Truth, Pride, Victory, Love

by David Connor

He got me with that, with the recollection and his charming expression, those sparkling, gray eyes of his that were never still until he wanted to catch you with them, and one side of his lower lip between his teeth.

  “Some version of it, I bet.” I had to look away. “And you think I’m going to risk breaking tradition… so close to the Olympics?” I rallied, and shot back with my secret weapon—sarcasm.

  He fought a smile. “So, I guess you plan on doing well today?” He obviously found this battling outside the pool somewhat enjoyable as well.

  “I’m fixin’ to sweep the event. Enjoy your lonely 2013 team gold and the three we could get today as a group. You remember that wall in my bedroom back at my parents’, covered with awards, winners’ ribbons, and cheapo plastic medals?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s all international gold ones now, and after today, I might have to start on the other side.” I walked away triumphantly, out into the hallway, in complete control of my brain.

  “Um. Where are your pants, Reed?” Coach Keller asked as I stopped short in front of him. “Or at least your Speedo?”

  I looked down. I was wearing underwear and nothing else. “Fuck.”

  He grabbed his bag and unzipped it. “Coaches are a lot like toddler moms,” mine had once said. “We have to carry a diaper bag with one of everything our swimmers might ever need.”

  “Thanks.” I took the swimsuit and track pants he held out to me.

  “Webber?” he asked.

  “Yup.” I stripped off my undershorts out in the hallway. I wasn’t the only one dressing out there. It was really no big deal.

  “Don’t let him fuck with you.”

  “How about just fuck me? That’s what he says he wants. And you know what?” I paused with my long-legged swimsuit and cock partway up. “I’m glad it happened,” I said, struggling with the spandex. “I needed a shot of adrenaline, and I got it.”

  “Whatever gets the fire going.”

  I tucked in my thick dick, slightly fuller and way more sensitive than when I’d first arrived. “Damn right.” I hadn’t gotten a boner at a swim meet in a while. Whenever I did, I beat my record, and that day was no different. I touched the wall first in every single race, with one more to go. Mathias was on fire as well. From eleventh in 2014 to gold at his qualifier a couple months earlier, he was close to the top now, but still only second best. Second best to me. He had obviously worked harder than ever this year, hoping to make my reign as world champ one and done. So far, that plan had failed him.

  Now, breaststroke was still not a sure thing for me. Conversely, it was the style Mathias always swam in team medley, the one he’d been put on the world team in Spain specifically to do. Beating him was not a definite. As I waited impatiently for the call to take my mark to try, I stretched my arm over my head and pulled. When I glanced across the pool, Mathias was doing the same. His pec muscles were pumped. His six-pack was rigid and outlined perfectly. I counted eight ridges, actually. He’d been supersized, and was also totally smooth again—not a hair to be seen. Even the sexy trail was gone. I longed to feel the smoothness against my cheek but did my best to shake it off, switching arms, pulling the other way, which he then did too. I twisted my neck from side to side and then grabbed both ankles, bending for a whole body extension. Son of bitch! Guess who else did.

  “Jerk,” I whispered. The jackoff was playing “monkey see, monkey do” during one of the most important moments in our athletic careers. What an asshole! And yet I couldn’t help but smile, especially as I wondered if anyone else would notice. Mathias arched and rounded his back. Then he tugged at his nuts, because I had a moment before. He didn’t seem to care if anyone did.

  “Swimmers to your blocks.”

  Finally! There was one lane—one swimmer—between us, according to the roster I’d checked out earlier. He currently stood at least ten feet from his starting block, with Mathias and me a fair distance from ours.

  “It’s not like the Dover Pool days anymore, huh?” Mathias asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Think you can beat me?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “At breaststroke?”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  Mathias chuckled, so damned relaxed or one hell of a bluffer.

