The Strongman
18
Losing Myself
I WOKE UP EARLY Monday morning with Lena looking into my eyes in my narrow dorm room bed. We were both very naked. Our adventure had begun on the beach, but it continued late into the night once we got back to my room.
“I… um… Hi,” I said.
“Hey you,” she answered. “That was some night.”
“It sure was. I… uh… really don’t have much experience with this. I mean, like, the morning after stuff.”
“Mmmhmm. That’s okay.” She cuddled closer to me, as if there was any choice. I found my hand stroking her breast. “I suggest that we fuck one more time and then get our buns in gear to get cleaned up, fed, and off to our training sessions. I’m a firm believer in building all the memories I can. Who knows if we’ll ever do this again.”
“That’s like… um… You don’t expect to be my girlfriend now?” I asked. She’d moved my hand from her breast down to her crotch.
“God, no. You shouldn’t have done that with Tara,” she said and then hastened on. “I’m not criticizing. I know you fell in love and it seemed like it would last forever. I’m not going to fall in love with you, Paul. I hope we’ll stay good friends and maybe we’ll even repeat some of what we did last night and… mmm… right now. But I know our paths lie in different directions. I don’t know when, but I know we’ll be going our own ways. Oh! Yeah! Push into me. Ahh. Mmm. Better not to get too involved with each other. I’m going to want more massages from you and they need to be just as professional as you’ve always been. More. Yes. Faster. It’s like… a special thing that we did once one night. Or half a dozen times. If it happens again, great. But don’t be watching for it. We’ll know if it’s right. Right there! Yes! Now, baby. Now! I want it!”
We kissed some more and finally rolled apart. Wow! I finally got a really good look at Lena’s body as she stood up to head for the bathroom. She was thin and muscular. Like me, she was probably only two or three percent body fat. That meant small breasts, but you’d never mistake this woman for a little girl.
“You can join me in the shower,” she called. I did, gladly, and we washed each other thoroughly. “No more of that!” she giggled. “We’d miss our training sessions and have to explain to everyone that we were fucking in the shower.” She pushed my hand away from her pussy and then kissed me before getting out of the shower. I finished washing my hair and stepped out to use the damp towel she’d used before me.
“I had a really great time,” I said. “Thank you for everything.”
“Everything?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t want to leave out the grouper sandwich.”
She pulled her shorts and top on and carried the rest of her things as she scampered down the hall to the stairs and up to her own room.
I don’t really believe sex is a cure-all for whatever ails you. I felt guilty about having fallen into bed with Lena—having fallen into Lena—the same day Tara broke up with me. I still missed and mourned my relationship with Tara, but I had to be honest. It ended when she drove off to California and I decided to call the academy in Florida. I’d been living a fantasy that she was still my girlfriend. If we’d been more honest with each other at the time, we’d have broken up right after we made love that morning.
An unfortunate side-effect of my encounter with Lena, though, was that I started noticing the other girls in the academy. The numbers in the adult dormitory were slightly more evenly divided between men and women, but no one seemed to have a permanent relationship. Maybe some of the mixed pairs had something going on like Tara and I had had. But I didn’t think any members of mixed pairs were currently in adult housing.
Then there was Sydnie and Eva. I hadn’t really figured that one out before Lena filled me in on it. The two girls had become lovers nearly as soon as they met four years previously. Sydnie would have been only fourteen, but there were only two years difference in their ages. I’d once commented about Sydnie’s ‘friendly’ kisses being incredibly enthusiastic. Eva had said, “Yeah. The first time she planted one on me I nearly sucked her tongue down my throat. We control that a little better now.”
I guess that should have been a clue. But Sydnie planted that kind of kiss on just about everyone. Eva didn’t seem to get upset by it at all.
I knew there were some adults who were in training every day but lived off-campus. Some of them were married or in long-term relationships. I’d read an article online (with the help of my screen-reader) that talked about how many female teammates transitioned into being a couple. Not just in gymnastics, but in basketball, hockey, soccer, and other sports. I guess it made sense and figured that there were probably just as many guys, but the media didn’t dare talk about that.
