Quadruple Flip

Chapter 3

Chapter 3Minutes later, Tom Alan watched enthralled as Milo Fisher took his turn “allowing his expression to be an extension of the melody.” His positions were…Mesmerizing came to Tom Alan’s mind for some reason. And enticing—and not just because the short shorts showed off so much sinewy muscle and even, sometimes, things that were only supposed to show back in the locker room. It was because each move was finished with a panache and finesse that Tom Alan had only seen from female skaters. At the same time, the guy remained completely masculine. Milo Fisher skated with such uninhibitedness that even the flashes of nudity seemed appropriate to the raw “Swan Lake” performance. Crotch hair and pubic crevice seemed natural, not distracting.

Sadly, as the performance went on, watching Milo made Tom Alan feel even worse about his own abilities. He had tried his best while interpreting the Tchaikovsky tune to pretend he was all white, feathery, and elegantly birdlike. He’d come off looking more like the proverbial headless chicken. He’d thrown in a few impressive jumps on the crescendos and proved himself quite limber for a hulk, managing a modified Bielman spin to end his impromptu program. But everything around the tricks, it was not what one would call pretty.

Milo’s interpretation wasn’t pretty either, but it was definitely dramatic, melodic, artistic, and, yes, arousing. Tom Alan tugged at his sweatpants.

“I think, perhaps,” Irina Mischen said, “we put you on the ice together. Milo is not much bigger than your partner back home.”

Though Milo was much shorter than Tom Alan, definitely lighter, he still had a good sixty pounds on Erika. To Tom Alan, that was much bigger. He doubted he could lift the guy over his head with just a hand on his crotch. Looking at Milo’s crotch, however, he was willing to give it a try.

“If we harness Milo,” Mrs. Mischen said, as if partially reading Tom Alan’s mind, “we can hoist him up there. You can do that with Milo, yes?”

“Do what with, now, Milo?” Milo asked, skating over, slightly out of breath.

“Lift you up there.” Mrs. Mischen pointed skyward.

“Um,” Milo said, looking up, “don’t we usually vote on things like this in America? Ain’t we a democracy over here? Don’t I get a say about something like that?”

* * * *

“Holy s**t!” was what Milo did say. He squealed it, more accurately, from eight feet in the air, six-six of it Tom Alan Baranowski, the rest of it Tom Alan Baranowski’s outstretched arms.

“Language, Milo.” Irina Mischen did not allow cursing on her ice.

“Sorry, Coach. But, dang it! Holy something!”

Milo and Tom Alan’s lift was assisted by a vertical steel cable that ran up to a “running wagon,” wheels that moved back and forth across another taut horizontal line. It was standard safety equipment for learning figure skating jumps and lifts. There was a handheld model as well, a pole harness, but they were using the ceiling one that day, to make Milo feel a little safer. The harness part had straps that secured around his legs. The fit, he’d confided, reminded him of assless and crotchless leather briefs he’d once ordered from a b**m website shopping page.

“Not liking this.” Milo balked. “Why can’t we be artistic on bloody mats—me looking on from a distance, without this guy’s huge hand on my naughty bits?”

“Release your left hand, Thomas.” Irina Mischen fluttered hers to show him how. “Release your left hand.”

“Say what?” Tom Alan looked back and forth, up and down, from Milo to his new coach.

“She’s an ice dancing coach,” Milo stated softly, looking down himself. “Big mistake!” he said louder. “Don’t look down. Don’t look down!”

“Don’t look down,” Tom Alan repeated.

“Should we, um, really be following Coach Mischen’s lead on pairs lifts, mate? It’s not exactly her wheelhouse.”

“The harness will hold Milo just fine.” Irina Mischen seemed confident. She soothed Thomas, not poor, frightened Milo. “Left hand,” she said. “Release it now, Thomas. Let it flow. Bill will not let Milo fall.”

Bill, introduced to Tom Alan as “the redheaded hockey goon who runs the Zamboni,” tended to the loose end of the contraption in which Milo was allegedly secure.

