{"id":1821,"date":"2012-09-06T12:53:57","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T19:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/?p=1821"},"modified":"2012-09-06T12:53:57","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T19:53:57","slug":"hot-shots-or-how-everything-i-know-about-olympic-shooting-fit-into-one-short-story-by-michael-p-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/hot-shots-or-how-everything-i-know-about-olympic-shooting-fit-into-one-short-story-by-michael-p-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hot Shots” or How Everything I Know About Olympic Shooting Fit Into One Short Story by Michael P. Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet Michael P. Thomas, whose story “Hot Shots” appears in my m\/m Olympic Anthology, Going for Gold<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, published by MLR Press<\/a>. As soon as I’d read the first page, I knew I’d include this story. I can’t wait to see what he writes next. And neither will you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When I say that I had always yearned to be an Olympian, what I of course mean is that I am ass-over-teakettle <\/em>nuts about jocks, and my life\u2019s primary ambition has long been to fuck as many Olympic athletes as possible.\u00a0 The first time I ever clapped eyes on Michael Phelps\u2019 extraordinary body in nothing but a Speedo, I knew that world-class athletes were my sexual destiny, and I set my sights on the Olympics at an early age.\u00a0 The shortest distance between two points being a straight line, I figured bunking up in a dorm full of them would provide me the easiest possible access to the Hottest Guys in the World.<\/em><\/p>\n

A foolproof plan, you\u2019ll agree, save for one detail: I was nowhere near a World Class Athlete.\u00a0 In any sport.\u00a0 Certainly not swimming, which\u2014a bed full of broad-backed Aquamen being my primary target\u2014I naturally tried first.\u00a0 I was fit enough, and at 6-foot-3 I would eventually grow flippers for feet, but I never had the shoulders, and why does everybody act like swimming pools all go dry at ten o\u2019clock in the morning?\u00a0 If I have to roll out of bed while the neighborhood rooster is still sawing logs and get shirtless and wet before the damn sun comes up, I am unlikely to excel at any pursuit.\u00a0 Swimmers are hot-bods, to be sure, but I figured I\u2019d have better access to them in the Olympic Village cafeteria than in the pool, anyway, and I hung my Speedos out to dry after one unremarkable summer-club season.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wrestling was no more of a success story.\u00a0 It occurred to me that if my objective was physical proximity to jocks, a sport that required me to intertwine with them during the course of competition might be the ticket.\u00a0 I cut an encouragingly sexy figure in the singlet, but I was still growing like kudzu\u2014taller this week than last, skinnier tomorrow than yesterday\u2014and I couldn\u2019t muster the coordination to do much more than hump every boy they put underneath me.\u00a0 Which suited me fine, but didn\u2019t jive with the sporting objectives of most of the rest of the team, and my season was cut short when I came in my singlet during a particularly frictional exhibition match against the star of the all-boys Catholic high school from across town.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Photobucket\"<\/a>

Steve Lundquist consoles his friend, rival, and teammate John Moffet at the end of his Olympic journey. You see how man-on-man Olympic erotica kind of writes itself?<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/em>Thus do we meet Beau, the handsome young hero of \u201cHot Shots,\u201d my story in EM Lynley\u2019s new Olympic-themed anthology, Going for Gold<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>I have long been a rabid fan of all things Olympic, a passion that, like Beau\u2019s, was sparked by the sight of a swimmer in a Speedo.\u00a0 Because of a heart-wrenching injury suffered during prelims, John Moffet failed to medal in 1984, but because he was gorgeous (and maybe a little bit because he cried), he had me glued to the TV for two weeks that summer, and, at age 12, two things became clear to me:\u00a0 1. I was officially and irretrievably gay, and 2. The Olympics were a moving, inspirational, and surprising spectacle for another fling with which I was scarcely convinced I\u2019d be able to wait four long years.\u00a0 When 1988 rolled around, I was enthralled with Swiss skier Pirmin Zurbriggen, and in 1992 I was so caught up in the rapture of love with Christian Laettner that I actually watched Olympic basketball.\u00a0 By the time the Thorpedo was wowing the hometown crowd in Sydney in 2000, the first Olympics I actually got to go to, I was a drooling junkie for the biggest quadrennial Hot Guy Pageant in the world.<\/p>\n