Still… Tara. I was irrationally angry with her, hurt by her, in love with her. As much as I rationalized the sense in breaking up—who knew when we’d see each other again?—I still didn’t want to break up. I wanted her as much as I loved her and I didn’t see that changing soon.
I’d been at the academy for two full semesters when I was called into a meeting with ‘the committee,’ which included Dr. Davis, the director, and several of the coaches.
“Paul, most of us have had a chance to work with you this year and we’ve all observed your dedication and skill,” Dr. Davis said. “It’s time, though, to narrow things down a little. At this stage of the game, you need a single coach who will guide you through all your training and competition heading for LA28. We have assessed your skills and believe you can become a successful part of Team USA. You’ve medaled in a couple of competitions and improve every time you are out. The four coaches I’ve brought to this meeting have all agreed they would like to work with you as your primary coach, starting this summer. Of course, the others will still be participating on specific events. We want to know if you have any preferences regarding coaches you’d like to work with.”
“Wow! I feel like one of those competitors on The Voice who have to choose their coach. I really appreciate all you’ve done for me this year. I feel more confident than I did when I moved here in October. You’ve each helped me more than I can say. Coach Desmond, you’ve brought my pommel horse and parallel bars to a whole new level, and I thought I was pretty good on those two before I got here. Coach Pleshenko, I really appreciate what you’ve done for me on the high bar and rings. I feel stronger every day. And thank you Coach Devault for your work on the vault with me. I learned almost as much the first day you gave me instruction as I had in all my training up to that time. I think I need to follow my love of floor exercises, though, if I have to choose a single coach. If you’re willing, Coach DiCello, I’d like to keep working with you as my primary coach.”
“Oh, I’m willing,” Coach DiCello laughed. She was the only one of my coaches who was female. Nearly all male apparatuses are coached by men, but she’d been the first coach to work with me on my tumbling and floor exercises. “You understand that we’ll be consulting with the other coaches on the other apparatuses, though. Are you sure you don’t want one of them as your primary?”
“If I can continue to work with them periodically, I’d be pretty happy to have you as my primary.”
“Let’s do it, then,” Dr. Davis said. “It’s not a surprise to any of us. We wondered why you seem to get along so well with women. We have that report regarding the athletes and coaches both. What would you say was your primary influence in that direction?”
“I don’t really know. Maybe it’s because until I got here, the only women who ever paid attention to me were my mother, sister, and Tara White. Everyone else ignored me as much as possible or tried to take advantage of me when I couldn’t be ignored. When I got here, Coach DiCello, Coach Li, the trio of Sydnie, Lena, and Eva, and just about everyone else I met were accepting and became friends. I’d have to say the academy was my primary influence in that direction.”
“We’ll meet together later this week to start planning out your training direction and competition schedule,” Coach DiCello said. “Welcome to my team.”
There’s a point in Anansi Boys—I finished reading it back in December—at which Fat Charlie discovers that Spider is a part of himself that was exorcised. Up until that time, all the fun and charming and magical side of him had been lost. I identified at first with Fat Charlie. I felt sort of like what Dad called a Sad Sack.
You’d think that doing what I loved and being accepted by the women and other male athletes around me would have made me as happy as I could be. It was really everything I ever wanted. But in that way, I was also like Spider. The fun and magical side of me was empty and had no relationships. There was nothing there that could really define me. I felt hollow and empty.
And I guess that my attempt to fill that hollow part of me spilled over into my training. I devoted twice the energy to it that I had before. Maybe if I won a gold medal at the Olympics, I’d feel validated, I guess. I’d be whole.
I didn’t sleep with Lena again that summer. She, Eva, and Sydnie spent a lot of the summer in Europe, attending training camps and competing in the European championships. They did very well.
I competed in four domestic events that summer. They were all in the Southeast. It was nice that Mom, Dad, and Mikey came down for one of them in Atlanta.
“Tell me when there’s a competition down here over one of my school breaks in the winter,” Mikey complained. “How do you stand this heat?”
“It isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity,” Dad chimed in. “We get days this hot in Minneapolis—once or twice a year—but it’s a dry heat.”
