Breaking the Surface (30 page)

I focused across the pool and then raised my arms, forming a T with my arms and body. I counted myself off: one, two, three, go. With each count, I moved my arms slightly to build momentum, and then I began my arm swing. As I did that, I had to remind myself to stay relaxed in my shoulders, because I couldn’t afford to tense up. If I tensed up, then my shoulders might rock back or forward and that would throw my alignment during the dive.

I relaxed my shoulders, letting my arms swing freely. As I reached through and left the platform, I kept looking at my spot across the pool. I circled around through the air, grabbing my knees, and then picked up my spot on the surface of the water. Another rotation, spot the water, another rotation, spot the water.

When I spotted the water for the third time, I gauged how far off the water I was. Based on that and the feeling of the spin, you adjust your kick to make your entry as close to vertical as you can. I knew that I was closer than I’d wanted to be, so I kicked for the sky and stretched for the water. With the reverse three-and-ahalf, when you come out of the dive, the water’s right there. You’re right on top of it, so it feels like you’re assuming the crash position as your hands hit the water.

I broke the surface with my hands, and as I entered the water, I had to reach back pretty hard to try to pull my body in line, because I was going short of vertical.

I heard my hands breaking the surface of the water and then felt the water rushing against my body. From that point on, I couldn’t hear anything except the hum of the water pump. It’s a deafening silence that only divers know. Even though I was in a building with thousands of people, I was all by myself for those few moments before I surfaced.

From the sound of the entry, I knew it wasn’t a complete rip. It wasn’t a perfect dive, but it was a pretty good dive. I was a little close to the platform on the takeoff and a little short on the entry. I realized all this while still underwater.

It was the final dive of my career, and that brief time underwater seemed a welcome relief from the events of the past few months. For much of my career, that time underwater had been a peaceful respite, a kind of friend. And now I was saying goodbye to my friend. I didn’t linger, though, because I wanted to get to the surface to find out if I’d won.

As I came to the surface, the crowd was cheering, but I could tell they were holding back to see the score. There was a dialogue going on in my head. I was reassuring myself that I had nothing to be ashamed of, that I’d competed well and done the best I could under less than ideal circumstances.

I swam to the side of the pool and climbed onto the deck. The cameras were right in front of me, and I tried to make my way to Ron, who was over at the side of the pool. I grabbed my chamois and put it over my face. I didn’t know if I should be embarrassed or happy, so I was just trying to be playful, although I wasn’t feeling all that playful.

I turned the comer to head toward Ron, and I could see he was fixated on the scoreboard. I didn’t want to look. So I just looked at Ron. Then all of a sudden he turned and he was jumping up and down hugging his son. Then the crowd started cheering, and I knew we’d won. After all we’d been through, none of it was in vain. Ron and I embraced and I just sobbed. I wasn’t just crying, I sobbed.

As he held me, Ron said, “Nobody will ever know what we’ve been through.” I said, “I know, I know.” Ron reminded me that in 1976 I was the young upstart and Klaus Dibiasi had to fight for his life. Now the tables had been turned, and I had done the same as Dibiasi. I didn’t say anything. I was completely overwhelmed.

People thought I was crying because I’d won. They didn’t know that it was the emotional culmination of an incredibly difficult few months and my last competitive dive. It was all over, and we had done it. There was no need to hold anything back now, and I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just cried and cried.

I’d like to think that despite the crush of people I managed to congratulate Ni as Klaus had congratulated me, but I’m not sure that I did. It was one of those moments when I was pretty selfabsorbed. But it was my moment, and for the first time I didn’t feel at all guilty about enjoying it.

My final score was 638.61, only 1.14 ahead of Xiong Ni. It was my closest win ever in a major international competition. I became the first male diver to win a pair of gold medals in consecutive Olympics. I also equaled Klaus Dibiasi’s record for total diving medals.

At some point after all the hugging and crying, Ron and I separated. I had to get ready for the awards ceremony, and Ron stayed on the deck and tried to get Mary Jane to come down from the stands.

Once I left Ron, it was pretty much a blur. I made my way back to the athletes’ waiting area to change into my sweats. In those situations, with so many people converging on the same place, you just wrap a towel around yourself and get changed. I don’t remember changing, but somehow I made it onto the podium with my sweats on.

When the ceremony began, Ron was on the deck with Mary Jane, near the podium. I could tell they were both crying. And, of course, I was crying too. I wish I could say they were only tears of joy, but they weren’t. The whole thing was very bittersweet.

On the one hand, my sense of joy for having accomplished what I did was great. I had an incredible sense of pride that I’d managed to come through for the whole team of people who were supporting me.

On the other hand, this was it. My diving career was over, and I was HIV-positive. Tom already had AIDS. Standing on the podium, I wondered, How soon before I get sick? How soon before I die?

It made me sad that I couldn’t share the truth about my accomplishment beyond our small group. What would the people cheering for me think if they knew I was gay and HIV-positive? Would they still cheer? And lurking in the back of my mind was the fear that I might have infected someone with HIV following my accident.

As soon as the awards ceremony was over, I had interviews with the press, and afterward they took me off for doping. Then I went back to the Village to rest for a while and get changed for the team banquet that evening.

