The Strongman
8
Mounting Tension
I HEADED FOR THE MAT where Tara and Jennifer were waiting for me. Jennifer wasted no time getting us started, so I didn’t really have a chance to talk to Tara before we started working. She didn’t seem to be in much of a mood to talk, either, so we just buckled into our routine and started working on those transitions.
We were only four weeks away from the Winter Cup competition in Louisville where Tara and I were intending to preview our routine for the USA Gymnastics Committee to get approval for the exhibition in Minneapolis in June. Coach Daniels had also let slip that she’d already entered Madison and me in the qualifier round for the mixed pairs. I wasn’t enthused.
Jennifer had sat with Tara and me to get our travel arrangements made. When Madison mentioned that we’d be traveling together, I was only too happy to inform her that I already had my travel and lodging arrangements made. My parents had decided to come down to Louisville to watch, too. I intended to spend as little time as possible with Madison and Coach Daniels.
“I’m tired,” Tara announced. “We can pick up tomorrow.”
“Would you like to go out to dinner?” I asked.
“No. I don’t feel much like being sociable right now. I’m sure you can find someone else to do.” She turned and grabbed her crutches, heading for the locker room as fast as she could. That was really strange. Jennifer just shook her head and followed.
Having an extra hour to myself before I had to get home and help with dinner, I immediately headed for the pommel horse to pick up my interrupted routine from the morning. I was combining a Russian flop followed by double splits and into a high dismount. I ran the routine three times and was pretty pleased with myself the last time I came off the dismount.
I headed toward the gymnastic mat to practice my floor routine and got into the flips and turns. I never got to do this kind of thing with the pairs routines. The tumbling was more basic and limited to things we could do in sync. Madison and I could synchronize a flip or other roll, but Tara didn’t have the leg strength to propel herself. If I did a flip, it had to be coordinated with a somewhat static move of Tara’s that I could catch her in before she fell. Madison and Tara could get as much height as I could throw them. That wasn’t too much with Tara because I also had to control her landings. Madison had to balance herself when she landed.
I really wanted to do a double pike with a twist, and I needed the sprung floor and a run-up to get the height I needed. I did a few warmups either without the twist or a single pike salto. I set myself in the corner and ran across the mat. Midway, I launched into the move.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite the height I needed and I landed without having fully rotated. I caught part of my weight on my hands and then landed on my back. I lay there for a couple of seconds, analyzing what I’d done wrong. In that time, three coaches had come running from different parts of the gym to check on me.
“I’m fine. I just didn’t get the full rotation,” I said as I sat up. “I was just trying to figure out what I did wrong.”
“You tried a new move without a spotter, Paul,” Coach Dawson said. “You know better than that.”
“Yessir. I should have waited.”
It didn’t make any difference whether I needed a spotter for this move or not. The right answer was to wait. In that way, gymnastics was just like school. You had to give the right answer in order to stop the lecture. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough this time. I had to undergo the lecture anyway, with a couple of other coaches chiming in about not being stupid in my workouts.
I finally got off the gym floor and into the locker room to shower and dress.
“How’d you manage to get everyone so mad at you today?” Andy asked in the locker room.
Andy had been one of the senior gymnasts who graduated from high school about the time I started in high school. I hadn’t seen him much because he went off to college somewhere. But he was taking a term off this spring to prepare for the trials and had come back here to practice. He was a star in the gym.
“Is everybody mad at me?” I asked.
“I just heard Coach read you the riot act. Earlier today, Coach Daniels was complaining to Dawson about something you’d done or not done. And when Tara headed to the locker room an hour ago, she looked steamed as hell. The only thing they all had in common was you,” Andy said.
“I have no clue. Everybody wants something different from me. They’re all ragging on me.”
“That’s a tough one. If you actually landed that last flip you tried, you’d be a contender in the qualifiers. It’s too bad you’re spending all that time with the pairs routines. They’re circus acts—not gymnastics. Usually, the only people who do acro-gym are those who can’t master the apparatuses,” Andy said.
I’d heard that before and even believed it. In fact, I’d made the same comment once or twice myself. If you couldn’t master the apparatuses, then you could do pairs or group acro gym on the floor. Still, I couldn’t discount acro gym being more fun than artistic gymnastics. I kind of felt the acrobatic gymnastics were more artistic and artistic gymnastics were more technical.
“I did a qualifier event in Chicago late last summer and didn’t qualify,” I said. “Coach said he didn’t think I’d progressed far enough to qualify this spring and that I should take the opportunity to help Tara. I don’t mind that. In fact, I like it a lot. I just try to keep working on my routines so I can get back to it after the exhibition in June.”