“I spend most of my time in the gym or massage rooms. The academy has good environmental controls. I even have air conditioning in my dorm room,” I laughed.
At the word “environmental,” Mikey’s ears perked up. She was two years into her education and intended to become an environmental engineer. She hadn’t quite decided what she intended to do with her degree, but a lot of her study had been on natural solutions to interior environmental control so the necessary pollutants of air conditioning, heating, and waste management were mitigated to some extent.
And that was everything I understood about what she was doing.
Mom and Dad put their foot down and told her it was too far to go visit the academy so she could just drop in and offer to assess their pollution quotient.
It was nice seeing them, and I sent a few of my medals home with them. I didn’t keep any of my medals or awards at the academy. I didn’t really have anything that personal or sentimental there.
There were, however, a couple of interludes with the women I knew. I still made frequent Sunday afternoon trips to the beach with several of the women who had gone when the three girls had invited them. It was kind of cool to be a muscular guy on the beach surrounded by three to five athletic beauties in skimpy bikinis. Occasionally, we’d do some acrobatics on the beach. That always attracted a few watchers, even though we were just clowning around.
I’ve talked about how young some of the pairs performers were or at least looked. That is not just dependent on size. I mean, the reigning world champion in women’s gymnastics was twenty-eight years old and no one would mistake her for a little girl. Still, she’s only four feet and eight inches tall. And women gymnasts do incredible balance and acrobatic routines on the beam, floor, and vault.
So, it was no big deal for a couple to balance on me or have me throw them into a somersault. And those girls who had moved to circus training could do almost anything, including incredible contortionist exercises while supporting themselves with just one hand on my head. We weren’t really performing or practicing, though. We were just playing and having fun. Sometimes, our antics were in the water and sometimes on the beach.
And once or twice, they led to acrobatics in bed. Lifting and balancing a girl is always filled with the awareness that someone could get hurt with a bad move. When we were both naked and balancing, it added a level of adrenaline rush that was otherwise missing. Most of these girls can do splits at more than parallel to the floor. That in itself can be an experience if you happen to be embedded in her as she stretches out!
But these occasional tête-à-têtes grew from our just having fun and carrying it on into the bedroom. There was nothing serious about them.
I was surprised one afternoon to see my coach waiting for a massage in the training room.
“Coach DiCello? Are you here for a massage?” I asked.
“I think it will give me some insights into you and how you work that will help us in training. Do you have a problem with giving someone as old as me a massage?”
“No, ma’am. You’re not old.”
She snorted.
“I mean, um… When I was doing my 500 hours up in Minneapolis, one of my clients who reviewed me about once a month was in her mid-70s. I don’t have a problem with people’s ages regardless.”
“I see. Well, I’m not in my 70s, so I’ll accept your judgment that I’m not that old.”
“Just… um… go on into the room. There is a basket and hooks for your clothes. When you are ready, slip under the sheet on the table and I’ll knock before I come in.”
She went into the massage room and five minutes later, I knocked and she said to come in. I always open the door and check the room before I actually enter. I learned that lesson from Madison. Coach DiCello was on the table, lying face down with the sheet over her and her face in the cradle.
I started my relaxation soundtrack and turned the lights down, getting rid of the fluorescents. I started by just laying my hands on her shoulders outside the sheet.
“Do you have any specific pains or problem areas I should know about?” I asked.
“No. Just need relaxation.”
“Good. Let me know anytime you find my touch too deep or too shallow. Everyone has a different threshold.”
I began to work, starting with her neck and shoulders, then moving down her back. After I reached her waist and did some full torso moves, I covered her back up and slipped the sheet under her left leg, exposing her left butt cheek and leg so I could work on them. Then I switched the covering and exposed the right leg and butt cheek.
Like all the gymnasts I’d worked on, Coach DiCello was extremely fit with low body fat and good flexibility. I held the sheet in a tent over her so she could roll over and then I started again at the head. I worked my hands under her and then drew my knuckles up on either side of her spine until I worked my way all the way to her skull. I held the position for cranial-sacral release and then went to work ‘styling her hair.’ That’s a term my clients coined for the part where I work on their scalp and the top of their head. I’d had a couple of clients who came in for a short session fully dressed and asked me to just work on their neck and head.
