THE BOOMER END OF THE SPEEDO CHALLENGE

 

 

Any challenge but the Speedo Challenge?

 

Even without a dashing, single-ski dock start, or the dive team Speedo, the man carried a lethal air. He looked like he could fight death and fear, and win.

It made him an icon.

Leaping off a houseboat deck rail into thin air with one foot trapped in a fiberglass board? No problem.

Flying off the deck on the end of a towrope like Spiderman in reverse, and jetting away behind a howling ski boat captain? It’s a good idea, but who does that?

In front of the harshest audience ever, a bunch of teenagers in their baggies watching their dads’ tricks, Max hopped his ski on one foot, getting lined up.

“Nobody does this,” one kid said.

“In a Speedo? Never. He must lift weights,” said another.

“He does.”

“Calls it the Speedo Challenge.”

Max stuck the dock launch, tucked his back foot into the ski loop, and disappeared like a rocket fired across the water.

Skimming on high Cascade lakes, spraying sheets of volcanic water, he carved the canyon. Force of nature met force of nature with a shared respect and swim meet style. Young teens on the houseboat watched, pulled up their sagging suits.

===

One of the boys would have a Speedo Challenge future. Jimmy. It started later the same month at a public pool on a hot, clear, day.

“Dude, she’s seventeen,” Nick said.

“Yeah, I know. Perfect,” Jimmy said.

“You’re fourteen.”

“Fourteen in a Speedo, you mean.”

“Not what I mean.”

“It’s what she means, and she knows what the Speedo means.”

“It means her boyfriend drowns you for strutting, then me for helping you. Not a good day to drown.”

Jimmy walked in front of the lifeguard at the public pool. He stopped and faced her for the fake wave to Nick, turned, took a deep breath, and slow walked to the far fence. The lifeguard in her high school bikini shook her head.

Nick circled around the pool the opposite way, past the neighborhood moms soaking their babies in the pee pool, past the round bellied older men wearing blindingly white shoes. Then jumped in the pool.

“You see that?” Jimmy said.

“I don’t see your blood in the water. That’s what I see.”

“She took an extra look. You saw it.”

“That’s the look she gives her boyfriend waiting in the parking lot to tell him what sort beating to give guys who bother her. And you’re bothering her.”

“One more time.”

“She’s waving. This ain’t good.”

Jimmy scissored away and pulled along the pool edge. He stopped right under the lifeguard stand. Looking up he saw painted toes, tanned calves and knees, and a summertime-beautiful angry face looking down.

“Kid, I get it. This is a pool, lots of people. I can’t watch you and everyone else.”

“It’s the Speedo, isn’t it?” Jimmy asked.

“It’s the only one all week. I’ll admit it. Probably the only one all summer. Okay? Look over there, the guys with their socks pulled up? They’re dads. What you’re doing is what they did growing up. Is that you? You want to end up over there? No one starts with that dream. They didn’t, and you’re heading toward them.”

“Right. So keep the Speedo?”

“One of those guys wore a suit like yours last week. Haven’t seen him since.”

“Look at us, talking and everything.”

“Keep it up and my boyfriend will see you. Stick around if you want to get hurt. You’re a nice kid. Get lost.”

===

Two years later the phone rang.

“Jimmy. Hot tub alert,” Nick said.

He grabbed a towel and his Speedo and jumped in his car.

Five high school girls sat in bubbling water talking about their college plans. Friends since kindergarten, they bonded by the gravity between beauty and GPA.

“I want someone just like me, like my dad,” one said.

“Well, that doesn’t work for everyone.”

“What’s wrong with your dad?”

“I’m not talking about my dad.”

“It better not be mine.”

“We’ve seen him, the way he pretends not to notice us.”

“Like he’s afraid of us.”

“No. I haven’t noticed him, but I’ve seen your dad in action.”

“We all have. He’s hard working, making a difference in people’s lives. Not sitting around pretending he’s something he’s not.”

“Hard working? My mom said he was hard working her at the last football game. Too hard.”

“Making a move on the single mom.”

“She’s not a single mom.”

