He was my hero, and, at thirteen, I was his schatzi, or so I’d thought. I’d come to him broken after frustrating months with my long-standing skating coach, who, resentful of my gains during a summer away, had systematically taken apart my newly mastered jumps until there was nothing left of them or me. As the boys looked on, she’d shouted across the rink: “I don’t want to see someone strutting like a peacock. Do you really think you have something to show?” Mortified, I’d fallen, sitting on the ice, arms crossed over my pancake chest, unable to get up. That evening, Dad called Karli to ask if he—a former two-time Olympic champion—would coach me. The next week, Mother and I began two years of weekend commutes from Boston to New Jersey during the school year and transatlantic trips to Vienna and Cortina in the summer.
Crossing the George Washington Bridge that first Saturday morning, we got lost in the labyrinth of West New York’s back streets before pulling into the littered parking lot of its odd, square rink where skaters laced their boots next to the lobby’s slot machines.
The arena was a far cry from the Skating Club of Boston’s regulation rink, but I decided not to care. Amongst the skaters, Karli stood on the ice in his overshoes waiting for me. An average-sized man in a shirt and tie, a wool sports jacket over a knit vest, and, covering a receding hairline, an olive velvet Tyrolean hat. That he’d lost his former athletic physique and was now training in such a place was not important to me, as he put his arm around my shoulder and offered in Austrian English, “So happy you come. Ve start mit rockers.”
“Right hand lower, that’s it, darling,” he said as I exited the turn, small corrections I could easily handle, my confidence growing by the minute. In the following hour of free skating, although still wobbly, I stayed on my feet, as I hadn’t in the previous weeks. “Soldiers back, schatz”— soldiers and shoulders often confused, as were judges and churches in a most amusing muddle of English. Balance returning and free to strut once more, I began landing my jumps again, just because he said I could.
Back in Boston while practicing circles and jumps alone, I counted the days until the next West New York trip, hoping to garner more schatzis and darlings. Over the winter, I gradually returned to my former self, my figures more solid, my jumps more consistent. I was disappointed when he couldn’t make it to winter competitions, where I placed decently, but, in the spring, he announced he was returning home to Vienna for summer training and hoped I would join him. Just as plans were finalized, Mother hurt her back and was confined to bed.
“Not to worry,” Karli told Dad on the phone. “She can stay with us. I look after her.”
I begged and pleaded, imagining adventures without Mother by my side, hoping Dad would agree. Eager for my rise up the skating ladder, he’d recently given me a ruby-diamond-and-sapphire ring, a miniature of the American flag he was determined I would represent. But in this instance, he was adamant, “You’re not going without your mother. Karli has a reputation for liking his girls.”
Mother eventually made the trip, spending most days in bed in the comfort of the Hapsburg-yellow hotel near the Schönbrunn Palace, occasionally venturing out to visit the primates at the Palace Zoo, as I took the tram from Hiezing to a station near the Wiener Stadthalle, not far from the red-light district.
Newly built, the Stadthalle had multiple auditoriums, one of which housed a regulation-sized ice rink where Karli coached me and an Austrian girl with a bucktooth smile. Two years older and far more developed, Helli spoke some English. Karli had brought her from Vienna to live and train with him in Lake Placid. She was a better jumper than I, but I never saw him give her little hugs like the ones I often received. And I got the extra time, my half-hour lesson often stretching to an hour. As our patches (rectangles of ice where we practiced school figures) were side-by-side, I could eavesdrop on her lessons and figure out that Wende were rockers, Gegendreier brackets, Doppeldreier double threes. But I was too shy to try out my new vocabulary in Karli’s presence, fearful I would make more of a salad of his language than he made of mine.
Late afternoons after practice, he would sometimes take the two of us to Grinzing to taste the new wine at a Heuriger, confirming in my mind that I was now grown up. Only once did he bring us to his home, a dark place full of mahogany furniture, crocheted tablecloths, and a wife who looked none too pleased. More often we’d go to the Engelmann Olympic swimming complex that belonged to his wife’s family. In his see-through white briefs, Karli, also a former Olympic breaststroker, would dive into the pool beside us, allowing us no more than 300 meters of swimming. Skaters shouldn’t get too soft in the legs.
Sundays, our day off from training, Karli arranged longer outings. Drives through the Vienna woods and on to the Neusedlersee at the Hungarian border, a magical world where storks nested on roofs and Roma played haunting melodies. He introduced me to the score of Kálmán’s Gräfin Mariza, and memorizing the lyrics, I imagined myself a countess. Later when I learned this honorary Aryan’s music had been banned in the Reich after he emigrated, I wondered if Karli knew. But at the time, I was focused on transforming into an Austrian girl sporting circle braids by her ears, donning a dirndl and a training bra.
After practice, Karli offered another kind of instruction: how to slip into a coat a man holds open for you, how to dress for opera—he brought Mother and me to Aida and Fledermaus—how to apply perfume—a dab behind the wrists, one at the nape of the neck. I was thrilled with the attention, unaware I was becoming Gigi.