  “I’ve beaten you at everything else so far today.” I walked away on that but had to come right back when the buzzer sounded, the real cue to get up on our blocks. I settled in, curling and uncurling my toes around the edge. I looked past Filipe Deliva from Argentina as he adjusted his cap and then pulled at the waist of his swimsuit—the thigh-length jammer I’d also switched over to, since almost everyone else in the running had over the years. I liked Mathias in the other kind better, though his bulge looked bigger in the newer ones. My gaze moved up some. His eyes were closed and he was steadily breathing in and out, preparing, meditating. It occurred to me I should be doing the same, and so I did.

  “Swimmers take your mark. Get set.”

  Mathias fell forward into the pool before the go. Mr. Cool as a Cucumber wasn’t so relaxed after all. He knew it was his last chance for a gold medal, and if he was anything like me, he could taste it.

  False starts were embarrassing, and somewhere deep inside I thought, Good. I was going to need everything I had, plus a little help from fate and the other swimmers, to live up to the boasting I had just done. I thanked the water gods for what I’d been given thus far, a harsh buzzer loud enough to make even the steadiest of men wet their pants. There had been precedence, of course, but with Mathias’s swimsuit already darker and dripping from going into the drink before he should have, it was difficult to tell. If I wanted to be an asshole later, I would ask. That was my thought—but only if I beat him.

  We started over. The second time Filipe flopped into the pool. Everyone was eager to get going, it seemed. Filipe’s fuckup probably put Mathias a bit more at ease, damn him. We all stretched. Some swimmers stepped down. I didn’t. Finally, it was time again.

  “Take your mark. Get set.”

  Bang!

  The third time was the charm. I’d flown out ahead of Mathias and everyone else, but a couple of guys caught up right away. As we entered the final lap, I sensed I had a very small lead. I never really knew how I was able to tell when I was ahead, but somehow, looking back at recordings of my races, I’d discovered I usually could. I also knew someone would be holding back, planning a last-minute burst. Chances were that someone was going to be Mathias. I was not a last-minute burster at all, not in breaststroke especially. I knew the only way for me to win was to get far enough ahead at the start and stay there. I thought I had done that. I hoped. Were it not impossible to swim with crossed fingers, I might have crossed mine.

  My eyes were open long enough to see the wall. It seemed so far away. My mind wasn’t supposed to be wondering who was on my tail, or worse yet, ahead of me. My mind wasn’t supposed to be thinking about what it shouldn’t be thinking about either. I had a secret system to get me through a race—a mantra, of sorts—I recited internally. I had never even revealed that to Coach Keller. It was something I would keep to myself forever, because it seemed to work.

  I switched my brain over to that for the final couple of seconds, and damn if it didn’t get me there before anyone else again. I didn’t know it until the numbers came up on the scoreboard, but Mathias was second. I’d beaten him—every time—and that was way more important than the fact I’d beaten everyone else too. It was almost more satisfying to wear gold to his silver than it would have been to see him standing there with nothing at all resting against his beautiful chest. It felt like closure to me. I waited until he looked my way, and then I smirked and nodded, just to let him know it. We were done.

  The moment I got out of the water, international swimming competition became sheer torture. An organized press conference always took place within an hour of the last race, during which reporters would lob questions at participants one at a time. I loathed every excruciating
minute. On the way to the locker room right after, however, we were accosted by shouting and phallic recording equipment at random. Not unlike my brother, I found that invasion of personal space even worse.

  “Your times are phenomenal. How does it feel to be so close to qualifying for your first Olympics so quickly?”

  I wanted to say something about how long and hard I’d been working—there’d been nothing quick about it—and how many people had supported me along the way, but all I managed was “Good.”

  Coach Keller had mentioned a second coach once upon a time, a media coach, who would school me in interview answers and press conference demeanor. I’d heard from her once via the telephone. So far, all she’d had to say after seeing me at other national and world competitions was “Your voice is weak, but you have pretty eyes.” Not terribly helpful as I answered around seven trillion more questions with one or two syllables each, out in the corridor between the arena and locker room. And then there was Mathias, all smiles, bare skin, and bulges, maintaining perfect posture and offering quips and anecdotes that had some sexy Clark Kent-looking news guy in stitches. Dude may have been second in the pool, but he was number one with the press. It didn’t take long for the newsies to desert me—the golden boy, the phenom, the onetime spoiler, now a repeat champion—and all flock to him, Mr. Silver.

