Truth, Pride, Victory, Love

by David Connor

  I laughed, then went to the cupboard.

  “Relationships are like swimming,” Dad said.

  “Relationships are like swimming?”

  “Or basement bathrooms. Relationships are like basement bathrooms—they take a lot of work sometimes, but they’re worth it in the end.” He pointed at me with what was left of his sandwich. “You won’t see that on a refrigerator magnet.”

  I poured him some tea and offered a hug.

  “Does Mathias even know why you’ve been mad all this time?”

  “He should,” I said. “And if he doesn’t, he’s had over six months to ask.”

  “How long have you had to tell him?”

  I shoved in the last corner of bread, meatloaf, and ketchup so I could answer with my mouth stuffed with food, just like he’d asked it. We were uncouth, manly men in deep discussion. “Six months.” I rolled my eyes.

  “What a stubborn jerk he is not to even ask in all that time.” Dad shook his head.

  “I get it.”

  “When I was angry with you, did you always know why?”

  “Mostly leaves, best I can recall.” The word reminded me of the first time I’d felt like I had to kiss someone—just had to—in a romantic way. I hadn’t, of course, but I’d wanted to. All those years later, the leaf Devon had sent to remind me of that day and Mathias was still in a frame in my apartment. I’d pressed it in wax paper and then ironed it, like we’d learned back in elementary school art class. It had hung quite prominently on the wall in my dorm for a while but was now in with some books on a shelf. It had become way too hard to look at it every day. “I wouldn’t even know how to start the conversation now.”

  “I might go with hello.”

  I held up my glass for a toast. “To the man with all the answers.”

  Dad clinked me. “Eh. I watch a lot of movies. What I’ve learned from them and just living over many, many years on this earth is that pride is a tricky thing. The most valuable thing a man can do is stand up strong for what’s really important no matter what. The most foolish thing he can do is let pigheadedness distract him with what’s not. Some things are worth compromise, sacrifice, and humility, Reed. Some things can only be accomplished without a lick of any of them. The mature man can figure out the difference.”

  “Wow.”

  “I think Robert Redford said that in The Natural. Or maybe I just made it up.”

  I smiled. “Maybe neither one of us are baked yet.”

  “Stay off drugs.”

  Dad shushed me when I laughed so loud it echoed off the fridge.

  “You’ll wake your mother.” He finished his sandwich. “So, you’ll call him?”

  “We’ll see.”

  He shook his head.

  “Hey. Obstinacy runs in the family. I still owe you a gift from Christmas before this past one. If I’d have known you’d be happy with the toilet last year, this year I could have gotten the sink.”

  My father reached across for my hand. “Be happy. Then I’ll have all I ever wanted.”

  IT WAS the middle of the night when I left for upstate, 1:58 a.m. according to the clock on the dashboard, or 2:01 a.m. according to the one on my phone. I really needed to synch the two. Three seconds was forever in my sport. The car had been running awhile, but I could see my breath as I stared at what I had typed. The month of May, just like December, could go either way in New York too.

  Hello.

  I’d hugged Devon good-bye at one. I must have slept myself out with my long nap, and since I was awake, I figured I might as well head north.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I’d said.

  “I have a banquet this Saturday.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “You promise?”

  “Absolutely. T-r-u-t-h.”

  I was surprised no one else was up. One of my parents was always awake that time of the morning, readying to head off to work. I wondered if they finally had a day off together. I smiled at the notion.

  Hello.

  Still, I just looked at it as I sat in the cold car waiting for it to get warmer so I could drive off. I’d now told several people I still had feelings for Mathias. The one person I hadn’t told was him. I wondered if he’d already moved on. I googled his name at least once a day. There was always something new. Swimmer Mathias Webber to appear on the cover of three LGBTQ magazines. While my people were telling me not to wave the rainbow flag, his were encouraging him to pose wearing nothing but. His cover for The Advocate was precisely that. There he stood, a red, white, and blue ribbon around his neck, the gold medal attached to it between his teeth—team gold, unless it was fake—with multicolored striped silk covering only what was necessary below the waist. The headline read Everybody Out of the Pool!

