The Understatement of the Year

by Sarina Bowen

“Your ex is pretty cute, for a skinny guy,” Bella said, swatting me on the butt. “So that’s your type, huh?”

  I couldn’t help it. My eyes flicked over to Graham, who I caught watching us. He looked away. Busted. “My type? Eh. It’s not that simple. I like ‘em tall and complicated.”

  Bella laughed. “So do I!”

  The locker assignments were sorted out. And then the usual checklist of locker room antics was followed. Hockey sticks were taped and retaped. Sore muscles were taped and retaped. Coach paced the room, reminding us not to go postal at the first sign of trouble, like a pack of cranky toddlers. Bella did nervous little circles around me, wearing a groove into the blade-proof rubber padding underfoot. “It’s going to be fine this time,” she kept saying.

  The lady doth protest too much.

  “Hey, Johnny Rikker!” came a shout through the partially-opened locker room door. “Getcha ass out here!”

  The sound of my name pushed past the clouds out of my brain. Petey Pulaski’s rough voice brought me the first untroubled smile I’d had all day. I went through that door in a hurry, and was immediately tackled into that sort of half hug, half beating that guys began perfecting during their teenage years.

  “Jesus, Petey,” I laughed as I fought off the headlock with my knuckles in his ribs.

  “HEY! Knock it off!”

  Coach’s ear-busting shout startled the both of us. Petey eased up quickly, and I took my hands off my friend. “We’re just kiddin’ around here, Coach,” I said quickly.

  The old man’s face did not immediately relax. He stared at us for a beat before turning back into the locker room.

  “Jesus, Rikker. Do you have a rep for brawling?” Petey asked. He couldn’t resist one more playful punch to my hip.

  “Ow! He’s just, um, wound a little tight.”

  “Dude. Shouldn’t you be wearing, like, one of those rainbow jerseys?”

  “Nice, Petey. I haven’t seen you for two years or whatever, and you open with gay jokes?”

  His face fell. “You know that’s only gallows humor, right? Shit. I saw those articles, and I thought you must be climbing under a rock right about now. You didn’t even like talking to the high school newspaper about our games. Always made me do it.”

  That shut me up for a second, because I’d never taken Petey for the perceptive type. But he was right about that. I had always let him speak for the team. “It hasn’t been a fun month.” To put it mildly.

  Petey chuckled. “The Saint B’s coach sounds like a real dick. The guys on my team are all glad they don’t skate for him.”

  “Yeah. Wish I hadn’t made that mistake.”

  “We could have used you here, you know. Still wish you’d committed to Vermont.”

  Me too, buddy. Our conversation lagged then, as I sunk under the weight of my own shitty decision-making.

  “You know…” Petey paused. “You never told me. I mean… I noticed that Skippy became a hockey fan. And I knew you two were tight. But you didn’t say anything.” His blue eyes were troubled. “I wouldn’t have… I dunno… been a jerk about it.”

  Heaving a sigh, I apologized. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. But I also never told you why I moved to Vermont for sophomore year. And that’s because my parents basically kicked me out of their house.” Petey winced. “…And it was high school, dude. Nobody wants to fly the freak flag, you know. But I loved playing on that team with you. The rink was a bullshit free zone.”

  “Hope it was,” he said. “I kind of wish I could rewind all the things I said for three years. I’m pretty sure there were fag jokes.”

  I shrugged. “Skippy makes fag jokes. His are more accurate, though.”

  Petey laughed, and then I felt a little better. Then, two more of my high school teammates came out of the Vermont locker room. “Dude!” they yelled by way of a greeting.

  At the sound, the visitors’ locker room door opened, and Coach peered out, taking measure of the newcomers. After a long stare, he closed the door again.

  “What’s with him?” Petey asked.

  “No idea,” I lied.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place,” McGarry said with a playful punch to my chest. He was a year behind Petey and me. Behind him was a guy we called J.J.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  McGarry raised his thick eyebrows. “The banners?”