Lessons and outings were put on hold mid-summer when Dad flew over to visit and check on my progress. I was nervous when he came to the rink, wondering if I was meeting his and Karli’s expectations. On the visit’s plus side: I didn’t have to rehash the day’s practice at dinner as Idid in Boston, and, in Vienna, there were no copies of the Wall Street Journal or Barrons on the dining room table waiting to be read and discussed. Following my hoped-for Olympic win, Dad expected me to take over his brokerage business. But when he expounded on the Dow and quizzed me on the Journal, I often balked. He would remind me that given my inability to talk business or politics, I would never be of any interest to a man.
At some point during the visit, Dad sat down privately with Karli. Both former athletes were now in their fifties, but Dad, though not in Karli’s athletic league, was a successful businessman, while Karli depended on his wife’s handouts. I would like to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting, as surely Dad’s blood boiled when Karli presented him with a bill twice as much as he’d expected. He paid it, he later told me, making it abundantly clear that from then on, I’d have a half an hour figure and free skating lesson, not an hour of both.
I didn’t want to think of Karli taking advantage, charging for extra time supposedly offered as a gift. Perhaps I was expected to have said something earlier about the added attention. The additional cost only increased my performance pressure. I was relieved when Dad flew back home, happy to resume my now curtailed lessons still replete with little hugs.
I was changing boots alone in the locker room one day when Karli came in.
“I want to look at your edges, darling. They are maybe needing a grinding.” He picked up one of the skates I’d just removed and ran his thumb nail over the blade’s inside edge.
“Dull, like I was thinking.” He took me by the hand and, pulling me out of my seat, guided my fingernail along what seemed a well-honed edge. “They need a little loving, like I do,” he said, setting the skate down, pulling me towards him, and kissing me hard on the mouth. My legs turned to jelly.
I’ve wondered if that kiss was the start of my becoming a nymphet, if the Lo of my Lo-Lor-Lorraine tripped off the tongue like Lo-Lola-Lolita, if I had Nabokov’s requisite perilous magic, what Humbert referred to as ineffable signs—the slightly feline outline of the cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb.
I became wary of Karli but also excited by him, wondering when the next kiss would come. Some time passed before it did. Mostly, he was a paternal coach, warmer and more interesting than my own father, and I gladly allowed him to introduce me to the treasures of his city, its musical history, the Musikverein where he’d studied—he was an accomplished violinist—and the places where Mozart, Schubert, Gluck, and Strauss had played. One day we were walking hand-in-hand on Mariahilferstrasse, admiring the Sachertorte displays, when he suddenly pointed to the other side of the street and said, “Do you see that man over there? He’s a Jew.”
The Sound of Music had just premiered in London, and I’d started thinking of Karli as a Captain von Trapp, refusing to consider any possible Nazi affiliation, unaware that Hitler had presided at his last Olympic win at Garmisch. Shocked by his pronouncement, but not knowing how to respond, I could only pull my hand back from his.
At the end of July, Karli drove the three of us—Helli, Mother, and me—from Vienna to Cortina to train at the Olympic Ice Stadium. At first, we ignored the maze of locker rooms in the basement of the building opposite the rink, arriving in our workout clothes every morning and sitting on the benches in front of the ice to lace our skates. But because Italian workmen, repairing nearby sewer lines, jeered and chased after me as I made my way back to the hotel at the day’s end, I soon started bringing a coat to pull over my head.
To add to my discomfort, the South Tyrol Italian-German conflict had flared again, spilling over to Cortina in the neighboring province of Belluno. Once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ladin and German-speakers were now in the minority and some Italians removed Austrian names from the gravestones and beat up people thought to be of Germanic descent. Karli arrived at the rink one morning with a black eye; he’d been walking in town, donning his signature Tyrolean hat, when an Italian had decked him.
Given the local disturbances, Karli didn’t organize outings as he had in Vienna. Most of the time, we went our separate ways after practice. But one afternoon, he made his way down to my walk-in closet locker room in the next building. Quickly closing the door behind him, he grabbed me by the shoulders, pressing me close. I felt his whole body next to mine, his tongue in my throat, his nicotine-stained fingers in my crotch. No other bliss on earth comparable to that of fondling a nymphet. An undeniable electric tingle. Then the sound of footsteps in the hallway. A bolt of shame. And before I could respond, he slipped away, perhaps afraid Mother was coming to see what was taking me so long. Moments later I emerged from the coat room catacombs, blinded by the sun turning the Dolomites a deep shade of coral.