“We’ve seen your dad. She might as well be a single mom.”

“She said he was being nice, too nice. Like meeting for drinks nice.”

“I’d go if I was her.”

“You’d go if he asked you?”

“I’d go in two years with a fake ID.”

Jimmy parked and knocked on the front door. Nick let him in.

He shut the bathroom door and changed into his Speedo, wrapping a towel around his waste. The hot tub sat on the upper deck. The girls’ voiced trailed through a sliding door.

“What are you going to do?” Nick asked. “Don’t break anything.”

“Just hop into the hot tub with my classmates. People do it all the time.”

“Not in a Speedo.”

“It’s all fun.”

“What do you think will happen?”

“Either nothing, or they all jump out. I hope they jump out.”

“Some are better jumpers than others.”

===

Jimmy stalked the deck toward the opposite stairway. He popped up, dropped his towel, and hopped in the hot tub.

Pop. Drop. Hop.

Like gazelles spotting a lion at a Serengeti water hole, the girls moved in quick herd instinct. Jimmy watched them leap and stretch and squeal themselves to safety, then stood up.

Mrs. Jefferson stood in the sliding door.

“Mr. Jefferson will speak to you,” she said, spinning away.

In her place stood a small man, but thick, with a full head of hair unblemished by age. A Just For Men man.

“Go put your clothes on, son, then meet me back here.”

Jimmy walked past, returning in five minutes. He could hear the girls in one of the bedrooms.

“I’m sorry if I did something wrong,” he said. “We call it the Speedo Challenge. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s when…”

“No, I haven’t heard of it, Jimmy. It is Jimmy, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your Speedo Challenge gives everyone a thrill, a scare, or whatever it is that happens. But it’s a gateway. What’s next, the kiss challenge? The bring a fat girl to the dance challenge? That’s is where it goes, Jimmy.”

“We all know each other at school, “ he said.

“Not the way you think. They know you at school, not you in a Speedo. Things change, like the girls. They’re not in kindergarten anymore, are they? You’ve changed, too.

“I’ll be the first to tell you, guys like us have an affect on the females. It’s not our fault. They don’t understand the way we make them feel. Like right now. Are they terrified of you in a Speedo and hiding, or peeking out the window. Don’t look.”

In the glass door behind Mr. Jefferson the girls weren’t peeking out, they were pressing their bikini butts against the glass and flipping the bird.

“Jimmy, you seem to think this is amusing? Well, maybe it is. Just kids being kids, right?”

One of the girls flipped the double bird through the window with both arms up. Someone behind her pulled her top down. She didn’t move.

Jimmy looked straight at Mr. Jefferson.

“Yes, sir. I’ll keep it in mind. I’m sorry if I’ve stirred things up.”

One of the girls brought a chair to the window where three of them crowded together and mooned Jimmy at the same time.

“Not at all, son. You may not be accustomed to young women who’ve become as serious as my daughter and her friends. They all attend church together, take accelerated college classes. Not so much in sports, but they excel in everything. You’ve seen their prom pictures? It looks like a Miss America pageant.”

“Yes, sir.”

The girls, changed to shorts and shirts, walked out the sliding door.

“Daddy, please don’t be too harsh. Jimmy doesn’t understand how sophisticated we’ve become. He’s a small town boy in the small town we’re ready to burst from. Aren’t we girls?”

“Yes, I know, honey. Let me finish here. You go back in the house.”

Behind Mr. Jefferson, the girls pretended to slap each other and pounded their fists together, vamping around the living room.

“Goodbye, girls. I’m sorry if I frightened you,” Jimmy said. “No more Speedo Challenge. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. I’ve learned so much today.”

“Glad to help you, Jimmy. Any time.”

Inside the glass doors the girls danced and gyrated, freezing the moment Mr. Jefferson turned to show Jimmy out.

“We men need to learn from each other, son. That’s all there is to it.”

Once passed, the girls stepped forward to give Jimmy a goodbye pinch. He pretended to fan their hands away with little effort.

“See you at school,” they said. “Bye bye, Jimmy.”

The Speedo Challenge made them all laugh for years after.