“You hear that, Hockey Brute?” Milo asked.

“Perfectly fine,” Bill answered, as if he could care less. He was just there earning extra money for school, Milo had said.

“I’m heavier than Jenn, mate,” Milo reminded him. Dancers did lifts too, but Milo was only allowed to lift Jenn to shoulder height. Plus, she’d be the one in the harness during practice. He would always be safe and secure on the ground.

“Ain’t never let no one fall yet,” Bill reminded him.

“Thomas, sweep your free arm as if catching a breeze.” Mrs. Mischen demonstrated the move, her arm like an eagle’s wing as she skated right beside them. “Don’t force it, allow it.”

Tom Alan swatted at flies.

“More elegant,” the coach suggested, as they circled around and around, “like it’s floating on a current.”

He swept crumbs from his chest.

“Allow the briefest pause between each continuous, smooth movement.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Tom Alan said.

“It does to the eye, just not to the brain.”

That doesn’t make sense either.

“Let’s debate the fine points later,” flying Milo suggested. “I don’t like it up here.”

“Start over!” Irina Mischen said. “Hush, Milo. Thomas needs to concentrate.”

Tom Alan picked up speed by stroking off his blades. Milo came along, held aloft by the harness and plenty of cable plus two large hands, until one hand was removed. Tom Alan did the movement. His left arm flowed with continuous movement that paused. Sensible or not, he did it right—almost.

“Again.”

He did it better.

“Seriously,” Milo complained. “Do I have to be up here the whole bloody time?”

“Is good for you to know how Jennifer feels.”

Tom Alan kept catching the current.

“Good Thomas! Excellent!”

“I don’t lift her this high!” Milo protested.

“See what you’ve been missing,” Tom Alan joked. “Dance lifts are for wimps.” He was suddenly ballsy from the praise. “Not really. Sorry. You guys, um, do hard stuff, too.”

“Focus!” Irina Mischen scolded. “No talk! Hand back on Milo, then away. The arm. Do it again.”

“What Jenn’s missing,” Milo said. “I’ll bet that’s why most of you pairs’ blokes are hetero,” he whispered to the top of Tom Alan’s head. “You can touch and see up all kinds of places from down there, can’t you?”

If only you hadn’t changed into long pants, not-at-all-hetero Tom Alan thought.

Boys…Mrs. Mischen’s eye roll seemed to say. “Boys!” she snapped aloud. “Bend your knee, arch your back, sweep your arm, and raise your head, Thomas. Milo, allow more of your full weight to rest in Thomas’s hand.”

Milo settled in. “Your hand is now officially on third base, pal. Enjoy it. I am.”

“Take this seriously,” Irina Mischen said, backing off a bit, but keeping a watchful eye. “More extension.”

Tom Alan bent, arched, and swept almost perfectly, judging by Irina Mischen’s applause. Milo extended his whole body, legs and arms spread, as if flying.

“Nice! Nice boys! Nearly perfect.” Then, she said it. “You two make a beautiful pair.”

There was a time when pairs figure skating was called “mixed pairs.” If they ever decided to unmix them, Tom Alan thought, it might be kind of fun to skate with a dude.

“One more time, then bring Milo down, Bill,” Irina Mischen requested. “I think we make magic.”

The pair repeated their graceful lift and movement, which Tom Alan completed, as he would have with Erika, by turning, then stepping back to set Milo down. Unfamiliar with the exit, however, Milo’s exquisite position collapsed.

“Or not,” Irina Mischen said as Milo hung like a discombobulated spider, until Bill released the cable, and he morphed from arachnid to flailing cat poised to land on all fours. “Whoa!” He righted himself, though, and made it to two. “Feels good to set foot on terra firma,” he said. “Or terra glacialis, as it were.” Milo elbowed Tom Alan in the ribs. “We taking five, Coach?”

“No. Now we do it to music.”

“I’m going up again!”

“As if Milo is Erika. All Thomas…”

“Tom Alan, please,” he asked meekly.

