The Strongman
7
The Girlfriend vs. the Partner
TARA AND JENNIFER came over to spend Christmas Day with us and stayed with us through Tara’s twentieth birthday on the twenty-seventh. I went crazy trying to figure out what to give her for Christmas/birthay and Sunday, Christmas Eve, after our workout, Mikey took me to Southdale to shop for something special. We’d only been dating for just over a month, so I knew that items of clothing and jewelry were out of the question. As were things that were really expensive. I set a fifty-dollar max on what I should buy her.
I knew what kind of cell phone she had and considered getting a cool protective case for it, but Mikey said those were as personal and intimate as jewelry and clothing. Sheesh! Then we passed one of those kiosks that aren’t in any store, but stand alone out in the mall. It had some really beautiful candles. They’d been hand-dipped and shaped out of multiple layers of wax and one was shaped almost like an abstract couple embracing with one lifted up. I knew that as soon as it was lit, the illusion would go away, but I liked it. Mikey approved.
I knew Jennifer liked to read, so Mikey helped me pick out a new release. I certainly wouldn’t have just walked into a bookstore and picked up The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale on my own. But Mikey assured me that this takeoff on the main character from The Wizard of Oz was a sure winner. I bought it.
I learned a few lessons about what I could do with a girlfriend over the holiday. Tara and Jennifer stayed with us for three days and we all headed for the gym together on Thursday. In the meantime, we played games, watched movies, cooked, and went through old family photographs. Tara couldn’t believe how scrawny I was before I started my gymnastics training.
When we got to the gym, Jennifer told me to change clothes and meet her at the therapy room. I figured I’d be helping massage Tara’s legs again. Jennifer had more in store.
“We’re going to progress slowly and you’ll work on Tara’s back today,” Jennifer said. “Eventually, after the two of you become comfortable with it, I want to teach you to do full body sports massage. I’ve talked to Coach Dawson, and he agreed that the gym could use a massage therapist. And you need a job.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to work while I’m keeping up with school, cheer, and our routines. Plus, Madison and Coach Daniels. If they have anything to do with me after the vacation.”
“Oh, they’ll be waiting for you, I’m sure,” Jennifer said. “She’s not the kind that lets people just walk away from her.” We went into the therapy room and I saw Tara stretched out on her stomach on a massage table with a sheet over her. “Now, we’ll start with extremities to get you used to touching Tara without getting lost in the sensations.”
I was already lost in the sensations. Jennifer pulled a corner of the sheet back and exposed Tara’s shoulder and arm. Bare shoulder. Tara wasn’t wearing anything under the sheet. It took me a minute to keep from hyperventilating as I let that soak in.
“Tara’s arms do the normal work of a gymnast’s arms, which you know is a heavy workload in itself. But they also do at least half the work of her legs. I’m sure you’ve noticed how strong she is,” Jennifer said. I nodded. “So, it makes sense to pay special attention to her arms and shoulders in a massage. Here’s where you’ll start.”
She began showing me how the muscles connected and where tension was likely to build up. I followed the instructions and before too long, I was able to concentrate on the muscles and tension, and not so much on who all that skin was connected to. I could hardly believe Tara was willing to let me touch her like this, but as long as I kept the principles of therapy and care in mind, everything was okay.
When we’d finished working on her arms and shoulders, Jennifer pulled the sheet down farther so we could work on Tara’s upper back. Man, was Tara strong! I had a reasonable understanding of my own strength. My back, shoulders, and arms were built to support my body on bars and rings, to vault, and to propel myself in floor exercises. I routinely held Tara above my head, and before Christmas had held Madison on one hand above my head as she did a needle stand—that’s vertical splits.
I could certainly understand why Tara needed this kind of massage work with the extra work she put on her upper body.
We moved to her lower back and I was a little relieved to encounter the top of a pair of panties. She wasn’t completely naked and that made me relax more. Of course, when we moved to her legs and butt, I discovered how minimal those panties were. I did close my eyes for a moment as I was massaging her gluteus maximus. Then I was able to let the feeling go as I moved down her legs and massaged her feet.
I was released from the massage room to go warm up for our routine and get a workout in before Tara joined me, while Jennifer turned Tara over to massage her chest and abs, and down the fronts of her legs.
