Chapter 3
I wake up to a thousand notifications. Everyone I’ve ever known is lighting me up—old friends, fake friends, my dentist—everyone climbing out of the woodwork to congratulate me.
This is pretty strange because, yes, qualifying for the US Open is huge, but it’s not exactly national news. I have a long way to go from here. How did everyone hear about this?
My phone buzzes. Oh.
A dozen people have sent me the same video from a popular tennis account.
I tap the link, and there I am, standing on the court, every part of me soaked in sweat—my face, my headband, my blond hair so wet that it’s basically brown.
I make a mental note not to wear white shorts the next time I play, because you can pretty much see my ass through these.
“Qualifying for this tournament makes you the first openly gay player to compete…”
The interview plays on my screen, as if I haven’t been playing it over and over in my head.
“Male player…”
And then I see it: 497,000 views. I squint, making sure I read that right. Yup.
“I’m not so special…”
I pause, my thumb hovering over the icon for the comments section.
If I don’t read the comments, they don’t exist—because there can’t be anything good in there.
How does the saying go? If you don’t have anything nice to say…
fire up those fingers and head to the comments, because the world needs to know exactly what you think.
Sure, there could be some compliments, some well-wishes, but it’s probably a shit show in there.
Today needs to be about focus, and preparation. I’m already nervous about a thousand things, and I don’t need to add to the list.
Nope, not reading the comments today. Nope…
I tap the screen.
Oops—guess I am.
Go off king
Women have been carrying tennis forever thank you Austin
Very well said, this young man has a new fan
Okay, not too bad.
Who is this haha
Why do we care if he’s gay just play tennis
Why is this news ??
Unfollow
They always look gay
I keep scrolling, looking for some positivity.
I’m the only gay person on my team at school :) congrats Austin
Going to start watching his matches!
Woww unfollow
Where can I watch the match free
Unfollow
As I continue to scroll, the good comments blend with the bad, the ugly, and the vomit emojis. They all turn to noise, and I can’t process anything anymore. I scroll deeper and deeper, and it’s impossible to stop. What am I even looking for? Whatever it is, I’m not going to find it here.
This fagget lol
I stop on that one. My world stops on that one. My hotel room turns quiet—the audio of the interview, the rattle of the AC fades to nothing—and all I see is that word in pixels on my cracked screen.
I’ve been called it before, and it hasn’t bothered me much. I’m also aware that there are queer people reclaiming it, but that’s not what’s happening here. And there’s something about seeing it attached to this particular video.
I’m celebrating. I’m celebrating a huge win that I’ve worked my whole life for.
Any rational human can see that here, but this random internet stranger chose to shut it down with one simple word—a word they can’t even spell.
I know they’re just one person, one lonely person out there who probably hates themself and their life, and they want me to hate mine too.
I know all of that, but I still feel the punch somewhere deep and dusty inside me.
I close out of the comments—that’s enough shit for one morning—but before I put my phone down, I check the view count one last time. In my five minutes of scrolling, the interview has hit a new milestone.
Look at that. Half a million views.
—
The morning of my first qualifiers match, last Monday, my breakfast was scrambled eggs with a dash of hot sauce, Greek yogurt with granola and seven blueberries, half a glass of grapefruit juice, and an iced Americano.
I won the match that day, obviously, and that means every breakfast on every following day will be exactly the same until I lose.
Yes, if all goes well and I never lose again, I will eat this breakfast until I retire, with eighty Grand Slam titles, at the old age of forty.
Mom wasn’t happy the day I decided to make this my one and only superstition.
I insisted on eating peanut butter pancakes for an entire month.
About a week in, she got smart and started making them in batches and just freezing them for later.
Robbie, however, has never gotten used to it, and he pressed a single finger into his forehead when I asked the waiter for two additional blueberries at breakfast this morning.
“You had nothing, no superstitions, when you were on tour?” I asked him, then scooped eggs into my mouth.
“I had one. Never hug another player after a match. A handshake is enough.”
“Well, that just sounds like a personal preference,” I replied.