  The irony was rich. “Everybody but me,” I said to my own gold medal hanging from the rearview mirror.

  I found a picture of Mathias and Elton John a couple swipes later. They weren’t fucking, and it wasn’t fake. Look out, Tom Daley! A new Speedo-clad Olympian has designs on your superstardom. Elton had been playing in Arizona, and Mathias had apparently gotten to go backstage.

  Money or fame? my snippy side had to ask. There was a third person there—a man with his arm around Mathias’s shoulder. I felt a pang of jealousy and hopelessness as I stared at the picture, then back at the word Hello. At precisely 2:17 a.m., or maybe 2:20 a.m., I took a deep breath, and sent the text.

  16

  I STILL hadn’t moved from the entrance to the practice pool at Cloverton, and my cheeks hurt from smiling. I laughed out loud as Coach Keller battled his way to where I stood.

  “Any idea who they’re from?” he asked. “Or how he got them delivered before daybreak?”

  A bouquet of blue, red, yellow, green, purple, pink, and orange Mylar balloons were secured by thin golden ribbons to the arm of a wooden chair right outside his office door. Each one in the dozen—no, only eleven for some reason—had Hello printed across it in a different color and font.

  “No note?” I played clueless when finally I gathered my breath and emotions to speak.

  Coach frowned. “Five minutes.” Then he turned and fought his way back the other way, which made me laugh some more.

  “Wait.” I followed him. “I’ve been thinking.” Getting through the balloons was quite noisy.

  “What?”

  “What did I say, or what have I been thinking?” I asked.

  His look told me to get on with it.

  “How much are we paying that media lady?”

  “I told you, money is not your concern.”

  “If it’s coming out of my bank account, it is.”

  “Sponsorships. Go get changed.”

  “What sponsors? Exactly who are they—beyond the patches—every one of them? And how much do we bring in that way? I want to thank them.”

  “I do that for you.”

  “I want to do it myself.”

  He grunted and sat.

  “Cloud-ia isn’t volunteering her time, I’m sure.”

  “No.”

  “And my winnings only go so far.” I leaned on his desk so I could look him in the eye. “Come on. It has to be a lot… the donations, I mean. And the money we spend is a lot too, especially now with her and the stuff I need to get ready for Rio, right? Just give me the list so I can write some personal responses. I should have been doing it all along.”

  “Reed, no one else—”

  “I don’t want to be like everyone else.” I raised both hands in frustration. “And I don’t want to be like I was. I had a lot of drive time to think, and this morning is a turning point.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” My dad’s sage words about being grateful instead of stubborn had made an impact. “We both know I wouldn’t be here without charity. I’ve accepted that. And I don’t want to be anywhere else, so….”

  “It’s not like I carry the spreadsheets with me.”

  Pointedly, I looked at the satchel sit
ting beside his desk—the diaper bag—the one stuffed with everything I might need and nearly everything else that had anything to do with me and swimming. “Give it. I have an hour between practice and class. What else do I have to do?”

  “Well, since I still think getting with Webber is a bad idea, how about hiring a hooker?” His sense of humor hadn’t improved over the years.

  “Fine, but who’ll be paying for him?” I held out my hand. With another grunt, he handed over a fat manila envelope he’d dug out from deep down in the bag. “Wow. That’s a lot of paper,” I said.

  “My filing system needs work. And stay away from hookers.”

  I was grinning again as I dialed Mathias, and not due to Coach’s levity. When he didn’t answer, my grin reversed direction. It dawned on me, though, as I listened to him telling me to leave a message and his voice tickled up inside me, that it wasn’t yet morning in Arizona. Hopefully, he was still sound asleep.

  “I wish I could see you,” I said to his voice mail. “But call me when you can. I’ll settle for that until the qualifier. Thank you. Let’s talk.”