We got a good workout in and made some progress on our routine. Jennifer wanted us to get to the point at which Tara could actually lift her legs to a vertical handstand. She could support them okay, but balancing them was the problem. She wore lightweight knee braces that helped to hold her legs straight.
The biggest difference between Tara’s routine and that of Madison was that Tara couldn’t jump to get started on a lift. As a result, she had to press herself up using just her arm and torso strength, like I did on the rings. Once you were on the rings, you couldn’t swing. Everything had to be a controlled movement.
I had to support Tara’s weight steadily in my hands, but it was Tara who had to lift her weight over her head. We were working on her coming straight up with her feet above her head. We worked the exercise repeatedly as Jennifer moved around us, spotting and helping as needed. She gave advice and encouragement. We finally reached the point where Tara was straight up on my hands with my hands at shoulder height.
Then the unthinkable happened. Her left arm started shaking and before Jennifer could move, she collapsed on that side, dropping toward the floor head first.
Dad sometimes told a story about Mikey when she was a toddler falling backwards down the stairs. Dad, who was across the hall from her at the time, managed to get under Mikey on the stairs before she hit. He considered it to be a gap in time that allowed him to move through space faster than gravity was drawing Mikey. He couldn’t explain it any other way.
I understood now. There was no time to think about what I should do. Part of my training for the past seven years had been to enhance my reflexes, but I don’t think that affected the faster than life move I made to get myself under Tara and hold her to my chest as I fell to the mat and she landed on top of me.
The wind was knocked out of me, but I managed to scramble around and gasp, “Are you okay?” as Jennifer quickly checked us both over.
“I’m… I’m fine!” Tara said. “I’m not hurt! You didn’t let me fall! Paul! You protected me. Are you okay?”
“Just a little out of breath. Oh, Tara. Thank God you weren’t hurt.”
I gathered her into my arms and kissed her like my life depended on it. At that moment, I thought it possibly did. She was safe.
“Uh… I appreciate the enthusiasm, but that isn’t really appropriate in the gym,” Jennifer said. I thought there was a little shakiness in her voice. It had all happened so fast that we were all in shock. “Now, can you tell me what we learned from that.”
“To always stay under my partner, no matter what,” I said.
“Um… Not to try to scratch my nose while I’m in a handstand,” Tara breathed. The draining of adrenaline from our systems finally left us in giggles.
“I think you also learned there’s a limit to the number of times you can try a move in a row,” Jennifer said. “I think we’ve reached the limit for this practice. Locker room, Tara. I want to check to see if you’re bruised. Paul, use the mirrors and let me know if you spot any significant bruises. You didn’t hit your head. We should be okay.”
Tara and Jennifer were treated like family and stayed New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with us. Jennifer brought her boyfriend, Bob, with her. He was a nice guy, around fifty or so, I guess—my parents’ age. Of course, so was Jennifer. Mom and Dad weren’t going to object to her having her boyfriend with her and we had plenty of room.
We aren’t usually big partiers—except Mikey. She was off to a New Year’s Eve party and not expected to come home before the next day. So, the six of us—Mom, Dad, Jennifer, Bob, Tara, and me—had a pretty laid-back New Year’s Eve. It ended up being the oldsters upstairs, playing cards at the dining table, while Tara and I watched a movie in the entertainment room downstairs.
Around eleven, Jennifer had me bring Tara upstairs so she could get ready for bed, but then I took her back to the basement to count down to midnight. Everybody else gave up and went to bed. Yeah, real party people. Neither Tara nor I was eager to leave and go to bed. I had an arm around her and she leaned against me, holding my hand in hers.
At midnight, we kissed. And then we didn’t really stop kissing.
We’d been working together for almost three months and dating for a month, but we hadn’t really spent more than a few minutes at a time making out. We did things on our dates. We went out to eat or went to a movie or went to a concert. We spent a little time in the car kissing, but even over Christmas, we hadn’t just stayed in the entertainment room making out.
Tara was in her pajamas. There is something really different about holding a girl dressed in jeans and a shirt with a winter coat on and holding a girl who was in just her pajamas… with nothing underneath them. I mean, I’d been massaging Tara’s bare skin all week. Saturday, Jennifer showed me a draping technique that kept Tara’s modesty while I worked on the front of her legs.
But holding her and kissing her and running my hands up and down her back and side was a new and exciting experience. I think it was true of both of us. She was so soft and squeezable I was lost in the sensations.
