Breaking the Surface (32 page)

Steven made me realize that my life wouldn’t be over if I left Tom. Here was someone who was attractive and kind, who liked me. He was a relative stranger who didn’t have to like me but did. My mind raced ahead, and I thought, “If I leave Tom, maybe I can have a relationship with Steven.”

Knowing that Steven was out there made it possible for me to face the truth for the first time. I couldn’t do it before, because if I looked at the truth, I’d
have
to leave Tom. But I couldn’t leave Tom as long as I thought that no one else would want me. But now that someone did, I could look at the truth and look at myself.

Steven gave me something that none of my friends and family or the gold medals ever could. He gave me hope that there could be life after Tom. I didn’t know for sure that we’d wind up in a relationship together, but there was the possibility, and that was enough.

The truth was pretty harsh. Tom was using me, and had been for a long time. He had never looked out for my best interests. And more than all of that, he had made me feel unwanted and unloved, which is one of the worst things one person can do to another. I had to face the fact that there was no salvaging the relationship, because there was no relationship to salvage. I had only one choice.

It was shortly after that breakfast with Steven that I decided to tell Tom I wanted us to go our separate ways. The decision came from a combination of things—my having experienced a sense of independence in Florida, my finding out that Tom had been mishandling my finances, his continuing verbal abuse, my discovery that he had lied about his record. Tom himself had finally pushed me to the point where I had to push back. With the love of my friends and family, and knowing I could depend on Steven, I finally felt strong enough to challenge Tom and break free.

Once I decided to break up with Tom, I had to figure out how and where to do it. I couldn’t do it at home when we were alone, because I was afraid of what he might do to me—I knew what he was capable of. I couldn’t have the conversation in a public place, for obvious reasons. So I decided that I’d do it in a limousine on the way to the airport. I figured that was the safest place to confront Tom, because if anything happened, at least there would be a driver up front if I needed help.

Tom and I were scheduled to go to New York that weekend, where I was booked to do an appearance at a department store or a convention, I don’t remember which, because that whole time is such a blur, but I do remember that we were going to fly out on a Saturday, do the appearance on Sunday, and fly home on Tuesday.

My plan was to tell him that I wanted us to go our separate ways and then make a very generous settlement offer. I hoped he’d be reasonable, but I also knew that he might get angry and hit me. I imagined myself showing up for my appearance with a fat lip or a black eye and having to explain how I got it.

Steven was the only one I confided in about my intention. I wanted to be sure I could go through with it before I said anything to anyone else. At first, I wasn’t sure I could actually do it. Once we were in the limousine, it took me a while to get up my courage to say anything. In general, I’m unsure of myself when I have to talk to anyone, and here I was about to confront Tom, who still frightened me. The truth is part of me still loved him. So I felt very ambivalent.

Here we were in the back of the limousine, and Tom put in one of his tapes and turned the volume way up. I said, “Tom.” I was trying to get his attention, but he didn’t hear me. He always teased me that I mumbled, that I didn’t articulate. So I did what he always told me to do—I raised my voice above the music. Almost shouting, I said, “Tom,” and asked him to turn off the music. He turned it down, and I said, “You might want to put up the partition. I don’t think you’re going to want the driver to hear this.” He put it up.

I already knew what I was going to say, having gone over it a hundred times in my mind, but I was having a very difficult time initiating the conversation. In that one moment, just to say the first few words, I had to overcome every name I’d ever been called by my father, by kids in school, by Dr. Lee, by
myself
.

Tom, impatient as always, turned to me and said, “Do you have something to say, or are you just going to waste my time like you always do?” Somehow I managed to ignore his nastiness, and I blurted out, “Tom, you’ve done a lot of good things for me, but I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me, so I think it’s best that we split everything and go our separate ways.”

I don’t know who was more surprised, Tom or me, but I’d done it; I’d confronted him. Tom looked at me and said, “What? You made this decision without me?”—which struck me as funny, because this wasn’t exactly something I could have discussed with him. I didn’t say anything.

