Chapter 1

So, what did you do on your Christmas Vacation?

In junior high and high school that was always some moron English teacher’s idea of a fun thing to write about. We went to see Grams and Gramps. We went to an amusement park. We went camping. We were in a car accident and my parents got killed! I always wanted to write that last one just for the hell of it.

At State the swim team took off out of town and trained until we almost died! Every year, we almost died. We always almost died in different places, but we always almost died. I know, then how can you write this? OK, we didn’t die. We wanted to. We dreamed of it. But we were never that lucky.

Some years we got on a bus and drove to our holiday training site. Some years we flew. In my four years there, we went to Northern Arizona University, Fort Lauderdale (The home of the Swimming Hall of Fame), and Maui. But one training trip still stands out in my memory.

That was a serious trip. Let me tell you about it.

The first day of practice that year, Coach sat us all down for our first team meeting.

“Gang, Coach Snider is going to pass out some forms for you. I need them filled out ASAP. We have the opportunity to travel this year.”

“Passport!?” One of the swimmers exclaimed upon reading the form he was handed.

“Yes and passport. Obviously any of you that have a passport are already set up and you can turn your forms back in. Those of you without a passport will need to apply. I’ve arranged to have them paid for so you won’t need to come up with the fee.”

“Coach?”

“Yes, Tina?”

“Don’t we need several forms of ID to get a passport?”

“Yes. We already have certified copies of your birth certificates so all we have to do is have you bring your driver’s license or school ID with you when we go to apply.”

“Coach?”

“Yes, Simon?”

“I know you’re going to tell us but I have to ask; where are we going?”

“Well since you know that you have to have a passport to enter another country, you can figure that we will be leaving the country. But I’m not going to tell you right now. All the details have been worked out. All of the travel plans, except the travel schedule have been made.”

“Travel to where?”

“It’s a secret,” Coach answered with a smile.

“Coach! The girls are going to need to know what clothes to bring,” Captain Will Chantry asked.

“Right Will. Since when are you interested in the girls outfits?”

“Since he was twelve and want to get the girls out of them!” One of the girls said, causing an uproar of laughter.

“Nice. I’m not going to tell you because it is going to be so amazing that I don’t want anyone to know about it. Remember last year when we went to Bermuda? The word got out and all of a sudden the place was packed with the teams that are our rivals. This year I want to go somewhere that no one will guess. It could be the Arctic!”

“Arctic? Is that north or South?”

“Jill! Really?”

“I get confused,” the huge sprinter replied.

At 6’3” and 175 pounds, Jill Clapton was a monster. She was naturally well muscled and as a little girl was a terrible tomboy. When she found out about boys, she was pure hell on wheels for her parents. They truly impressed their conservative beliefs on her and more than one high school boy had been put in the hospital for putting his hands where she didn’t want them.

She wasn’t gay, as proven by the time she had a girl grab her ass and then her breast only to lose three teeth and have several fingers broken. Jill didn’t like to be touched unaware. She had no problem with a pat on the back from the guys on the team or a swat on the ass from her female teammates. She didn’t even mind it when Deena Finster hugged her.

“Jill, when we get closer to Christmas I’ll let all of you know what the plan is. All I can truly and honestly verify is that you are going to love it. I know. I can hear it now, “Oh yeah, we’re going to love going to a foreign country to die for a week!” But trust me when I tell you that you will forever consider yourselves to be blessed to be on the team this year.”

“You will be going home for a few days at the beginning of the break but we will be on our trip on Christmas Day. You should contact your parents if you’re going home so they can move the holiday celebrations to an earlier date. You will be off school on Dec 19 and will need to be back here on Dec 21. We will depart on Dec 22 and come home on Dec 30.

“While you’re home get these forms filled out if you are under eighteen. If you’re between eighteen and twenty-one check to be sure that you filled out the schools new travel forms when you did your paperwork at the beginning of the semester.”

“Get the forms back to me ASAP, gang,” Coach Snider said. “You can even email the forms if you scan them in.”

The group broke up and headed out to the various places they needed to be.

“Well, Jim, they seem to be curious.”

“Ya think, Coach? They are going to shit bricks when the word gets out. All the coaches and athletes on campus are going to lose their collective minds.”

“I agree. The Alumni have done great things for us in the past. I’m not sure that this ranks up there with what they did for Tiny Tina a few years back but it’s pretty big. As soon as you have everyone’s applications, we’ll set a schedule to get them over to the Post Office for their passports.”

