There are two things that stand out for me about 1984 — Greg Louganis and Mary Lou Retton. For some reason the Olympics that year were the best ever in my memory and I was glued to the television.
At eight years old, I saw him, Greg the god, on television with his perfect body in those tight little speedos and felt things happen to my body that only happened every time I thought of a naked guy or sat in the classroom daydreaming about Jason Lubeck.
At the same time, I was also somewhat repulsed by him. I recognized immediately that he was a big ‘mo and after he completed the dive that secured the gold for him, I cringed as he sobbed like a girl while my slightly older cousins watching with me laughed and called him a fag. I wanted him to butch up so I could be his secret lover.
Then there was Mary Lou Retton. She made it look so easy. Two perfect tens in a row. Tumbling around like a monkey, she won the hearts of all Americans. If she could do it, I surely could.
The 1984 Olympics inspired me to become an Olympic medalist and consequently be rich and famous. The problem was I couldn’t play anything that involved a ball for shit and I was an awful swimmer because I was afraid of water and freaked out when it hit my face (childhood trauma involving a fire hydrant, a sadistic woman and a brick wall). I decided I was destined to become the next Mary Lou Retton. When I told my pregnant mother that I wanted to go to gymnastics school, my request was denied. They must have foreseen how expensive my brother, still in the womb, would be.
When I got to high school, I wanted to play tennis (like Martina) but they wanted people with talent and who actually KNEW how to play, so that wasn’t happening. In freshman year, I really wanted to get a letter jacket so I bought one and had them put a microscope on the back (I was part of the science team). I wore it once, was so embarrassed by the reaction it got and never to put it on again. At the beginning of the new semester of freshman year, I joined the track team. I was tall and thin and mostly leg so the expectation was that I would rock. Unfortunately, I also hated running at that time, had low lung capacity and had a pretty transparent motive: stay on the team long enough to get on the roster so I could get the foot of Hermes to replace the microscope on my jacket. I stayed on the team for four weeks, skipped multiple practices, feigned asthma & injury and ran in one race after which I promptly threw up. That was enough though and I was officially a member of the team on paper. With the goal of getting a cooler symbol on my jacket accomplished, I put aside my Olympic aspirations for a while.
When I was sixteen, there was another Olympics and I was once again inspired by the gymnasts…the hot Eastern European male gymnasts this time. It was my belief that if only my mother would have supported me in my quest to become a world class gymnastics superstar, I would have been hanging out with all of the hotties and they would be kissing ME on the lips instead of their ugly, bearish coaches when they returned from their routines. I threw some guilt on her and told her that "gymnastics were the only thing that I wanted to learn when I was little and [she] never took me seriously". The guilt-laden knife found its mark. She had put both my brothers in piano school and little league and they never even asked for it. I never had lessons in anything except from my schizophrenic grandfather on how to collect aluminum cans in the neighborhood and take them to the junkyard for money. My mother broke and at sixteen she enrolled me in a gymnastics school in Nutley, NJ.
Although I was excited to finally have a chance to realize my dream, the reality wasn’t so pretty. I was old for a beginning gymnast and, at 6′1" (and still growing), I was surrounded by super-flexible, nimble people half my size that made me feel like Bea Arthur. I put aside my pride and worked towards the goal of, at the very least, being able to do a back handspring like the body double for Michelle Pfeiffer in the first second Batman movie. My biggest motivation was Billy, the 18 year-old assistant instructor who took me under his wing so to speak and gave me encouragement. It also helped that I thought he was hot. Unfortunately, I never did develop the confidence to do a back handspring (or ask him on a date) and the only time I ever utilized my gymnastics skills was during senior week in college when I did four back flips in a row on a giant trampoline. On the last one, I couldn’t stick the landing and sprained my ankle so I hobbled up to the podium on graduation day to receive my diploma in front of Oprah Winfrey.
In college, I was determined to challenge the stereotype that gays don’t do sports so I searched for a college sport that I could get into without experience. There were two options…rugby and crew. Rugby was all about getting drunk and though the people were very nice and not meatheads, I didn’t drink at the time so that was out. I decided to join the crew team.
The first week of practice went fairly well. I ran my first ever mile and two days later ran three ( I thought I would die). Then came the swim test. It was four laps, then you had to tread water for five minutes. I never made it to the treading water part. I was one of two people who failed the test…the other was the gayer than gay coxswain who looked like a dead rat when he managed to drag himself out of the pool. Undaunted, I worked over the next week with a teammate on my poor swimming technique and eventually passed.
Crew was awesome. Our team kicked ass and my boat was undefeated for most of the season (only one team beat us before the championships). We finished the year ranked third novice boat in New England and I felt like a rock star. The sport changed my body. My back broadened, my legs doubled in size and I was using muscles that before crew seemed to be vestigial. I was a college athlete. I challenged the gay stereotype…well, not really.
Crew was FULL of Marys. One of the campus queens, Mike Twist, sat in my boat. He was a talented thespian who played Lady MacBeth in the theater department’s major production of MacBeth. He was also a giant woman. We became buddies and gossiped about everyone else. My close friend and one-time boyfriend Tim was also a rower. Another teammate, Josh Kletzkin was closeted at the time. And there were a gaggle of other questionables, two of which blatantly flirted with me and the flirting was confirmed through others so it wasn’t just my imagination. And we weren’t the only gay team. Regattas were cruisefests. Marys EVERYWHERE. What was worse, all crew uniforms included lycra bike-short-like bottoms so sometimes our persuasions were unconcealable.
I rowed for a year and a half and then I went to France for a semester abroad and lost the desire to wake up a 5:30 am for practice or take erg tests so I ended my short-lived rowing career.
Now, years after my last opportunity to be an Olympian, my athletics are limited to biking around the city, going to the gym and the occasional bad tennis match with my friends. Do I regret never standing on a podium while the US national anthem played (I would know all of the words) with a medal around my neck? Yes. But about a year ago I didn’t feel so bad.
My friend Scott was in the area and I invited him over to my apartment for drinks. He brought his childhood friend Kate Johnson, who, during the conversation, I discovered was on the silver-medal-winning women’s crew team in the Athens Olympics. I was awed by her. Here she was, a Mary Lou Retton of sorts sitting on my couch drinking red wine from one of the cheap glasses I bought at Fish’s Eddy. Did she receive lots of money from the win? Is her gold medal on display in some museum? Does she get recognized all over the world for her accomplishments? Not so much. Crew doesn’t really get a whole lot of coverage and there were no real lucrative endorsements. Her father wanted the medal more than she did so she gave it to him and he keeps it on the wall in his office (she told us that Olympians from some of the poorer countries pawn, hock or sell their medals on eBay). And finally, no one really knows who she is. She sat bow in the eight-person boat in an obscure sport. When I met her she was looking for a job in sports marketing and moving in with two other people in an apartment in Brooklyn. There was no Wheaties box cover for her. No interview with Oprah. No Nike endorsements. Her medal didn’t change her. She loved the sport and that was about it. I never loved sports. I just wanted the accessories.