From the top of her head, I worked on gently releasing her facial muscles. Then I pulled one of her arms out from under the sheet and worked on it for a while, eventually switching to the other arm and then up to the front of her shoulders. I worked down to her breasts, but not onto them.
“Do you want any abdomen and psoas work or do you prefer that I avoid that?” I asked.
“I signed up for the full treatment. Please proceed.”
This part was a little tricky. On a man, I could just uncover the entire torso and work on the lower torso all the way to the pelvis. I had to keep a woman covered. I guess it didn’t make that much difference, though, because I often worked with my eyes closed anyway. Working under the sheet wasn’t that big a deal. I wrapped the sheet under one leg so I could work all the way from her rib cage to her foot. I started just below her breasts and worked the muscles of the rib cage, then directly to the abs.
I’d noticed that a lot of athletes have difficulty with the psoas muscle. It’s a fairly large muscle that attaches to the femur and runs through the pelvis to the lumbar vertebrae. It is largely what makes homo erectus walk erect. In order to massage it, I had to be careful of the abdominal organs and kind of slide deep right at the pelvis to work up and down the muscle. Coach gasped a little when I got in there and I checked to be sure she was okay.
“I had no idea that was so tight,” she said.
“It’s not unusual,” I said.
I switched sides and then did some soothing rotations on the surface of the abdomen before I moved down to work on the front of her legs and her feet.
“Just relax and take your time getting up,” I said when I’d finished. “Don’t rise too quickly. I don’t want you fainting.”
I left the room and waited for her to come stumbling out.
“I had heard from other coaches and athletes that you have great hands,” she said when she finally emerged from the room. “Magic hands, I’d say. That was truly wonderful. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome anytime,” I said.
I lost track of time. It was defined only by my workouts and interrupted by the competitions that I went to. Coach DiCello had some great improvements for my floor routine and vaults, but she contributed to choreographing my other routines as well. She also got me to work on tumbling passes. I really think they contributed to the height and speed I got in my floor exercises. I continued to meet with Coach Pleshenko and Coach Desmond once a week to advance my other apparatus routines, but I found Coach DiCello had a unique perspective on those routines that the men didn’t have. I wondered why more male gymnasts didn’t have female coaches.
There’s a big difference between men’s floor exercises and women’s floor exercises. To start, the women’s exercise is 90 seconds and includes a music background. The men’s exercise is 70 seconds and has no music. As a result, the women’s exercise contains dance moves and a lot more showmanship than the men’s. The men tend to have three to six tumbling passes (with required minimum elements) and one strength demonstration. The sprung floor is the same for both men and women.
What Coach DiCello brought to my floor exercise was an element of showmanship that was missing previously. Of course, I was told that my one-and-a-half back flip landing on my hands was, indeed, an illegal move and I couldn’t use it in competition. Apparently, there had been several injuries and one death while executing the move and that was kind of sobering. I hadn’t even considered that when I was practicing it. Coach DiCello encouraged me to work it into a full double with the one-and-a-half twist, letting me land on my feet. That added a significant element of difficulty to my exercise without being illegal.
I took one week in the summer and one week at Christmas to visit my family, and then spent the rest of my time training and competing. 2026 was the first year in which I would be traveling to compete internationally. Assuming I qualified at the US Nationals in June, then I could head for Europe in October as part of Team USA. There were other Olympic qualifying events that I could compete in even if I wasn’t on Team USA, but placing in the Nationals was my surest way in.
I was nothing if I wasn’t competing in the Olympics.
In fact, I wasn’t much anyway. I was even less when Sydnie, Lena, and Eva got first in the 2026 Worlds and received an offer to perform over in Orlando for three months. I got another erection inducing kiss from Sydnie and a place to put it from Lena. Eva waved goodbye as they loaded a small van with all their belongings and took off.
Even though I’d only made love to Lena maybe three or four times in the past two years, seeing those girls leave was almost harder than breaking up with Tara. But while they were in Holon, Israel for the championships, I was in Rotterdam preparing for the World Gymnastics Championship. I made Team USA in June, but my entry in Worlds was assured before that. Still, it was great that I’d be able to compete as part of the team instead as an ‘also qualified.’
