"Pay attention," said Phil.
He was lecturing Vic Singleton, George Panther, Maddy and Flair on endurance swimming in Vic's suite in a Long Beach hotel. The ex-bootlegger was having a hard time learning about this strange world, but with the announcement of the swim contestant to the papers and radio, Phil insisted that Vic as the sponsor ought to know a little about swimming and endurance.
Phil pointed out that many land mammals besides man could swim, and in the case of fire or catastrophe swim well indeed with no prior experience in the water. Sea mammals, of course, did the best. Whales could swim for thousands of miles at good speeds. Seals could swim easily at five miles an hour and reach up to twenty miles an hour if they were chasing their dinners. Porpoises had been known to keep up with modern steamships, while a mammoth sea turtle had been clocked at twenty-two miles per hour. Penguins could easily do ten miles an hour and go up to thirty in short bursts. Some had been found more than a thousand miles from land, quite happy in the desert of the ocean.
Polar bears were great swimmers, well-insulated for their cold water environment and had been clocked at six miles per hour, while a trained human swimmer would be lucky to do three for short bursts.
Tigers and elephants had been found swimming; the only way they could reach certain isolated islands in the South Pacific or near Africa. Monkeys had been taught to swim for the inducement of food thrown upon the water.
Small mammals were likewise capable of good swimming records. Rats had been kept swimming steadily for fourteen hours, as well as woodchucks, chipmunks, skunks and possums in stints of six to eight hours.
"I hope no skunks enter my race," laughed Vic.
"You'll get a few human ones," commented George.
Phil moved on to human swimmers. Slow in speed they could still last for many hours in the water. Most challenging was the English Channel swim, first conquered by Matthew Webb in August of 1875 in the time of twenty-one hours and forty five minutes. It was thirty-six years before anyone was able to successfully swim the channel again. Several other men accomplished it, but Gertrude Ederle's recent swim was not only the first female success, but she set a new time record of fourteen hours and forty minutes, from France to the English coast and won her ticker tape parade, fame and money. The English Channel distance was exactly twenty-two miles.
"But we have a twenty-two mile swim from Avalon to the California coast," said Phil. "And no one has officially done the Catalina straits at all. So the publicity, after the Ederle swim, is going to be enormous. You, Vic, are going to have to know a little something about professional swimming. The newspapers treat such swims as a kind of weird circus anyway, so a little reality coming from you will help the cause."
He then went into some of the factors that made for good endurance swimming. Protection from the cold was important. That's why he thought Maddy had a good chance to win this show, because women's bodies were better insulated than men's, with a fatty layer just under the skin. However, the Catalina water, even in January, should not be a great problem. Buoyancy was a factor. Surprisingly the best endurance swimmers hung low in the water. Surface swimming offered waves and currents to slow the pace. Those who could swim deeper in the water did better, so a neutral or even negative buoyancy was best. The power in swimming came from the arms and muscles in the upper torso, so the arms should not be too long; a compact, symmetrical torso and arms in proportion was best.
Phil didn't believe that legs counted at all in long-distance swimming.
"The motion's wasted in up and down movement," he said. "It's like pumping a bicycle where most of the effort is wasted in up and down motion, maybe ninety percent. I teach my swimmers to use the legs as little as possible or not at all."
The rest was a matter of the individual's physique. Great oxygen intake, rapid sugar conversion for energy, a slow heart rate from good conditioning, plus an iron will to win – these things made up the pattern of a champion endurance swimmer. To this you could add training for the specific event and that was the whole story.
"What about kinds of strokes?" asked George.
"I teach crawl," said Phil. "However, I long ago learned not to force an ideal stroke on a swimmer. There is no ideal stroke, because bodies are different. I once saw a swimmer with a frenzied eighty or ninety strokes a minute, hanging on top of the water and felt sure he was going to drown. He beat all my well-trained students instead."
"I remember that," said Maddy as they all laughed.
"What kind of gear will Maddy need?" asked Vic.
