Breaking the Surface (21 page)

T
OM AND
I
MOVED
in together right after the 1984 Olympics. I’d been renting an apartment in El Toro with two other divers, Kevin Machemer and Michele Mitchell, and our lease was up. They were going off to find another place to rent, and I was either going to find a place to rent on my own or move in with Tom. To me, it was logical for Tom and me to move in together. My plan after the ’84 Olympics had been to buy a house, something bigger and more suitable for two, but I hadn’t saved up enough money yet to do that. So Tom gave me “permission” to move into his condo in Laguna Beach. He acted as though he was doing me a tremendous favor, and I acted suitably grateful.

Shortly after I moved in, we started looking for a house. Actually, it was Tom who started looking, because I was out of town so much doing appearances. Tom told me he looked at hundreds of houses all up and down the coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego. I really don’t know how many he looked at, but I was with him when we looked at the house we wound up buying. It was a spacious four-bedroom at the northern end of Malibu in the hills overlooking the Pacific. I liked the fact that you couldn’t see it from the road, and it had the most incredible views of the ocean from every room. It was perfect for the two of us. There was space for an office for Tom and a workout room for me.

The house was a little beyond what I could afford. But after asking my agent from the William Morris Agency to come see it, I decided to do whatever I could to get the place. I had to borrow money from both my mother and Dr. Lee to swing it. My mom had divorced my father a year before, so she had money from the sale of the house. I wasn’t comfortable borrowing money from either of them, but I really wanted the house.

Tom told me that his contribution toward buying the house was putting up the collateral to qualify for the mortgage. The way he explained it to me, it seemed like a fair deal. To this day, I really don’t know exactly what the financial arrangements were with the bank. All I know is that we bought the house jointly, using my down payment. Tom was selling his Laguna condo, but somehow he didn’t put up any of his own money toward the new house.

Wally Wolfe, my attorney and manager, went over the details of the arrangements with me. He asked if I understood what I was doing, and I told him I did, even though I didn’t. I didn’t understand finances, especially mortgages. I’d always paid cash for everything, and I’d never owned a house before. I didn’t want to tell Wally that I didn’t understand, because I was embarrassed. Tom was at that meeting, too, and I didn’t want them to think I was stupid. Of course, I had no idea just how stupid I was until it was much too late.

Tom and I moved to the house in Malibu in May 1985. That August, Ron announced that he was moving to Florida and would continue coaching in Boca Raton at a new diving facility. I’d already decided not to retire from diving, and I wanted to continue working with Ron, so my plan was to go with him to train that winter.

Until I left for Florida, Tom kept me very busy with as many personal appearances and speaking engagements as he could put together for me. By this time, he was working full-time as both my business and personal manager. I always thought he was setting up more engagements than I needed to do, but he told me I had to make enough money to pay the mortgage during the six months I was away. I would only be able to do an occasional appearance while I was training, so we needed to build up our savings.

Before Tom started working for me, he didn’t seem to have any kind of steady job, and I wasn’t supporting him. He told me that he had put away some money from his real estate investing, but I wondered why he’d want to live off his savings for so long. During those two years, he’d occasionally go away, explaining that he had work to do. He led me to believe that he had to do paperwork associated with his real estate investments.

I learned a lot in life too late, and it hurts to learn too late. What I learned about Tom, years later, from people who knew, was that his “work” was hustling on Santa Monica Boulevard. Tom was a prostitute. If someone had told me in 1984 that Tom was a hustler, I wouldn’t have believed it. Tom always gave me the impression that he was true to me, that I was the one who had strayed, and I couldn’t imagine him lying to me, let alone hustling.

Not that I didn’t have reason to be suspicious. One time before we moved in together, I went over to Tom’s house to surprise him one morning. He hadn’t stayed with me that night and I just assumed he was home. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I looked in the window and saw two naked men. I thought one of them was Tom, but I wasn’t sure. I pounded on the door. No one answered, so I drove to a phone booth and called. Still, no one picked up. I drove home and called again. This time Tom answered. He said that I’d scared the hell out of a friend of his who had borrowed his condo, and that he hadn’t been there when I came by. He told me he had stayed with some friends that night. I believed him.

Of course, one of the naked men was Tom. But I wanted to believe what he told me. I was so desperate to have Tom’s love and approval that I was willing to believe he was faithful to me even when I could see that he wasn’t. If I was unwilling to believe he was cheating on me, how could I have ever believed he was hustling?

It was shortly after we started living together that Tom began managing my business affairs—not the contracts, but he took care of the checkbooks and all my financial matters. I was happy to have him take responsibility, because I had never had much confidence in my own ability to handle it all.

Tom thought we should put our arrangement on paper, so I had Wally draw up the contract. Dr. Lee had introduced me to Wally, and I’d hired him to handle arrangements for my personal appearances. The contract he drew up for me gave Tom the legal right to handle my business affairs, allowing him to sign checks and other business documents for me. It also stated that Tom was to be paid a set amount of money for the work he did. Again, Wally asked me if I understood, and I said I did.

Tom took a lot of interest in my work, and he started coming along to meetings with Wally. He was very observant, and when he believed that Wally wasn’t being aggressive enough, he’d push to make sure I was getting what he thought was a fair deal. This went on for quite a few months before Tom started saying, “I can do what Wally does. Save yourself some money and just pay me. Then we can keep it in the family.”

