Chapter 1 #2
So you can dish it out but not take it? A shred of self-preservation kept me from saying that to his face. I shrugged and rubbed soap over my chest, not quite daring to turn my back.
To my surprise, Bubs snarled at Morty, “Vally’s right, you know. You’re full of bullshit and one-track lame chirps, and the rookies aren’t the only ones sick of you. Give it a fucking rest.”
Morty stared at Bubs, who was almost as tall as him, and several years younger. Several other players in the showers were watching now, but when Morty glanced around, none of them seemed inclined to back him up.
Nikki, who was bigger than both of them, called over, “Can we get the fucking shampoo out of our fucking hair without the fucking drama?” and got murmurs of agreement.
Morty looked pissed, but Yagger hauled him off to the farthest showerheads, talking urgently under his breath.
Bubs muttered my way, “Morty’s so hung up on guys being gay, you think he might be…?”
“Ew, no,” I murmured back. “We don’t want him in the club.
” My stomach dropped as I realized what I’d said, but Bubs just raised an eyebrow at me, returned to his showerhead, and angled his face into the spray.
I rinsed off, trying not to look over too often, pretending I wasn’t watching for signs Bubs had heard me right.
We stepped out at the same time and grabbed for towels. Bubs gave his hair a scrub before moving lower, and glanced my way. “Dolan was the best defenseman we’d had in five seasons. You think he’d have played even better without our own goon squad harassing him?”
“Maybe.” I wrapped my towel around my waist.
“Yeah, I think so too.” Bubs raised his voice. “Hey, Stacker,” he called to the rookie. “If the bully brigade comes after you again, let me know.”
“And me,” I agreed, because why the fuck not? Morty hated me anyway.
Morty called, “Fuck you all,” from the far shower, but the words didn’t carry his usual force.
Back in the locker room, Bubs and I headed to our places and changed.
Bubs was one of the team guys I liked hanging out with, but we weren’t close.
This time, on his way to the door, he detoured to my locker.
“The mood in this room has sucked the last few years,” he said, not explicitly naming our indifferent captain Petrov as the problem, but we shared a knowing glance.
“Last year was the worst. I want to win some games and I want to get back the team we had when I was a rookie. Remember?”
I’d joined the Gryphons a bunch of years before Bubs, but I remembered his rookie year when we’d made the second round of the playoffs.
We’d been an unaffiliated team in those days, before the league added the Portland Rafter’s franchise.
Our captain was a veteran defenseman named McGarity and Mac hadn’t allowed any grudges in his room.
God, hockey had been fun back then. “Yeah, I remember.”
Bubs pointed back and forth between us. “Right. So it starts here, you and me.”
“And maybe Nikki. Could be a useful guy to recruit.” He was our biggest man, quiet, but a team player.
“Good thought.”
I hesitated. “What will the captain say?”
“You know what?” Bubs looked around at the half dozen guys changing out and pretending not to be listening to us.
“Pete’s got two choices. He can come down on the bullies himself.
Or he can stand back and let us do it. Frankly, I hope he’ll wake up and put a leash on Mortenson before something bad happens. ”
I did too, but Petrov was cold and hands-off, and I wasn’t going to count on him.
Stacker came out of the showers, toweling off, and nodded to us. “Thanks.”
“Might not help,” I told him. “Might make things worse.”
“Thanks anyway.” Stacker dropped the towel and pulled on his underwear.
Bubs said, “I used to think, well, it’s just chirping. Harmless. Which of us hasn’t called someone a cocksucker out there on the ice?”
I’d never used that particular word, but I nodded.
He stared at the blank wall across from us.
“I used to think, if it’d hurt someone, we’d stop.
Like, you don’t chirp a guy about his mother when she has cancer, right?
Then Edison came out as gay, and Tim Pedersen in Saskatoon.
We got Dolan here, and the chirping didn’t stop.
If anything, it got more vicious, at least in this room. ”
“Yeah.” Last year had sucked.
