks.”

  “Sorry.” Suddenly, Cal looked very serious. “For the way I acted and some of the things I said a little while back… a hundred years ago. This whole bisexual thing. I’m not sure I get it.”

  “What’s to get?” I asked.

  “Well, see, I know I’m not gay and in denial, because… dude… after all these months, I still fucking love Caryn. I love her tits and I love her—” He put his hand in my lap and grabbed my hard cock. He squeezed it and grunted. Since Caryn didn’t have one of those, I assumed he was referring to her vagina. “But I ain’t hating your dick either.”

  “So?”

  “‘So.’ Fucking so….” He almost laughed too. He wasn’t mad. “Like it’s that easy to be into both girls and guys.”

  “Why is it hard?”

  Cal took his hand away from where it was. “I’m glad I never told you I loved you, because this way you didn’t get hurt. Maybe not as much as you would have, at least… if I’d have said it when I felt it, and then gone all back and forth like I did.”

  “I’m sorry it’s been so confusing, and for everything else you had to go through.” I wanted to touch his face. I wanted to kiss him again.

  “You said all that before, Wats, over and over, a hundred times, even when I wouldn’t listen.”

  “Let me say it again, now that you are. I felt really bad… I still do… that you had to give up swimming.”

  “Truth?” We were holding hands again, and I couldn’t even pinpoint when it had happened. Sometimes they rested in my lap. Sometimes Cal moved them around.

  “Yeah. Truth. Always,” I said.

  “I probably would have quit by now anyway.”

  “Seriously?”

  “One thing I definitely don’t miss is competitive swimming.” He waved it away, like he meant it. “Never once did I get a swimming boner, like you do.”

  “You did so. Remem—”

  “Metaphorically, you anus. One of the social workers back when I was in the hospital, she made me envision the rest of my life. I was a dick, at first, like I was with you—”

  “No.”

  “Let me talk. Jesus, Wats.”

  “Sorry.”

  “She pushed. Shark Tank was on, and maybe I was bullshitting at first, because Daymond John was talking, but I think that’s my thing. I’m going to major in business and finance.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And I think I might maybe buy the factory someday, develop real estate, not just for profit, but to better the whole town. I want to put my employees’ ideas to work, not just their bodies. I even imagine maybe running for some sort of political office.”

  “No shit.”

  “Where we grew up, it’s great, right?” He didn’t give me a chance to agree. “Fuck yeah, it is, but it needs a boost. I’d love to get those abandoned buildings where your mom and dad work up and running again… turn them into something. Mr. Kenney is already mentoring me. He don’t have to live here, you know. Dude’s rolling in it like a Webber, could fucking live in Hawaii if he wanted to, but he stays because he grew up here. I’m all over that.”

  “It gets you hard? Like swimming does for me?”

  “Believe it or not.”

  “Sweet. I just want you to be happy.”

  “I’m getting there. And speaking of hard, I am again. And I see you are too. I… I’d like to suck it… if you want, because Caryn said it was okay. And you can get at mine.” He took a breath and relaxed. He actually said, “Phew,” as if admitting what he just had was work. “She says what no high school teacher of mine ever would have. ‘Cal, you think too much.’ I wonder, though… does being bi mean I’m twice as likely to cheat?”

  “Have you?”

  “No,” Cal said right away.

  “In a year… give or take.”

  “No, because it’s like, nothing’s lacking with Caryn.” He made the primitive grunting sound again, except this time it didn’t altogether sound pleasurable. “According to her, we’re like any other couple that fantasizes away from one another, only when we can’t be together, we sometimes both get off imagining your hairless body naked—or your hairy one—you know, depending on which way we want to see it that day and whether or not you’ve shaved.”

  “Stop.”

  “She said she wants to be sexually fluid. She wants to be, but she’s not sure she is. ‘There’s a bit of disappointment in just being straight.’ Those were her exact words.” Cal smiled. “I guess the pendulum has swung that far now, some young people think straight is backwards or something.”