“Do you want to wait for the pictures until we get to the PO or should I get their pics from the admissions office?”

“Admissions Office? I hadn’t thought of that. Great idea, please take care of that.”

“Will do, Chief.”

“Were do you think we’re going?”

“I don’t know,” Deena replied to her roommate and lover, Terri. I know that I need to talk to Coach about me. Some countries have travel restrictions for people like me.”

“You mean hot chicks with dicks?”

“No, Terri. If you’re a guy who dresses as a woman there is usually no problem. But intersexed people can get thrown in jail just for having both sets of genitals.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yup. If we are going to a strict Muslim country, all the gay kids on the team could be in danger.”

“I can’t imagine we’d go to one of those countries. None of them have swimming as a serious sport. We’d have to be going to someplace safe. Oh my God! Remember talking to the girls at the U last season? They went to the Bahamas for Christmas. They wanted to go someplace warm. I know a great place that’s warm at this time of the year and is very swimmer friendly.”

“Where?”

“Australia! Australia, Deena! It would be Summer down there! They are a great swimming country!”

Deena furrowed her brow and then looked at Terri with doubt writ all over her face.

“Terri, there is no way we are going down under? That would be crazy expensive. The airfare alone would be over a thousand bucks per swimmer. I could see Bahamas or Bermuda or Cancun.”

“What if Coach is going to trick us? Jill was being a bit silly when she asked about the Arctic but do you remember that book a few years ago, “Swimming to Antarctica”? That swimmer, Lynne Cox, swam a 1500 in that water.”

“But she didn’t train in it, Terri. We’re going on a trip to train and train really hard at that. It might be a place that’s warm or cold; Coach won’t care as long as there is water and a lot of time in it.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I wonder what Simon thinks?”

“We’ll have to ask him when he gets back.”

Will was walking with Sian O’Mackey, his fiancé and a backstroker on the State team. They were going to be married after graduation, take a two week honeymoon, and then report to work at their new jobs in Omaha, Nebraska.

“Si, where do you think we’re going to go?”

“I don’t know. In all the time we’ve been here, we’ve never needed a passport. I guess we could end up in Canada. Thunder Bay has a great pool. The Commonwealth Games have been held in Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver and the Olympics have been Montreal.”

“True. Montreal. I hear that’s a really cool city. Maybe a nice place for a honeymoon?”

“Only if you speak the Canadian version of French. I had a friend who went up there for some sort of French immersion class in high school and she said the people there didn’t care for those who didn’t speak their version of French.”

“Then maybe the other direction. I hear that Vancouver is a beautiful city, and the sea and mountains are all right there.”

“I could see that. The Canadian Dolphin team is there. They’ve had a history of Canadian Olympic swimmers. But I just get the feeling that he’s got something else in mind. In my four years here I’ve found that he is nothing if not uncanny. My freshman year he told us that we were going to swim against a little better competition. So we train and for our first away meet, we go to Stanford. We got killed. For our second away meet we went to the University of California. We got killed.”

“But everyone got better afterwards,” Sian countered.

“Yes we did. We saw that they super-fast were just like us, only super-fast. They screwed around at certain times but when they worked, they worked very hard. We came home from Cal and the guys and girls had team meetings away from each other and without the coaches. We vowed to work harder.”

“I remember. At first I thought everyone was having an emotional reaction but as the next few days passed I noticed that everyone was serious as a heart attack about working harder and getting better.”

“No one ever said anything to Coach. He saw us working harder and he made the practices more challenging. As we got tougher the workouts got tougher. Now he says that we are going to count ourselves as blessed for being here this year. I think it’s gonna be like when he tells us that a practice is going to be appropriately challenging. I’m scared!”

It usually takes a few months to get passports. Somehow we got ours in seven weeks. Word was some alumni had a hand in it. Then came the big shock. One Saturday we showed up for our morning practice and there were several men and women in hospital garb. We each individually went to a room and a doctor and nurse questioned us and went over our medical releases before giving us a serious of injections.

After that Coach told us to take the rest of the weekend off. Good thing too. I could barely lift my arms from the shots and I swear the shot I got in the left butt cheek was with a crooked, square, needle.

In the cafeteria that morning, I saw that Simon, Terri, and Deena were sitting alone, which they did sometimes. Simon is gay. Terri is gay. Deena is a hermaphrodite, or an inter-sexual in modern terms. They were looking a little sullen. I was good friends with them and often went on dates with them and my girlfriend. I went to their table and asked if I could join them.