I was on a swim team and all that\u2014State Champs my senior year in high school, thank you very much\u2014but I knew I didn\u2019t have the drive or the dedication to Sport to ever go to the Olympics as anything other than a spectator.\u00a0 OK, I had occasional fantasies of sitting supportively next to my sun-tanned and toothsome jock husband in the Olympic Village while NBC interviewed him about his meteoric rise to the top of his sport (swimming, skiing, basketball, I didn\u2019t care\u2014beggars can\u2019t be choosers), and of smiling demurely and cracking a suitably-understated-yet-hilarious joke when he glowingly heaped praise and credit for his success onto me in front of millions of viewers, but that was the closest I ever even dared to dream I would get to Olympic Glory, and when in Real Life I flipped for a 350-pounder, even those dreams were put to rest with some finality.<\/p>\n

I had other dreams, though, and one I pursued hotly was to travel the world as thoroughly as my time here in it would allow.\u00a0 It happens, more by accident than by design, that I have visited every city that has ever hosted a modern Summer Games, Sydney and Hong Kong (which hosted Beijing\u2019s equestrian events in 2008) while the games were actually under way.\u00a0 Hot guys doing amazing things with their incredible bodies is, yes, a major selling point of the Olympics for me, but the modern Olympic Ideal of the pursuit, not just of shiny medals and leafy crowns, but also of enhanced cross-cultural understanding and Brother (and Sister-) hood of Man appeals greatly to the World Citizen in me.\u00a0 My career with a goliath international airline is a learning experience on many fronts, but the one lesson it never tires of driving home is that, when people meet each other face-to-face, as individuals, we seek common ground and understanding with much greater fervor than we do opportunities for conflict and strife.\u00a0 In the face of language barriers and wildly disparate cultural expectations, we still often smile and laugh and gesture hopefully, if indecipherably, to express a need to find a train station, a willingness to help, or our universal distaste for airplane food.\u00a0 While exacting and exalting extraordinarily high levels of dedication and achievement, The Olympic Games also embody\u2014and highlight on the World Stage\u2014a spirit of fellowship and equality that is otherwise too-often lacking as people consider their place in our world.<\/p>\n

\"Photobucket\"<\/a>

South African swimmer Chad Le Clos is a particularly colorful example of the kind of athlete that motivates Beau.<\/p><\/div>\n

In a way that I never did\u2014partly because he\u2019s 6-foot-3, gorgeous, and cocky in a way that I never was\u2014Beau sets out to see that his fantasies of world class sex with world class athletes become his reality. \u00a0After repeated attempts at more traditional athletic pursuits disappoint, he comes to find himself in his mother\u2019s native Luxembourg, utterly smitten by suave, sexy Marcel, a three-time Olympian who can lay claim to two bronze shooting medals, and Beau\u2019s last best chance at a crack at the Games\u2014and their players. \u00a0What I knew about shooting before Beau and Marcel came along wouldn\u2019t have sloshed out of a thimble, but writing this story gave me a new respect for the event.\u00a0 Less physically rigorous than, say, swimming or gymnastics, it nevertheless requires the same level of concentration and degree of skill and dedication as other sports, something that Beau does not at first appreciate, but that Marcel will see to it that he understands.\u00a0 Distracted by his mad passion for jocks and his complicated relationship with his coach, Beau doesn\u2019t realize that in yearning just to qualify for a spot on an Olympic team\u2014any team\u2014with little hope of winning a medal or any acclaim, he exemplifies, if unwittingly, the spirit of the Games.\u00a0 For as no less an authority than the Olympic Creed proclaims, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” \u00a0\u00a0But when he fights too <\/em>well with Marcel, will Beau still get to take part?\u00a0 Or has he conquered his own chance at realizing his Olympic dream?<\/p>\n

Want to know more about me and my forthcoming novel?\u00a0 Visit misterstewardess.com<\/a> or follow me on Twitter @MrStewardess.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Michael P. Thomas, whose story “Hot Shots” appears in my m\/m Olympic Anthology, Going for Gold, published by MLR Press. As soon as I’d read the first page, I knew I’d include this story. I can’t wait to see what he writes next. And neither will you. When I say that I had always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,63],"tags":[307,918,329,330,271,331,934],"class_list":["post-1821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-guest-posting","tag-going-for-gold","tag-guest-posting","tag-michael-p-thomas","tag-mike-bruno","tag-mlr-press","tag-mr-stewardess","tag-olympics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzLgx-tn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}