Chapter Fourteen
“When I think about LGBTQIA+ athletes, I think about men who figure skate or women’s hockey leagues. People who break gender stereotypes to do the sport they love. It’s what you expect, right, that people who aren’t straight don’t look or act it either?
In men’s hockey, you have to look and act straight.
When I was nine, one of my sisters told me not to let on that I watched figure skating, but she didn’t have to bother.
I knew already. I grew up in locker rooms where slurs got passed around like party favors, going through which one was funniest to say at the time.
This is the part where I want to tell you I knew it was wrong and I did better, but I would be lying.
I was the loudest and the worst. As the coach’s kid, a pimply redhead who didn’t understand—didn’t want to understand—why I never had feelings for a girl, I had no idea how else to get the guys to accept me.
I never thought twice about it until my time with the San Francisco Sea Lions, where I learned for the first time that there were (male) hockey players who cared about respect and how to treat other people.
People wondered why the Sea Lions suddenly started working with the LGBTQ community last season.
The answer is I said something insensitive about gay people in the Sea Lions locker room once, and team captain, Tom Crowler, shut me down instantly.
Jax Grant and Chris Calabrese decided to make a learning experience for all of us out of the whole thing.
But Tom didn’t just make me feel so ashamed I wanted to become one with the bin of used hockey pads (which, if you know how those smell, ugh).
He took the time to talk to me about it.
He’s not a loud or demonstrative guy, but he is the kind of captain who makes you want to become a better version of yourself.
He didn’t know it at the time, but with his help and encouragement, I did.
I started looking into all the things I’d been making fun of and hiding from for as long as I could remember.
As soon as I did, there was no way back.
What started as a research project to make sure I didn’t put my foot in my mouth again became late-night screenings of Paris Is Burning and Stonewall and anything else I could get my hands on.
What started as a way to make up for my own ignorance became a journey to accepting who I actually am.
One thing I want to make very clear for everyone reading this is that, to the best of my knowledge, the Sea Lions didn’t trade me for being gay.
While a few people there did know, they traded me because I was a bad fit for the team.
I was distracted and emotionally all over the place.
Part of the reason for my uneven performance has been covered extensively in Ben Sinclair’s articles about the betting scandal that caused the coaches to bounce me all over the lineup.
Mostly, my inconsistencies were my own fault.
I had no idea how to be a gay man and play hockey.
I would skip workouts and go clubbing. I showed up to practice hungover more than once.
I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on inside me, and even once I did tell a few people, I didn’t think I could ask for their support.
It made me angry and resentful and a bad team player.
I can’t blame them for trading me, and I hope they don’t blame me for being such a mess.
At my most self-destructive and lost, all I wanted was someone who had done this before.
An older, wiser guy, someone out and proud who had faced the prejudices inside and outside the arena.
Someone who could teach me to balance being one of the guys in the locker room and dating a guy at home, someone who was exactly what a hockey player should be in all ways except his sexuality.
That guy doesn’t exist.
Obviously, no one has come out in the NHL before.
If you want to get technical, no one has now, since I didn’t choose this.
But I don’t just mean there’s a lack of role models.
I mean when I made the wish, I was still busy hating myself for not being what people expected of me.
What I wanted was a gay guy who looked and acted and felt straight in every single way except for the gender he dated, which is pretty dumb.
I’m not him. I don’t like beer (sorry, Lissy), I think most menswear is ugly and boring, and I can’t stand any of the top three NHL pastimes (golf, fishing, and country music).
I want to wear pink and paint my nails if I’m in the mood.
I want it not to be a big deal if I think another guy is hot.
And as the whole world knows now, I want to go dancing in clubs where everyone is welcome.
I love being gay and acting like it, and I also love hockey.
I’m not a role model. Maybe I could have been, if I’d had more time to figure myself out.
Thanks to Olivia Starling, I’ll never know if I would have been brave enough on my own.
What I do know is this: I’m Kilian Howard, I’m a gay hockey player, and I’m going to have to decide what that means myself.