  “She’ll find herself,” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure I can almost be kind of comfortable pretty soon calling myself absolutely bisexual if—big if—I actually am and it’s not just all about you.”

  I looked at Cal’s hand on my thigh. The car was getting hotter. We were both sweating. I could feel it on his palm and my leg and down the back of my shorts.

  “Caryn is a one-day-at-a-time kind of gal. As long as we’re happy, we’re happy. If we’re not, then we talk about what happens next, she says. And we do talk about it, and yet you saw how casual she was about you and me fucking. Not in a she-don’t-give-a-shit kind of way,” Cal added quickly.

  “No. That’s definitely not how I saw it.”

  “She gets it’s a lot to think about, despite getting on me about obsessing.”

  “Do you have to decide right now?” I asked.

  “Caryn wouldn’t think so, but I do, if I want to give you head, because what if doing that leads to feelings?”

  “What if?” I repeated. “I mean, it would be really cool to see what we could be… if… except….”

  “Except?” Cal made the disgusted grunt again—“God!”—and finally let go of my hand. “You’re telling us to let the idea go, but you’re still hung up on Whitey Greenbucks.”

  I looked over—and then burst out laughing. “Whitey Greenbucks?”

  Cal shrugged and smiled wider. Man, was it beautiful. Still, I punched him.

  “Ow.”

  “Knock it off with the skin color crap.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “And what led you to that conclusion?”

  “He’s the only guy you ever wanted more than me.”

  “Oh.” There was no point trying to deny it.

  “And still do.”

  I didn’t object to that either. “It’s better if we’re both honest.”

  “Yup.” He gently touched my face, showing genuine affection. I’d missed it so much.

  “It’s amazing to see you with Dev,” I said, once the silence went on too long.

  “I think he saved my life.”

  The comment surprised me. “Really?”

  “I was ready to give up, Reed. Seriously. I’d go three weeks without a seizure—four—five—and then have one and have to start counting all over. It was fucking devastating.”

  “A year now, though, right?”

  “Yeah. The doctor said, ‘See. I told you they could just stop, just like that and forever.’ I didn’t believe it until they did, but look at me now. When Devon called me and said he wanted to be just like you…. Actually, what he said was he wanted to be almost just like you, and he sent me the link to Special Olympics and asked me if I would coach him on the side.”

  “Yeah.” I knew part of the story, just not the emotional side of it for Cal—and the almost-just-like-me part.

  “It was, like, my best day ever, ’cause it was later that same night Caryn made me go to that movie—Les Misérables—a fitting selection, since we both were. God, it sucked. I told her I’d been into her since that first day we rode home from the meet with her. I told her I didn’t say anything right away, because, besides having to deal with my own
shit, well, some white girls would have been… not up for that.”

  “Come on. You know better. Not Caryn.”

  “No. Funny thing is, my parents are one pro, one con. My dad hasn’t totally come around yet.”

  “Wow.” Maybe I didn’t really know Mr. Bellamy as well as I thought. On the other hand, “I get that, I guess,” I had to admit. “Remember when you said I’d abandoned you for Mathias?”

  “That was the depression talking. I shouldn’t have—”

  “No.” I touched his arm for reassurance. “It’s okay. It’s just that…. See, there were times I was with him when I felt like I was abandoning my whole race… the one I feel like I am even if it turns out I’m not.”

  “You want to know… for sure?”

  “Maybe. Someday. It’s just weird how even the most tolerant minds can sometimes get bogged down with stuff like that.”

  “You got smart in college.” Cal smiled.

  I laughed. “I was always smart.”

  “And you think too much too. I worry quite a bit about what my old man would have to say about… you and me. Or me and any guy.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Cal shrugged. “It is what it is, as they say.”

  “You could have called,” I told him. “We could have talked… really talked.”

  “I did call. You don’t always call back.”

