Truth, Pride, Victory, Love
Page 35
“I’m sorry, Reed,” Devon wailed. The way he talked into his hand, it reminded me of how I always spoke, back before Mathias convinced me I didn’t have to.
“Naw. If you hadn’t said it, I think I would have.” I looked at him, not the director, who had likely called “Cut!” by now, not that I’d heard him. I yelled it then. “The truth is I’m in love with Mathis Webber, and pride sometimes kicks you in the nuts.” Devon almost smiled. “Balls?” That got him. He barked out a laugh. “Balls. Pride kicks you in the balls. Dad should have said balls.”
My brother laughed even harder as I wondered what the hell I’d just done, how much trouble I was in, and whether or not my heart would ever start beating right again. It was pumping, for sure, that much I knew, because it hurt like hell when Mathias turned and walked out.
“CUT!” OLIVER shouted. Apparently, I hadn’t missed it the first time. It wasn’t an angry shout. In fact, he was smiling. Unfortunately, no one else was. Along with the twenty of us in the pool, there were close to two dozen more who’d joined us and were now standing around, including my father, Mick Albert, Cloud-ia, Coach Keller, and the Macon Charter guy.
“You okay, Dev?” I managed to ask.
“Yeah. You’re not.”
“No,” I admitted.
The room seemed silent then. It wasn’t, not by any means, but for that one brief moment, I was sure everyone in the arena, thousands of ears, had picked up what I’d said. Even if they couldn’t hear me, they could surely read my huge lips on the massive video screen. When I turned to see how bad my teeth looked, I realized I could never see anything but the back of my head up there. That was a blessing. As the bank rep approached the director, as Mick and Cloud-ia animatedly spoke, I moved toward the edge of the pool.
“I’ve got to go. You sure you’re okay?” I asked again as Devon followed the short distance to the side.
“Yes. Where are you going?”
“To tell him.”
“He didn’t hear?”
“I don’t know. I have to tell him again.”
“Go.”
“How lucky am I to have such a great brother?”
“Go!”
“Stay with Cal.” I motioned for him to come closer. “He’ll take care of you.”
“Go, Reed!”
Mick grabbed at me as I climbed from the pool, nearly shoving me back in. “I’ve got to go,” I repeated.
“Go where?” Mick Albert refused to release my elbow, and Cloud-ia’s stare almost literally burned.
“You don’t want to know.” I jerked away.
Making my way to the rear of the stadium was no easy feat. Admirers stopped me almost every other step, which made my trek to the back door seemingly endless. When I finally burst through it, out into the hallway, there were just as many people there, possibly even more. I fought my way through, my wet footprints growing quieter and dimmer on the light tan industrial tile that ran the center of the corridor. Somehow I sensed him. Of all of the directions I could have turned in, I kept a straight path, and as I politely—or possibly not—wedged my way between the last group of eight or ten people deep in conversation, I saw him, with his hand in my mother’s.
“Reed.” She seemed surprised to see me, though not nearly as surprised as Mathias when I threw myself against him.
“Next time,” I said. “In 2020.”
“Naw.” He brushed my arm with his fingers as we separated. “I think I’m hanging up my Speedo.”
I could hardly breathe. I still couldn’t imagine not competing against him, not seeing him. “Then I love you,” I told him.
“Then?” Those adorable knit brows of his that illustrated befuddlement so clearly, they made me smile. “Then you love me?”
“I love you.” I didn’t care who could hear me. I didn’t care who could see me, standing there exposed and vulnerable, with no clothes and no emotional barriers. “I love you, plain and simple.” I tapped it out on his arm. I yanked a leaf—a handful—from an ornamental plant right behind him in the hallway. I threw them in the air like confetti and watched them shower down on him. They weren’t big maple leaves, but ovals with points, a dozen little green flora footballs, one of which stuck to his forehead.
“I knew,” he said. “I could tell. I can.”
“Don’t make up your mind right now,” I said. “It can wait.”