“I can definitely feel you squeezing there,” Tara whispered.
“Oh, my God!” I breathed, trying to snatch my hand back away from her breast. “I’m sorry!”
“Kiss me more,” she said, holding my hand to her breast. I did.
Somehow, we managed to slow down a little. We just kissed and touched each other lightly, pretending to watch some stupid after midnight movie until we fell asleep together on the sofa.
Waking up with my girlfriend in my arms was the high point of my winter break. It wasn’t easy getting up, but we managed and Tara got to the bathroom about the same time Jennifer came out of her room and rushed to help her.
We were well-behaved for the rest of the holiday. I cooked and had fun with Tara helping me in the kitchen. The day was way too short as the last day of vacation always is. I was back in my classes the next morning to start the new semester. There was a change of teacher in my English Literature and Composition class. He seemed okay and was interesting to listen to.
I got back to the gym for practice at noon and back with the cheerleaders at two-thirty. I was beginning to feel like cheer was a real waste of time. Of course, I didn’t dare quit. I could have, but Dad drilled into me that I should never let my team down—even when they didn’t care about me.
For example, I could lift Penny over my head with her standing in my hands, then toss her and catch her when her pose was over. She never even looked at me. No thank you. No touch of my arm. Just down and away. The other girls were pretty much the same. Lana was the most decent of them, but that wasn’t saying much. She did a dismount and gave me a quick hug once, before she ran off to the girls’ huddle.
“Paul’s really nice,” I overheard her. “He puts up with all our shit and never complains. And God! What a body.”
“He has no personality,” Penny scoffed. “Really, he’s like a Goomba. You know his younger sister was in our class but skipped a grade and graduated last year. In the meantime, he got held back a year. D-U-M-B. I don’t know what my sister sees in him.”
“She just wants someone to stand on,” laughed Melina. “He is a good base.”
“He should wake up and get with Madison. She’d be sprawled out under him in a second.”
“Isn’t she only, like, seventeen?”
“Almost eighteen. Our parents couldn’t wait to start again after I was born. So what? I started having sex with Ethan when we were sophomores. I don’t think that Tara White woman is even capable of sex,” Penny continued as the girls went past without even recognizing I was there. “I mean, what would she do? Just lay there with her legs spread? Maybe that’s the most he could deal with.”
“Let’s hit The Uptown Creamery for ice cream,” Lana said as they walked out the door.
I guess I was probably the only one left in the building. I went out and walked toward the gym. All three of those girls drove their hot little cars. Any one of them could have offered me a ride. They all knew they’d drive right past the gym on their way Uptown. What a bunch of stuck-up bitches.
“Good, you’re already dressed,” Madison said when I walked into the gym. “Coach Daniels wants us to work on a cannonball mount straight to a handstand. This is the way it should be done. That slow motion stuff you’ve been doing with Tara is for the birds.”
She dragged me to her mats and I stripped off my shoes and coat. I should really warm up more. I didn’t see Tara on the mats yet, so I supposed I could spend a few minutes working on a move with Madison.
Madison’s coach started in on me right away.
“You’ll stand with your feet outside the width of your shoulders so Madison can swing between your legs. We’ll start once with Madison lying down behind you and you reach back to grasp her hands and swing her forward,” Coach Daniels said.
I kind of dragged her along the mat until she was in front of me. Not pretty.
“You’re too short!” Daniels said.
I don’t know what she expected me to do about that, but she warned Madison that she’d need to keep her arms bent to pull herself off the floor. Well, the problem could have been that Madison was five-two and that was about five inches taller than most of the mixed pair tops. Nonetheless, we started working with her getting into position and me just swinging her between my legs.
In order to do that, she had to pretty much fold in half at the waist with her feet above her head as she lay on her back. Then she reached up and I reached down to join hands. From that position, we pulled her up off the mat and I swung her back and forth between my legs. It wasn’t too difficult once we got the hang of working together on it and keeping our arms bent so she was off the mat.
The next step was to get enough swing that I could swing her all the way up on my hands at shoulder height. Believe me, we failed more times than we succeeded, but we did finally manage to get her into a handstand on my hands with her legs straight up. The rest of the time, I simply caught her when she came crashing down.
“Now we need to reverse the direction and swing with head and feet back instead of forward,” Daniels said. “You will be able to do different mounts and throws in this position.”