“What’s with the other chick you’re working with and Coach Daniels?” Andy asked.
“Don’t ask. I said I’d help her out after her previous partner quit on her. I thought it was just going to be an occasional thing, but Coach Daniels thinks I’m her full-time partner and has us registered to compete in Louisville. I don’t know how she managed to convince Coach Dawson.”
The more I let all this out, the more depressed I was becoming. Andy thought I could have qualified in one of the events this spring. I really didn’t mind helping and working with Tara. I liked it. She was my girlfriend and I wished we could spend more time together. But I missed doing real gymnastics and it irritated me that I had to sacrifice my workout time to practice with Madison.
“Well, I’m not your coach,” Andy sighed. “All I can say is do the best you can and don’t give up your routines. I think you’ve got what it takes, but you’re still young as male gymnasts go. There’s a lot more pressure for the women to get in the game in their teens. There aren’t that many like Simone who can hold a career together for ten years.”
“I’ll make Team USA for Worlds by 2026.”
I wished I was as confident as I sounded. After this year’s trials were over and Tara and I had done our exhibition, I planned to spend all my time getting ready for fall artistic gymnastic competitions.
In any case, I didn’t have time to worry about any of it. I received word from my school counselor that it appeared my grade average had slipped below the standard required for participation in sports at school—like cheerleading. I don’t know how they measured that. The most recent grading period had ended at Christmas and I had sufficient grades to continue. They weren’t great grades—I was still no genius—but they were good enough to continue.
On top of that, I’d been studying more than what was in school. My four classes seemed unimportant compared to the study Jennifer had assigned me to become a massage therapist. From the first time I did a guided massage on Tara’s legs, Jennifer had me keep track of every hour I put in studying massage. I was putting in a good twenty hours or more a week learning therapeutic massage.
I watched YouTube videos repeatedly to support the reading and had a one-hour practice session each day on Tara. That was a real trial by fire, so to speak. I’d learned to control my natural physical response to her. She was my girlfriend, and even though we hadn’t had much time together in the past week or so, we still kissed and I was really attracted to her physically as well as emotionally.
Something seemed to be bugging her lately and we just weren’t finding time to talk. Or anything else that wasn’t in the gym. It bugged me, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it.
Now there was this school thing that blindsided me.
“Paul, Mr. Fields is concerned about your progress in his class,” Ms. Brown, my counselor, said when I reported to her office. “He says your responses in class are not in keeping with the rest of the class and he feels your writing is elementary.”
Mr. Fields was my new English teacher. My last term in high school, and I get a guy who thinks everyone in his class should be a Rhodes Scholar. My previous two English classes had mostly been kids who had English as a second language, so the workload was adjusted accordingly.
“He assigns a lot of reading and I can’t get it all done. I just don’t read that fast,” I said. That hadn’t been a problem the past year and a half. My teachers had tested me on the lighter reading assignments. I guess Mr. Fields wasn’t with the program. I knew a couple of the ESL kids were struggling.
“This is the work the class is assigned. Everyone else is keeping up just fine.”
“I don’t read that fast. Isn’t there a class that isn’t as accelerated as this one?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what we can do about that. Mr. Fields is of the opinion that athletes and second language learners need to keep up with the curriculum just like everyone else does.”
“I don’t think there are any other athletes in my class. And I don’t think all the ESL kids are keeping up, either.”
“We have complaints on file from you and your parents that indicate your unwillingness to be in classes with the athletes you are referring to. The school has done its best to keep you out of classes known to cater to athletes who have limited time to study.”
“So, you keep me out of classes I’m capable of passing so I won’t get beaten up by the others you’ve chosen to give special treatment to? I don’t think I need to worry about getting beaten up or stuffed in a locker anymore.”
“Your presence in those classes could be considered an incitement. If there was violence, you would be considered at fault for not having stayed in different classes. Besides, you are older than the rest of them.”
I’d be nineteen in a month. The school wanted to be rid of me.
“Great. So, my choice is to go someplace where I’d end up being expelled for other people’s actions, or stay where I am and fail based on a different standard. That doesn’t really seem fair.”
“Avoid conflicts and keep up with the rest of your class. That sounds like the same standard all other students are held to.”
Well, shit.
“Mr. Fields, I’d like to do better in your class,” I said. I’d had to cut all my afternoon training in order to be at the school when he had a period free. He looked at me critically. I could see ‘big dumb jock’ written all over his face.