"Not much," said Phil. "Endurance swimming is cheap. Nose clips if she wants, although most don't use 'em. Some ear protection against later infection, perhaps cotton with a little oil to combat water penetration. A cap to cover the ears, certainly. It cuts down heat loss up to twenty percent. Lots of swims are lost by the swimmer getting too cold; it's as simple as that. Goggles for the eyes, yes, in salt water."
"And grease?" asked George, fantasizing the bodies of the girl swimmers glistening sexually.
"Probably," said Phil, "but you have the problem of a thin grease like Vaseline wearing off too quickly and a thick one like lanolin being hard to apply. You only need a millimeter or so. If nothing else it gives a psychological lift. Also it saves the friction points of the body from burns. Hours in the water and your armpits, groin, shoulders and even chin begin to ache pretty badly. But no grease on the face or arms. Grease on the face makes it impossible to keep the eyegoggles sealed, and on the arms gives you a loss of the arm's biting power in the water. Greased arms allow slippage and loss of power.
"Now," he finished, "you already have learned more than ninety percent of your newspaper readers will know about swimmers and swimming for records. Anything the reporters ask beyond that you can turn over to me as technical consultant."
"What if they claim the swim is rigged because Maddy works for Vic, the promoter?" asked George.
"A swim is a swim is a swim," said Phil. "We'll have impartial judges. The first one in at Catalina and out at Point Vicente is the best swimmer and it doesn't matter who she's related to, or works for. It's a fair swim."
"I'm glad you said that," said Flair. "I'm going to swim, too. I'm going to hire my own trainer. And I'm going to win, too."
Having dropped her bombshell, she gave Maddy and the others a dirty look and left the room while the group stared after her in astonishment.
To Phil's sorrow the New Jersey group was broken up now. Flair's sudden decision to enter the swim and compete against Maddy was only the latest blow.
"How can she do in this race?" George asked Phil.
"Flair's a helluva swimmer," said Phil. "With the right training and some luck she could give us a bad time."
"How do you feel about Maddy now that she's… she's…"
Phil felt his face set sternly. "I dreamed up this whole thing for Maddy to begin with," he said. "It makes no difference to me that she's decided to marry Vic. I owe her a good winning swim and I'll give her my best."
Secretly he felt quite hurt. He realized that he'd counted on the old intimacy but it was gone. He had Maddy during the daytime but her nights belonged to Vic. Once the training started he began to scold her for her night time activities.
"You're losing sleep, f-f-fooling around with your fiance too much," he complained. "How can I bring you to top form when you dissipate my work each night?"
She merely gave him a cool, infuriating smile. "Look at my daily records. At this point in my training I'm way ahead of where I was when you and I worked together before. Love makes the difference."
He could've killed her.
Flair disassociated herself from the group. She found her own trainer and paid him from her own funds. When Phil complained to Vic he got practically no response.
"She has my guts," said Vic. "It's good for her to step out on her own."
"She could give us bad publicity."
"Maybe the public will go for my fiance and my daughter competing for the prize I give," said Vic proudly.
They did. The newspaper and radio stations also began to build interest in the endurance swim because it was open to all with no entrance fee, and the prizes were huge. Phil had had a fierce struggle with Vic on that.
"Twenty-five thousand dollars to the winner!" roared Vic. "That's five times too much!"
"Twenty-five, fifteen and ten," insisted Phil. "A channel swim is already thought to be a nutty, useless affair by most people. But nobody thinks twenty-five thousand dollars is silly, not even with Wall Street booming."
In the end he won his point, and it was a wise decision. The newspapers and the public would ignore some ego maniac making the swim to get his name in the papers. Or a small affair sponsored by some athletic club for a minor prize was only of limited local interest. But these days a whole family could live extremely well on twenty-five hundred dollars a year. A comfortable living for ten whole years was important money. Invested properly it could last the winner almost indefinitely.
So the entries poured in, as interest mounted, and the publicity for the Vic Singleton Invitational Swim grew across the nation and stimulated interest in foreign countries. Very soon a snowball effect carried them along to the delight of Vic.
