Breaking the Surface (22 page)

At another appearance, in the Bible Belt, a woman in line was showing everyone the
Playgirl
poster. She was so proud that she had it and asked me to sign it. This time, the Speedo reps teased me, saying, “Where’s the Speedo?”

Speedo has always been good to me. Several months before this book was scheduled to come out, I sat down with Linda Wachner, Speedo’s dynamic CEO, and told her that I would be revealing my HIV status in the book. My contract was coming up for renewal at the end of 1994, and I wanted her to know the whole story before we talked about a new contract. Linda was most concerned about my getting proper medical care, and she assured me that I could always count on her support. She also told me that she wanted to continue our business relationship and renewed my contract for another two years. You can imagine what that kind of unconditional support has meant to me.

With all the appearances I did, I always imagined that someone would show up claiming to be my natural mother or father. It happened at a Speedo appearance at a big shopping mall in Honolulu. Tom came over to me while I was signing autographs and said, “Your father is here.” I knew my dad wasn’t in Hawaii, so I immediately knew what Tom meant, that someone there was claiming to be my natural father. I told Tom that I’d talk to him after I was finished signing autographs.

I don’t know if I had any mental picture of what my natural father would look like, although I figured he would look something like me. He was shorter than I am, with rounder features, and had a heavier stature. He had dark eyes and wavy, dark hair, gray at the temples. And there was no mistaking his heritage; he looked like a Pacific Islander.

Our conversation was very emotional for him. His voice was shaky as he explained that he needed to tell me that he hadn’t wanted to put me up for adoption and that he did care for me. Then he started crying and said that he was glad I’d been adopted by a nice family that could offer me the kinds of opportunities that he couldn’t have.

I was pretty wary, especially because certain facts didn’t jibe. I had been told that he and my mother were fifteen at the time I was born, but given what this man told me his age was, he would have been around nineteen when I was born. Later, I realized that he might have lied on the original records, because if my mother was fifteen, he could have been accused of statutory rape.

I was pretty reserved through the whole thing, and after we finished talking, he asked if he could introduce me to some of his family, whom he’d brought with him. He introduced me to his son and two daughters. I had to get to the airport, and told him that I had to go. He asked if I minded if they came to see us off, and I said that was fine.

At the airport, he loaded us up with macadamia nuts and pineapples to take home. He gave me his phone number, and I gave him an address where he could reach me, but not the house address, because I was still suspicious. We said good-bye, and Tom and I got on the plane.

All the way home on the plane, I thought about whether this man was my natural father. I couldn’t help but wonder if he wanted something, if maybe he was just bragging to his friends that he was my father. But then I thought about how genuinely emotional he had been. I decided to call the adoption agency.

It took me a while to get around to calling the agency, because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. On the one hand I didn’t care, because Pete and Frances Louganis were my parents. They had been there for me. There when I skinned my knee. There to pick me up and dust me off. But in the back of my head I knew that I wanted to know once and for all.

Eventually, I called and the people at the agency explained to me that they’d had a fire several years back and that my records might have been destroyed. They said they had some of the records on microfilm, but they weren’t sure, and it would cost seventy-five dollars to check. They emphasized the possibility that my records were gone, so I didn’t bother. I could have tracked down the hospital records, and I’m sure there are other ways of finding out, but it wasn’t that important to me. I had my family and I knew that my natural parents had wanted the best for me. That was enough.

Since 1985, I’ve been back to Hawaii more than once and the man who says that he’s my father has come to my appearances to see me. He also sends me a Christmas card each year. But over the years, I’ve never called him. And I’ve never asked him about my natural mother.

A
FTER THE
’84 O
LYMPICS
I was very excited about my acting career. The William Morris Agency in Los Angeles signed me up just days after the Games ended, to “represent me in all areas of the entertainment industry,” so I thought they’d help open some doors for me, especially in television and film. But except for a few good experiences, my career in show business turned out to be one disaster after another.

William Morris sent me to some general meetings and a handful of auditions. I don’t know how it happened, but whenever they sent me out, I would show up in jeans and a T-shirt when everybody else was in suits. Or I would be in a suit when everybody else was in jeans and a T-shirt. And since they sent me out on so few auditions—two or three the first year—each one was incredibly important. I was never sure that I’d ever get to go on another one.

Fortunately, I had plenty of other things to keep me busy. Between taking acting and scene-study classes in California and making appearances and doing exhibitions around the country and training in Florida, it wasn’t as if I was sitting by the pool waiting for the phone to ring.

The one movie I did during that time was called
Dirty Laundry
. I hated the script and told Tom that I didn’t want to do it. But Tom and my agents talked me into it because they wanted it for my reel, which didn’t have much on it. Sonny Bono, Frankie Valli, and Carl Lewis were in the cast. I played the womanizing beach bum roommate to Lee McClosky. It went, as they say in the film industry, straight to video.

Over the next few years, I did things like
Hollywood Squares
and
Family Feud, Night of 100 Stars,
and
Circus of the Stars
as a sports celebrity. I met all kinds of people, including Anita Morris and Grover Dale, Louie Anderson, Roseanne, Richard Simmons, Milton Berle, Wil Shriner, Dionne Warwick, Estelle Getty, Brooke Shields, Michael Feinstein, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Dick Clark, and Raquel Welch.

I also did a lot of benefits, where I met other celebrities. At one benefit, an AIDS fund-raiser in Dallas, I met Angela Lansbury, who is my absolute hero. I’ve always admired the range of her work, from the Broadway stage to television. I’d seen her in just about everything she’s done and knew that in person she would be completely accessible. I wasn’t at all disappointed, but I was incredibly nervous.