At the end of our Cortina training, Karli gifted me his Tyrolean hat. When it was not on my head, I would run my thumb along the white rope above its brim and finger its sizable bristle, unaware that lore forbids touching a man’s Gamsbart. At the same time, he suggested a brief holiday on the Lido where we could watch the glassblowers, sample linguine con vongole, and bask in the sun. We drove down to Venice together, but Mother, who tended to heat-stroke, left us alone to enjoy the beach where we lay side by side on lounge chairs until we got too hot and had to plunge into the Adriatic. Once, as I tried to follow him down to a shell on the ocean floor, he reached back and grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me towards him, his mouth finding mine, his tongue again penetrating my throat, his other hand pushing back the crotch of my swim suit to massage a spot I didn’t know existed. Until then, I hadn’t realized I was teetering on a tightrope I might not be able to negotiate.
Only recently have I learned there’s a term for adults attracted to children from early puberty to their mid-teenage years: hebephilia. It comes from Hebe, the goddess of youth, and Philia, meaning love. More words like pederosis and nympholepsy, had they been known to me at the time, might have explained the path our relationship had taken.
Fortunately, that fall, West New York’s no-locker-room-rink again provided a venue where balance could be regained. Under its glaring lights and to the tune of its dinging slot machines, I safely continued to improve. Karli couldn’t come to Nationals that winter; his wife wanted him home. But upon learning I’d won the Juniors, he urged me to go to the 1961 World Championships as a team alternate and to participate in the post-competition exhibition tour. I could hardly contain my excitement when, just after my fifteenth birthday in January, the ticket for Sabena flight 548 arrived.
I don’t remember if Mother called him the day before we were to travel to let him know of my school’s last-minute ultimatum—go with the world team and don’t come back to school. In the few hours before the train left for New York for the Brussels flight, I’d made the difficult decision to stay home. My name, however, remained on the passenger list. At 5:10 the following morning, the phone rang—a Boston Globe reporter informing my father of my death and asking for an interview. Sabena Flight 548 had crashed in Brussels and there were no survivors. In the fog of shock, my father sent my screaming mother upstairs to check that I really was in my bed.
What’s left of that morning: the bell-tolling-like reading of passenger names on the morning news—mine at first included then retracted—and that Karli didn’t call. Perhaps he didn’t know what to say. Perhaps he had no inkling that of the eighteen team members and associates, nine were from Boston and I’d spent most afternoons of my childhood and adolescence with six of them. Perhaps his wife had phoned again, irritated he had yet to return home. But wouldn’t he have at least wanted to know if I were still alive? A question I was too numb to ask that post-Valentine’s morning. Exactly what he said when I saw him some weeks later is now gone, those months ablur. During that winter of white nights, though, he sent me letters written in German. Words I struggled to understand, words not meant for others’ eyes, words that kept me going until spring came to a close and I could escape the ghosts of my Boston teammates in Vienna and Cortina.
That next fall in West New York, we worked together to bring me to the pinnacle of U.S. skating. Yet my only two memories of that time were not on the ice. There was the Saturday after training when Karli invited me to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. Excited to be going to theater again with my coach, a former actor and movie star, I was looking forward to spending time alone with him, happy that Mother wanted to rest before our trek back to Boston. But just as we were leaving the rink, a pear-shaped, middle-aged lady in an oversized coat showed up and gave me a sour look. During the performance, Karli sat stiffly between his mistress and his nymphet, occasionally raising a hand, kept otherwise in his lap, to draw my attention to the Rockette’s kicks and head flicks. Dancing as astronauts, they were saluting feminism that year.
After our last practice before Christmas, he gave me a beautifully wrapped gift. The card read “Das liebste and beste liebe Lorraine” (The dearest and best loved Lorraine)— fancy prose of the hebephile. Inside, a jewelry box that opened to a dancer twirling to La Vie en Rose.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose
When he takes me into his arms
He speaks to me softly
And I see life through rose-colored glasses
The tune played as I later arranged my trinkets in the box: the flag ring and others Dad had given me, one crafted from his opal stickpin, and a cameo portrait of an elegant young lady he envisioned me becoming.
Karli didn’t drive up to Boston for Nationals that winter when I made the world team, his wife again calling him home to Vienna. Ithoughthe might make the 150-odd-mile drive from his house to Prague for the World Championships six weeks later, as Helli was competing too, but there was no sign of him. I don’t remember now when my parents told me he had returned home permanently and I would need a new coach.
Whatever pleasure I once had on the ice began to dwindle, as did my skating ambition, other interests gradually taking its place. After winning Nationals the following year, I hung up my skates. When Dad said, “You could have been the most famous girl in the world, but you blew it,” I took off the flag ring, stashed it along with his others in the back of a drawer, and then gave Karli’s box to Goodwill. A few years later, during a move in medical school, Karli’s hat disappeared. I don’t remember taking much notice.
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Rumpus original logo art by Luna Adler
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ENOUGH is a Rumpus original series devoted to creating a dedicated space for work by women, trans, and nonbinary people who engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence. We believe that while this subject matter is especially timely now, it is also timeless. We want to make sure that this conversation doesn’t stop—not until our laws and societal norms reflect real change.
Many names appearing in these stories have been changed.
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