"We've got a legless newspaper vendor from San Francisco, and a seventy-year-old entry from Nebraska," he told Phil. "One of the papers is going to start a daily column on us in December, and I'm almost tired of seeing my name in print. Me, Vic Singleton, a nobody from Jersey City, New Jersey. I got to hand it to you, Phillip."
But Phil could only answer with a dour "Thanks." For him it was afternoons in the training boat following Maddy's daily swims, directing her conditioning on land, watching her diet and worrying, as he spent lonely evenings alone in his hotel room. He was even deprived of the company of Texas Bunny who was lost somewhere inland a few miles in the dusty streets of Hollywood, trying to advance her singing career. Nights she had a job warbling in a small night club, so she didn't come around at all anymore.
By Thanksgiving he grew philosophical about it.
"Love and sex had crumbed up my life every time out," he told George. "At least this time there's no chance to spoil things that way."
"Considering that it almost got you killed with Vic and now you're his fair-haired boy, I'd say it didn't hurt you too much," George responded dryly. As Vic's main publicity man he found life quite interesting, especially when certain female, nubile entrants sought his after-hours company with the mistaken idea that they'd have a better chance if they could get close to an "insider".
The holidays came and went with Phil busy if not happy. He hardly noticed as the swim date of the middle of January rushed towards him.
On the night before the race all the contestants were brought by boat from the mainland to the Avalon settlement in Catalina. Hotels were filled; most camped in tents along the beach. There was a general carnival air to the whole area, with the rising excitement about tomorrow's race. Although more than three hundred people had entered during the long publicity build-up, the actual contestants were down to about a hundred and fifty on the last night before the event. The coldness of the water accounted for most of the dropouts, because in January the temperature ran between fifty-five to sixty-five degrees.
Vic Singleton's yacht had been brought around the canal from Atlantic City a couple of months earlier. On this last night he gave a candlelight dinner party for a select few in the big dining room. His guests included a sports editor, the head of the biggest radio station in the area, a motion picture mogul and officials from the Long Beach and Los Angeles city councils. The guests enjoyed champagne and steak as well as the presence of Flair, Maddy and Texas Bunny, whom Vic invited especially so she could meet the movie mogul.
It was to be a truce for the night but of course Maddy and Flair who had to swim tomorrow could not stay late.
After the dinner was over, Maddy, eyes shining, took Phil by the hand.
"Come to the stateroom," she begged. "I want you to see my wedding gown. It's the most gorgeous creation I ever saw."
Phil had already seen her wedding gown. Flair had dragged him there when he first arrived. It was indeed an expensive affair of white satin and veils, displayed on a dresser's dummy in the big bedroom. To Phil it looked like enough cloth and train to cover three brides. Both the gown and the room left a sour taste in his mouth. It was here that he'd first pronged Flair but it was also here that he'd seen Vic screw the love of his life and change everything.
"Very fine," he murmured to Flair.
"What are you going to do about it!" cried Flair. "Right after the race that slut is going to marry my father!"
What Phil did about it was haul off and slap Flair a resounding smack on the face. His nerves were screwed up to the breaking point, but Maddy was no slut. He stalked back to the dinner, leaving Flair shocked and in silence, glaring after him in rage.
Now with the dinner over, Maddy wanted him to see the dress for a second time and he had to go because he couldn't admit he'd seen it already. On the night before a big race you humored your star athlete. Flair sat with her father, head resting dreamily on his shoulder, monopolizing all his attention. Texas Bunny was involved with the movie mogul, George was making eyes at the nubile wife of one of the city officials, while the husband loaded on the champagne. Phil and Maddy slipped away.
The wedding dress was no more. In the short interval that the dinner had taken place, someone had slipped into the bedroom and slashed it to threads. Long, useless pieces of satin fluttered from the dressmaker's form and torn veils littered the floor.
Phil froze in shock. Maddy gave a gasp and then uttered a scream of rage. She plunged out of the room. Phil recovered and rushed after her.