The breakfast rule does not apply to my coffee order. I opted for two iced Americanos today, and I’m feeling especially wired as we navigate through the tournament site an hour later, my badge tapping against my heart with each step.
“We’re on practice court two,” Robbie says, turning back to me while checking his phone.
He played here many times when he was a pro player—made it as far as the semifinals once, the closest he ever got to every player’s dream of winning a Grand Slam title.
He never found that spark again, and he retired a few years later.
He blames it on his shoulder, but I don’t know. Maybe somebody hugged him.
Robbie’s been in my life forever. He met Dad in middle school, in my hometown of San Bernardino, California.
They were both on the school’s tennis team, and they quickly became best friends.
Dad’s claim to fame was beating Robbie once—once—in a practice match, and Robbie came down with the flu the very next day. So the story goes.
Robbie eventually settled in Venice Beach, and we were with him all the time when I was growing up—summers and Thanksgivings at his beautiful house, road trips to junior tournaments across the country.
He gave me my first racket on my fifth birthday, and I loved that thing to death.
When I outgrew it the paint was chipped so badly that you could barely tell what color it was.
He sneaks a quick glance to make sure I’m behind him. Still here, Rob.
Qualifying week, the week before the US Open officially starts, is completely free—you can just walk right in—and families are everywhere, packed in for affordable entertainment.
We pass a pop-up mini tennis court painted with bright purples and pinks, sponsored by some brand.
A mom and dad are hitting a ball with their kid.
He swings at the ball so hard that it flies off the court and into the crowd shuffling around the court.
Someone yelps in the chaos, then cackles.
The kid is terrible, but he doesn’t care. He’s having the best time. His parents are laughing their asses off too—not at him, just laughing the way you do when you’ve got nothing else to do but have fun, to exist with your family and not worry about a single thing.
I loved hitting with Dad when I was younger, grass growing in the cracks of the run-down court by our house.
He was able to keep up with me for a few years, but then, well, I got too good.
My balls were too fast, and he couldn’t even touch my serves after a while.
And then he just started to slow in general.
His body was first. His mind wasn’t far behind.
It was years before he was fully gone, but now it feels like it happened in one terrible second.
“Austin!”
Someone, somewhere, shouts my name.
A group runs up to us. They’re all a little younger than me, and dressed in oversize tees and fresh sneakers. “Are you Austin Hardy?” one of them asks.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, glancing down at my badge. Then—quite possibly the dorkiest thing anyone has ever done—I hold it up like I’m trying to prove it.
“Can we get a photo?”
“Okay, yeah, sure.”
The group quickly wraps around me, arms extending into the air. “Where should I be looking here?” I ask through a toothy smile, trying to navigate the many screens.
“All right, Austin, we gotta get moving,” Robbie says after a bit. The group thanks me, one of them says they love me, and they disappear back into the crowd.
“You made some fans,” Robbie says as we carry on.
“Guess so. That was weird.”
“Guess they saw the interview.”
“Oh, so you’ve seen the interview?” I ask, eyebrows up.
“ ’Course.”
“You reactivated your lurking account?”
“I like to keep up with what’s going on.” What’s going on related to me, he should say. “And if that means returning to social media…”
“I just can’t picture you scrolling through cat videos and hot takes,” I reply, shaking my head.
“I love a hot take, have a few of them.”
“Oh yeah? About what?”
“Espresso martinis.”
“For or against?”
“Against,” Robbie says. “If you need caffeine with your alcohol, you should be listening to your body and going to bed, not going out.”
“Interesting. I don’t think that’s a popular opinion,” I say.
“It’s not. That’s what makes it a hot take.”
We turn a corner and the practice courts come into view—five of them, all lined up and sandwiched next to one another. “This is where they scheduled us?”
“This is us,” Robbie says.
“How did we get VIP?” I ask, clocking the other players. They’re all top twenty, each one of them with their entourages—coach, hitting partner, physio, nutritionist…
All I’ve got is Robbie. He’s all of the above for me—and I can’t even afford him.
You need to be making big money from tournaments to afford anything at all, even a coach. It’s really tough when you’re just starting out, and for some players it remains tough—because shit is expensive.