The level of competition here was higher than at US Nationals. These guys were the winners and champions of a dozen different nations—the best of the best. We were to follow the Olympic rotation, as most major competitions did. There would be twelve national teams that had qualified. The other thirty or so gymnasts who were not part of a full team would be grouped together in fives, the same number as on the national teams. So, there would be eighteen groups heading onto the six apparatuses. They would do it in three rotations.
The official rotation is floor exercise, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, high bar. That’s the order we went through, but our team started on the rings. That was probably my toughest event. Starting with the floor exercises was always a confidence booster for me. Once we finished the rings, we moved to the vault station. After everyone in our division had completed their full rotation, we were done, but the next division of six groups took their places.
In the qualifying round, only four members of each national team competed in each event. It didn’t have to be the same four members. But three of us were competing for all-around and so the three of us were up each time with the other two rotating in on their strongest events. The competition guideline is ‘four up, three count.’ We had four people compete on each event, but only the scores of the top three went into the team score.
I placed fourth on our team on the rings. I knew that wouldn’t get me into an individual competition on the rings, but I might still compete there if the team qualified. I got a team best on the vault. I’d have to wait until the end of the day to find out where that ranked among all the ninety competitors. We went through the same process on the parallel bars, the high bar and floor exercise. I got another team best in floor exercises, but there was only 0.01 difference between my score and our second best. He’d beaten me at Nationals.
In the final event, I stepped up to the pommel horse. Coach Desmond had really elevated my level of competition on the pommel horse. Some say it is the most difficult of all the apparatuses. I’m pretty confident on it and consider rings to be the most difficult if you really want to win. I did well, but not my best. I was third on the pommel horse for our team.
There were national team coaches, but nearly every competitor also traveled with his personal coach—for me, Coach DiCello. We didn’t find out until late after dinner what the final standings were. Our team qualified comfortably for the team competition. Eight teams would compete for medals in the finals. Each team could enter three of their athletes on each apparatus. This was a ‘three up, three count’ round. Our coach selected me for floor exercises, vault, and pommel horse—even though I’d done better on the high bar. We had stronger athletes on the high bar.
I did not qualify for the all-around finals. Twenty-four men were in that competition and I was number twenty-nine of ninety. I’d qualified individually on floor exercises, vault, and—to my surprise—pommel horse. I’d placed third on our team on the pommel horse, but our first three were all in the top eight in qualification. That dropped me out of the pommel horse event. I wouldn’t have competed in the all-around anyway. Each country was entitled to only two entries in that event and I was only third on our team.
The top eight competitors, regardless of nation, compete in the individual apparatus championships. In case you got lost, that means that I qualified for three medal competitions: Team, individual vault, and individual floor exercise. It wasn’t a bad showing, no matter where I ended up in the placing.
The second day of the competition was the team final. We did well. Our team stood on the podium and received the silver (second place) medal. It was my first medal in international competition. Day three was the individual events. I performed on my two and just missed a medal in the vault. I received my first gold medal in international competition for my floor exercise. Not bad for my first international competition. The final day of the competition was the individual all-around and our champion did the performance of his life on all six apparatuses to win the gold medal. Cool!
I called home to tell my parents and sister how I’d done. They were all super happy for me and promised they would have tickets for LA28. Dad said he’d already reserved a hotel room for the three of them. Mikey had finished her undergrad degree and was studying for a master’s in Environmental Engineering. What can I say? She got the brains and I got the brawn. She’d also become engaged the past fall and I’d met the guy at her graduation in May. He seemed to be really nice and my sister had certainly settled down. I’d be going to their wedding over Christmas.
After dinner that night, I sat in my hotel room staring at my phone. It was only noon in California. I wondered what the chances were that I’d catch Tara where she could talk. I guess I kind of lost it. I mean, I just lost track of what I was doing and sat there blankly for three hours. At midnight, I thumbed in the number and surprised myself by calling Lena. The girls were in their dressing room preparing for an 8:00 show. All three girls gathered around the phone and squealed when I told them my news.
I never did call Tara.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
