by David Connor
“Anyone who pays attention to the sport, who doesn’t know your name already, sure as hell will after today.”
No one from home came with me, but everyone was going to watch on TV—on network TV! As queasy as my stomach had felt at takeoff my very first time on a plane for NCAA travel, that was nothing compared to how it felt now, as I pictured myself on the Webbers’ huge screen. “I think I’m going to puke.”
“You won’t be the only one,” Coach said. “I promise.”
When I bounced up out of the water after my final 2014 US Championships swim, it wasn’t only my time that mattered to me. Mathias had participated in a separate qualifier the weekend prior, hoping to make the world team a second time. He hadn’t done very well and was currently seeded number ten. If Newman Bates, the guy in the lane right beside me, placed second or third in the race just completed, Mathias would be out for the season. World Medalist Webber was suffering a bout of pneumonia, and the ambivalence that became the third party in our relationship long ago—back when we’d had a relationship—had me torn between wanting to throw my arms around Newman when he won silver, and wanting to serve Mathias chicken soup in bed and apply Vicks VapoRub to his hairless chest. I presumed that was someone else’s job now, the man sharing that bed when Mathias was well.
I BECAME the number one spoiler in 2014, defeating the previous year’s medalists in nearly every race, the US ones and those on the world stage. I left California and then Qatar a hero to some and a villain to others.
“Reed Watson is the greatest thing to hit the water since instant coffee,” said one sports reporter.
Another threw me into the company of a temporary champ, “a flash in the pan,” predicting my eventual disgrace. “This guy comes out of nowhere and virtually sweeps the competition? Someone better see if he and Lance Armstrong have friends in common.”
“Ignore the bullshit,” Coach Keller said. “Be proud. You know the truth.”
As I touched down at home, what was true to me was an overwhelming sense that my journey wasn’t completed, not because I was still looking forward to Rio—which I was—but rather because I had not beaten Mathias in head-to-head international competition on the big stage. I worked hard all through the next year with that goal and Rio in mind. As I entered the locker room for the final day of the 2015 World Championships in Kazan, Russia the following August, I was entering as the US gold medalist in nearly every event yet again, and had already won several there.
Though I had done my best to forget Mathias Webber ever existed over the three years since he’d walked out of my dorm room to fuck someone else, I really never could. My victories in the pool against men other than him weren’t exactly hollow. Most interactions in the bedroom, backseats of cars, or behind buildings with anyone I tried to get with, conversely, honestly were.
I’d had plenty of opportunity. Dozens of men had asked me out as I became a big man on campus—or at least in the campus pool. Because I never told anyone any of that out loud, it wasn’t bragging. I’d forced myself to accept invitations to lunch with the captain of the football team, a stroll in the moonlight with the captain of the debate team, and one to sing “Edelweiss” in a karaoke bar with the guy who played Captain von Trapp in the Cloverton Drama Department’s production of The Sound of Music. I even had a brief relationship of sorts with an older dude nicknamed Captain Falcon, who worked at a pet store and had a special affinity for the birds.
He’d caught me in the library, reading an article online about race relations in the US. There had been a few incidents in the news—black against white—young men dying under circumstances that had people crying out.
“Mark my words,” Captain Falcon said before I’d even known his name. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I have that feeling too.”
Burly and tall, sweet and handsome, he sat down with me, offered me some Funyuns from his bag, and introduced himself.
“Captain Falcon?” I asked.
He explained about the pet store. “I love God’s fine feathered creatures. The kind up on two feet, them I worry about. We’re not always nice to one another.”
I told him a little bit about myself.
“Oh, I know what you do, Mr. Swimmer,” he said. “You’re the talk of the campus.”
“Beyond all that, right now I’m thinking more about who I am, not what I do.” I filled in the details of the family I knew and the one I didn’t—my actual DNA. “When I read about this kind of stuff happening—not once, but twice or, like, five times in a pretty short amount of time—it scares the hell out of me for my brother and Cal… for Julius and my nephew when he grows up. For guys like you. I guess I can’t experience it on the same level, because maybe I don’t have to fear for myself as much. Even though I feel black, on those rare occasions when I have to think about what color I feel, even though I might very well be, at least partially, I don’t always look it, so maybe people don’t treat me like I am.”
“Is there a difference in the way people treat us?” Captain Falcon asked.
“I guess I wouldn’t know that either. What do you think?”
I wasn’t sure why this conversation was coming with a stranger as opposed to my parents, my sister’s boyfriend, or Cal. From the moment he sat down, there was an ease about Captain Falcon, a friendly tone on onion-and-iced-tea breath, compassionate eyes, and a willingness to converse openly, as opposed to telling me, “Fuck off, white boy, there’s no way you can even know.” He claimed a lot of guys on campus would say that to me.
“There are black students who don’t want whites in with the Black Lives Matter group. There are definitely people who would tell you if in fact you’re black at all, you sure as hell aren’t black enough. I’m not sure pointing out all our differences and more segregation is the solution.”