  “It has always been my dream,” I heard him saying. “It feels amazing to be well on the way to making it come true.”

  “What do you think about Reed Watson?” someone asked him.

  My heart stopped, and so did I. What did Mathias think of me? Oh yeah. He was madly in love with me and wanted us to fuck, that was what he’d told me just before the start of the meet.

  “Well, he’s certainly stiff competition, isn’t he?”

  I stifled a chuckle because he’d said “stiff.”

  “I’ve known Reed a long time. I aspire to be more like him, actually, in and out of the water.”

  “Can you beat him next time?” a guy with an ESPN microphone asked.

  Mathias took a moment. It seemed rehearsed, like a dramatic pause. “I think I can.”

  We’ll see about that, I thought.

  Coach Keller brought up the media training again the moment we reconnected. “I should have been on that more. Sorry. I dropped the ball.”

  Yup. He’d been close enough to see my interviews and showed his disappointment by using incompatible sports metaphors. We weren’t there for water polo, after all. The only balls involved shriveled when wet.

  “At the press conference, try to be a little more… relaxed?” He posed it as a question. “Be the guy you are with your friends and family… with me. You’ve never been short on words around us. Be yourself… except….”

  “Except what?”

  “Well, it should go without saying….” He leaned in close enough for me to see ear hair and smell his deodorant, to say what shouldn’t be said. “We probably want to keep the gay thing under our hats.”

  I barely heard the words, but I got the message. “Oh.”

  “Look. There’s good reason.”

  “No. I get it.” I just wanted the conversation to end. I hadn’t planned on coming out publicly anyway, especially not in Russia. Sure, I’d rehearsed it a billion times in a billion ways, what with all the stuff that went on with gay discrimination—gay abuse—in Sochi during the winter games back in 2014. I’d fantasized often, since I first knew I was heading here, about making a huge pronouncement and eloquent speech of support for anyone suffering because of heinous laws and hateful, ignorant lawmakers. I never could have pulled it off anyway, though.

  “You know I respect you,” Coach said.

  “Sure.”

  “Seriously, Reed. We’ve never discussed the public side of this—your inevitable fame—as much as we should have. I want you to… to what? To be you, but….”

  “I said I get it.” I peppered the short retort with a hefty dose of attitude. “I won’t do anything to embarrass you.” I turned to go.

  “Reed.” He spun me back around with a firm grip. “It’s not about me. Other than the chance of it distracting you, I worry. People have opinions, and my God, they share them freely nowadays, don’t they, all over the Internet. I would hate to see you hurt by all of that.” The sincerity in his eyes softened my insolence. “I think it would be awesome if you fell in love.” Once again, we were having the most intimate of conversations in the most public of places. “And beyond that, well, there’s quite a bit of time between now and Olympic qualifiers.” He smirked lasciviously.

  “Here’s a thought; maybe it’s time to try something new, not that celibacy hasn’t been working.” His tone indicated he was joking, which was good, because what came next was pretty bad. “How good would it feel to mess with Webber’s head by banging him, then walking away next spring?” It seemed as if Coach Keller held a grudge. “You’ll end up frustrated again, and he’ll come out of it so torn up he’ll be lucky to take home a plastic award, let alone precious metal.”

  Apparently I was an asshole, just as Cal had said, because there was something about that plan that sounded intriguing. Maybe it was just the fucking part.

  I MANAGED to avoid Mr. Personality in the locker room. It was odd how suddenly depressed I was, considering I had just excelled at the ultimate international swimming competition of the year. My name would be on the news again. It would be in the record books, right beside the already famous ones. Was all of that negated by the fact I had just been shoved to the back of the professional sports closet?

  “Hey.” Damn! It was him. “Can we get together? Please?” He touched the back of my neck. He remembered. “When you flying out?” The smell of all kinds of pricy bath products seduced and also irked me.

