Course Correction

by Ginny Gilder

  That moment in the boat, cocking our water pistols, silly grins on our faces, summed up how Strayer changed my experience of rowing. When I was in a boat with her, the pleasure trumped the pain.

  I was an Olympian, well trained in the subjugation of desire. I knew how to ignore the plea to stop the pain. I didn’t even wonder if I could ignore the parallel plea for pleasure. Suppression was a tool I reached for naturally in managing my life.

  We said our good-byes at the end of the camp. Strayer had the US National Team camp to attend, the World Championships in Munich to compete in, and senior year in Princeton to finish. I had my full-time job and live-in boyfriend in Boston. It was a relief. Distance would protect me.

  12

  But it did not. The letters began flowing immediately, like the start of a race. A state change: from dead stop to all out in an instant. Sitting motionless, poised to explode, watch for the tremor of the red flag signaling the starter’s intention to swish it down as he utters the commands: “Are you ready? Ready All? ROW!” or, in French, the language of FISA, the international rowing federation, “Êtes vous prêts? PARTEZ!”

  Your oars are not to move until the last part of the command, on the “row” or the “partez.” Of course, you go on the “r” or the “p,” but it’s better to go on the flag’s motion. Light travels faster than sound. You will see the flag move before you hear the commands. Go with what you see. The best start is the jumped one that’s not called back.

  Strayer’s first letter to me was actually a postcard. It started with “Dear Jerk-face” and ended with “love.” It got me going right away, smiling at the memory of the private jokes we had shared. That first note covered so much distance, inviting, inciting, and establishing our inevitable direction. So much for calming the waters. Her words churned me up, like those first strokes off the line: a couple of short, light ones to launch the boat out of its dead-in-the-water torpor. The oars dig into the swirling puddles left by the first stroke. The next few strokes grow progressively longer to propel the boat to maximum speed. Don’t waste any time gearing up.

  Not that this was a one-sided affair. There she was, nearly halfway across the world, a perfect excuse for a measured response, one which I devised accordingly: a dozen long-stemmed dark red roses sent overseas as a good luck gesture. Exactly the bouquet anyone would send a new friend. Good luck, my ass.

  A starting race cadence typically exceeds forty strokes per minute—a kind of controlled hell breaking loose—until about a minute into the race, when the coxswain calls a settle to lower the stroke rate (number of strokes rowed per minute) to somewhere in the mid-thirties. By then all major muscle groups are starting to burn, lungs are heaving, and the body’s oxygen debt is building rapidly. The level of initial exertion will prove impossible to maintain somewhere between two and two-and-a-half minutes into the race, depending on the rower’s fitness. Once that anaerobic threshold is reached, the battle for superiority among crews is joined by the internal battle to keep pulling.

  By mid-November, Strayer and I were ramping up to maximum intensity. In three months, we wrote and mailed over forty letters to each other, whose closings started with “see ya,” progressed to “love,” and blew through “I love you dearly” to “All My Love.” We explored our feelings within the boundaries of stilted sentences and oblique references, acknowledged the indefinable yet precious quality of our friendship, and even admitted that our closest friends characterized our relationship as obsessive. Yet we would not go further. We couldn’t confess our wild and mutual attraction on paper and couldn’t admit the rawness of the desire that was clawing at both of us.