  “What banners?”

  All three of them laughed. “You’ll see. I think the stands are going to be packed tonight. Even though the semester hasn’t started yet.”

  “Really?” That seemed unlikely.

  “Too bad they’re all going to see your team get smeared,” J.J. grinned.

  “Smack talk much?” I asked.

  “The Harkness nerds have had a good run,” McGarry said. “But it’s over.”

  “Nice,” I said. “After all the queer jokes I’m getting, you have to bring out the nerd jokes too?”

  “If the skate fits…” Petey gave me one more punch to the bicep. “See you out there. But you aint’ gonna win.”

  “We’ll see,” I smirked. Then I went back inside, feeling just a shred less anxious than I had before.

  — Graham

  After the way I left things following our weird little visit in Vermont, Rikker and I weren’t really speaking. (Again. I was going to be eligible for Jackass of the Year for a second year running.) So he didn’t have a clue how tense I felt about this game. That was probably for the best. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to know that my teammates were worried that he’d become a permanent liability.

  I finished applying some more orange tape to my stick (not that it helped the last time) just before Coach made his final speech.

  “Time for a comeback, kids! Vermont has a strong team, so you’re going to have to work for this. But you can do it. You have the chops! And you’re coming off a rough couple of games, so you want this. Go take it! Grab it with both hands, and bite its head off. Let’s go!”

  Bella hauled open the ice door, and we ran down the chute in our skates, jumping the lip and hitting the ice. The visiting team was allowed exactly ninety seconds of warm up, which we were all smart enough to use to the fullest. That’s why it took me more than a few strokes down the rink before I noticed that there was something odd about the crowd.

  In the first place, they let out a whoop of excitement when we skated onto the ice. If this were a home game, that would be perfectly normal. But how many fans could we have this far from home? And the cheers and hollers did not let up. The clapping and stomping actually escalated as we skated, as if The Rolling Stones were due to follow us out for a command performance.

  Raising my head, I tried to make sense of it. The first thing I saw was a sea of color. Some of it was on the people. Quite a few of the fans were wearing… were those rainbow hockey jerseys? What the fuck? I whizzed past the student section, which was full of Vermont’s green and gold. No surprises there. But elsewhere, especially behind the visitors’ net, spectators were holding giant rainbow banners. “EVERYONE CAN PLAY,” read one banner. “BIGOTRY IS FOR SISSY MEN,” read another one. And “WELCOME BACK TO VERMONT.”

  Distracted, I stumbled and almost fell.

  Coach’s whistle blew, and we skated toward our bench, still craning my neck to read the signs. I passed a little kid wearing a sweatshirt reading, “RIKKER IS MY HERO.”

  “What the fuck?” someone said, which was pretty much the same as my reaction.

  “Rikker, would you be my hero, too?” another guy asked.

  “Take a number,” Rikker muttered. He looked dazed, his eyes darting around the arena.

  “This is nuts!” Bella said in a breathless voice. She pressed herself against the boards, taking pictures with her phone.

  “Change of lineup!” Coach bellowed. We all turned to listen. “Rikker’s skating first line with Hartley, and Trevi. Davies, you’re on second. We have to give these fans what they came here to see.”

  Nobody
argued. Not out loud, anyway. Rikker’s expression was serious behind his facemask. I couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Maybe his prayers were the same as mine: let this not be another disaster.

  After Vermont’s team got its own standing ovation, our first line was back on the ice, skating to a stop at our net. The announcer began introducing players, giving the name, class, hometown and position of the Vermont first line. Each player skated to Vermont’s blue line when his name was called, receiving applause.

  Then it was our turn. “From Etna, Connecticut, Harkness senior and team captain Adam Hartley.” There was applause even for the competitor. This crowd was fired up tonight.

  “From Kent, Michigan, junior defenseman Michael Graham.” I’d never admit it, but I liked hearing the announcer call my name. I skated to the blue line to polite applause.

