Epilogue
Travis
When I was fifteen, I met a boy. He was cute and probably too kind for his own good. We connected, then we kissed, and it was another nail in the coffin that was my life at the time. Normal life. Straight life.
I liked him. Problem was, we were at a camp from hell. I fucked up by talking to one of the counselors who was supposed to be safe.
They weren’t safe. We weren’t safe.
I ruined everything for him. For me too, but I was lucky. After we were punished for our ‘crime’, my dad had a change of heart. He got me the fuck out of that place.
Not Sen. He suffered more than anyone should. He came back into my life and I was glad for it, but I felt guilty. It was probably irrational, but still.
It opened my eyes even more. I’d been a voice or gay men in sports for a while. As a major league baseball player who lived openly and unapologetically, I’d forgotten that these atrocities still happened.
Seneca Taylor reminded me of that.
I didn’t have the power to take down places like Dumont, but I also wasn’t the same fifteen-year-old boy. I wanted to remind the world that these places existed. Awareness was the first step in these sorts of things and since I had the ear of millions of people online, I thought it was my duty to at least speak up.
People like me and Sen, ones who were forced to hide and who were consumed by fear for too long, still existed and they weren’t just at Dumont. They were everywhere.
Funnily enough, I think I found one and it was at a baseball game of all places. The World Series. It was the second year I’d gone with Sen and all of his friends. Their group had all found love and it was nice to see how happy they were. I got us all a suite to watch the game from above, they invited their families- the ones who could- and it was a big deal.
There I was, catching up with them and drinking a beer, when I found someone staring at me. Really staring. I figured he recognized me; I wasn’t sure if it was from my team or my social media. There was obvious contempt in his eyes, but also more. I shouldn’t have been curious about it, but fuck, I was.
And fuck, it was going to end badly because he’s a goddamn asshole, but he also won’t stay away.
What the hell am I supposed to do about that?