“Well, that’s a good first step,” he said. “I understand you’ve received special treatment in the past. That’s something I’m not in favor of.”
“I’ve paid dearly for the slower pace of my classes. It’s taken me a year longer than my classmates to get this far in school, but I’ve done the work and passed the classes,” I said. “I’d rather not take another year. My only real sports interest in school is the cheer squad, and I’m nearly out of eligibility for that. The state cheerleader competition is March first. I turn nineteen on the sixteenth. That ends my eligibility.”
“And today is February twelfth. Hmm.”
He looked at a calendar and shuffled some notes on his desk. I recognized the signs of someone thinking a problem through because it was exactly the way Dad acted when he was faced with a tough decision. Somehow, that was comforting. Mr. Fields was actually thinking about the situation.
“Why are you in my class, Paul? Nearly every other jock who can’t make the grade point is in Mrs. Dunham’s class. Why aren’t you?”
“It’s kind of a long story, sir. Are you sure you are interested in it?”
“Yes. Remarkably, I am very interested. You’ve been in the—shall we say—accelerated classes for the past year and a half. Certainly not AP or IB classes, but most of the people in these classes are intending to get at least a community college education. Even the ESL students. I’m pushing them to get ready for college. The less accelerated classes are expected to go into trades or manual work of some sort. Why have you been in the college prep courses?”
It was the first I knew I was in the college prep classes. It’s not like they made a thing about who were the smart kids and who were the dumb ones. Since I got some ‘trade school’ credit for my work at the gym, I assumed I was being prepared for a trade rather than academics. I’d chosen gymnastics as my trade with massage as my occupation.
I told Mr. Fields my story, starting from being a dumb wimp and progressing to being a dumb jock. Nothing had made me smarter, obviously.
“So, for five years your teachers have just been passing you without you doing the work?” Fields demanded. He looked steamed. It got me mad.
“No! I did the work. It just takes me longer and my teachers accepted the lowest standard. During Covid, I spent two years at self-guided pace with my parents monitoring my progress and administering tests. I’ve passed the tests. I learned the material. I just can’t read that fast.”
“How fast do you read?”
“Not very. That’s why it takes so long to get the work done. Even in math, I understand the concepts fine. I might remember them better than the students who study for the test and then forget about it. I just have to, like, prove every step before I get it.”
“Interesting.” Mr. Fields seemed to be puzzling over something. “You’re studying to be a massage therapist?”
“Yessir. It’s one of the ways I pay my way at the gym so I can continue to work on my gymnastics.”
“You’re a competitor?”
“Sort of. I didn’t qualify for individual events at the national level this year. I hope to next year. I’m still a senior elite gymnast. But that means it will be three more years before I can qualify for the Olympic trials. This winter and spring I’ve focused on working with Tara White, the pairs gymnast who was injured three years ago. I also work with Madison Layne on a pairs routine. She thinks we can qualify for trials at Louisville next weekend.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“I don’t much like her or her coach. They think of me as a convenient footstool instead of a partner. Like the cheerleaders do. Tara is my real partner.”
“Okay. Do the work I assign and I will pass you so you can compete at the Louisville qualifier weekend after this one, and for the state cheerleader championships the following weekend. I want you to try something. I’m assigning you a book by Neil Gaiman. It’s not on the class reading list, but it’s a fun book. I think you’ll enjoy it. You won’t be dealing with the same material as the rest of the class. The book American Gods came out in 2001 and won several awards. I think they made a television series out of it, but that wouldn’t help you with this assignment. I want you to read and understand this book, Paul. I’ll be asking you relevant questions about it every week. That means you need to keep me informed of exactly how far in the book you’ve gotten each week. That way I’ll have the right questions ready for you. Now, have you used an audio book before?”
“I’m not on a program that allows for assistive technology,” Paul said. “My parents felt that would be detrimental to my future.”
“Audio books aren’t assistive technology. They are a valid publishing format for literary works and are every bit as common as print books and eBooks. I’d like you to try listening to the book as you read. Try that out for a couple of weeks and see if it helps your understanding and progress. You can buy the eBook and turn on the screen reader. Your Kindle will read the book to you while it highlights the words. You might call it assistive technology, but they are equally available to all students. I know there are several students who listen to their books instead of trying to read them. Give it a try.”
“Yessir.” I wasn’t sure it would help, but Mr. Fields was giving me a chance I didn’t expect to have. I’d take it.
“Good luck in Louisville.”
