GENRE: Romantic Comedy

SUBJECT: Tech-savvy

CHARACTER: A gymnast

When the 2028 committee announced plans for the Olympic Village, the talking heads called it A Slice of the Future. Except, how can it be the future if I’m standing in it, giant robot clicker in hand, waving and shaking at a room of unresponsive lockers? I miss the old system—first come, first served for any jock with a lock.

I call conspiracy. This is the Japanese or the Italians, trying to keep the second-best American man off the pommel horse. Deny me a day in the gym, deny me a medal.

“Give it a go at your fingerprint, mate,” says a nearby Brit, a swimmer by the looks of his broad, chiseled shoulders.

“Oh. Thanks,” I say, resting my thumb on the rubber indentation, previously assumed to be a button. A door in the corner pops open with a squeak, as if laughing at me.

There’s someone else’s stuff in it…because of course there is. A phone and some black underwear. It’s nondescript, which is weird for an Olympian. I can’t blink without the US team sticking me with another tote bag plastered with the stars and stripes.

This other guy must have his wires crossed. I’ve been trying to open this shit for ten minutes, so I’m not about to walk away. I tear off a bit of athletic tape and scribble a note.

Locker 425 opened for me. Unless you’ve stolen my thumb, kindly find your own.

Then I leave and enter the gym because I’m at the Olympics, and I’ve got bigger things on my mind. After training, I re-sacrifice my fingerprint to the locker gods. A new, softer hand has added something underneath my words.

In the athlete app, go to settings, profile, locker. If you have been assigned 425, then we are double-booked.

MVH

There’s a little drawing of a snowflake next to his initials. It’s cute but resilient, like it has seen hard winters and come out stronger.

So I do what he says, and it shows me 425 clear as day. I could complain to the staff, but what’s the point? I have a job to do and can get over sharing a locker. I tear off another piece of tape.

Looks like we’re sharing. Please advise on how to use the key to my dorm.

PS: Still not convinced you don’t have my thumb.

I don’t feel like giving away my initials, so instead I draw the outline of a pine tree. It matches the one tattooed on my wrist, which matches the one outside my childhood bedroom window. No matter where this dream of glory takes me, I’ll always have a little piece of Georgia burned into my skin. I have to cover it with makeup for competition of course, lest a lonely housewife see a tattoo on TV and have an impure thought.

I called it a dorm key in the note, but it’s more like a USB drive with magical powers that clearly never awakened in me. My trainers would have a fit to know I’ve been scaling a wall and scrambling through my window during the most important competition of my life.

That night, I try to find him, but there is no one in the Olympic directory with the initials MVH. When I open our locker the next day, there’s a new note waiting for me.

The Lightning Stick is inserted in the top-left corner of the door frame. Also, if we have

the same thumb, we are in more trouble than we think.

MVH

This snowflake is just as enticing as the first. I reply while trying not to think about this man in peak athletic form telling me where to put my lightning stick.

Many thanks. And the showers?

My pine tree is getting bigger with each note, as if I need more branches to hide my shame. I want to add that the idiot who came up with the idea to put a computer in a shower should be sacrificed at the closing ceremonies. I hope this doesn’t make MVH think I haven’t been showering. I have, but only because I jump in as someone else steps out without using all of their allotted eight minutes.

I don’t make it to the personal gym the next day. I’m here for gymnastics things and have to do gymnastics things. There are no medals awarded for flirting with hot locker pen pals. The forty-eight barely-showered hours I spend waiting for MVH’s reply are brutal, but when I finally return to our locker, I’m not disappointed.

I could tell you about the showers, but I would like to show you instead.

MVH

Heat rushes to my neck and cheeks and a few other places I’d rather not think about while wearing my training shorts. Next to his snowflake, he has drawn the official gymnastics avatar for the games.

Do I flirt back, or talk smack? This is the nature of the village. Friends back home ask about it like it’s some paradise of promiscuity, hungry bodies in their prime. In reality, it is this incredible, fleeting thing that promises victory, but more often than not ends early and empty-handed. We have all put in the time, the sweat, the sacrifice to be here. That’s the part no one talks about. How little life I’ve lived just to experience this one piece so few can achieve. I want to grab it while I still can.

Look for me in the arena. I’ll be the one wearing gold at the end.

On the eve of the team all-around, I am resting in my dorm—having not crawled through the window—watching commentary from the qualifying round a few days before. They are displaying a letter from the King of Sweden, wishing luck to the Swedish men who are competing in the team event for the first time in something like a thousand years. It doesn’t pull my attention until the anchor mentions the sign-off.

Med vänliga hälsningar.

It is apparently Swedish for kind regards, but all I see is M-V-fucking-H. My locker fling has yet to be unmasked, but he’s been given a passport.

I wish I could say I am able to ignore this during the event, but my gaze slides over to the Swedish team too often, wondering which one is my Snowflake. Instead of the second-best pommel horseman on the US team, I am more like the sloppiest pommel horseman who gives a surprisingly gold-medal-worthy performance on rings. Who knew emotional distress was a motivator for flipping oneself about on some dangly pieces of wood?

But the cool thing is, I win. We win, and I am so overwhelmed I barely notice the grim faces of the Swedes.

I never get another note. It’s a reminder of the impermanence of it all. I would go back to my country, and he would go back to his, and we would train ourselves to death and never find out what it would be like to shower together.

Before I know it, I am stalking the Swedish Team’s website. I don’t know why I linger on Oskar Norberg’s photo. Maybe it’s because I’ve watched his vault so many times I have it memorized. Textbook but glorious. I look closer, and that’s when I see it. The delicate lines of a snowflake jutting from the sleeve of his SVERIGE zip-up.

I have this feeling Oskar is still in the city, lamenting his loss. I take to the streets, which sounds dramatic, but there is no shortage of horny Olympians waiting for the opportunity to comfort him.

The social app for athletes leads me to a bar in the touristy part of the city. The Swedes are here, and I’m instantly lost in a sea of yellow and blue. Elbows up, I push through, drawing every eye in the room to my track suit that screams ‘MERICA much louder than I’d like.

He sees me before I see him. Then I’m standing before this man who is my equal in so many ways—except when it comes to navigating the gadgets and gizmos of the Olympic Village.

“Hi,” I say, before wondering if I should have said it in Swedish and how I would even do that.

“It’s Benjamin, right? You are impressive on the rings,” he says in perfect English. My name on his tongue is melodic, better than the dream of hearing my national anthem as golden metal hangs from my neck.

“I…” I really don’t know what to say, so I just lift my arm and show him the pine tree on my wrist. He does the same, brandishing that immaculate snowflake. His home next to mine. Both so far away.

“Do you want to know how to use those electric scooters they gave us?” Oskar asks, saying more with his eyes than his words.

With the world gathered around us, we ride into the night.