“And baby,” he said with a naughty glance, “I don’t want to know.”
It was mid-January in Los Angeles, still three weeks before his Olympic coming out party Monday, when the 28-year-old took to the Pyeongchang ice in a spectacularly shimmering costume tinged with electric blue and the American public started to fall head over heels in love with him.
It’s just beginning. They’ll love him because he is fun and fearless and also an incorrigible flirt. He flirts with everyone and everything but in the sweetest and least threatening sense of the word, not with intention but with smiles and playfulness and outrageous humor.
He is a gay man but he flirts with men and women and graying reporters; he flirts with the camera and the crowd and the ice and the judges.
And, baby, he’s ready to flirt with the Olympics.
“Am I prepared for people to fall in love with me?” Rippon asked, with mischief, as he slid into his bedroom to show off that collection of fashion accoutrements that he wishes to avoid thinking about the cost of.
“Are (people) ready for me though?” he added. “I am ready. I’ve been ready my whole life.”
American Adam Rippon performs in the figure skating
American Adam Rippon performs in the figure skating single free event during the Winter Olympics at Gangneung Ice Arena in Pyeongchang,South Korea.
DANIEL POWERS, USA TODAY SPORTS
He was ready Monday all right, coming off the bench to shine for the United States in the men’s skate portion of the teams competition.