For the benefit, we were supposed to waltz across the stage for my introduction. But in rehearsals I kept stepping on Miss Lansbury’s feet, so we gave up on that idea. In the end she wound up introducing me from one side of the stage, and I walked out from the other. She was very gracious, but I was embarrassed. After all, I had lots of dance experience, so doing a waltz should have been second nature for me.

While I had lots of fun, none of the television game shows or celebrity specials involved acting. In fact, it wasn’t until a year after the 1988 Olympics that I was cast as Prince Charming in
Cinderella
at the Long Beach Civic Light Opera. The prince had plenty to do but, thankfully, it wasn’t a lead role. I didn’t feel at all prepared to carry a show. I did get to sing a few songs, and the reviews weren’t bad.

I’m never one to shy away from a challenge, but I hadn’t taken voice lessons in eight years, so I knew that I needed a vocal coach. I went down to San Diego to see Cathy Rigby, the Olympic gymnast, in
Peter Pan,
and I asked her advice about studying voice. She suggested a coach in Los Angeles, and I began weekly lessons.

To mentally prepare for a diving event, I’d always look around the stands at all the empty seats and then visualize them full. That way, I was comfortable when the seats were filled with spectators. So when I walked out onstage for the first rehearsal, in my mind I filled in all the empty seats with people. That terrified me, because I was going to be singing solo in front of all those people, which is something I’d never done in front of such a big audience before.

By the time the show opened, I felt secure with the acting and dancing, but vocally I wasn’t completely sure of myself. There’s always a feeling of being exposed when you’re onstage, but when I sang, I felt totally naked, especially with my family there watching. Despite all my anxiety over my voice, it was great fun during the three weeks of rehearsal and three weeks of performances. I especially enjoyed working with the wonderful cast. And the audiences were great—close to three thousand people for each performance.

I learned from that experience that I wanted to do more dramatic work. It was easier for me to get into musical theater because I can act and dance. But after
Cinderella,
nothing much happened for a while, not even auditions. I kept telling myself to be patient and continued with my classes, hoping something would happen. When nothing happened, I began to think that I should probably start thinking about doing something else.

Finally, I got another offer, which I really should have turned down, for the lead in
The Boy Friend
at the Sacramento Music Circus. I wasn’t getting a lot of other offers and I thought I’d better not be too picky. I wish I had been.

From the start, I wanted to play Bobby, which is a supporting role. I still didn’t want the pressure of the lead role, and I thought that the lead character, Tony, was a cardboard figure. The producer was adamant that I had to play Tony. The draw was going to be “Greg Louganis, starring in
The Boy Friend
.”

I would have been even more comfortable in the chorus, but no one wanted me in the chorus, because I was too famous to blend in. The cast knew that I had been given the lead role because of my name, and some of them resented that. So from the first day, I was out there on my own.

My performance was okay. I had three songs, and my voice was about the same as it had been for
Cinderella
. We didn’t have much rehearsal time, so I didn’t even feel fully prepared with my acting. The only thing I felt good about was my dancing.

The reviews were so awful that I didn’t want to go back, but I still had about a dozen performances to go. At least I got some positive comments from people in the audience, and nobody threw things.

That experience made it clear to me that I wasn’t cut out vocally for musical theater. I wasn’t sure I’d do any acting again at all.

Not long after that, I was asked to go onstage and perform with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. It was a variety show in which a number of baseball players and other athletes had been asked to recite a poem about baseball. I had to read part of the poem and dance, which helped make it easier for me to get back onstage, since dancing was one of my strengths. Pamela Myers, who had also been in
Cinderella,
and I sang some music from the show. I also sang and danced “I Can Do That” from
A Chorus Line,
which was in many ways the story of my childhood. The emphasis was on the dancing, and I had an entire orchestra behind me. Pam helped me through it, and I was glad I did it, because I really love performing.

After that, I did a small job for the Playboy Channel that required a lot of body makeup. It was just a short sketch about Max the fish, whose owner is in an awful relationship, in kind of a
Love, American Style
television show with eight- or nine-minute stories. In mine, the fish turns into a “man-fish” (man’s body, fish’s head) and rescues the owner from her terrible life and takes her back to the fish tank with him. They used my voice for Max the fish and my body for the man-fish. It was called, unfortunately,
Wet Dreams
. I must have been dreaming when I said yes to that one.

Maybe I should have called it quits then, but not me. Along came a film offer, for
Object of Desire
. I was cast as the love interest for the leading lady. I loved working in front of the camera, because when they’re ready to shoot, you’ve got to be there instantly, which is like diving, although with diving at least you know you have another dive coming up. With film, there’s usually not much rehearsal time and an awful lot of waiting around.

We had two weeks of work in the can when one of the producers was thrown in jail for writing bad checks. Fortunately, I had a round-trip plane ticket, otherwise I would have been stranded in Belize. I was disappointed, because it would have been a good break for me. When the production collapsed, we all went into the editing room and watched the dailies. It was beautifully shot, and I was proud of my work.

There were other offers that came in occasionally for parts where I would get to play a diver or play myself in a cameo, but I didn’t want to do that, because it wasn’t acting. At one point I was cast as the Finnish runner in what was supposed to be a movie adaptation of
The Front Runner,
but it never got made. So after the debacle in Belize, I pretty much gave up, and by 1992 I got so frustrated that I even quit my acting classes and voice lessons. I was spending money every month to study and my efforts were going nowhere.