What happened next took place so fast that no one could stop it. A furious Maddy seized one of the steak knives from the table, then jerked Flair up from her place at Vic's side.
"You bitch!" shrieked Maddy. She plunged the knife into Flair's middle. The knife hung there, quivering while Flair gasped, her face going white and began to crumple. Maddy turned and sped out of the room, tearing off her dress. Naked but for panties, she leaped to the boat rail as Phil followed her and executed a dramatic dive into the water.
Phil cursed, stripped off shoes, pants and coat and went over the rail after her with considerable less elegance than his idol, Doug Fairbanks. There were several boats moored at the landing rack. He climbed into one and started off in hot pursuit of the swimming Maddy whose head was already beginning to disappear in the murk.
Silence. Phil and Maddy rested alone in a tent along the Avalon shore. Phil had caught Maddy, brought her out of the water but she didn't want to go back to the yacht. He found a friend who was glad to give up his tent so that Phil could settle Maddy down. They had a long talk, the first time he'd been able to speak to her out of Vic's shadow since she'd come back into his life. Some time passed.
Phil was anxious to know how badly Flair was hurt, but Maddy insisted that the steak knife wound was slight. "It hardly went into her at all." Well, Phil couldn't be both places and he was sure that Vic and George would do all that needed to be done to help Flair.
The rest of the time they talked about the old days, their hurts and small triumphs. Phil was delighted to find that she had her doubts about marrying the older man. As he looked at her in all her beauty, her face glowing in the soft, golden light of the kerosene lamp in the tent, he felt his cock begin to thicken. The old desire to fuck her luscious, creamy body was as strong as ever.
He put his face close to hers.
"Maddy, are you sure you didn't destroy that gown yourself!"
"What!"
He kissed her on the mouth, thrilling to the soft lips, the sweet breath. She gasped in spite of herself.
"Cut it out!" she cried. "Why would I destroy my own wedding gown?"
"Part of you doesn't want to marry Vic. You're in too deep, can't admit it to the world." He felt under her blanket, cupped a rich, naked breast, feeling the nipple respond at once, coming up hard against his palm.
"Non-nonsense!" she cried softly. "Don't do that. I don't want sex. I hate all men!"
He desisted but his hard-on persisted. After a moment, he sneaked a hand under the blanket, this time to cup her pelvis and touch her cunt, sexy in those almost-dry panties. For a second she opened her legs with a groan of desire, but then closed them and shoved his hand away.
"No, Phil, I won't be seduced."
He thought she would. He thought she needed the relaxation of sex, then sleep on the night before the big race. He felt a rising excitement. Here, at last, he was getting some of his own back, after dismal months.
The tent flap opened. Flair came in, wearing only her one-piece bathing suit. She stared down at them. "I didn't do it, Maddy."
"Flair!" Phil jumped up.
"No," she said, answering his anxious expression. "The knife didn't go in very far, Maddy. Not that it feels too great, but it only needed a small bandage. Daddy's madder than hell, though. He wants to kick us both out of the race for unsportsman-like conduct; torn dresses and flashing knives."
"He can't do that!" flashed Phil.
"He needs the excuse," said Flair. "There's been too much talk about a rigged race in favor of his daughter or his fiance. Have you fucked yet?"
"What?!!" said Phil.
"Of all the nerve…" Maddy began.
But Flair reached into Phil's shorts and found his rock-hard cock which she brought out with a murmur. "Just getting ready, I see."
And while both Phil and Maddy stared in horror, Flair bent her head and sucked Phil's stiff manhood into her mouth. Phil gave an immediate groan of pleasure. He'd been sexed up for quite a while.
"Flair! What are you doing!" cried Maddy as she suddenly sat up so that the blanket fell back and her naked breasts shone in the golden light. "You tore up my dress, now you come here and pull this vulgar…"
"I didn't tear it. Texas Bunny tore it. She's always been mad at you for grabbing Dad," said Flair between sucks. "Anyway, I need Phil's prong. I need sex so I can relax and sleep, in case Daddy reinstates us tomorrow."