  I was guilty as charged on that. The deeper I sank into my own isolation, the more I ignored the people I needed, the same ones who often needed me.

  “Your parents are cool with the whole guy-on-guy stuff?” Cal asked.

  “They’ve never referred to it as that, but yeah. Once we finally discussed it, all was good. They’re nosy too, though. ‘Who are you seeing?’ ‘When can we meet him?’ ‘No one and never.’”

  “You really need to get over that a-hole Webber.”

  “He’s not an asshole.”

  “Tell me how he’s not.”

  I took a breath to think.

  “Time’s up.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Cal’s smirk was endearing.

  “I guess. So what’s the solution, oh smart one? What amount of asshole-ishness is acceptable?”

  “Slightly less than what Mathias Webber has.”

  I laughed again, longer and harder the second time. As Cal started the car and pulled back onto the road, I kissed him on the cheek and then put my head on his shoulder.

  13

  THE SEASONS passed again, all four of them, and before I knew it, I was a junior in college and Devon was a high school sophomore. My parents weren’t thrilled with the latter, since they felt he was passed through his first year of high school without really grasping what he should have. I was looking into a program at Cloverton that might be able to help him.

  He was doing well with his swimming, moving up the ranks, and still seeing Amy. Though the span of nearly two years had brought quick advances for my brother in his athletic and romantic endeavors, my trajectory had slowed down considerably. Coach Keller had decided not to try to get me on the national team in 2013. He’d had his reasons, and though I hadn’t altogether been able to decipher what they were, I hadn’t put up a fuss. The Cloverton coach had, but I’d decided to side with the one I trusted implicitly, the one who had made me as good as we all thought I was.

  It only dawned on me later Coach Keller’s reasons might have been financial. That was why, by 2014, on top of my grueling training schedule, I had three jobs I tried to keep secret from him along with a full load at school. It was well worth it, I thought, as things started to move again. In just a few weeks, I actually would be attending the US team trials—finally—as Coach Keller thought the perfect moment for some national exposure and my proverbial coming out had at last arrived. My times were better than almost every other guy in the sport.

  “You’ll make a big splash when we finally show you off to everyone. A big splash… get it?” Coach Keller had used that joke a million times. Now, it was actually about to happen. I was both petrified and excited.

  I had sponsors now too, businesses and philanthropists, who, according to him, had “tons of throwaway cash they love to throw at up-and-coming athletes.” Accepting the checks left me feeling uneasy. “Then let me deal with it,” he’d said. “This is how it works.”

  Mathias had been on the national team the summer before. I’d seen him on TV—him and his mother. There she’d been in close-up after close-up, taking up my entire TV screen as she smiled broadly. I’d found the whole thing quite the ruse. Now she was interested in her son’s pursuits and athletic quests? I’d never seen her at a local meet—not once—and would have bet the woman’s entire bank account her presence had something to do with Mathias being on the precipice of celebrity. Finally, it seemed he was worthy of her time. Or maybe, once again, I was somewhat jealous, because I knew flying to Spain for Mrs. Webber was less of a financial burden than the Watson family taking a car trip eighty miles south to New York City to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree some December.

  Mathias had been a hot topic during the entire 2013 competition, because the two swimmers everyone knew from the London games weren’t there—and neither was I. Mathias wasn’t talked about because he was blowing everyone away. He hadn’t come in first once, but there was something about him. The announcer used the words “swagger” and “it factor.”

  I couldn’t disagree. Mathias Webber’s undeniable, indescribable aura had certainly captured my attention once upon a time. In fact, it wouldn’t let me go. A couple of years after getting together and then drifting apart, I still couldn’t stop thinking about him, even as we remained separated by the entire span of the United States of America.

  Mathias and I had come face-to-face only once since he’d moved to Arizona, at the 2013 NCAA swimming semifinals, shortly after his Nationals and TV debut. Separate locker rooms had proven a blessing. He had nodded from the next starting block over a couple of times, which I’d ignored.

