by Blake Alexander Hannon
Alex wasn't known for being punctual, but this afternoon he made sure he was at the gym five minutes early. Today was the last day of tryouts, which meant he had to make damn sure he was on top of his game. For the millionth time, he cursed himself for procrastinating this long; now that time was running out, he was dangerously low on options... and the ones that were left didn't exactly play to his strengths. Sadly, aside from hiking and bike-riding, he wasn't too much of an athlete. He just hoped to god that he was enough of one to make the team.
The nineteen-year-old college freshman had gotten himself into a bit of a pickle. Due to his impressive grades and exemplary citizenship in high school, the institution was willing to waive 75% of his tuition... on two conditions. The first was that he maintain a Grade Point Average of 3.5 or higher - no problem. The second was that he participate in at least two official extracurricular clubs or activities per semester, one of which had to be a competitive, intramural event. This shouldn't have been a problem either, had he not listened to the drunken frat boys who assured him that there were always plenty of open slots and that he shouldn't hurry.
"Alex?" A female voice came from behind him. "Hi!"
Alex turned to see Jill striding up to the gym. Jill's was a very distinctive appearance. She was the tallest woman Alex had ever met, her 6'2" frame giving her four inches over himself, along with almost everyone else. Hell, she was probably one of the tallest people he had met. With her blue eyes and long, platinum blonde hair, Alex thought she looked like a Valkyrie out of some Norse opera. The first thing he had said to her, when they'd met in Classics last week, was, "Hello, I'm Alex. You're really tall." Jill had blushed and shaken her head at him, but she didn't seem to take it in a bad way. She had continued sitting next to him, and usually provided conversation on the way out of the building.
"Oh, hey there!" Alex replied as she came up to the door. "Here for paddling tryouts?"
She shook her head. "I'm already on the team. It's, like, my favorite sport."
She smiled broadly. Jill had this wide, full-cheeked grin and freckled girlish face that looked almost out of place on her stature. Alex smiled back.
"I used to be pretty good back in middle school," he said, recalling his sea-kayak trips around Puget Sound, "but... uh... it has kinda been awhile."
"Oh, don't worry, I'm sure you'll do fine." She sounded like she meant it, which honestly confused Alex a bit; his arms were not exactly bulging. "You want to work together?"
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Together? They don't have the new people together for tryouts?"
"What?" Jill gave him an incredulous stare. "Is that really how they do it in Washington? You can get really hurt if the top isn't experienced."
Alex had never heard the word 'top' used in association with paddling. Granted, it was several years since he'd touched a rowboat, but he could have sworn the two positions were 'front' and 'back.' Maybe it was an East Coast thing.
"I guess I'm just a super badass then," Alex shrugged.
Jill chuckled, looking at Alex in what almost seemed an appraising manner. "I guess we'll see."
"So," Alex said, deciding to change the subject before he made himself look too ignorant, "how'd the cupcakes turn out?"
Jill's eyes lit up. "Oh, they were great! I made that mocha frosting you told me about, and... here, I took a picture!"
She eagerly fished out her cell phone and showed him the cupcake platter she had been planning earlier that week. They talked about baking until the rest of the team started to arrive, at which point Jill started introducing Alex around. Strangely, almost all of them were girls. For a moment, Alex was afraid he had accidentally showed up for women's tryouts, but there were a couple of other guys. Finally, the gym door opened, and they filed in.
"Locker rooms are that way!" Jill pointed when Alex tried to follow her. Alex was confused.
"We're not changing up at the lake?"
"Lake?" Jill looked at him blankly. "Why would we go there?"
The men's locker room was nearly empty - just Alex and two other guys, both of them upperclassmen. In it had been a hamper containing a number of one-size-fits-all uniforms that looked nothing like the wet suit Alex had worn in middle school. A white muscle shirt with a black number '05' on the front, a pair of skin-tight, white, polyester shorts that Alex felt embarrassed just looking at, and slippers. The hell? He had asked one of the older guys about the uniforms, to which he replied, "What about them?"