"Don't do that in front of me!" cried Maddy, jumping up. "How dare you do that! Phil, stop her."
"She n-n-needs sex to reduce tension!" sang the happy Phil as Flair sucked deliciously on his shaft. "So do y-you, as I was trying to tell you a minute ago!"
"You beasts!" cried Maddy.
"Come on, Maddy," said Flair. "You've been fucking the heels off my father for weeks – on the yacht, the train, in hotels. You know what sex is all about, so why resent me and Phil having a little?"
With a cry of despair, Maddy grabbed her blanket and fled the tent.
She was gone exactly twenty seconds, not quite long enough for Phil to enjoy a couple of hot, open-mouthed kisses, feel up Flair's gorgeous-breasts and mount her saddle.
"Phil, are you going to f-f-fuck that odious girl!" cried Maddy.
Phil stopped. "She says she needs the relaxation and relief from tension. You don't."
"So do I," said Maddy. She stripped off her panties and stretched out next to Flair. "And you're my trainer, not hers!"
That was the beginning of the best sex Phil ever had, in that modest tent under the golden light of the kerosene lamp. Never again would he smell that kerosene smell again without remembering those two luscious, naked girls, both voluptuous, both exquisitely built, both equally hot, both yearning for the plunge of his rock-hard cock. In size, weight and richness, in their supple bodies and large, firm breasts, they could've been sisters.
There was really no choice to make. Phil had hungered for his randy Maddy for too long. Quickly he mounted her hips and violated her wet, swollen cunt with his eager cock, crying out in delight as he targeted home in the hot, waxy tightness of her cunt.
"Oh, Maddy!"
"Oh, Phil!"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," said the third voice. It was Flair, who far from being angry, seemed delighted to witness two other human beings in hot sex, a new thrill for her. She used her fingers between her legs to good effect as Phil and Maddy grunted and groaned, rocked and keened, sucked and caressed, as if they had to destroy each other's blazing, sex-hungry beings.
But Flair had no intention of missing out on the action. She noted as Phil hugged his sex partner his head extended past the head of the girl getting cock-reamed. She sat behind Maddy's head and opened her legs.
"As long as you're not doing anything much at this end, how about a little tongue?" she begged.
Phil gave a cry of delight and began to suck on Flair's cunt while he drummed his blade into Maddy's writhing belly. Maddy protested but there was nothing she could do, pinned down by Phil's weight and driven to glory by his big, thrusting prick. Maddy had been used to sex with Vic and while Vic was all right in sex, he didn't have Phil's body, Phil's prick girth, or Phil's youth. In no time at all she completely forgot about Flair as she went dizzy with the sizzling friction of crazed prick deep in her cunt. She humped and panted and cooed like a silly girl on her first wild sex trip.
Flair could hear the meaty sound of male cock digging into female sheath, she could see the stretched-out Maddy, alive with friction madness, shaking to her fabulous drilling… and she could enjoy Phil's hot, sucking mouth and tongue on her box. The stimulation of watching two adult bodies fuck while having her own parts taken soon lifted her to heights of glory. "Oh, my heavens, it's ta-tooo much!" she cried.
Phil had the best of it. With his long-neglected prick flexing happily in his Maddy's belly, he could bury his mouth in the rich wetness of Flair's pink cunt, find her clit and drill two women at once. Never had male pride risen higher than to feel the sweet distress of the two females as they writhed and grunted, pleasure-wracked and helpless under his double assault. He thrilled over and over, driving, driving, driving, lost to the world, living in the high exultation of mastering two gorgeous females at once. He went on and on.
It was Flair who gave up her sex treasure first. The lascivious orgy was just too much for her inexperienced soul. She felt the ineffable, sweet culmination rush at her. Her eyes went big, her mouth fell open, she grabbed Phil's head, froze and delivered her cunt throbs with rich cries of "Oh, oh, oh, I'm fuckedddd!"
Legs wrapped around Phil's back, cunt driven to ecstasy of feeling, Maddy heard Flair's desperate cries of joy and succumbed to Phil's ravaging prick.
