Chapter 20
ELI
The headline says: "Eli Mercer: The NHL's First Openly Bisexual Player."
By the third paragraph I stop reading with my eyes and start reading with my jaw, my shoulders, the old familiar clench of trying to smile before anyone can decide they've erased you.
The headline is wrong. I am not the first. Others said the word before me, in interviews and posts that the internet doesn't remember. The "first" narrative erases them and attaches the erasure to my name.
And the article says "queer" fourteen times and "bisexual" twice. The word I chose was specific. The article chose a different one.
The article is from a national outlet. The interview was last week: a phone call, forty-five minutes, a reporter who was polite and professional and who asked good questions and who wrote an article that is polite and professional and that reduces my entire identity to a label and then argues about the label for three thousand words.
The article says "queer" fourteen times and "bisexual" twice. I used one word. The article returns a different one, polished and more marketable, like my own mouth needed editing before it could be legible.
I read the comments because I am a twenty-two-year-old with a phone and the impulse control of a golden retriever near a sandwich.
The comments are the comments. The one that stays: "Is he actually bi or is he just gay and not ready to commit to the word?"
Not ready to commit to the word. As if the word I chose, the word I carried for seven years, is a rest stop on the way to a real destination. As if bisexual is a phase and the phase will end when I'm brave enough to pick a side.
I said bisexual. The world heard confused. The gap is the erasure.
I close the laptop. My jaw aches. I've been clenching it for twenty minutes without noticing, the old familiar brace of trying to hold a face together while someone takes it apart.
The grin goes up.
It's been down for weeks. The apartment didn't need it. The team didn't need it. The ice didn't need it. The grin was retired.
The world outside brought it back.
At practice, I am electric. Twenty goals worth of electric. The speed is there. The hands are there. The grin is there, wider than it's been in months, deployed at full capacity, aimed at every coach and teammate and camera like a floodlight.
Bennett says: "You good?"
"Great. Never better."
Jonah says: "You see the article?"
"Yeah. It's fine. Whatever."
Jonah looks at me the way Jonah looks at people when Jonah suspects the words and the face are not in agreement. "If you want to talk about it..."
"Nothing to talk about. The article is the article. The internet is the internet. I'm fine."
I am fine. The fine is the grin, the grin is the wall, and the wall is back up.
The wall has been down for weeks and the down was the growing and the growing was the best thing that ever happened to me and now the wall is back up because the world said "confused" and the word hit the exact place where the wall used to stand and the place was vulnerable because the wall had been removed and the vulnerability is the cost of the removal and the cost is the sting and the sting is the grin.
Cole finds me in the weight room. Cole, who did this first. Cole, who kissed Mik on television and whose comment section was a war zone for months. Cole, who survived the surviving.
"The article," he says.
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. The article is reductive and the headline erases people who came before you and the comment section is a cesspool. None of that is fine."
"Cole..."
"You don't have to be fine. Fine is a performance. You taught me that." He pauses. "You taught the whole team that. Your face right now is the face you wore at camp. The grin. The wall. The face that says 'I'm handling it' when the handling is costing you."
I look at him. Cole Briggs, who walked this road. Whose road had different terrain but the same distance.
"What did you do?" I ask. "When the articles were wrong about you?"
"I let Mik read them first. Mik has a threshold. He reads until the threshold is reached and then he closes the laptop and makes tea and the tea means: the reading is done, the world has spoken, the world is wrong, and the wrong is not ours to carry."
"And the comments?"
"The comments are the comments. The comments are strangers performing certainty about a life they do not live. The comments have no authority over the life. The authority is yours. The word is yours."
The word is yours. Ava's sentence. Cole's sentence. The sentence that keeps arriving from different mouths and that keeps meaning the same thing: the word belongs to you and the belonging does not require the world's approval.
"The grin is back up," Cole says. Not a question.
"Yeah."
"Take it down. Not for me. For the person who's going to go home tonight and see the grin and know it's the wrong grin and who is going to worry about you in the specific, Russian, T-shirt-folding way that Sokolov worries."
I drive home. The apartment. Nikolai is on the couch. The reading glasses are off. The phone is in his hand. He has been reading.
He looks at me. The look is the comprehensive look, the look that reads everything, the look that has been reading me since the corridor. The look sees the grin. The look sees through the grin. The look sees the wall.
"You read it," I say.
"I read it."
"And the comments."
"I read three comments. The third comment was sufficient to form a conclusion about the intelligence of the commenting population."
"What was the conclusion?"
"Insufficient."
I sit next to him. His arm does not go around me.
This is notable because the arm has been automatic for weeks.
The arm not going around me means the arm is waiting.
The arm is assessing. The arm is reading the grin and the wall and the performance and deciding that the automatic gesture might not be what I need right now.
What I need is for the grin to come down. What I need is for the wall to come down. What I need is to sit on this couch and let the sting be the sting without performing the handling of the sting.
"The headline erases people," I say. The grin is on. "The article substitutes queer for bisexual. The comments say I'm confused."
"You are not confused."
"I know."
"The word you chose is the correct word."
"I know."
"The article is wrong and the comments are wrong and the headline is wrong and the wrongness is not your responsibility."
"I know." The grin is on and the knowing is in my mouth and the sting is behind the grin and the grin is failing because Nikolai is looking at me with the look that sees the wall and the look does not accept the wall. The look has never accepted the wall.
"Come here," he says.
The arm opens. The arm that was waiting. The arm that assessed and decided that the automatic was not enough and that the invitation was necessary.
I fall into him. The falling is not graceful.
The falling is the collapse of the grin, the wall, the performance, the bright electric untouchable Eli Mercer who handled the article and the headline and the comments with humor and speed and the grin.
The falling is the underneath arriving, and the underneath is tired, and the tired is the cost of the performing, and the cost is higher today than it has been in months because the performing was supposed to be over and the over was premature.
He holds me. The holding is not the couch-holding or the bed-holding or the public-holding.
The holding is the I-see-the-wall-and-I-am-holding-you-until-it-comes-down holding.
The holding is Nikolai's care language applied to the specific crisis of a man whose word was taken and reshaped by strangers.
"The word is mine," I say into his chest.
"The word is yours."
"The word is bisexual."
"The word is bisexual."
"The world doesn't get to edit it."
"The world does not get to edit it."
We sit. The apartment holds us. The not-immaculate apartment with the sneakers and the plant and the sofrito and the teaspoon.
The apartment does not care about the headline.
The apartment does not care about the comments.
The apartment holds the word the way the cabinet holds the sofrito: without conditions.
The grin comes down. The wall comes down. The underneath is tired and stung and held.
The holding is enough. For tonight, the holding is enough.
But the sting is not gone. The sting is resting. The sting will combine with something else, something that has not arrived yet, and the combination will be the crisis that tests whether the fortress with the door can survive a siege from outside.
The siege is coming. I can feel it in the sting.