I saw Tara and Jennifer come out of the locker room about then and begged off any more.
“I have to go work with my partner now,” I said. “I can probably work with you this weekend.”
“Oh, come on. We need to get this down. She can work later,” Madison complained.
“Can’t anymore today. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
If she thought she was just going to change my schedule and my time, she had another think coming. I guess I did, too.
Tara and I had a good workout and we actually progressed to doing a swing mount—the cannonball—too. I could feel Madison’s eyes burning a hole in my back since it was so easy to swing Tara up to the proper position. We used it for a throw and Tara did a full tuck flip and I caught her as she landed.
Jennifer and Rachel, our choreographer, said we had all the poses down for our balance routine, but we needed to work on transitions and getting into the positions. That was going to take as much work as just learning the poses in the first place.
I have to admit that sometimes I felt like I was tossing around a doll and balancing her on my hands. Tara’s knee braces kept her knees from giving out when she was going into a stand, and a lower back brace stabilized the base of her spine at the cost of some flexibility.
The first time she went up on her hands from a cannonball, her feet didn’t make it above her head and she ended up in a full layback fold with her feet and head pointed in the same direction. Jennifer was enthusiastic about the position, called a Mexican arch, and wanted us to practice it for the routine.
I was worried that I’d break her in half, but all the female tops could get in that position, so I guessed it wasn’t too bad.
I was still managing to get individual workouts on the apparatuses in. I found that working with Tara made me even more enthused about progressing on my other routines—especially my floor exercise. Coach Dawson was spotting me on the rings and I was doing pretty well. I was just a little short of horizontal on my iron cross, but I’d managed to hold where I was for three seconds. I dismounted and was ready to switch over to the pommel horse when I saw Madison and her coach come in.
“You need to go work with your partner,” Coach Dawson said. “Coach Daniels has complained that you aren’t fulfilling your commitment to her. You need to shape up on that.”
“Wait. What? My only commitment was to work out with her sometimes,” I complained. “I have a full-time partner I’m working with and my individual routines. I try to work with Madison once or twice a week.”
“Coach Daniels and Madison say you promised to work with her as a partner. I admire the work you are doing with Tara White, but that isn’t going to get you far. We know it’s temporary. You could still make the competition in Louisville with Madison and stand a chance at the trials in June.”
“Coach, I’m going to Louisville with Tara. We’re auditioning our routine there and that’s when they promised to decide if we can perform at the trials in June. I never promised any partnership with Madison before June. I don’t even like her that much,” I said. Maybe I was being a little whiny. Yeah, I was.
“You might not realize it, but Madison needs you as much as Tara does. You’re one of the only bases we can field who is strong enough to support her. Being five inches taller and ten pounds heavier than other tops is a disadvantage for her, but you can lift and throw her. She has some real talent and you can likely go further as a mixed pair than you can as an individual gymnast,” Coach Dawson said. “I’d really hate for you to get a bad reputation by slighting your working time with her.”
I was pretty mad about the whole Madison thing. More like twenty pounds heavier. I didn’t like her and I didn’t like Coach Daniels. But Tara wasn’t out of her physical therapy session yet, so there was nothing to stop me from going over to work with Madison for a while. Except that I really wanted to practice my pommel horse routine.
Still, the implication from Coach Dawson was that I would damage my reputation in the gym by not working with her. We all worked everywhere in the gym. The expense of my gym time and coaching was defrayed by the time I spent working with younger gymnasts, spotting for seniors, and teaching the toddler tumbling class. Reputation was a big part of success in the gym and in paying my way.
I headed over to Madison and Coach Daniels. If they’d said anything about my commitment, I’d have lost it, but they didn’t. We just went straight to work. Coach Daniels was definitely trying to get us into some choreography as we moved through the pieces. I had to admit that Madison was talented. She had good balance and was reasonably easy to support. Tara required hyper-diligence because I had to help balance her. Madison was able to do a throw with a full pike flip with a rotation and I could catch her as she landed to support her.
We worked hard. I wasn’t going to give Coach Daniels an excuse to complain, but after two hours, I said I needed to go work with my ‘real’ partner. I think the little dig went by both of them. Madison rushed up to me before I got off the mat and kissed me—right on the lips. It took a second to shake her off.
Some people just can’t take no for an answer.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