"I have – to – oh, God, I have to goooo!" she sang.
Throb, throb, throb. She locked on Phil, went paralyzed and opened her belly in female submission, her cunt squeezing powerfully on Phil's shaft as she lost her womanhood to the white-hot blaze in her cunt. "Ahhh!"
It was the double orgasms, the feel of two hot, helpless cunts expiring one after the other that raised Phil to the peak of his own lust passion. With Flair done and panting in relief, with Maddy finished, he cried out his sex warrior's triumph.
"You're both fuckeddd! And I'm gone!"
His body tensed in an incredible locking of muscle, nerve and gland. There was a glorious, unforgettable paralysis of bliss before the deluge. Then his cock let go to explode inside the cunt of the girl he'd always wanted so badly. Spurt, spurt, spurt. Giving animal grunts he seeded her with massive relief and exulting shots of jism. "Yeee," he cried as he spent and spent in total fulfillment of his sexual power. As he spurted in glory, Maddy throbbed some more and he floated away into sublime spheres of ultimate consummation, realizing his manhood in mind, body and soul.
When Phil woke up the next morning the girls were gone. So, he discovered, when he emerged from the tent, were all the contestants! The beach was bare of everything but tourists.
"Oh, they moved the start of the race up to the isthmus," a man told him. "Old Singleton knows it's only eighteen miles across at that point, so everybody has a better chance."
Phil arrived at the isthmus boat-hitchiking, minutes before the start of the race. The scene was chaos with the final hundred or so swimmers standing just short of the water, waiting for the starting gun. Spectators on shore and on boats leaned forward anxiously.
The starting gun sounded and a hundred or so eager marathoners dived, ran, splashed or walked into the water. Among the number were some world-famous, highly trained swimmers. These few immediately stroked ahead of the field and disappeared. Even as the roar from the crowd and the blasting boat horns began to fade it was easy to see that the vast horde were only there for the fun. The sun was out, but the water close to shore was fifty-five degrees and only sixty-four in the middle of the San Pedro channel.
There were plenty of volunteer boats to pace the swimmers as well as the boats of the judges. Vic didn't want anybody to drown in his extravaganza.
Phil found Vic at the starter's booth.
"What about the girls?" he asked.
"I'm letting 'em swim, but they have a handicap. They have to wait for an hour after the start to go in the water."
That was fatal. With strong male champions out there, the girls could never catch up.
"You prick!" said Phil.
Vic put his head close to Phil. "No, you're the prick! You fucked my girl last night. I'm through with you, always screwing my women. You're fired, Griffin!"
Later Phil paced Maddy in the water, ready with hot broth and encouragement as he followed in a boat. He didn't blame her for trying. To train and then not to swim would be too much. She gave up after four hours, because the leaders were too far ahead and her heart wasn't in it.
A while later they saw Flair picked up by her handler's boat. She waved to them, they waved back. Phil, saw the look on Maddy's face and understood then that she felt guilty about knifing Flair and ending Flair's chances. Maddy wouldn't have swum her best anyway.
Phil asked her about the situation with Vic after last night.
She said she didn't know. Vic still wanted her; she wasn't sure.
She wanted to take a month and think it over.
"I'll visit my folks in San Diego. I want to get away from everybody, Phil, including you."
Phil was suddenly sick of the whole thing, and of Vic, Flair, Texas, George and even Maddy. He was angry that Vic had shortened the swim. In sum he'd wasted better than two years and gummed himself up with too much sex at the wrong time as usual. What he needed most of all was a new career start. Once he reached land he was through with this crowd. Even if Vic hadn't fired him, he'd have quit.
The winner of the race was a penniless Canadian teenager, George Young, who confounded everyone by beating several world champions. He collected the twenty-five thousand, lots of publicity, and some stage appearances, the hero of the hour. A poor, widow mother back home added to the magnificence of his triumph. His time was fifteen hours and forty-five minutes, a beautiful swim for the record books.