“To decide if I love you? I don’t have to.”
“No. About swimming.” I wanted to kiss him, like the day in the leaves. I had to, but like that day, I fought it—but only for a moment. “I had to see you. I needed to hold you. Are you okay?” Some nearby people pretended not to listen. Some had been all along, and some just paid attention after Mathias and I had kissed. Everyone there knew who we were. Well, most of them. Some may have come only because of the letter P.
“I’m happy… for you,” Mathias said.
“And I’m sad for you.”
“On the best day of your life. I know.”
“I should go,” my mother said.
Mathias stopped her, though. “It’s because of you… and Mr. Watson. Remember, Reed…?” He took my hand. “Remember when I was trying to figure out what love was… what tangible thing? Love is wanting to give the other person everything they need to be happy. Everything you think they might. That’s the money part, and the part that doesn’t always go well. What else it is…. It’s giving me back my light-up watch in case the strange, new dorm room is dark. It’s teaching me how to make my favorite food, and keeping a color you think is ugly all up on your walls so you don’t hurt someone’s feelings. I asked your mom. That room is still ocean fog.”
My mother smiled. “Part of it.”
“You know which picture was mine up on that bulletin board in fourth grade?”
“What one?”
“The one with the mom and dad and the young boys… the boys our age.”
I pictured it in my mind.
“My written report said I wanted to be a dad.”
“There was supposed to be a written report?”
“Reed,” Mama gently scolded me.
“That wasn’t entirely true,” Mathias said. “That I wanted to be a dad. Even then, even before I realized what I didn’t have, I wanted to be that boy. Not when I grew up, but right then. Family.”
“I want to kiss you again,” I said quietly. “Longer.” A thousand phone flashes went off when I did.
“I want to kiss you too, because love is being happy for someone who accomplished something you didn’t.”
More people snapped our picture when we kissed a second time.
“Are you sure you’re done?” I asked.
“It was one dream,” Mathias told me. “It wasn’t my biggest one.” He looked down at my hand still in his. “I think this is.”
Eric Spidderman was shooting video. I wondered if it was going out live. I still didn’t care. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What about your commercial?”
“Oh.” My chest got tight again. “Yeah. I have to deal with that, I guess.”
“Okay, you two.” Eric stepped between us, his phone aimed at me. I Sean Penned him—blocking his lens—so all he’d be capturing was my slightly pruney palm. “I want an exclusive, so take it out of the hallway before you rip each other’s clothes off—not that you’re wearing any.” He looked right at my dick. “You officially coming out?”
“I’m pretty sure I already did.”
“Say it.” He held up his phone again.
“I’m officially coming out.”
“As?”
“Gay. What else?”
“Just had to make sure,” Eric said.
“Put him on the cover in my place,” Mathias told him. “I’m yesterday’s news, now that I won’t be competing in Rio.”
“You will never be that.” Eric touched Mathias’s face. “Is there anything to them keeping you off the team—anything about all the gay notoriety and celebrity?”
“There could be a story in that.”
“Maybe.”
When someone took my elbow again, I jerked back to punch him.
“Whoa!” It was Cal. “Like old times, except last time you punched him.” He’d put a towel around his waist. What a shame.
“Sorry. I thought you were my agent.”
“They sent me out to get you. There’s still a commercial to shoot.”
“Really? It isn’t cancelled?”
Cal shrugged. “Not yet. They want to get it done before the crowd thins out to nothing.”
“Oh.” I needed one more kiss from Mathias, for strength and just because. Then I took a deep breath. “Let’s go, then.”
WE RAN through the commercial three times. “The truth is, swimming is almost everything to me, and pride is representing the US in Rio at the Olympics.”
“The truth is, I want to be just like my brother, and pride is hanging my medals next to his.”
Devon and I were perfect. Too bad the spot would never run on TV, which I learned later, on the plane on my way to Brazil.