  I got through the first half of a punishing training day thinking about having sex. When my times fell off even more, going up instead of down, I tried to think of something else. I never recaptured my best numbers, but I promised coach by the time I came back for the afternoon stint, after school and work, I would. I was just out of the shower, standing in the middle of the locker room stark naked, when—“Hey!”—I had to cover myself when unexpected guests arrived.

  “Nothing I haven’t seen,” Cloud-ia said.

  “Shame we don’t have European standards in this country when it comes to full frontal in television spots.” Mick wiped his chin. He’d either been drooling or fantasizing about some other kind of moisture on his face. I’d have sworn his pants got pointier in front. “We have a prospective client.”

  “This couldn’t wait until I had clothes on?”

  “It’s the ad you wanted. They love the idea of doing it with your brother.”

  “Really?” In my excitement, I dropped the towel I’d grabbed.

  “Really.” Mick picked it up but didn’t hand it back. “It’s a credit card company. They’re offering big money and a big donation to the Special Olympics. It will be you and a group of other swimmers. A pool full, but you’ll be the center of attention.”

  “Can I have my towel?” I had to reach, but he surrendered it. “Sounds good.”

  “Six figures,” Mick said, his eyes getting even bigger.

  I thought about what I could do for my parents with six figures. I could also, hopefully, pay back some sponsors. Whether the first digit was a 1 or a 9, I was happy.

  “If you win in Rio, or even challenge the top contenders… medal… or otherwise make a big splash….” He waited for my smile, but I’d heard the pun before. “Well, it only gets more lucrative from then on.”

  “Some of your teammates will be invited to participate as well,” Cloud-ia said. “Though the producer is open to suggestions, I’d advise steering clear of several. The ones who’d upstage you, I mean. Now, two of them wouldn’t be interested in sharing the spotlight or revenue anyway, and the third, well….”

  I knew she meant Mathias, but the minute she left, I dialed him, still buck naked and now half-hard with a couple different kinds of excitement.

  “Leave a message.”

  Ugh! Still? There was a possibility I’d jumped the gun. “Hello” may not have meant anything more than that. Yet even as a part-time card-carrying pessimist, I had trouble convincing myself that “hello” spelled out with eleven balloons could mean anything other than “Hello, I still want to fuck you.” Still, I hung up without leaving a second voice mail.

  AS I dragged myself across the threshold to my small far-too-beige campus apartment around ten that night, after training, classes, work, more training, and more classes, I had to give the ribbons attached to my balloons a hard yank to get in, and myself an inner pep talk. Mathias had never called back.

  After securing his only offering to a beige cupboard, I stripped down to underwear, tossing my clothes to the beige rug. I was in for a few precious hours, and there was no need for pants. The bed called to me immediately, so I pulled back the beige covers, hit the head, grabbed a pack of rice cakes and some protein bars from what could barely be called a kitchen, then snatched Coach’s manila envelope from my duffel bag and climbed in. Back against my pillow, I started pulling at papers with one hand, as I flipped past doctor shows and firemen shows with the other. Just as I settled on a rerun of The Facts of Life on Logo and tried to make heads or tails out of Coach Keller’s paperwork, I heard something outside the door—not a knock, really, but more the sound of a scratch. I didn’t own a cat, but I still had to check. Begrudgingly, I lumbered all of eight feet and turned the handle.

  Hello. It was balloon number twelve, and behind it Mathias stood with a full head of hair and his gray eyes sparkling. “Hello.”

  When I pulled him into the room and into my arms, he released the balloon and let it float to the ceiling. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I got the first flight I could.”

  “Why?” The moment I let him free, my hand went up to hide my jacked-up grill again.

  “I thought you stopped doing that.” He moved it.

  “Oh.” The media team’s discussions about my looks had gotten to me, it seemed. “I’m nervous, I guess. And surprised.”

  “It’s shaving week,” Mathias said.