  After such an intense beginning, there was no knowing where our relationship would settle. We saw each other in late October at the Head of the Charles regatta for the first time in nearly three months, but we were both busy with training and racing. Strayer rowed in the seven seat of Princeton’s varsity eight in her last autumn as a college rower. As for me, my dedication to sculling paid its first significant dividend. During my first year of rowing in Cambridge, my memory had imprinted the contours of the Charles River in its stores as my muscle memory consolidated my hours of training into substantially improved sculling technique. In my first major single’s race, starting eighteenth in the pack of forty elite women’s scullers, all of whom proceeded to cross the starting line one by one and then raced to pass the competitors ahead of them, I rowed superbly. Maneuvering around more than half a dozen scullers, cutting every corner expertly, exiting from under the Anderson Bridge and skimming my blades inches above the Belmont Hill dock as I hugged the shore at the start of the course’s last big turn, I nearly pulled off an upset. Despite rowing through the choppy wakes caused by my seventeen preceding competitors and rowing a slightly longer course, the result of passing frequently, I finished second. Only Judy Geer, who’d rowed to fifth place in the US women’s double with her younger sister, Carlie, at the World Championships two months earlier beat my time. I beat not only my former Yale team-mate, Anne Warner, but Anne Marden, another Ivy Leaguer, a recent Princeton graduate, who’d also just raced at the Worlds as the US single and finished eighth. In one showing, I catapulted myself into the ranks of US sculling contenders.

  That was enough excitement for the moment, which was extremely gratifying, but the following weekend brought a completely different wave of challenge and opportunity. Strayer and I met in New Haven to row the double together, far from the hullabaloo of a crowded race-course. We rowed out of the Yale boathouse in Derby on borrowed equipment, courtesy of Chris Ernst, who was still coaching the novice women.

  On that quiet river, as we worked on drills and did some longer pieces together, I came face-to-face with the facts of my physical longing. Every time I slid into the stern for the next catch, I was tempted to drop my blades and grab the woman who sat mere inches in front of me. Every time I released my blades from the water before starting my recovery, I had to quell my impulse to let them go completely and pull her into my lap instead.

  We rowed up to the top of the navigable stretch of the Housatonic River, four-and-a-half miles from the boathouse, where the shores veered close together and the water grew shallow, with rocks poking up in the middle of the river. I concentrated on our motion, listening for the sounds of synchronicity, and ignored my inner voices pleading for a different kind of unity.

  We stopped and sat quietly for a moment before turning the boat downriver. Strayer turned around and put her hand on my lower leg, just above the ankle. She was saying something, I heard her voice, but the feel of her hand on my skin disabled my hearing. I was melting, turning to liquid inside, wishing I could return the touch, stroke her hand, or take it in mine, pull her toward me, something, anything. I closed my eyes for a long moment, drinking in the feel of longing as my wishing thrummed its message throughout my body.

  “I love it when you touch me like that,” was all I could say as we sat there together in our private craft. And still, we did nothing but row back to the boathouse.

  The next weekend ended the wondering and waiting. Under the guise of attending the Yale-Princeton football game with my father, I visited Strayer. I drove down from Boston on the Friday of November’s first weekend, arriving on the Princeton campus late in the evening. I spent the night on the floor of Strayer’s dorm room and the next day with my father and his classmates, drinking heavily and cheering Yale on as its football team played to a dispiriting loss. Then I kissed my father goodbye and turned all my attention to the real purpose of my visit.

  Clarity came in darkness. In the hallowed deep-night silence meant for peaceful sleep, I ended up snuggled next to Strayer in her dorm bed, our bodies wedged against each other in the narrow space. I don’t know if I left my spot in the sleeping bag on the cold concrete floor to seek out Strayer’s irresistible warmth or if she fished for and found my hand and tugged me up. Certainly, no words passed between us. Speaking and writing had taken us as far as they could. Intellect had brou
ght us to the brink of rationality and could go no further. Emotion was now our reason to row, to yearn, to dream, to push on despite the risk.

  Strayer and I could not voice the truth that burned between us, but thankfully we shut up and allowed our lips to take over and speak for us. Her mouth opened ever so slightly. A pure invitation, devoid of aggression, wanting without insisting. I closed my eyes, and everything beyond her touch disappeared. Her tongue welcomed mine, no power struggle in the exploratory hello that ensued. The heat of her first liquid touch ignited me, setting my entire body on alert. Just a kiss, but I was already all in.

  I didn’t pull away, she didn’t stop, as we descended together into our own world. I sank into our embrace, which now extended down the full length of our bodies. I stretched my legs alongside hers and caressed her feet with mine, my hands stroking her round cheeks, my fingers twirling the wayward strands of hair that curled by her ears, as our kiss lingered. I had never felt desire incited by such a light touch as that of her fingers circling the base of my skull below my hairline.