“That’s what happens when you violate the terms of your contract,” Mick Albert said into my ear. “You read that morality clause, didn’t you?”
Had I? Not really. “So, being gay is immoral?”
“Being gay is the shit, kid. I love it. On the other hand, Macon Charter wasn’t looking to get dragged into your whole hot, sexy, controversial love story. It gave them an out. There’s nothing we can do.”
The bank people were rather fair if unapologetic for their stance. I heard from them next. “An ad campaign, such as the one we started with, said one thing before you came out. Now, it says something else. In no way are we against what it says. In no way will we bow down to the people who would be against us if we ran the ad now. That said, the entire climate—your entire persona—has taken on a different sort of celebrity. Not a bad sort, just different. I hope you understand.”
I didn’t, really. I assumed the whole point of hiring a somewhat famous person to represent your business was to call more attention to it.
“The ad will run online, in its new incarnation,” Carl Bruno said. “And we would still be honored to sponsor you for the 2020 team, and provide the tuition for your brother to go to the school of his choice.”
“That last part’s up to my dad,” I told him, and that was who I was leaving it up to. Somewhere along the line I realized something. The fact I hadn’t participated in everything I’d wanted to in junior high and high school may have been a blessing. If I had, I might never have fallen in love with swimming. Perhaps Devon’s best education would happen outside of school. There was no reason I couldn’t apply what I was learning as a teacher to helping him out along the way. Sometimes the “best” isn’t always best for everyone. Time would tell.
“As for the next Olympics, I think I better get past this one first, and then see how I feel.”
“Fair enough.” Bruno was friendly, and also sincere. “Please let us know, and the best of luck.”
22
RIO WAS intoxicating, more so than the Budweiser my father had let me sneak with Mathias at our going-away-to-Cloverton party or the four I had needed to perform karaoke in front of an audience one time while there. As I finally set foot in the country I’d been focusing on for years, I found myself thinking a lot about the past and what it took to get me there, the hard work, the support, the people.
Despite what the locals called the current season south of the equator, the humidity washed over me like a warm, moist kiss as I finally stepped through the sliding airport doors. I’d have to wait a bit longer for more of the real kind. Though I had landed in Brazil the day before the opening ceremonies, Mathias wouldn’t arrive until the morning of. All the money in the world couldn’t undo his procrastination. The flight he’d wanted was booked, and so he had to wait. His mother had rented a villa right on the beach. Since Mathias wouldn’t be swimming, she had decided to skip the entire event. That meant Mathias and I would have plenty of private space, if not time. Instead of an endless, magical night, we were looking at a couple of hours in the morning before I had to hit the training pool with Coach Keller and the team coach to prepare for day one of the Games.
I was annoyed, sure, but I loved him in spite of it, and we planned on making the most of every second before I had to head for the Olympic village.
The beat of the nation stayed in my head, even away from the music that had been playing inside the terminal. It was the rhythm everyone knew, the one of dance—the samba—that epitomized the carnival-like aura of Rio de Janeiro. And of all the things that might happen in Brazil, seeing my mother subtly sway to it almost everywhere we went, miles away from actual music or any speakers, that was one of the fondest memories I would take back home.
My parents and Devon were down for ten days. Dad and Mama’s coworkers had surprised them by taking up a collection to help with the cost, one my father had almost refused. They both got four weeks’ vacation per year and would use two of them to cheer me on. Cal would fly down for only half as much time later on, Beth and Julius too, while the kids stayed back with Julius’s parents and watched on TV. Like Mama and Dad at Christmastime, I wished I could have done more.
However many medals I managed to collect, even with the donation, I would find myself returning to a mountain of debt and a long conversation with my parents. I was an adult, but I wasn’t a liar. Being a man meant facing my mistakes and decisions head-on. Seeing how relaxed my parents were, how much they were enjoying themselves, seeing Devon’s eyes so wide, his smile so bright, his inquisitive nature so unrestrained as he stepped onto foreign ground for the very first time and later stood for a couple minutes just letting the South American sand sift through his fingers, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t change a single thing, even if I could.