“I kept expecting Cap or Coach Nilsson to do something, but then Nilsson left and we got Coach Frazier, and he doesn’t believe in ‘coddling’ us.” Bubs did air quotes and snorted. “So now, I figure it’s time to stop expecting someone else to do something, and be that someone. Ya think?”
I took a breath, because Bubs probably didn’t know what he was asking, but he wasn’t wrong. “Works for me.”
Bubs ran his gaze around the room. “Stacker probably isn’t gay, judging by that redhead he was kissing at the Christmas party.” He didn’t look at Stackhouse and the kid kept silent. “But what if he was? What if he’s the next Scott Edison, and we’re shitting on a player like that?”
I knew why Bubs brought up the Rafters’ gay All-Star.
Easier to motivate the guys to protect a rising star who’d help the team— self-interest and all.
I was just a mediocre forward who’d never get to the AHL for more than a few games in a row.
They’d probably laugh if they were asked to protect me.
Still, I appreciated his effort. “You’re a good guy, Bubs. ”
He flushed and looked down as if realizing he was making speeches. “Yeah, well, anyhow, the answer to bullies is enough folks saying no. We’ll start with you and me.”
“And me,” Nikki said from the entrance to the showers.
Stacker nodded silently. A couple of the other guys rumbled agreement too, before we all went back to getting dressed.
That shift of mood in the room stayed with me as I drove home.
I’d been telling myself coming out didn’t make any difference.
There’d only been one NHL player who came out after Edzie, even though there had to be dozens of them out there, maybe a hundred of us between the three leagues.
Edzie hadn’t opened some magical route to safety.
But today, listening to the boys, I had to believe that Edzie and Pedersen and Rusty Dolan had shifted the needle, at least a little.
What good might I have done, if I hadn’t let Miles down and fucked up everything?
Back home, I tried to resist the lure of that familiar speech— Miles up on YouTube for everyone to see.
I ate and stretched and lay down like I was going to nap before the game.
Like I should’ve. But a minute later, I had my phone in my hand.
Three letters and the search auto-populated. I definitely had a masochistic streak.
There was Miles, standing at the podium in front of a bunch of teenage athletes, their families, high school officials— a few hundred people associated with the Way to Play program.
Except me. I was supposed to be there up front with two other hockey players, representing our sport.
Instead, I’d been on a train headed north to Tacoma and the AHL.
Called up to the Tornados for the first time in almost two years.
Of course I hadn’t wanted to miss that call-up. That wasn’t just my dream; I’d have been fired if I didn’t get on that train. I’d have owed a shitload of money for breach of contract. Miles himself would’ve told me to go. If he’d known. If I’d called him first, like I should’ve.
On screen, Miles finished his generic spiel about the program, the kids, the volunteers, praise and thanks. He gripped the edge of the podium and looked straight at the camera.
“But as wonderful as sports are for teenagers— and I firmly believe in that truth— there’s a dark side to boys’ and men’s sports in America.
A side we haven’t done nearly enough to address.
I’m talking about the bullying culture of locker rooms and games.
We call it trash talking and chirping, and a lot of the time, it’s meant in fun.
Unfortunately, too often, the trash talk slides from impersonal taunting and jokes to racist, sexist, body-shaming, and homophobic bullying. ”
Even on the small screen, I could spot consternation on the faces of the program execs sitting near the podium as Miles went off-script.
If I looked closely, I could see the deep breath he took before he said, “As a gay man, I heard those slurs a thousand times, on the field and in the locker room. I heard them from my opponents, and also from my teammates and my coaches.”
In the background, the video buzzed with dozens of muttering voices.
Miles continued, “I used to pretend the homophobic bullshit didn’t matter, that it was just random talk, that they wouldn’t keep using those insults if they realized I was gay.
But at heart, I knew that wasn’t true. It did matter that at every practice and every game, the worst insults my opponents and even my teammates could come up with was being like me.
That my coaches goaded us with homophobic slurs.
I also knew I couldn’t be the only gay kid, or the only gay man, in football.
By the numbers, every team probably had at least one queer player.
The coaches knew that. The other players could figure that out. They didn’t care.”