The banquet was very emotional. Each athlete got up to give his or her thanks. When it was my turn, I went up to the podium, thanked all the appropriate people. Then I turned to Ron and said, “Ron, I couldn’t have gotten through this without you. It took all ten years of our experience together, and a lot of love and trust, to get through a very difficult week. Nobody will ever know what we went through, nobody.” I started crying, and that was the end of my speech. I simply couldn’t say any more. I left the podium and went to Ron’s table and we hugged and cried. We didn’t talk. We just cried.

I
DIDN’T GET MUCH TIME
to reflect on what I’d just been through, or even catch up on sleep, because Tom had me on a plane back to California even before the closing ceremonies. He’d booked me to guest-host
Improv Tonite,
a cable stand-up comedy show, which was taped at The Improv, a comedy club in Los Angeles.

After the 1976 Olympics, I decided that I never wanted to go on television unprepared in the way some other Olympians do. You’d see them embarrassing themselves. But here I was, totally exhausted from the ’88 Olympics, on my way to host a comedy show. I’ve never been a comedian.

I got to Los Angeles, and they handed me a script that made fun of my hitting my head and how I brought back this wonderful jewelry from Korea—two gold medals. They got their mileage out of the Olympics at my expense. The script was horrible. I was horrible. The whole experience was horrible. It was exactly what I’d said I’d never do.

I could have said no to the whole thing, but I was still taking the path of least resistance with Tom and that meant doing whatever he told me to do. He booked it—I had to do it. What I should have done was force them to rework the script, but there is never time with television. So I came off looking like a dumb jock. Even worse, I thought the whole thing was a disaster as far as positioning me to pursue acting after the Olympics, which was what I’d hoped to do.

Right after the
lmprov Tonite
taping, Tom and I were on a plane back to Seoul. Just before I’d left for Los Angeles, the U.S. Olympic Committee announced that I was the winner of the Maxwell House Olympic Spirit Award, which honors the American Olympian who best embodies Olympic ideals. So after another thirteen-hour flight across the Pacific, I went to accept the award. It was an incredible honor, but I didn’t know where I was.

I decided to use my acceptance speech as the time to announce my retirement from diving. I said, “This is a great way to end my diving career. I have decided that this was my last competition.” The next morning, I flew back to LA and watched the closing ceremonies from home. I was so wiped out that I couldn’t imagine participating in the ceremonies. I’d had more than enough. I just wanted to be at home.

I didn’t have a grand plan when I got home from the Olympics. I knew that my first goal was to work on rebuilding my relationship with Tom. I realize now that I was wrong about wanting to go on with Tom. To anyone looking in from the outside, the only solution was to get out of that relationship as fast as possible.

The way I saw it, there had been no way for us to build a relationship when we were separated by a continent for months at a time. Now that I was finished with my diving career, I would be home most of the time and we could focus on solving our problems. We had talked about couples therapy before, and I thought we might get into therapy now.

I also wanted to get focused on my acting, which had taken a backseat to diving. In the weeks immediately after the Olympics, there wasn’t a lot of time for anything because of all the public appearances and speaking engagements that Tom had scheduled for me. He had me running around everywhere talking about the Olympics, from colleges and universities to corporate groups and organizations of all kinds.

After the first few appearances, I started complaining to Tom that I was getting tired of rehashing the Olympics. It was especially difficult because I couldn’t tell the whole story about what had really happened. Tom insisted that I do just about everything that came along, or at least everything where the money was right. He figured we’d better earn the money while we could, and it didn’t matter to him what it was or what any particular group or company stood for. As long as it paid, that’s all that mattered.

During the times I was at home, the adjustment turned out to be difficult for both of us. Tom complained that I was always underfoot, and he gave me little projects to do, trying to keep me busy while he did the important things, like answering the phone, paying the bills, keeping up with the mail, and arranging appearances for me.

It wasn’t a lot of fun for me either, because Tom was more controlling than ever. I knew that a lot of this had to do with the fact he was sick; he couldn’t control his health, so he wanted to control me. If I tried to go out on my own, I had to face a barrage of questions: “Who’d you see?” “Where’d you go?” “What’d you do?” If I went out with a male friend, he’d ask, “Did you sleep with him, too?” All those years later he was still throwing it in my face that I’d “cheated” on him.

It wasn’t even as if I went out a lot. There weren’t many people I was friendly with anymore. Tom had been my go-between for so long that he’d chased off almost everyone. He drove away my friends. He cut me off from my family. There was hardly anyone left except for Tom and me. I was very isolated, and I was beginning to feel like a prisoner in my own home.

The only place I felt really comfortable was in Debbie Shon’s law office in Los Angeles. I would go there to make phone calls without getting the barrage of questions from Tom. If I called Megan, for example, when I got off the phone, Tom would say, “Oh, so you’ve talked to that bitch. What are you talking to her for? She can’t do anything for us.” It didn’t much matter who it was—he’d lay into anyone I talked to. Tom didn’t even have to be home to challenge me over who I was talking to, because he would go over the phone bill to see who I’d been calling.