No wet suits, and no lake. Were they just going to be paddling across the gymnasium swimming pool or something?
Alex looked at himself in the mirror before following the others out into the gym. The muscle shirt hung loosely around his torso, displaying his arms and upper chest. The swimming trunks (or whatever they were supposed to be) were the exact opposite, squeezing his hips and upper thighs like a constrictor snake. Turning around, he saw a shamefully prominent bulge at the front - damn, it hadn't looked so noticeable from above! The other two boys had the same problem with their own uniform bottoms, but they seemed nonchalant about it. Alex decided he should try and act the same, but it wasn't easy. He just hoped he could avoid paying too much attention to the girls...
After trying in vain to adjust the front of his trunks, Alex gave himself one last look in the mirror. A tan-skinned (from his Mexican half) and reddish-brown haired (from his Irish half) young man, broad shouldered and on the tall side, was framed half-nakedly against the wall of lockers. His arms and legs were naturally thick, and there was a bit of a pectoral bulge over the low collar of the shirt, but his arms and torso could still hold a lot more muscle mass than they currently did; overall, he was a lot fitter below the waistline than above it. Alex's thighs were thick with muscle, and folded in nicely above his calves. His gluteals... well, he had never been sure how he felt about them. Even as a child, Alex's bottom had been a little higher and stuck out a bit further than seemed proper. Once he had started hiking and biking, it had only gotten bigger, and rounder; he'd even had it pinched once or twice in the gym. Alex had never been sure whether to take that as a compliment or a kind of mockery, but either way it made him self-conscious about his prominent rear end. Looking at the obvious double-hump of his butt under its skin-tight white spandex in the mirror almost made him blush. As a whole, the bits of white cloth and polyester that made up the uniform didn't look right on him - like he was too small for the shirt and too big for the trunks - and the bright white was too vivid against his complexion.
He shook his head. There were just too many things about this practice that didn't add up.
Everyone paired up as soon as they entered the gym. Most of the girls were coupled with another of their kind, aside from the two who had snapped up Alex's peers. It didn't take him long to spot Jill, on account of her being almost half a head taller than the next biggest person. She smiled encouragingly as they crossed the room toward each other.
"It looks good on you!" she insisted.
Alex snorted. "I guess you're more into baking than fashion."
She gasped in mock offense. "Oh shut up!"
However ambivalent Alex was about his own uniform, there was no denying that Jill looked absolutely stunning in hers. Her shirt and trunks were pale gray rather than white, and fit her just tightly enough to show off her strong, buxom figure without squeezing too tight. As his eyes fell over her tall, well-highlighted body, Alex felt his trunks getting tighter; he carefully reminded himself to stop checking out his teammates and get back to worrying about tryouts.
Judging by the presence of Jill's name emblazoned in black letters next to the number 09, this suit had been fitted for her. Hopefully, Alex would be granted the same privilege when he made the team. Well, if I make the team, he thought.
"What's with the different uniform colors?" Alex asked as he peered around the room.
Jill gave him that incredulous look again, like she couldn't believe he didn't know this. "Gray is top, white is bottom."
Alex raised an eyebrow. There had only been one hamper in the men's locker room, and it had been full of white uniforms. The women, from what he could see, were divided pretty evenly between white and gray. While Alex didn't especially care which side of the canoe he sat in, he couldn't help but feel just a little discriminated against. Maybe the coach is some crazy feminist or something, and she wants the girls to steer? he wondered. The more he thought about it, the less likely that seemed.
"Here she comes," Jill whispered as the door opened again. "Ready to blow Coach Johnston away?"
"I'll blow out every candle on her cake," replied Alex in the most ridiculously macho whisper he could produce.
Jill laughed, shaking her head and putting a hand over her eyes. "That sounded so dirty."
"Well I guess you've got your mind in the gutter."
She rolled her eyes with a bit of a blush. Jill seemed to blush as easily as she smiled.
Coach Diane Johnston turned out to be an African American woman, big-boned and thickly built, with heavyset features and an impressive musculature that showed through her full gym suit. Alex guessed her age at a very fit and athletic forty.
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