“Sure, man, have a seat.”

I sat and ate breakfast sitting with my right cheek off the side of the chair. At first I was worried that I’d look like a fool until I noticed everyone else was the same.

“So what’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing,” Simon answered in a less than gregarious tone.

“I call bullshit. You three are the liveliest people on the team. Now you’re sitting here looking like the world just got dumped on your shoulders.”

“I guess we’re worried about the questions we were asked and all the shots we just got,” Deena replied.

I stood up and spoke loudly, “Hey everyone. Who got a mess of shots this morning?”

Every hand went up.

“Who got more than four?”

Every hand went up again.

“Who got asked some serious questions?”

All hands again.

“Thank you. Is anyone worried about where this is going?”

“Hell yeah!” One of the guys hollered out.

I sat down between Simon and Deena, “Worried like all of them?”

“No, more. The doctors asked us about our sexual relationships. You know how we are,” Simon said quietly. “Terri and Deena get together. Deena and I do as well. Sometimes all three of us get going. They asked about everything.”

“They talked to me about my situation,” Deena added. “They wondered why my parents didn’t have my penis removed at birth. I didn’t even know that was a thing until recently. I’ve always had a penis and a vagina. Until I got to junior high and we had to take showers together I didn’t know that everyone wasn’t like me. Now I can’t imagine what it would be like to not have Simon sucking my dick while I eat Terri’s pussy.”

“Whoa! A little TMI for me there.”

“Sorry. I’m getting worried that we may be left out of the Christmas training trip. You know there are some places where...”

“Stop! Deena. Can you imagine that Coach will allow us to go anywhere that wouldn’t take all of us? He went out of his way to recruit the three of you and every other non-heterosexual team member we’ve ever had. He’s not going to bring you here and then discriminate against you.”

“I guess.”

“You guess all you want but I’m telling you, everyone is going to make this trip.”

She looked at me and smiled.

“Thanks.”

Practice was brutal! But like Coach always says, “If you work hard it’s a hard practice. If you don’t it’s an easy practice.” I like to think that I work hard but today I seriously thought that I was going to back off a little. I didn’t but I thought about it.

“OK, after you dress, I want to see all of you back in here for an important meeting,” Coach said seriously.

Things on campus had been a little tense of late. It seemed that the men’s volleyball coach was caught taking videos of his men naked in the showers and putting those videos on the web. We’d heard that several other people in the athletic administration areas were implicated.

We talked a little about it in the shower and as we dressed and then filtered out to the pool deck for our meeting as each of us finished. We sat on the deck bleachers and waited for the girls. They took a little longer which was interesting. If we had to get to the cafeteria, those females beat us out of the building every time. But for a meeting? The girls were slower than molasses in January.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know, Simon. I can’t imagine anyone associated with the team is involved with the shower incidents,” I answered.

The girls all came out together. That seemed ominous because they usually came out two or three at a time like the guys. The couples sat together. Our only trio, Simon, Terri, and Deena sat together in front. When everyone was assembled, Coach came out of his office with the assistants and stood before us.

They all looked serious as a heart attack. Coach scanned the team to be sure we were all there and then he quietly and seriously said, “I’m sure that you’ve all heard about the scandal with the volleyball team. This morning the school’s Administration let us know that our team’s training trip...” He paused for the longest time.

We knew it. Our trip was going to be canceled because of the damned volleyball coach. I braced myself for the bad news.

“ ... Is going to be at the Queen Elizabeth Aquatic Training Centre.”

Everyone else must have been expecting the same message because it remained stone silent. He paused again and waited for the big question.

“Coach?”

“Yes Tina.”

“Where is the Queen Elizabeth Aquatic Training Centre?”

“Oh! You don’t know? I guess that you’ll have to look it up.”

The phones all whipped out and lit up. It was still dead quiet until a very excited Simon screamed out, “England!?!?!?! Woooooo!”

Everyone was broken from their spell and began to cheer and clap. Then Coach spoke again, “The Queen Elizabeth Aquatic Training Centre is the main training center for British Swimming. It has a few pools but our training will be in both the 50 Olympic pool and in the 25 meter pool in the same complex. More details will be coming out to you tomorrow. Have a nice evening.”

With that he just turned and walked back to his office, followed by the assistants. The buzz began.