them.”
“You know, just because you’re smart and you know what to do doesn’t mean your body is going to do it all on its own.”
I was hearing the echoes of “book smart, worldly stupid.” I was once again seeing myself as an uncoordinated, overweight young man. Neither could have been further from the truth, yet both were the reality I inhabited.
Graham would never participate in any of the physical exercises or drills, blaming his asthma (or a hernia or an arm in a sling or some other excuse). I have no idea why it never dawned on me back then that these ailments would in no way have prevented him from, say, at least doing some of the stretching with me. I guess I was just so caught up in the moment and what I was doing that I never even noticed that he preferred to just lean back and stare at me. I would stretch, I would do squats, I would do push-ups and sit-ups, all under his watchful eye. I would mimic a goaltender’s stance and shuffle side to side and lunge laterally back and forth and back and forth until my thighs ached. I was always a model student for him. I viewed this as my opportunity to learn from an expert and impress a leading figure in the hockey community, one who could give me everything I had ever dreamed of.
It must have been a very difficult time for him. Having identified me, having taken steps to bring me under his wing and groom me to be receptive to his thoughts and desires, and having isolated me from my family, coaches, and friends, and having made himself the most important force in my life, he now had to test my boundaries and assess whether the time was right for him to make his move on me. Would I be compliant? When could he safely take tentative steps to find out? How could he move forward without fear of getting it wrong and potentially opening himself up to being found out?
Because he did not have constant exclusive contact with me, he would have to be very careful in making his next move, for while he had won my trust, there was no natural setting for him in which he could physically take advantage of me since I was still living at home with my parents. He only had our meetings and these workouts.
But Graham was brilliant in his own way, the Rhodes Scholar of sexual predators.
One night during a training session, he pushed me until I was exhausted. I had worked my legs so hard that I could already feel them stiffening as I sat down, leaned back, and gulped for air. I was sweating hard, my shirt was soaked, and stopping felt so good. The intense exertion gave way to the usual post-workout euphoria that I craved so much and that felt so good, so intoxicating. I loved to give my all to the task at hand and work to the point of utter exhaustion. That had always been my reputation in everything I did. I was the guy who worked the hardest in all the drills, the one who never stopped short in the skating drills but went all the way to the end of the rink and slammed the boards with my stick, who always stopped on the line, never before it. That’s just who I am. Or rather, who I was before him.
Graham started going on about the physiology of a hockey player. He noted that a hockey player was required to perform everything on skates, two small edges of steel.
“A hockey player looks with the eyes, which starts everything. Power to move where needed comes from the core and torso, and this power must be transferred to the hips and down to the legs. From there, all of that power has to be carried by the feet in the skates, which each sit on top of the ice on thin edges of steel, which transfer all of that power to the ice. A hockey player requires very strong feet, very special type of feet that can withstand the enormous forces. Can I take a look at your feet?”
Not a demand. Not a command. A request. A simple request that at the time made enormous sense to me.
“Sure.”
I reached down and took off my socks. I leaned back and put my feet in the air for inspection. He took one foot and cradled it, stroked it. He squeezed it, twisted it slightly, ran his palm from heel to toes. He pressed into the arch. He released the first foot and grabbed the other. Same thing, an inspection, a slow, deep analysis of my foot. He stared at each foot for what seemed like a long time. It all seemed so scientific, so analytical.
“You’ve got good feet. Big, strong feet. They’re perfect. Perfect.”
The physical barrier was broken.
From then on, post-workout foot massages became part of the routine. It didn’t seem strange to me but instead made perfect sense after what he’d told me about the physical mechanics of hockey. My feet felt so good after his massages, and I’d thank him for making me feel better and helping me recover from the pain of the drills.
Said another way, I thanked him for touching me.
The pattern was repeated. He made it the new reality as my training continued, despite any injury he might at the time have—a bandaged hand, an arm in a sling, whatever might have otherwise stopped a less persistent and less needy connoisseur of feet. So now, in addition to being my mentor and my friend, he was my massage therapist. He had already broken me down intellectually and emotionally. Now, finally, he had made his first physical move.
This new pattern of foot massages continued for several months. Some foot massages lasted longer than others, some involved wedging a foot against his chest when he could use only one arm because of injury, some seemed a little different from the rest, but nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to me to be at all inappropriate or anything other than a foot massage.
But of course, Graham wanted more, and eventually “more” happened.
“MORE” STARTED OUT as a training session just like the rest. Only this time he wanted to show me a book about hockey theory, Tarasov’s Hockey Technique. We talked a bit about it, nothing out of the ordinary.
“How do you feel? Tired? Sore?”
“Of course.”
“Here, why don’t you lie down and I’ll work the pain out of your feet.”
A foot massage, but this time, it wasn’t like the others. I sensed something was different even as he started normally, with my feet. He seemed different, a bit aloof, not completely present. He had shown me the book, but we hadn’t spent much time looking at it, and I sensed it had been a pretense for something else. Maybe these thoughts are something that I’ve created to make myself seem smarter about what eventually happened, or maybe I always knew that this was going to happen. I don’t know.
He started to move beyond my feet and slowly work his way up my legs. I froze. I did nothing but lie there, my eyes closed, wondering what was going on. I was afraid. I was confused. I opened my eyes, trying to get my bearings and understand what was happening. But all I caught was a glimpse of him, his face, his eyes.
It’s his eyes that I remember the most. His dark, dead eyes, the kind of eyes that show absolutely no emotion at all, that seem to look right through you as if you aren’t there—the eyes a shark has, cold, searching eyes that see without engaging, eyes that are always on the hunt for prey. I will never forget those eyes. I can never forget those eyes.
He moved slowly up my legs, never saying a word. I kept my own eyes shut as much as I could after seeing those eyes. They scared me. But it was too late. I had seen his eyes, the dead eyes, and they would be with me for the rest of my life.
I had no idea what was happening. I mean, I knew exactly what was happening, but I had no idea what was happening.
Where is this coming from? Why am I not pushing him away? What should I do? What could I do? Why
