Chapter 10 #3
I sprint to catch up, and something sparks in my brain I have never felt before.
Adrenaline or endorphins or both. I know, biochemically, I must have had adrenaline release into my system before, in moments of fear and anger.
But this is different. Running in unison with a pack of teammates, forcing my legs to move my body, triggers a powerful sensation that floods my muscles.
This adrenaline is productive, for exertion and play: it is joyful.
For two laps of the oval, there is nothing deficient or wrong with me. I am part of a team. I am one of the boys.
But I am immediately exposed as unco and unfit.
I’m already panting from the two laps and the dynamic stretches, and when Brick starts us with a simple handball drill, I drop the footy so many times I know it’s clear I was full of shit when I claimed to have played.
When we do a kick-to-kick drill, the footy comes off my boot at a messed-up angle every time.
I keep calling, ‘Sorry!’ to Rogan in an increasingly pathetic voice as my cheeks burn.
It’s when Brick sets up cones for goal-kicking practice that I feel truly humiliated.
It’s not just my inaccuracy: I can’t even kick the footy hard enough to make it travel all the way to the goalposts, even when I’m at the closest cone fifteen metres from goal.
I suck. My legs are weak and I don’t have any power in my kicks.
All the other boys can do this, but I can’t.
Brick and Jack call out encouragement, but I’m sure they’re all thinking what a flog I am.
I want to sink through the patchy grass and get dry-drowned by dirt.
By the time we do a gameplay drill – which I don’t understand – I have never been more publicly embarrassed. I feel like such a joke of a man I want to neck myself. I can never come back here again.
Brick says we’re gonna finish with a match sim – four on four. I tell him I have to go to the toilet and find myself standing in some dark bushes on the edge of Coolbinia Reserve, peeing onto a shrub with my heart hammering and my breath short in my chest.
I consider sprinting from the oval, never to be seen again.
While I’m still pissing, a voice behind me says, ‘You orright, bro?’
It’s Jack.
I shake my dick and tuck him back under my footy shorts. ‘Just a bit rusty,’ I say, focusing on the grass.
‘You’ve never played footy before in your life, have you, mate?’ Jack says flatly.
I want to cry and/or die.
I look up to face Jack squarely. ‘No,’ I admit. ‘I’m a geek. I’ve never played any sport, let alone footy. I’m so sorry. I think this was a mistake.’
I wait for Jack to sneer at me, or laugh, or screw up his face in disgust, but instead, as I walk back towards him, he puts his arm around me.
‘I figured,’ he says simply, giving me a rough squeeze. ‘No need to be so hard on yourself. You look like you’re trying to pass a kidney stone, bro. This is meant to be fun.’
I try to smile back at him but it’s shaky. ‘I might head off,’ I say.
Jack frowns at me. ‘Like hell you will, mate. Four on four. The team needs you. Without you we can’t play our scratch match. You’re not gonna let the boys down, are ya?’
I swallow. ‘Well, if you need me, I guess I can stay for the game.’
‘Good,’ Jack says. ‘Never dog the boys. Come on, get amongst it.’
Jack jogs me back to where the other guys are chugging Gatorade. I’ve almost run out of water; I didn’t realise how badly you need to hydrate at footy training.
The other boys are talking about Hammer and his TV interview. Apparently a bunch of people are going down to Eagles HQ to protest tomorrow.
‘I won’t stop you,’ Brick’s saying to Firetruck. ‘But I won’t protest.’
‘Why not, though?’ Firetruck says sharply. ‘It’s Pride Round. He’s been homophobic and hasn’t apologised. Shouldn’t we say something?’
‘First, I’m doing a physio placement with West Coast, so no, I’m not gonna protest my future employer,’ Brick says. ‘Second, there’ll be a proper club statement coming soon. And third, I think protesting gives him more power than he deserves.’
‘How d’you mean?’ Firetruck asks, folding his arms, unconvinced.
Brick squeezes the footy in his hand tight, until his knuckles are pale.
‘The whole point of this team was to create the space we never had: where you can be gay and still have the male bonding that comes with being in a footy club,’ he says.
‘I want every man in this team to be tough. I don’t mean straight or macho.
I mean tough. We all cop it in this world, every other day.
After Hammer there’ll be another homophobe to be upset about, and another.
If we get unravelled by every idiot, we aren’t going to last very long. ’
‘So what, you give him a free pass to be a tool?’ Firetruck says. He spits a blue Gatorade–tinged glob onto the grass. ‘That lets him get away with it.’
‘Go protest if you want, Firetruck,’ Brick says.
‘I’m not telling you how to live your life.
I’m telling you how I live mine. If you let every single bigot fill your life with rage – congrats, they won and you lost. You’re locked in an endless cycle of constant anger.
They hurt you and they beat you. Or, instead, you do this. ’
Brick squares up, facing the white goal posts, and drops the footy onto his boot with a resounding thump.
The footy sails clean through the sticks for a goal.
‘You play footy anyway. You prove them wrong with your actions. That is how you beat people like Kade Hammersmith. You make yourself so happy they become irrelevant.’
I’ve never had something resonate with me as much as this.
‘Hear hear,’ Tommo says. ‘Let’s just play footy. Yeah the boys!’
‘Yeah the boys!’ we all echo back.
‘Yeah the fucken boys!’ Jack booms. ‘Lesssssgooo!’
Us boys jog back out onto the oval. Brick throws the footy up. I feel a narcotic injection of adrenaline in my skull for the second time tonight, even more palpable than the first. Fuck it. Fuck the fear, the anger, the bullies, the homophobes, the world.
Nobody can stop me playing footy if I want to.
The adrenaline does its job: I am not a mind anymore, but a body. Instead of running from the footy as I did in high school, I run towards the contest, trying to be useful, trying to help clear the ball to Brick.
Near the end of the game, I manage to mark the footy – clumsily, and hurting two fingers – but it’s paid. I go to kick it to Brick, but he yells at me to have a shot at goal myself.
I line up, put as much power in my leg as I can, and kick the footy hard.
It comes off my boot at a weird angle again, and I miss, the Sherrin skidding through as a behind.
But it’s the first time a kick of mine has made the distance.