  “And… from Burlington Vermont! Sophomore forward John Rikker!” The stands absolutely erupted then, with screams and the stomping of feet. I turned my head to see Rikker skate to the blue line, eyes wide, an embarrassed smirk on his face.

  Across the ice, on the opposing line, I saw his high school friend roll his eyes and smile.

  The announcer had to pause before reading the last Harkness player’s name because the crowd was screaming too loud for him to go on. “What planet are we on?” Trevi asked when he finally arrived beside me.

  “No clue,” I said, distracted by the relief coursing through me. The ice lights dimmed, and the announcer asked the crowd to stand for the national anthem. A spotlight went up on some dude who played it on the electric guitar, and the sound of it gave me chills. I didn’t even have a name for the way I felt right now. All I knew was that this game would be different from the one against Saint B’s.

  Even if it was crazy, and embarrassing to Rikker, the whole thing was awe-inspiring. There had to be a thousand newly-converted hockey fans in this place tonight. (Tomorrow we would read on the news sites that a few drove from as far away as Toronto and Maryland to attend this game, just to show support for the first out gay Division One player.) The place was crammed full of people who’d come to see a guy they didn’t know play in a sport they might not understand. But they were all watching.

  As usual, I tried not to let my true feelings show on my face. But the whole thing was really freaking cool.

  Unfortunately, Coach had been right about one thing. Vermont wasn’t going to give the game up easily.

  The first period was a big donut for both teams. Then, in the second, Hartley got lucky with an ugly goal right in front of the net. But the pressure from Vermont redoubled, and it was a sweaty third period. Vermont scored, unfortunately, and with five minutes left on the clock, the tension on the bench was ridiculous.

  With just three minutes left, Rikker took a shot that looked awesome as it flew toward the net. The crowd flipped out. But Vermont’s goalie scrambled, deflecting it with the very tip of his glove.

  That might have been the end of it. But while the crowd was still yelling over Rikker’s near miss, Big-D slapped that baby back into play, and Hartley tipped it behind the goalie and into the basket. From where I sat on the bench at that point, I couldn’t even see it happen. I only knew from the screaming.

  From there, we ran down the clock and won it, 2-1.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we were back.

  — January —

  Lamp Lighter: a goal. In pro hockey, a goal is signified by a red light on the goal itself or on the boards behind the goal.

  — Rikker

  After the Vermont game, we kept right on winning. In the middle of January, the college newspaper put our stats on the front page in enormous type: 14 WINS, 3 LOSSES, 3 TIES. Coach was all fired up. And now, when the guys from the Harkness press office showed up with a reporter in tow, it wasn’t to talk about me. (I’d been relegated to a single sentence at the bottom of these articles, usually “…the same team that welcomed gay left wing John Rikker,” blah blah blah.)

  “Tell us how it feels to be the winningest college team on the Eastern Seaboard,” a sports writer had asked Hartley last week.

  “It feels like hard work,” Hartley told him.

  And that was true. But it was the best job ever.

  One pleasant side effect of all that success was that I didn’t have time to feel lonely. Between school and hockey, all my hours were spoken for. I fell into bed like a dead man every night.

  Success also meant a lack of friction in the locker room. The fact that our win song played all the time helped to promote a “live and let live” vibe. The result was that the whole team inched up the Rikker scale, simply by default. They were too busy winning to snub me.

  Only one teammate was actively avoiding my eyes these days. And that was Graham, of course. He wasn’t rude or anything. It’s just that he seemed to always find a reason to walk out of a room if I walked into it. I don’t know what I expected to happen after our strange little Vermont interlude. But if I’d thought we might be close again, it wasn’t happening.

  I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t offended anymore. Because I knew that Graham wasn’t afraid of what I might do. These days, I was pretty sure that Graham was afraid of what Graham might do.