“Doesn’t seem like it would be,” I agreed.
We both just looked at the picture awhile of the once lively teenager who was now no longer alive after a traffic stop. “So young.” He said it. I was thinking it. “Now that we have a black president, who knows what this kid could have been? What any of us could be. We’re going to have our first black Olympic swimming gold medalist, right?”
I looked at him funny.
“You, goof.”
“Oh. I’d be the third. Cullen Jones was part of the team that won gold in Beijing. He’s also the first African American to hold a world record. Before him, there was Anthony Ervin. Plus, Simone Manuel could very well get one before me if her races come first. She’s pretty impressive.” We looked up several more names as I told him about the time Devon busted me for surfing the net for gay porn. The reminiscence had me grinning, and it made Captain Falcon laugh out loud. “I thought he should know these guys too, and I just e-mailed him a link to Simone. I figured it’d also be good for him to know I go online for something other than getting off.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
After that line, we got serious again for a while—almost an hour—until the librarian started turning off lights, offering a subtle hint it was time for us to go.
“I hate for this to end,” Captain Falcon said. “Though we’ve come up with no solutions to the hard stuff, I sure had a lot of fun when we ventured into other areas.”
Those areas had included being gay and a bit of dirty talk. He’d even typed big black cocks into the search engine on the computer I’d used my college ID to sign in on. He brushed a tear away from my cheek when I’d shed one over the kid in the hoodie not much older than my brother, not much younger than I. After giving me my moment, he put a Funyun to his eye like a monocle and did an impression of the English professor I’d had freshman year and who he was learning from now. “Shakespeare would not be on Twitter, don’t you know.”
Professor Venette had actually said that, to my class and also Captain Falcon’s, apparently. Venette didn’t really use a monocle, but his stuffy professorial demeanor and voi
ce sounded like he very well might when he dressed up for formal affairs.
Captain Falcon had put my hand on his crotch when he’d opened the site showing some of those big black cocks, and so it didn’t exactly come as a major shock when he invited me back to his off-campus apartment and we ended up naked.
He had a lot of tattooed wings on his body I traced with my finger. “These are beautiful.”
“So many days I wished I could fly when I was little. On the playground, for sure, to win every race”—we had that in common—“or to get away from the bullies who called me a big black sissy. I wanted so bad to be able to rush to my grandma’s house when she had a stroke and my mom said she was going to die and we’d never get there in time. Sometimes I wish I could just float above it all to see what the fuck is wrong with people and, maybe even better, to find out from that perspective it’s not the real picture and the bad guys aren’t winning.”
He was lumbering, possibly scary-looking to some, but so very childlike at times. I offered a hug that turned into a kiss, because he was a man, an interesting, sexy, introspective one who’d started college a little later than most, who seemed to need both.
When his cock was hard, it kind of looked like a cyclops eagle or a jumbo jet with dark mocha fuselage, feathered wings instead of metal ones, and super-smooth, bulbous landing gear. He shaved too, and he wasn’t a swimmer. I ran my fingers over the ink outline of the feathers there as well, and then down the full length of his erection. I took my entire lower lip between my teeth, in anticipation of putting both around it and making him come in my mouth.
“You are available?” he asked as we weaved our fingers together and I rose up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Not hung up on someone too smart, sexy, compassionate, and fun to get over?”
I looked at the floor.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Captain Falcon said. “So don’t look so sorry.” He kissed the top of my head, and then, sort of one at a time, unlaced our fingers. Naturally, it reminded me of another time, of someone else. “Tell me about him.”
So I did. “I think maybe I need some sort of closure with Mathias. If I look him in the eye and tell him good-bye, tell him everything I’ve been feeling for years, maybe then it will feel like it’s really done.”
“My dad would hate me dating a white guy anyway,” Captain Falcon said with a sigh.
“Oh.” For some reason I was suddenly disappointed to learn his father was not as open-minded as he was. I’d already pictured the entire flock of Falcons—or whatever a group of falcons would be called—sitting in leather chairs discussing the problems of the world over brandies and then fixing them all. Another lovely vision tainted by prejudice.
“To him, you would be. He’s… light-skin black versus dark-skin black…. It’s a thing to him, Reed. They were totally cool with the gay thing, but my dad literally said, ‘No proud black man is going to bring a white boy home to his parents.’” How was it I’d never thought of that? “We could show him your DNA, but I don’t think you can pass.”
“That’s kind of funny, since to some people I can’t pass for white either. No wonder I don’t know what the fuck I am.”
“You’re amazing.”
“But there’s someone else?” I’d recalled what he had started to say before.
“Professor Venette.” He covered his mouth. “Oh, the scandal,” he said from behind his hand. “He’s the right ethnicity, but maybe not the right age. So… that’s that. There are two of me, Reed. The thirty-year-old man who can stand up to any wrong and can sometimes fight with my father on important issues, and then there’s the guy who can’t face the risk of being shut out of my family at any age. Crazy shit, huh?” We embraced. “Hey.” He made me look at him. His eyes, his smile, forced or not, they made me feel better. “Maybe I can’t bring you home to dinner, but we can talk a lot and play once in a while?”