  In the end, the Cloverton team advanced, while Mathias’s hadn’t. There was a bit of smug satisfaction in beating a team with a US medalist on it. He’d gotten better since his relocation, but he still had a ways to go to beat me, except maybe at breaststroke, “it factor” or no. My whole family had watched from the couch that year as he’d qualified for Worlds and later helped the US team win gold in Spain.

  “Mathias won!” Devon had been thrilled. Apparently he hadn’t been able to forget Mathias over so many days, weeks, and months either.

  God, how I envied Mathias that world medal. I was jealous of it every waking moment of every day for almost a year. Even if I had many, many more, he was the first to get the real kind and International Swimming Federation acknowledgment.

  That winter I was off to Nationals in North Carolina. The venue felt huge. Other than that, it was pretty much like every other one in which I’d ever competed. It smelled like chlorine and sweaty men, a combination that still made me a little horny with both competitive spirit and sexual arousal. There were open rafters, bleachers, a lot of wood and concrete, and guys standing around in various states of nudity, right out in the open. I wondered why so many were already two-thirds naked. Then I realized they weren’t my direct competitors. They had evidently swum earlier. Some of them had failed, and it was already time for them to go home. They wouldn’t be on TV. Their families wouldn’t get the thrill of pointing at the screen with excitement and screeching, “There he is!” But some of them would be right back in their respective pools the next day, fighting for a chance to do better next year. That much I knew. Their hearts and minds would accept nothing less.

  There were banners hanging from the ceiling with names on them. Some names I had heard of and some I had not. The most famous name in the sport hung right in the center, slightly lower than all the others—not higher, which one might consider more prestigious, but down some, in order to be more easily seen. Coach Keller put his arm
across my shoulder as I paused right under it.

  “That’s where I want mine someday,” I said.

  “There are two types of athletes,” he responded. “Maybe three. There’s the guy or team that wins all the time—the champion. People watch him. They root for him. They know he’s never going to lose. Then there’s the spoiler. He’s the one who finally beats the champion. Some people immediately love him. Some hate him, because he’s the asshole who takes down their longtime fave. Everyone knows his name after that, though.

  “Then, eventually, there’s the comeback kid. He’s the guy that lost a couple times, or lost big, or fucked-up. Sometimes he scampers off with his tail between his legs in shame, but then, a while later, he comes back, and our hearts are torn between wanting him to win and rooting for the spoiler, who is by now the champ.”

  “Which one am I?”

  “Most likely, all three. You’re the champion at Cloverton, right? You know what it feels like to have the crowd behind you… the whistles and cheers… the adulation.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not that here. Be ready. Be ready for quiet when your name is announced, and be prepared to hear someone else’s in a chant as you swim. You know your times can put you on that podium today and get you to Qatar.”

  I hadn’t even known where the fuck Qatar was a few days back. I had to google it to see where I’d be going for the World Championships, when I made the team.

  “This is what it’s all been for. This is the next step. Every person, every dime it took to get you here, it’s all been worth it.” Coach’s arm felt like an anchor—or maybe a big sack of dimes. I’d become quite obsessed with the money side of things lately. I was paying him, upon my insistence, but the small amount of cash I handed over every two weeks would no doubt be laughable among the other coaches and swimmers. I had no idea who was paying for plane fare to Qatar or for any of my other jaunts back and forth across the country.

  “The money part is not your problem.” Coach had said that ten more times in recent days, and every time, it bugged me. There were a dozen other guys in a similar boat I could have asked about finances, but I never did, because I was afraid I wouldn’t like the answer. Feeling like someone’s charity case was always a sore spot with me. Now, here I was, one for real, indebted to a whole slew of people I could never pay back. There were patches all over my duffel bag, little thread-and-canvas tributes to local business sponsors I owed who knew how much—a win, if not a cash payback. As I looked down at all the colors and words, I realized how many people I could be about to let down.