It took a few seconds more before what I had said sank in. Then Tom warned me that I’d signed a contract with him and that he wasn’t going to let me off so easily. “If you try to get rid of me,” he said, “I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to take you to hell with me.” That frightened me, because I felt that he could. He told me he’d call a press conference and tell everyone how it really was: that he had AIDS, that I’d infected him, that now after all these years and his hard work, I was throwing him out on the street. He said that people would see me for the selfish, uncaring slut that I was. “After that press conference, you can kiss your contracts good-bye, because you’ll never work again,” he said.

There was enough truth in what Tom said to make me wonder for a second if I was doing the right thing, but only for a second. I said, “I’ve thought about it, and I’ll buy your half of the house from you,” which was a substantial amount of money. Mind you, I had paid for the house with my own money, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to divide everything in half and be done with it. I felt I was buying my freedom.

I must have been naive to think that Tom would consider this a generous offer. The way he saw it, he had made me, and if he couldn’t have me and the life we had together, he simply wanted to destroy me. He actually believed that he had made me.

My approach at this point was to be totally calm and rational. I tried to reason with him, repeating that we needed to go our separate ways because we no longer trusted each other. I again offered to split things down the middle, offering to buy his half of the house so he could find someplace else to live and get on with his life.

While I was explaining this to him, it dawned on me that Tom was blackmailing me. He didn’t want to hear about any kind of settlement. Tom wanted things to stay just the way they were, with him in complete control of my life and my finances. He was blackmailing me to get me to back down. That made me sick to my stomach, because I had thought he would take the money and run. It had never occurred to me that he would blackmail me. So I said to him, to confirm what I thought he was doing, “You’re trying to blackmail me.” He just kept repeating, “I made you, I can destroy you.” I realized then that this was going to be worse than anything I’d imagined. Money wasn’t going to take care of it, because money wasn’t the issue. If Tom couldn’t have me, then he’d destroy what he saw as his creation.

What I didn’t realize then was that Tom was terrified of losing me because without me he had very little identity of his own. As much contempt as he had for me, Tom was probably counting on my taking care of him through his illness. He was going to do whatever he could to hang on, and if he couldn’t change my mind, then he wasn’t the only one whose life would be destroyed. He was going to take me with him.

When we pulled up to the departures area at the airport, I got out and took my bags out of the trunk. I started getting his bags out, and he said, “No, don’t. I’m not going. I have to take care of business here.” I had to go because I had an appearance that I couldn’t miss. I left his bags in the limousine.

As soon as I got into the terminal, I called Debbie. I was worried, because I didn’t know what Tom was going to do. I told her, “Debbie, I did it!” Her greatest concern was that I was okay, and I reassured her that I was. My biggest concern was what Tom would do with my finances, but Debbie reassured me that the way we had restructured things, I was protected and there wasn’t much Tom could do. She was, however, very concerned for my safety.

I wasn’t on the phone long with Debbie, because I had to catch my plane. I don’t remember anything from that flight except that during the movie I went into the restroom and sobbed. After I went back to my seat, I tried to keep my mind occupied with the movie, but I was overwhelmed by my emotions. It was a combination of amazing relief that it was finally over and sheer terror because I didn’t know what Tom was going to do. I didn’t know what he was capable of. He didn’t have power of attorney any longer, but they knew him at the bank, and I doubt they even knew he no longer had power of attorney. Debbie had already reassured me that she would take care of things, yet I couldn’t help but worry. So many conflicting emotions were racing through me at the same time, from relief to joy to sorrow, that worrying about the finances was the easiest thing for me to latch on to.

Somehow I got to the hotel—I don’t remember how. I don’t remember which hotel I stayed at. I was completely exhausted by the time I got to my room, but I couldn’t sleep. I called Debbie again, and then I called Megan to tell her what had happened.