I wasn’t in any rush to fire Wally, because I was generally happy with what he was doing. After a while, Wally made a series of decisions that Tom pointed out weren’t in my best interest, and then Tom started giving me examples of what he called Wally’s incompetence. Soon after, Tom convinced me to get rid of Wally. With Wally out of the way, Tom was in a position to manage virtually everything, and I was happy to have him do it. I was convinced that Tom had my best interests at heart.

I had a new contract drawn up with Tom, giving him 20 percent of everything I earned. But to me it didn’t really matter what percentage he got, because we were keeping it all under one roof. In my mind, we were a team. I also figured that if anything went wrong, there was a contract.

After that, if there were contracts to negotiate or events to arrange, Tom did it. I would sign whatever papers I had to sign and show up. I was profoundly naive and trusting when it came to money and property. I would never do anything to harm anyone or to take advantage of anyone, and I just assumed the same of Tom. I should have been more cautious, because I’d already been taken advantage of by an overeager and greedy manager I signed with when I was twenty-one. From that experience I should have learned to ask questions and protect myself. But I saw my arrangement with Tom as different, because I loved Tom. Tom was family.

Tom kept me very busy after the ’84 Olympics with appearances and speaking engagements, but the big product endorsements, which Tom had been counting on even more than I had, never materialized. I figured it was because I wasn’t blond and blueeyed or because I was shy or because people thought I was gay. That’s business, I thought. These companies are selling products, and it’s their choice. Just because I won gold medals, they weren’t obligated to give me advertising contracts.

Whenever a rejection came in, Tom would tell me that the main reason I wasn’t getting the big endorsements was because I wasn’t masculine enough. He’d always say it as a put-down: “Just think of the endorsements we could have had if…” He made me feel guilty, as if I wasn’t doing my best to earn a living for us.

Tom’s attitude about my bookings was that he was making do with whatever he could get me. Since the commercials weren’t coming in, he got whatever he could for me, from speaking to business groups to opening new shopping malls. These may not have been big product endorsements, but in a very short time I earned what I thought was a lot of money—enough to pay off my loans to my mom and Dr. Lee, and more than enough to make payments on our house and cover our other expenses.

Even though Tom was disappointed with me, I still got a few advertising contracts and did some product endorsements. I did some print ads for Banana Boat suntan and skin-care products and for California Pools and Spas. I appeared in a national television commercial for Carefree sugarless gum with four other Olympic gold medalists. A number of companies that manufactured or distributed alcoholic beverages expressed interest in having me represent their products, but I’d stopped drinking by then, so I didn’t pursue it.

The one big advertising contract I got after the ’84 Olympics was with American Express. That was a lot of fun, because I got to work with photographer Annie Leibovitz. We were on location in Florida, and her vision was to do a photograph a la Tarzan. She thought my physique would work well with that idea. So they put me in a loincloth, which was fine with me, because it wasn’t nearly as revealing as a bathing suit.

Speedo also approached me after the ’84 Olympics, and a year later, I signed with them as their representative. I’ve been with Speedo ever since, and that contract has meant more to me than just a business arrangement. When people come to my appearances, they bring all kinds of things with them, from teddy bears to notes telling me what I’ve meant to them. I especially love the kids. There was one little boy who came to an event just after the ’88 Olympics who said, “Oh God, I can’t believe you hit your head—I hit my head taking diving lessons, and I’m still taking lessons, because I figured if you could hit your head and win a gold medal, then I could hit my head and still keep taking lessons.” That’s the greatest reward of all.

Tom often came with me to my Speedo appearances, and when he was along, it wasn’t much fun. I always tried to make sure that I got to everyone who was waiting in line, even if that meant staying beyond the scheduled two hours. But when Tom was there, he wanted me finished in two hours flat, no matter how many people went home without seeing me.

One time when there was a really long line of people waiting for me to sign autographs, Tom suggested that he sit next to me and sign my name. I heard this later from the Speedo rep, and I couldn’t believe it. It was classic Tom.

It was always tense at appearances when Tom was there. Often, people brought magazine articles about me or pictures of me that they wanted me to autograph personally to them. I was willing to take the time, but Tom insisted that I sign only my name and nothing else. He’d actually say, “Time is money,” and push the people along. That really irritated me, because I felt that these people had made an effort to see me and the least I could do was sign what they asked me to sign.

On many occasions, if somebody was telling me a personal story about what they’d been through and what I meant to them, Tom would say, “C’mon, hurry up, move along. We’ve got a long line.” That really embarrassed me. No one ever said anything, except for one woman. She was trying to talk to me, and as Tom was telling her to move along, she put her hand on mine and quietly said, “He’s an asshole.” I laughed, because she was right. But I have to wonder: If I really thought it was true, how could I have stayed with him?

There was one time I was particularly glad that Tom didn’t come with me. In the major cities, many of the people who came to see me were gay men. Even though I wasn’t publicly out, I had plenty of gay fans, which I always appreciated. Tom was uncomfortable whenever I had anything to do with other gay men—I pretty much stopped spending time with any of my gay male friends after Tom and I moved in together. So I know Tom would have been really upset when a gay man brought a poster of me from
Playgirl
for me to sign. That was one of those things Tom had arranged for me to do, but we’d specifically said that I didn’t want to be the centerfold. We thought that would be too much attention, but they did what they wanted anyway and used me for a poster-sized centerfold. It’s a picture of me with a small towel draped across my body, with a parachute flowing behind me. This guy was trying to be very discreet and opened just a corner of the folded poster, enough for me to see what it was and sign it. But the Speedo rep saw it and said, “What’s that?” and took it before I could do anything and unfolded the whole thing, with everyone standing there in line. This guy was dying of embarrassment. I signed it and thanked him for coming by.