Circumstances 19

The water was warm.  Gary said they had a heater they used to keep the pool in the mid-seventies. 

He was a great swimmer, and the water running off his body, the sun highlighting his blond hair, his muscles moving under his skin as he walked along the deck or jumped on the diving board, made for a spectacle that had the expected effect on me.  I stayed in the water.

Gary swam alongside me as we did a couple of laps.  It was his idea.  I’d have rather just sat on the steps than have him see how poor a swimmer I was.  After the laps, back in the shallow end, he had me put my face in the water and hold it there for five seconds.  Then he told me I should do that when swimming, as holding my head up created too much drag and made swimming twice as hard.  Then he showed me how I was splashing at the water instead of cupping it and pulling it while I swam.  He said I should stroke, not splash.  And helped me do it.

The laps we swam after that were much easier for me.  I laughed at the end, feeling really good about just about everything.  He laughed too, maybe just because I did, and he patted me on the back.

I knew I had to tell him.  It wasn’t fair if I didn’t, and that should have been incentive enough.  I did my best to be fair, and nice to people, too.  I didn’t think being nice was wimpy at all.  It was one thing I could control, and it allowed me to be proud of myself.  I needed more things to be proud about.

But there were more reasons than just that, and all of them were important.  I knew I had to do it; I had to tell him.  I didn’t know how he’d react, but in any case I had to tell him.

I thought maybe I should tell him while he was in the swimming pool.  It’s difficult to hit anyone very hard in a pool if you’re in deep water with your feet off the floor.  You can’t get much leverage that way.

So I waited for him to make his next dive.  He swam to the edge of the pool, put his hands on the cement side, and with one great lunge, was out of the pool and on his feet.  He swung his head sharply, first right, then left, and a spray of water flew from his hair and made brief, sparkling rainbows in the sun.  As he moved across the decking, the sun highlighted his musculature, shadows and sunlight playing games on his body.  He saw me watching and grinned at me, and I had a quick thought that he knew how stunning he looked.  But, maybe not.  Maybe he was just happy to be alive, as usual.

He strode to the board.  I hollered at him, “Can you do a backflip?”

He grinned, walked to the end of the diving board, turned around, stood there with only his toes and the balls of his feet on the board, did a couple of squat-and-ups to get the board flexing, then shot up backwards off the board, opened his body completely, threw his hands and head backwards, and did a perfect back dive into the water behind him, cutting into the pool with hardly a splash.

When he came up, I said, trying to act dismissive, “That wasn’t a flip.  That was a back dive.  Anyone can do that.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“You do one then.  Go ahead.”

“What, right now?”

“Right now.”

OK, so the timing was perfect.  I’d maneuvered him.  I felt proud of that, and scared as hell.  I steeled myself, and went ahead with what I’d started.

“I’ve never done one.  I’ll probably kill myself.”

“So not anyone can do one, then.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t, or that I wouldn’t.  I said I’d probably kill myself.  I’m going to do it.  But, I’ll probably die.”

I said this very matter-of-factly, without a trace of humor, and he gave me a funny look.   He opened his mouth, but I beat him to the punch.  “I have something I’d better tell you first, though, in these last few, final moments that I have left.”

His funny look got more serious.  I plowed forward.  “You have the right to know, since we were soon-to-be best friends.  Swim over here and I’ll tell you.”

He frowned.  He’d been holding on to the edge of the pool in the deep end, across the pool from me.  He didn’t argue, he just started to swim across.  When he was halfway, I said to him, “Stop.  I’ll tell you while you’re where you are now.”

“Huh?”  He stopped, treading water.  I knew I had to say it fast or I wouldn’t say it at all.

I took a deep breath.  “Gary, I’m gay.  If we’re going to be friends, and I want that as badly as you do, I have to be honest, so I’m telling you.  I’m gay, and I like looking at you, being with you.  I think about you a lot.”

Gary was looking at me with an expression I don’t know how to describe.  I didn’t stay and watch him.  Instead, I got out of the pool by pushing myself up, managing to put one knee on the cement decking, then the other, then standing up.  I shook my head, but only a little water came off my close-cropped hair.  I strode across the pool deck, but didn’t get the sense that the sun was playing with the muscle definition on my body.  There wasn’t anything to play with.

I walked to the board, and got to the end and stood as he’d stood.  I started to flex the board, but it scared me so I stopped that.  I looked ahead of me at the house.  My heart was racing.  I’d watched him do it and it looked pretty easy, really.  All it took was the nerve to leap backwards and go upside down without looking.

I was hoping he’d say something.  If he said, “Get the hell out of here,” I could just leave, and never have to do this.  If he said, “Wait, you might hurt yourself.  Let me show you how,” then I’d know what I’d said didn’t make any difference to him.

But he didn’t say anything.

I’d just leapt into the unknown while in the pool.  Now I had to do it from the diving board.

Of the two, this seemed easier.  I’d done that, I could do this.

I opened up my arms, leaned my head and shoulders back, bent my knees, and threw myself backwards.