  We found ourselves in a hot and steamy affair that defied us to deny that we were madly in love with each other. We oozed all the hallmarks of passion—holding hands and looking starry-eyed, the rush of blood at the sound of each other’s voice, the weakness in the knees when we regained each other’s presence, the incessant urgency to stand together, row together, talk together, sleep together, be together however, whenever, wherever we could manipulate the circumstances to force that outcome.

  But I knew better, that those things did not belong between us: two girls, upstanding citizens, models of potential and promise, on the straight track to success.

  I had dated my coxswain boyfriend since halfway through college, over three years ago. We were close. I’d gotten pregnant and had an abortion with him. Well, not exactly with him: he was too embarrassed to confess the circumstances to his rowing coach and refused to ask for a lousy practice off to accompany me to the clinic. So I went without him. So maybe we weren’t that close.

  But we were living more or less amicably together. Our conversations about the future started to veer in the direction of “either break up or get married”: not the dialogue of compelling romance, but at least someone wanted me, and he was a nice guy. He offered a safe harbor, and, given my family history, I could justify the choice of security over romance. But Strayer jerked my world upside down.

  And there was the problem, right there … the world. I dreaded what the world would see or say. Forget the world, what about me? What would I say? Sex with a girl? Me, gay? How had I arrived at this juncture? I had always liked guys and, now, out of the blue, this … mess. What was happening to me?

  Sex had never been a big thing with me. Take it or leave it. I knew it was supposed to be important, but it had never been all that. Now, all bets were off. Deep-seated desire hijacked my body and left my brain in the dust. It wasn’t just the sex, but the experience of being wanted and treasured, adored. I didn’t want to think about meaning and implications, truth and consequences.

  All I wanted was Strayer. Simplicity, not complexity. Give me the girl. I blotted out the big questions about sexuality and identity. I didn’t know what was happening, who I was becoming, but I loved being with her.

  I didn’t want to think about the path I was heading down, but I knew I couldn’t stop others from observing, wondering, judging. That was a problem, a big one. I couldn’t bear to think about what the world would do to me, about me. The hell with the world: my father would disown me.

  I needed my father. Yes, he left my mother and left us kids to take care of her. Yes, he taught me to buck up and shut up. And he introduced me to baseball, taught me how to throw, played box ball and running bases. He wrote me countless notes and letters when I left home for boarding school, filled with the Yankees’ box scores, news of his business trips, and musings about the companies he’d visited and whose stock he’d purchased or sold. He came to my races, paid my college tuition, got drunk with me at Yale football games, gave me reams of unsolicited advice, and mostly cheered me on.

  Falling in love with rowing had never fit his picture of what I should do. Falling in love with a girl would destroy his picture of me. He would toss me from his life, I was sure.

  But none of that could stop me.

  Seven months later, I broke up with my boyfriend, under the guise of supporting him in a move to New York for his career. He knew without asking that I would not accompany him there, or anywhere else. He asked me directly about my relationship with Strayer. “Nope, there’s nothing between us, just friends,” I assured him. Strayer was dating a guy in Princeton, but following graduation, she moved to Boston to train. She left her boyfriend behind, but maintained the pretense of their relationship.

  Ten months of a honeymoon existence ensued, starting with the selection process for the 1982 World Championship team. We both raced in the single trials, held at Camden, New Jersey, in early summer. I came in second, losing to Judy Geer, who earned the right to compete as the US single sculler at the Worlds. I was only mildly disappointed, as the prospect of rowing in the quad with Strayer consoled me.

  We ended up as the bow pair in the quad and traveled to Lucerne, our daytime status as teammates and roommates obscuring our secret life as lovers at night. Our crew came in fourth, just out of the medals, and yet I returned home happy, blissful, my life filled with all that I loved.