“All Thomas holding, just little bit Bill. Give me a touch of prelude. Skate toward each other. Lift him. Flourish. Set him down and repeat the arm movement.” Mrs. Mischen bent, reached, stretched, and flourished as if there were no tomorrow with each word of instruction. “Like that, yes?”

The two students looked at each other dubiously. Bill loosely held the harness line with a snicker. He had doubt in his expression as well, which apparently annoyed Milo Fisher.

“What’s so funny, Hockey Brute?” he asked, tugging at the thick straps crowding his balls. “Mrs. Mischen wants me to be Erika, I’ll bloody be Erika. Sorry if all this gets in your way,” he said to Tom Alan, giving himself, not the harness, one more yank. “I got a lot more ‘an ol’ Bill over there.”

Tom Alan did a visual check.

“You ready, partner?” Milo asked.

Tom Alan nodded, his eyes on his boots. “I guess.” At least he still got to be himself.

Irina Mischen hit Play behind the boards, and Tchaikovsky’s glorious melody flowed throughout the building once more. “Into position,” she said. “No more foolishness. Be the swans! Be the hunter.”

Be both? Tom Alan wondered how.

“Circle the rink. More arch,” Mrs. Mischen hollered. For a small woman, she had a commanding presence. “Watch Milo, Thomas. Less snow from your blades. Good. Good. Now meet each other. Don’t forget music.” When she got excited, she forgot the English articles. “Don’t forget romance.”

Tom Alan circled the corner and headed for Milo. Romance? He was skating toward Milo fast—maybe too fast. Milo’s face looked anything but romantic. It read total panic. Having 190 pounds of six-foot-six-inch dork hurtling toward you at upward of twenty miles per hour could do that to a face.

“Um…” Milo uttered, his eyes wide and unsure.

The look of panic threw Tom Alan off. He took a last-minute detour, careening right past Milo and into the barricade, the sound of cracking wood accompanying the loud, “Oomph” the impact thrust out of him.

Hockey Brute chuckled.

Just behind the crash site, Irina Mischen shook her head. “Shake it off and regroup. Try again. Try again!” No rest for the weary, certainly not the Olympic-bound. “Now!”

The boys obeyed at once. No one but a coach got so much action out of so few syllables. This time Milo closed his eyes, cracking the right one ever so slightly as he stroked his way toward the center of the rink. As Tom Alan looped around to him from behind, he let the music guide him into an improvised Ina Bauer-like position—leaning back, skates parallel to one another, one on a forward edge, the other on the backward one, just before Tom Alan made contact.

“Oh my God! Beautiful!” Irina Mischen exclaimed. “Extraordinary!”

Milo’s left arm fluttered like the wing of the balletic swan as he straightened himself and spread his legs, preparing for Tom Alan’s large hand to grab the balled-up fist he rested on his pubic bone.

Tom Alan reached through with both hands, like a football player about to get the snap. He lifted the 130-pound stud up in the air, with the aid of Bill and the harness, then released the second hand, palming Milo’s fist. Tom Alan felt something he wasn’t used to feeling under a normal hand-to-hand lift circumstance. It was hard to ignore the sensation of touching what lay beneath the cloth of Milo’s pants, behind his fist, behind his sack. How he’d love to gently tease there with long, gentle strokes of his fingers. He moved one. No. Concentrate.

His free arm flapped, but then, as he focused, floated, waved like the breakers in a calm ocean.

“Beautiful, Thomas. Set him down and finish the move.”

Flower Booger—”The girl is the flower, the boy is the stem” is a pairs skater’s quote—flexed beneath Tom Alan’s palm, possibly involuntarily. He would be no more accustomed to being held up by the nuts than Tom Alan was accustomed to doing it. The crotch-flex made the stem lose the moment. He turned, as was normal, to set his partner down, but his feet were crossed, and his hand caught in the V-strap on each side of Milo’s ample genitalia.

Tom Alan panicked. He tripped. The cable got twisted around them both, and Milo Fisher went down. Tom Alan, with a gasp, landed right on top of him.