The Show Must Go On : Butterfly Specialist Melvin Stewart Has a Competitive Drive for Sport, but Also a Need to Express Himself as an Artist

Where does it stop? Not with the videotape that captures the vignettes of a multifaceted life. Nor with the play that exposes his internal conflicts.

It doesn’t stop with self-analysis, piercing observations or boyish silliness.

What a complex web Melvin Stewart has weaved. If he were simply an Olympic swimming champion looking at the black line of a pool all these years, it might have ended there. It does for many others.

But sport numbs Stewart like Novocain. He is more interested in personality than who won.

“I want to be taken in,” said Stewart, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist in the 200-meter butterfly. “I want to know the motivation. What makes them want to win.”

So it does not stop outwardly. Stewart is so driven to learn the elusive answers, he has turned the camcorder and playwriting on himself in a sort of transcendental collaboration. Someday, perhaps, the artist will explain the athlete.

In the upcoming Knoxville, Tenn., production of “Toilet Paper Tales,” written by Stewart and Chris Stringfield, Stewart’s character offers this monologue:

“People call me a hypocrite because I live for me and don’t worry about everyone else. I think I’m the least hypocritical of all of them because they are all doing the same thing, just cloaking it in a shroud of self-righteous altruism. (Mocking) Therefore I’m the hedonist. I am the hedonist because there is nothing more perfect than pleasure and I can’t help it, I’m a perfectionist.”

Stewart’s prowess as one of the world’s great 200-meter butterfly swimmers bears this out as much as anything in his life, and he hopes it continues for at least another year.

He and the rest of the United States’ best swimmers are at the U.S. nationals this week in Pasadena on the way to Atlanta and the 1996 Olympic Games.

Stewart will try to win his 13th consecutive national title in the 200-meter butterfly Tuesday at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center. Thursday, he will challenge Mark Henderson in the 100 butterfly using the innovative dolphin kick.

At 26, he is a two-time Olympian, a former world-record holder, world champion and not willing to let go. When he lost his world record to Russia’s Denis Pankratov in June, Stewart was shaken. It was as if something was taken away.

And the artist in him realized the disillusionment was fodder for a perfect sound bite. He went home that evening and recorded. Leaving his emotions on tape, Stewart found a release and returned to the pool at the University of Tennessee with renewed vigor.

“I yawn when I’m behind the block at races,” he said. “Now I have a reason not to yawn . . . not to be just mundane and ordinary.”

Actually, there is little about Stewart that is perfunctory. He is as unusual as a San Francisco snowstorm.

He grew up in North and South Carolina in a Christian fundamentalist family that got swept up in the seductive world of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and the PTL ministry. His father, a man larger than life at 6 feet 3 and 280 pounds, was a truck driver in Charlotte before becoming Bakker’s manservant until the television evangelist’s indictment for defrauding investors of millions.

Between 13 and 16, Stewart was forced by his mother to read seven chapters of the Bible out loud each day. She saw the hypocrisy of the PTL and wanted her son to learn about God from the book instead of an evangelist’s interpretation.

With his father’s loyalty to Bakker as unwavering as his mother’s suspicions, Stewart’s family was filled with tension, one of the few parts of his life he does not openly discuss.

“It was very unsettling at home,” he said. “I always escaped by going to the pool.”

On weekends he and his older sister, Kim, discovered another escape--movies. After Saturday morning workouts, their father, Melvin Sr., left them at a mall, where they spent the day watching films.

“We did it every weekend for a year when we didn’t have meets,” Stewart recalled. “I still do it today.”

This passion for film has led to Hollywood, where Stewart, an avid moviegoer, someday hopes to make pictures. He has a Hollywood publicist and has earned bit parts in such TV shows as “Baywatch.” Stewart has a degree from Tennessee in public administration with a minor in theater.

For now, he is content to explore the tableau of his life. With the camcorder always at his side, Stewart chronicles himself as he wishes others would see him--the conflicting personalities of athlete and artist.

With his hand pressed lightly over the red “On” button, Stewart can control his vision. As a fully accredited member of the MTV Generation, he wants to depict an ambiguous world.

As an aside, he mentions he is glad his publicist did not stay for an all-day interview starting at a Beverly Hills hotel.

“I’m tired of people trying to make it plain vanilla,” Stewart said. “I feel like everyone is trying to push everyone to the middle of the road. Differences should be celebrated, not criticized.”

Even in the pool, Stewart is different, although he credits his coach, John Trembley, with the innovations. Unlike most butterflyers, Stewart turns his head and breathes to the side. Most lift their heads straight up to breathe.

“We had every intention of changing it,” Trembley once said. “But after watching him, we didn’t, because it was so natural to him.”

Since December, Stewart has used an underwater dolphin kick, which he claims will make him a world-class competitor in the 100 butterfly. At the spring nationals, he recorded the fastest time of the year, since surpassed. Stewart swims half the race underwater when using the kick.

Others have not been quick to adopt the kick.

“I don’t understand why,” Stewart said. “It’s lightning fast. My guess is that it’s very painful. You pay for it on the back end [final 50 meters]. You die.”

Stewart chuckles at the thought, his competitive side exposed.

Then he drifts again, using sports as a metaphor. He says U.S. swimming has lost its status as world-beaters in this decade because of a poor work ethic. Isn’t that what economists are saying about U.S. productivity?

“We’re just not willing to give up time, energy and emotion and fun to do it,” Stewart said. “I personally am not. I have way too much fun. It’s quality of life.”

The media generation has infiltrated the souls of the young with too much instant gratification, according to Stewart, who does not think life should be so easy. Only when it is difficult, he said, is there a hunger to succeed.

“We’ve gotten away from that,” Stewart said. “I wonder when it will stop.”

No time soon, it seems. Stewart contemplates the disorders while realizing that he suffers from the symptoms.

And the tape is rolling again.

As with many good filmmakers, sometimes capricious luck presents itself. While preparing for an interview with Prime Sports in Century City last week, Stewart happened upon tennis’ Jensen brothers, also there for an interview. After introductions, Stewart brought out the camera while a news photographer clicked away.

It was a surreal scene that seemed to parrot Stewart’s dualities: Life capturing art capturing life.

Murphy and Luke Jensen, who know something about using the Global Village, took their cues.

“Swimmers rock,” Murphy said to the camera, distant smile on his face.

Stewart proved Murphy right during an interview with Glen Walker. When discussing the long hours in the pool--Stewart swims between 12,000 meters and 15,000 meters a day when training seriously--he asked the interviewer, “Do I have anything in my teeth? No algae?”

Later, while finishing his second calorie-filled coffee mocha, Stewart confided: “I don’t want it to end. I’m having too much fun. I’m enjoying it because it may not happen in a year or two.”

Stewart wants to savor the last reels of his athletic life before the studio lights dim and he is asked to exit stage left.