Story of Matt, Part 2

My new relationship with Matt wasn’t easy. Two and a half years before I had ended a painful relationship with my first lover and I had dragged the corpse of it around until shortly before I met him. It had shattered my self-confidence, the little bit I had built up before it started. My feelings for Matt rekindled all those feelings of loss and self-doubt, and I feared I would meet the same demise if I allowed myself to fall in love with him.

It didn’t help that Matt was so hard to read. It seemed to be his mission in life to communicate to everyone around him that life was fine and good and that nothing was out of the ordinary. But for me meeting and spending time with him was definitely extraordinary. Having little other choice, I decided I had best go along with his positive, unflustered attitude and accept that nothing was wrong for now, even if he didn’t want to celebrate our connection as enthusiastically as I did.

My caution was both kindled and overwhelmed by this amazing man that held me close each night. He was way too cool for 25. How did I, a scrawny 138 lb weakling, hook up with such a handsome muscled hunk. But he was so much more than that. He taught me foot reflexology and massage and about old blues music. He ate amazingly well for a young guy, making his own combination of granola and eating it every morning with a live yogurt culture mixed with alfalfa sprouts that he grew on his windowsill with half a dozen other herbs. Then he was off to work as a nutritionist at Marks & Spencer, tasting pork pies and sausages all day long. He hated his job, though he never admitted this until he left it.

Two weeks after we met he invited me to his parents’ place in Woodstock, two hours west Toronto. We drove this time, but threw our bikes in his car. His parents had a lovely piece of property, a couple acres in size, that sloped down to railway tracks at the bottom. Most of it was a grass lawn, which Matt didn’t like. He said that when he had his own property he’d only scatter seeds for wild flowers and let them grown naturally. That concept was important to him. He glanced at me when he said it, to see if I shared his vision.

I did. Mowing our family’s vast lawn was my chore when I was a teenager in Tsawwassen. I felt lawns were a pointless and unquestioned habit that reflected society’s lack of imagination. I liked little yellow and white flowers and saw no purpose to killing them just because they were different. He beamed his approval when I told him this.

His father had a woodworking shop on the property. Matt and I slept in a small shed nearby, away from the house where we had our own cozy privacy. His parents, Sid and Marnie, were very kind and polite. They may have suspected that Matt was gay. I had the impression that they would have loved him anyway, but the subject would never be mentioned again. Perhaps they, like many Canadian families, thought denial was a river in Egypt.

There was a natural spring at the bottom of their property near the tracks and they had excavated a large pond, 25 metres square and six metres deep. They had converted a scrapped hydro tower into a 10 metre diving board had built a five metre and two three metre boards beside it. Marnie had been a coach for the Canadian national diving team ten years earlier, an international force in those days, and later a judge of international diving championships. The national diving team used to work out in their back yard in those days not long past.

Matt and his four siblings witnessed all this and were immersed in the swimming and diving culture from birth. It was nothing for them to scramble up the hydro tower and do a triple back flip into the pond. They could do this all day and think nothing of it. There was a trapeze that hung above the three metre board. I watched his brother Paul swing out on it, flip upside down to hang by his knees and swing back to grab his sister Mary Ellen’s arms and swing her out over the pond. He released her and she did a back flip before splashing down.

I, on the other hand, was afraid of heights. I climbed to the ten metre platform and inched half way out onto the board, but when I felt the tower shaking as the next sibling clamored up the tower behind me, I almost feinted. I was a pathetic swimmer too. It was best to just watch the others, I decided, as I choked back my feelings of inadequacy.

The next day I was more in my element. We took our bikes out on the mostly flat rural back roads down to Lake Erie, which was totally unimpressive, and came back north a different route. It was a long day, over 140 km, but we were happily alone together. It was heaven in his company, even when we were silent. He cherished my company too. I thought a lot about owning property together and scattering wild flower seeds. Though he was three years my junior, I knew I had so much to learn from him.

On our drive home he told me he had registered for his first ever triathlon, which would be held between Woodstock and Fort Erie two weeks later. He had begun running in the mornings and swimming in evenings for the first time in months, but had not told me why until then. I learned that he always set and plan his goals on his own without need for approval or encouragement.

I was impressed by his determination and strength, but it made me uneasy too. I was afraid he did not need or want my support. On the day of the triathlon he left me in Toronto. I can’t remember the reasons he gave me. Perhaps he thought I’d be a distraction or encumbrance, or that he’d need to explain my presence to the other friends and athletes. These speculations tormented me that day while I, the unnecessary cheerleader, stayed near home and busied myself with a myriad of chores.

The first part of the triathlon was a one-kilometre swim. After returning to the pool to train only three weeks before, Matt came in first out of 156 participants. He was sixth after the run and a disappointing 40th after the cycling. His weaknesses, he said, were not knowing how to change gears effectively during the cycling and not training long enough with his running.

But none of it looked like weakness to me. His swimming ability left me speechless and feeling very much like an inadequate lover, but it was the next night, while holding me tenderly, he confessed to being in love with me.