I did my appearance the next day, totally numb. I don’t remember anything about it, but people who were there told me later that I seemed upbeat and very friendly. I’d learned a long time ago how to put on a happy face no matter what was going on, to do what I was supposed to do and to say the right things.

Usually at appearances I had little dialogues with myself. Someone would say, “You went through so much at the ’88 Olympics, hitting your head and coming back and winning the gold medal,” and I’d nod and think to myself, Oh, if you only knew the half of it. Or when women would say, “Oh, I have a daughter I want you to meet,” I’d think, I don’t think you
really
want me to marry your daughter. Sometimes I’d actually say what I was thinking. Like one time when someone asked who the woman in my life was and I said, “Maile.” “Oh, that’s an interesting name. Where does it come from?” I explained that it was Hawaiian, but I never mentioned that Maile was covered from head to toe with black hair, walked on all fours, and had pointy ears.

That day at my appearance I was on autopilot, and when people asked me how I was doing, I’d say I was fine and tell them about my acting classes. The whole time I was thinking, Oh, everything’s okay other than the fact my lover just threatened my life and he’s trying to take everything away from me.

As soon as I was done, I headed for the airport and took the first flight home. Debbie met me at the airport and brought me back to the house she shared with her sister. We talked a lot that day, and that was when I told her about Tom raping me.

Tom was expecting me back on Tuesday and this was Sunday, so I had a couple of days to pull myself together and to plan out a strategy with Debbie. At that point I was more excited than scared. Telling Tom that I wanted to break up was one of the most difficult things I’d done in my life, a lot more difficult than winning four gold medals. Diving was easy by comparison. It was physical. Breaking up with Tom, telling him what I wanted, meant that I had to verbalize what I was feeling. I had to stand up to somebody I felt inferior to.

I called Tom from Debbie’s house, pretending I was in New York. Debbie listened to the conversation on another line. I wanted to find out his thoughts on what we’d discussed. Was he going to leave? Would he agree to what I’d offered him? He was furious, and he threatened me. He told me again that he was going to take me to hell with him, that he would go public with everything and destroy me, that I could kiss my acting career good-bye. He said he’d hold a press conference and tell it the way it
really
is, the way that I
really
am. He was going to tell the “true” story, that he was being thrown out on the street with full-blown AIDS. And he was going to blame me for giving him AIDS, putting me on the defensive, trying to dispute his story.

I asked Tom what he wanted and he said that he’d already told me what he wanted. I thought that meant he was going to make me live up to my contract, which had another year or two to run. But then he simply repeated all his threats about destroying me, and it was clear that what Tom wanted went beyond the contract. He wanted me back under his control, or he wanted to see me destroyed. This time, though, Debbie heard the whole thing, so she knew I wasn’t crazy, that Tom had really said these things.

I told Debbie that I thought one way to deal with Tom’s threats was to go public, hold a press conference ourselves, put it all out on the table. The thought that kept running through my head was, “The truth shall set you free.” My thinking was that if I took the upper hand and was aggressive and held a press conference, it would be out there and he would have nothing to blackmail me with. I would be taking control of my life, and I wouldn’t have to worry about being on the defensive. With the truth out there, people could draw their own conclusions. They might have faulted me for getting involved with Tom and staying with him for as long as I did, but they couldn’t fault me for telling the truth and getting out of an abusive relationship or trying to get on with my life.

Debbie thought that, in this case, going public with the truth was a bad idea. There was no way of knowing how the public would react, and she didn’t want to see me get hurt. She thought the best tactic was to reach a settlement out of court.

Deep down I wanted to come clean with my whole situation, but I had no support among my small circle of friends and family for doing that. I think the overriding concern for everyone was that it would be impossible for me to make any kind of living once this was all out on the table, that I would be sabotaging my own future. I don’t think their concern was unreasonable or unwarranted at the time. For one thing, most of my contracts have a morals clause, so any of the companies I already worked for would have had a pretty easy time getting out of its contract. If I couldn’t make a living doing appearances, exhibitions, and endorsements, what would I do?