  “In the morning.”

  “Me too. What say we… spend the night together?”

  I thought back to what Coach Keller had just said. Ripping out Mathias’s heart was tempting. So was capturing it. “Yes,” I said, before I had too much time to think.

  “For real?” He seemed surprised.

  “You chickening out?”

  “No way.”

  “We can’t leave together, though. Coach doesn’t want me outed.”

  “Ah.”

  I wondered if Mathias’s coach was on the same page. He didn’t say.

  “We’ll be sitting beside one another at the press table. It might be hard to hide how much you mean to me.” He said that instead, with yet another brush of the back of his hand at the nape of my neck.

  “I hate that part of this whole….” I motioned around the locker room to finish the sentence.

  “Eh, you’ll get used to it. You were the guy who didn’t buckle under the spotlight and pressure of a fourth-grade vocabulary bee.”

  I smiled.

  “Speaking of… check it out.” He was already dressed and went to his pocket for his phone. “Look.” He held it in front of my face, his Facebook feed, where well-wishers had already started to congratulate him on his performance. There were dozens of posts in less than thirty minutes.

  “Cool.” I wondered how many I had. Then I remembered I didn’t have a fan page, just a personal one. Maybe I could get Cal and Devon on that, and then we’d start one for Dev.

  “Look closer.”

  I did, and I laughed. “Congratulations from Mrs. Smeckler. Cool.” She’d been the first to post.

  “You know that’s—”

  “Not her name. Yeah. I know.” Her first name was Beverly. “Sweet, though, that she remembers you.”

  “And you. ‘Tell Reed way to go too!’” Mathias read.

  “Yeah. She sends a check every now and again—a donation—which I hate.”

  “It’s part of the gig, Reed.”

  “I guess. Not for you, though, I bet.”

  “I have sponsors.”

  “Hmm.” I wondered for what. Surely the Webbers could cover everything from body-hugging swimsuits to pricy airfare all on their own,
possibly for the whole US team. “So…?” I nodded toward the exit.

  “Yeah. We should get out there, I suppose. Though surely they won’t start the Q&A without you. You’re the star of the day.”

  “I wonder if I could just sneak out the back.”

  “You’ll do fine.” Mathias took my hand. “I wish I could hold it out there.”

  “I wish you could too.”

  “It’s shaking.” He brought it toward his lips.

  “Don’t.” I couldn’t let him do that.

  “You’re really nervous.”

  “You have no idea.”

  THE FLASHBULBS were dizzying. I wondered how the Kardashians hadn’t all gone blind. Here we were, elite athletes, sure, but not like Peyton Manning or the guy who deflated his balls or whatever, and yet the press was acting like we’d just gotten back from the Super Bowl, Mars, or the Oscars.

  “Was today a fluke, Reed, or can you keep up this pace right through mid-2016?”

  “I, uh, train hard, and so, I, uh, think I can keep up the pace.” Fuck! That sounded inane.

  “Mathias, what will you do to pull ahead of Reed? What more can you do?”

  “Just concentrate. A lot of it is a mental game, right? I can try to train harder. I can build up my stamina and strength, but in the end, I think all I have to do is believe I can win, and then I will.”

  “You didn’t believe it today?”

  “Hmm.” When Mathias flashed his perfect, winning smile and showed his handsome dimples, the flashes went off again. “This guy’s a little intimidating. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that in front of him. Since we were kids, I’ve known the kind of numbers he can put up. I’d be lying if I said beating him was going to be easy.”

  “Reed?” the same reporter asked.

  “What?” I tossed back.

  He chuckled. “Do you have any response to that?”

  “Oh. Um… I think…. He… I…. What was the question?” I’d never taken on water in the pool. On dry land, I was drowning. Coach Keller tugged on his left finger with his right hand. What the fuck does that mean? I’m a swimmer, not a fucking major league pitcher. What’s with the signals from behind home plate? I turned my attention back to the reporter. “Mathias and I used to be…. We trained together, so I know… he’s… um….” I looked toward Mathias.