I hope knowing they aren’t alone will help anyone else who comes after me to be braver than I was.”
(From “A letter from Kilian Howard,” posted to the Chicago Firecrackers NHL website and Kilian Howard’s personal Instagram on 12/24/2025; shared by the official NHL account, on all platforms, Anyone Can Play Hockey, on all platforms, and the San Francisco Sea Lions’ official account, on all platforms, etc.)
Damir wasn’t a big breakfast guy.
He appreciated the necessity of a solid start to the day, food-wise.
He could eat a massive plate full of eggs with fried vegetables and be satisfied, but as far as he was concerned, eggs were an all-day meal.
Americans on the other hand were very extra about breakfast as a concept.
They’d invented at least two different kinds of fried dough to slather in syrup specifically for breakfast (though Damir wasn’t convinced French toast originated in France, which would make it three).
He liked pastries as much as the next athlete who couldn’t eat many of them, but surely, making something called a “cruller” was a bridge too far.
Bagels, Damir could get behind. The were a versatile food, bagels, adaptable to any meal of the day and delicious in all sorts of variants. It made perfect sense they were an invention of the Eastern European Jewish community. Americans could never.
It turned out Canada had its own fried dough cuisine. While Kilian had been doing whatever it was that had kept him in his room for so long after skating the day before, Damir had busied himself googling.
Through a concerted effort on his part, he didn’t know much about Christmas.
Damir attended the Firecrackers’ official seasonal party every year since he was contractually obliged to show up.
But he generally avoided the team get-together at Lissy’s place for everyone who couldn’t get home for the holidays.
Sometimes Damir felt guilty because he did believe in the importance of fostering camaraderie and team spirit.
But there had to be ways to do that without surrounding himself with dead trees and twinkly lights and gift exchanges where no one received anything they actually wanted.
He wouldn’t even mind the holiday itself, but the constant advertising, obnoxious music, and general inescapability of it made him crabby.
If he really tried, he could sell his opposition as a conscientious objection to capitalism.
The truth was he was bitter he hadn’t gotten to celebrate Eid al-Fitr since he was fifteen.
He could count the number of times he’d properly fasted for Ramadan on one hand.
Most years, it collided with the hockey season, and playing on an empty stomach wasn’t feasible.
Before scheduling had become a concern, he’d been too young to fast. The dates had only lined up for one year when he was a teenager, and it had made the festivities sweeter after a month of working toward it.
These days, when he couldn’t fast, all Damir could do was reflect on the past year and give to those less fortunate than himself.
And since he was never home, he couldn’t celebrate the end of fasting either.
He called his parents and listened to the bustle of friends and neighbors in their apartment, sharing food and small gifts with one another.
On the stove, a pan full of hot oil sputtered around the dough Damir had carefully placed in it with the slotted spoon.
He knew exactly how it felt to be alone during the most important holiday in his culture, and he didn’t want Kilian to feel that way.
Unfortunately, good intentions did not make him an expert at making bannock.
By the time Kilian emerged from the bedroom they’d slept in together for the third night running, Damir had managed to produce something vaguely similar to the pictures in the recipe.
He was in the process of setting out glasses of orange juice, coffee, and toppings.
(Did people put syrup on bannock? Or jam?
Or both? Would Kilian hate it if Damir got out the sour cream?)
“What’s this?” Kilian yawned. He wore one of Damir’s shirts and his own briefs, just barely visible under the hem of the shirt.
Good thing Damir kept the apartment warm.
Damir looked at the spread and sighed. “Merry Christmas Eve? I tried to make you something from home.”
Kilian followed his sight line, took in the attempt at bannock, the table set with far more care than they usually bothered with, and the fat red candle Damir had found in the junk drawer and placed in the middle of it all.
He turned back to Damir, pushed him against the counter, and proceeded to kiss him slow and deep for so long the food started to go cold.
“You’re such a softie,” Kilian said against Damir’s lips when he decided he’d had his fill.