“How far are we from home?”
“Approximately 4,808 miles,” I told him.
He’d asked on the plane, again in the airport, and now on the beach. I worried the distance might be troubling, but each time, he just answered, “Cool.”
“You know what else is cool? Remember when you went on that class trip to Coney Island in eighth grade?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s the same ocean—the Atlantic—and Coney Island isn’t that far from home, so in a way, this ocean touches home. It definitely touches New York.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“And it’s the same sun,” he said, looking toward it, “that shines on our house, right? And the moon tonight?”
“Yes.” I was taken back to the tent and Mathias’s watch.
“Cool.”
Though I might face some slight disappointment and disapproving looks at the kitchen table, going into temporary hock seemed well worth it to me so far. That’s what I would say, and then I’d listen to their argument against it. My parents had been through a lot more than I had been, different things, and the moment I stopped thinking I could learn from them, like I had very recently concerning Mathias and my hopes for Devon, that was the very moment I’d become a fool. I was told some very lucrative endorsement deals were still on the table if I did well. On the other hand, Mick Albert claimed coming out destroyed any chance of me becoming as big as the tall guy who once ate Subway sandwiches and recently became a dad. Stubbornly, I told my agent, “We’ll see about that.”
He countered with “Maybe. But the world still has a ways to go. It ain’t perfect yet. Let’s hope for more change.”
MAMA’S HAND was in my dad’s as the four of us stared in awe at Christ the Redeemer up close—at least as close as we could get with so many other people. My mother wanted to see the Copacabana, and my father wouldn’t stop singing the song—that one and “The Girl from Ipanema” too. That got Devon doing i
t, and the two sang a duet across much of the city, much to my mother’s amused annoyance. It was a contradiction I totally understood. As much as I couldn’t wait to be in Mathias’s arms, I wouldn’t have traded those moments as a family for the world, even doing nothing but lying quietly on the beach, while my mother’s toes still tapped in the air and in the sand while Dad hummed Barry Manilow and Dev and I built castles or raced back and forth to and in the water under the heat of the brightest sunlight I thought I had ever seen.
Slathering on my SPF 15 sunblock against the rays still strong during the Brazilian winter, I once again thought about the color of my skin. I’d read an article concerning a recent census taken in Brazil, where ethnicity was broken down into skin colors. According to the piece, forty-eight percent of Brazilians considered themselves white. Forty-four percent called themselves brown, and half a percent considered themselves yellow. Such method of classification is supposedly controversial within the nation. As someone who still couldn’t decide if the lightness of my complexion had anything to do with my ethnicity or who I was, I kind of found it fascinating. The overall numbers meant in Brazil, white was a minority. I found that quite interesting too. As someone who might call himself beige, like my Cloverton apartment, I couldn’t wait to find out what race relations were like there, not only from the Internet or media, but hopefully from the people who lived there every day.
FINALLY CATCHING sight of Mathias early the next morning, I could barely breathe, and not just because of how hard he hugged me. We hadn’t been together much since we’d publicly declared our love for one another. Once I’d finished everything with the commercial and the press, I was almost immediately whisked away to team training camp without much time in between, except enough for quick but emotional good-byes.
I felt as if I’d matured exponentially at team camp. That was pretty ironic, since at one time I’d pictured it as a two-week frat party and later imagined it as prison with bare chests, hair-waxing, and water. Men I went in thinking of as rivals, however, turned out to be friends by the end. I’d had a bit of an emotional breakdown partway through, admittedly overwhelmed by the whole thing as Rio was finally so close I could almost taste the salt from the South Atlantic. I was comforted by a man who had been through it before. He wrapped his unnaturally long arm around me and gently pulled my head to his shoulder with his extra-large hand. It was at that moment I learned I could like someone and still want to beat them in competition. I learned I could love someone and want to trounce them even more. That was likely going to come in handy going forth with Mathias.