“Thank you, sir. And thanks to your wife for the cookies.”
He snorted and I left.
I got to the gym and ran straight to Tara, just in time for our practice session. Madison and her coach tried to wave me over to them, but I really wanted to see my girlfriend.
“You should probably just go to your partner,” Tara said. “She isn’t going to let us work and you’d rather be there anyway.”
“What? I don’t care what she or her coach wants. I want to be here with you. You’re my partner and she can just go to hell as far as I’m concerned. What do you mean I’d rather be there?”
“I saw you kiss her. Don’t try to deny it,” Tara burst forth. “You go straight to her as soon as you come into the gym. You don’t even come in for massage lessons. You’d rather have her.”
“That is so untrue. The only time I kissed Madison, I didn’t even kiss her. She attacked me and laid one on me. I was so surprised I ran away from her. And the only reason I’ve been going to her first on most days is because Coach Dawson insists. I’d much rather be massaging you.”
“Is that true, Paul? Do you really want to work with me? I told Jennifer not to complain to Dawson because I thought you wanted to spend time with her and we could limp along with our demo.”
“Tara! First off, you asked me to be your partner back in October, and I agreed. Second, you are my girlfriend and I would never cheat on you. To think that you believe I’d do it with her? Yuck. And third, you went with me to the initial meeting with Madison and suggested that I could work with her while still working with you. I never wanted to work with her in the first place. I have a hard enough time working with her sister on the cheer squad.”
“But you’re doing so well!”
“Not because I’m putting any great effort into it. You know it’s the same with her as with the cheerleaders. They all think they should be put on a pedestal and I’m a convenient hunk of marble. I don’t know why I ever wanted to become strong in the first place. I’m not even a human anymore. When I’m working with you, I feel like I’m part of something. Something beautiful.”
“I’m so ashamed,” Tara cried, clutching me tightly.
“No. You don’t need to be ashamed. I understand how you could think that, but it’s like what I want doesn’t even count. All I want is you.”
“Okay. One quick kiss to make up and let’s get to work,” Jennifer said. “We’re going to move the twist throw up a notch.”
I gave Tara a quick smooch and we promised to go out to dinner after our workout. As soon as we were in the middle of the mat, I saw Madison and Coach Daniels marching across the floor with Coach Dawson in tow. Jennifer stepped between us and them and told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to leave us be so we could work on our routine.
“We need him on Madison’s routine,” Coach Daniels said. “They’re competing at Louisville.”
“Only if you think they’re ready now,” Jennifer said.
“Paul needs to work with Madison in order to maintain his competitive edge,” Coach Dawson said.
“No, he definitely doesn’t and you’ve betrayed his trust as his coach,” Jennifer responded. “Paul works much harder with Tara than he does with Madison. In fact, the amount of artistry required for Madison’s routine could be handled by a stepladder. You know as well as I do that there isn’t a ghost of a chance she’ll qualify for nationals. She has no more chance of that than Tara has. You’re just milking a money cow by sacrificing one of your best gymnasts to her.”
“Now just a minute, Jennifer. That is not remotely true,” Coach said.
“Isn’t it Phillip? I know what the gym has charged us for our training time and use of Paul. You haven’t reduced that despite shorting us on the time. Are you telling me she isn’t paying just as much? We agreed to a maximum of an hour a day, four days a week for Madison. The rest of Paul’s time is ours. You’ve been keeping him two to three hours a day, six days a week. You owe us training time.”
“Paul, you have to speak up here. I’ve been guiding your career since you wandered into the gym as a scrawny twelve-year-old. You know Madison offers you a better opportunity to succeed than Tara does,” Coach Dawson said.
First off, I had no idea the gym was charging Tara and Madison for my time as their partner. I needed to really think that through. But the important issue right now was training time with each.
“No, Coach. Four hours a week. That’s the limit of my commitment to Madison,” I said. “And that’s more than my initial agreement. Take it or leave it.” My heart was racing so fast I was afraid I’d pass out. I felt like I was that same twelve-year-old getting stuffed in a locker.
“Phillip, you have to talk some sense into him.”
“I’m sorry, Coach Daniels. I can’t force him to give you more time,” Coach Dawson said. “You should take what’s offered. Dr. Martin is right. Paul’s commitment to Tara was well before you started putting demands on his time. I’m sorry, Paul. I should never have approved any of this.”
Coach Dawson ushered Madison and her coach away from our mats and Jennifer started working Tara and me on the three throws in our routine. We worked hard for three hours, then Tara and I went to dinner.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