  “I know. I got the e-mail.”

  It was a bit of a quiet tradition, known only within the inner circle. Before competitions with long downtime in between, swimmers would buddy up for hair removal parties or do it solo, and then exchange photographs.

  “Get any good pics?” Mathias asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Some.”

  “And requests for yours?”

  “Well, I haven’t done it yet, but… yeah.”

  “So I see.” He touched my bare chest—bare of clothes, not hair. “Sasquatch. No one asked for mine.”

  “Screw them.” I brushed my fingertips against the light beard on his cheek. It felt like the down of a puppy. Then I rested just one on his pouting lips. “You didn’t get the Go Pluck Yourself mass text?”

  “Sure. None of our teammates would be that blatant, but no one asked me to pair up or for snapshots. Look at you.” He went for my chest again, with both hands this time, grabbing, like with claws. “You’re a fucking animal. Unf! I haven’t gone at mine either. Want to get to it tonight?”

  “I guess we could. You do me… I do you.” I grabbed the balloon and tethered it to the others.

  “Do me?” His brows went up. For a moment I considered buzzing those off as well, but they were too damned cute. “Come back,” he said. “I’m not done hugging you yet.”

  “Oh.” I let him take me. “I thought I was hugging you.” Mathias smiled at that. I felt it, even though I couldn’t see it.

  “These apartments are smaller than our dorms were. I wonder if the walls are thin enough to hear through.” Subtlety had never been his thing. “You said we could fuck after Worlds, remember?”

  I laughed.

  “I love you.”

  I stopped laughing. “Still?”

  “Yes, Reed. Always.” He touched my chin, my arm, and then my boxer briefs, the latter not up where they belonged because my erection had caused them to sag. “I don’t care what everyone says.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  He shrugged—and cracked my chin with his hard skull—since we were still sort of clenched.

  “Ow.”

  I untangled myself, but then Mathias took my hand. “I was so mad at you,” he said, squeezing my fingers hard. His next move surprised me. Before I knew it, my arm was twisted behind my back, and I was shoved against the wall. When he turned my face in his direction by my still-smarting chin, his question surprised me too. “Why did you ditch me whe
n we were finally going to make love?”

  A second “Ow!” was my answer.

  “Suck it up, buttercup.”

  He tried to force me into a kiss, but I pushed back hard, forcing him to release my arm. I seized his face in both hands, stepped around him, and slammed him back in my place. “Suck this. Because I was mad at you before you were mad at me.”

  Mathias struggled. “What did I do?”

  “How can you not know?” I didn’t let him move. No fucking way did he get to be the dominant one. I was madder and had way more gold medals. That meant I took charge. “Think about it… about that night in Russia.” I held him with my knee while I unzipped his USA hoodie and tried to rip his T-shirt down the middle, like I’d seen lustful women do in romance movies and men do in gay porn. It didn’t tear. Damn him and his name-brand-quality clothing! We laughed about it, and he went for my underwear. “Stop,” I told him.

  “Why-y-y?” He whined like my nephew.

  “Because… I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do.” I waited a moment to hear it from him as I seized his wrists so he couldn’t get to my cock. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you why I was mad.” There, I was the bigger man. “Though I still don’t think I should have to.” Maybe I wasn’t. He still didn’t say it back—still didn’t—but rather cringed when I tightened my grip. His clueless expression pissed me off. “You ditched me for an interview.”

  “I didn’t ditch you.” He wriggled. I held tight. “I was just late.”

  “Two fucking hours—without so much as a phone call or text telling me why. I thought you’d been dragged off by the KGB.”

  “Do they still have that?” Mathias asked.

  “I don’t know. Look it up.”

  “Our liaisons wouldn’t have allowed that,” he told me, as if my concern was ridiculous.

  “I didn’t know. I was worried, and then when you finally did show up without so much as a ‘Sorry. I lost track of time,’ it made me feel like I was far less important to you than your sudden fame.” I let him go and walked away.