We had some great conversations about race and family values after that night, most of them with no clothes on. I made another buddy, but as more and more time had passed, I was still coming up short when it came to falling in love again or getting that closure.
I REMEMBERED the bear hug Captain Falcon sent me off to my plane with as I sat in the changing area, prepping for my final races at Worlds. The smells, sounds, and aura around me—the musk of dozens of half-dressed males, a dozen more totally undressed males, the clashing scents of varied brands of body wash and deodorant—it was enough to get me drunker than the three beers I’d needed to get up on the stage at that bar near campus to sing about tiny white Austrian flowers. I couldn’t let it, though I did so enjoy the smell of a man, especially the more intimate places on his anatomy, those only a lover got to see and inhale up close, whether it be behind his ears, his armpits, or my favorite part of all, the area where the upper leg met the pubic bone. I had nothing to base some of that on but imagination and memories of getting partially there with Mathias. I never got that far with any of my captains or with Cal. I’d come closest with my feathered friend.
Sitting right behind a naked, bent-over Newman Bates, I thought about how frustrating it was I still hadn’t experienced the enthralling, erotic, satiating thrill of putting my face in between my lover’s—
“Reed.”
I startled.
“I wondered when we’d meet again.”
“Mathias?” Quick on my mental feet, I posed it as a question, like I wasn’t sure, as I turned to straddle the bench the other way.
“You’ve forgotten me already?”
“Never,” I said, and I held his gaze. I’d be damned if he was going to mess with my head at a competition.
“I’d like to kiss you,” he whispered. And just like that, he did.
I jumped up, ready to hit him or run. Newman had walked off just before Mathias’s bold, boneheaded move. A tall row of lockers offered privacy from everyone else, but it still was not the place for grand gestures or even conversation. “You’re trying to distract me. You afraid you can’t beat me fair and square?” I reminded myself I now had almost a dozen FINA medals—individual and team—to his one, because I hadn’t been only an alternate.
“Not at all.” He smiled his arrogant smile. Cal was right all along. He was an asshole. “The truth is… I’ve been thinking about this meeting quite a while. If only it had happened sooner. I’ve sowed my wild oats, Reed, over all these years, and now I’m ready to settle down… with you.”
I shook my head and played it off as a joke, though I was barely able to control my emotions, emotions that changed quicker than the channels when Dad was bored and in charge of the TV remote. Turning my back to Mathias, anger was the one I tried hard to hold on to as I imagined shoving him into one of the lockers. “I have to go.”
“No.” His fingers wrapped around my wrist. I wanted to take his hand. “I’m serious, Reed. I’ve missed you. I want you back.”
“Really?” I did slide my hand up into his, then held the two together, secure in the fact our intimate act was hidden from others. It was the summer of 2015. The years had passed quickly, just like Coach Keller proclaimed they would way back, the ones from 2012 to almost 2016, and the ones from Ms. Smeckler’s class to my senior year in college that would start in just a couple weeks. At the same time, with my hand in Mathias’s, it felt as if no time had gone by at all, as if the clock and the calendar had stopped and we were back living together at my house or his, teenage boys discovering love for the first time.
“Mathias….” I said his name sweetly, and made his eyes meet mine again by refusing to say anything more until they did. “Fuck you,” I told him. “In the words of Taylor Swift…. Well, you know the song. Getting back together with you… it’s never going to happen.” I took a breath. “Good luck out there.” Then I let his hand fall away.
14
HOW FUCKING dare he mess with my emotions at the World Championships of swimming only a year before the Olympics? How dare he play with me like that? If he’d really had some great
epiphany, why hadn’t he shared it days, weeks, or months ago? He knew my phone number, my e-mail address…. He knew how to find me on motherfucking Grindr, under the joke account, still active as far as I knew, that we had set up one horny night under a fake handle with a picture of his asshole taken in the bathroom, my dick captured under the covers, and a full-body Photoshopped image using porn stars and Coach Keller’s face from his online yearbook circa 1983. For that matter, Mathias fucking knew where I lived and could afford a first-class ticket anytime.
“Reed.” He came after me, following me as I headed God knows where. “I had my reasons. Trust me.”
“This isn’t the time,” I told him.
“No. You’re right.” We were still whispering—whispering rather loudly. “Though maybe it is. The best numbers I ever put up was when I was frustrated over you, frustrated over having you so close and not being able to touch you.”
I clenched my fists and twisted my neck side to side. “Then you ought to do really well today.”
“Come on. Think about it. After this, we spend some time together… just the two of us… and sort it all out. Maybe… you know….”
“Fuck?” I looked him right in the eye again.
“Maybe. I haven’t, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure.”
“I’m telling the truth, Reed. In many ways, my first time would still be with you, and that’s how I wanted it.”
“Bullshit.”
“T-r-u-t-h.”