  In September, we became housemates, continuing our charade with separate bedrooms to show the world. Strayer not only took over my heart, but moved into my life. We spent the next seven months training together for the 1983 National Team by day, sleeping together by night. We cooked together and shared expenses. She struggled through the transition from college student to gainfully employed adult, while I kept on working at my day job and focused on my training. I kept improving in my single, even as we trained together in the double. No matter the rigors of the daylight hours, nighttime would find us lying side by side, safe and secure with our secret, bolstering each other in the special way that only lovers can, smoothing over the rough spots of the just-completed day, and paving the way for the one to follow. We learned all there was to know about each other, keeping no secrets—except the giant one we both sheltered from the rest of the world.

  Strayer expanded my established training repertoire. On the water, we regularly alternated between rowing our singles or together in our double. I even purchased a sleek, wooden racing double, specially made for women our size, from Stämpfli, the Swiss boat builders in Zurich. My father named the shell Mobile Bay, recalling the famous Louisiana Civil War battle when Colonel Farragut had decreed, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Dad had no idea how appropriate I found that name.

  Somehow Strayer coaxed Harry Parker into coaching us. It wasn’t my idea, that’s for sure. We already had Lisa Hansen, who had begun coaching me in the single the previous autumn when I decided to train seriously again and then agreed to include Strayer in the bargain. Lisa possessed her own impressive résumé, having raced and medaled internationally as the stroke of the famous Hansen and Hills double in the late 1970s. But in the early summer of 1982, just as Strayer arrived in Boston to live and train, Lisa left town for an extended break. She would be gone until the fall. We needed a replacement.

  Strayer sought Harry out and put him on the spot. “We need a coach, Harry. Come on, how about it?” She teased him into submission. “Please? It’ll be fun. You can try to teach a Yalie how to row.” She prodded him gently, offered home-baked cookies, promised good behavior, and swore we would be fast and make it worth his while.

  As for me, I was too proud to ask for help from a god. I wouldn’t risk the humiliation of rejection. Besides, I didn’t have the greatest track record with coaches. I doubted their utility, so kept my expectations low.

  Harry had ample excuses to refuse—his varsity program with about thirty men, National Team coaching obligations, and a passel of heavyweight
men’s scullers, Olympic aspirants who’d flocked to Boston to train under his near-silent direction. But he said yes.

  And he meant it, allowing us to slowly worm our way into his daily life. We started out by joining some of the male single scullers on the water so Harry could check our technique. Then Strayer cajoled him into taking us out separately so he could watch us row more closely. In the early fall, after we returned from the Worlds in Lucerne, Strayer and I stalked Harry at Newell Boathouse, across the Charles from Weld, and begged him to design our training schedules. Strayer’s sense of humor must have been a deciding factor. Her joking and easy banter often made Harry tip his head back and laugh, which was good, because I was always challenging him. I couldn’t help my Yalie self; Harvard and Harry Parker were my alma mater’s nemeses, and I could not traipse to the dark side without some semblance of a fight. Nonetheless, Harry was generous with his time; for the first several months, I repaid him with smart-ass comments.

  Harry’s influence started to show up quickly, starting with the Head of the Charles. Strayer and I raced twice in that regatta, a flagrant violation of the rules, which my former college coach, good ol’ Nat, pointed out to the race officials when he lodged an official protest. We joined our other quadmates from the Worlds to enter the elite women’s four event, which we won, although our entry, and victory, was disqualified, and then we all raced our singles. This time, starting in the second position instead of back in the pack, I not only kicked butt and won, but set a new course record, beating Judy Geer, who’d raced at the Worlds as the US single. Luckily, the race officials allowed me to keep that medal and the course record.

  Strayer and I lifted weights; ran stadiums, which involved racing up the steps of every section in Harvard’s football stadium; rowed ergs; slogged through long, slow runs; and spent hours talking technique and racing strategy. We flexed our biceps and compared measurements, tussling for bragging rights over the strongest arms. We discussed the future, speculated about our speed, and dreamed of standing on the victory platform, medals around our necks, hands clutched tightly in victory.