  The second weekend in January, we had only one game scheduled. To celebrate our Friday night off, Bella and I blew off the dining hall in favor of a cheap Chinese restaurant off campus. Together, we ate General Tso’s chicken and greasy fried rice. When the fortune cookies arrived, hers and mine had identical fortunes inside.

  “What a scam,” Bella sniffed. “If they match, it feels as if my fortune is cheapened.”

  “It’s a pretty good fortune, though,” I pointed out. Our little paper slips had read: True love awaits.

  “Eh. I feel more optimistic whenever the lucky number on the back is sixty-nine.”

  I laughed, of course. With Bella, you just had to.

  “How’s your sex life, Rikker?”

  “I sort of remember sex. Though the details are fuzzy.” Fortune cookie or not, I was never going to have a boyfriend if I didn’t meet some available gay men. In theory, there were plenty of those at Harkness. But none of them spent twenty hours a week at the hockey rink.

  Bella made a wry face. “There’s a harsh irony. The team pervert gets no play.”

  “I know, right? I have to do the time, but I can’t do the crime.”

  She pointed to my fortune. “Maybe you’ll meet some cute boy soon.”

  “As it happens, my lucky number on here is sixty-nine,” I said, waving the cookie slip.

  “What?” she jumped for it. “That’s not fair.”

  Laughing, I held it out of her reach. I was only kidding, of course. The lucky number was 16. Which did nothing for me.

  Bella’s phone chimed, and she read the text on it. “Hmf,” she said. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”

  “Why?”

  “Graham is texting me. Hartley and his girlfriend are hanging out, playing RealStix in his room. He invited me over. But he’s also hoping I’ll pick up a couple of six packs on the way. What an ass.”

  In spite of her protestations, after we left the restaurant, she cheerfully dragged me into the package store. (That’s what you call a liquor store in Connecticut, for some reason.)

  “What shall we bring?” Bella asked.

  “I dunno. Am I coming with you?”

  “Sure you are. It’s Friday night. Do you have a better offer?”

  “That would be no.”

  “Then choose an ale. I’ll pick a lager.”

  I bought a six of Switchback. Not only do I love that beer, but it’s the stuff that Graham and I drank at guerrilla night. The most immature part of me was hoping he’d remember.

  Bella led me to an entryway in the very beautiful Beaumont House. “He’s on the third floor,” she said. We climbed up two flights of marble steps. There were four rooms and a bathroom on the third floor landing. Bella opened the left-hand door as if she owned the pl
ace. “Hey guys,” she said, breezing in. “We brought the goods.”

  “Awesome,” Hartley said from where he sat cross-legged on the bed.

  Beside him, Graham looked up at us. When he saw that I’d come in with Bella, a flicker of confusion crossed his face.

  Good.

  “Damn, this is a sweet room, Graham,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he muttered. Graham had a generous single, with a big screen TV on the wall and a giant bed. There was even room enough for a beanbag chair in the corner, where Hartley’s girlfriend Corey lounged, a video game controller in her hand.

  Hartley and Graham both sat the wrong way on the bed, propped up against the wall. Bella climbed on too, snuggling up to Graham’s side.

  I wandered over to the desk, where Graham’s computer and a couple of speakers were playing his favorite tunes. He was half-way through a classic rock playlist. I decided to fuck with him a little. With a few taps of the keyboard, I switched to a list of dance music. Lady Gaga began to sing “Bad Romance.”

  Although Corey began to move her shoulders to the beat, Graham gave me a look of irritation.

  I just grinned at him, forcing him to look away.

  Perfect.

  I parked my butt on the floor next to Corey, who was battling it out in a game of RealStix against her boyfriend. There were only ten seconds left in the game. When the buzzer sounded, Pittsburgh had beat the Bruins 3-2. “Who’s your team?” I asked Corey. “Did you just beat Hartley?”

  “Of course,” she grinned. “I always play Pittsburgh.”

  “Ask her why,” Hartley said with a smirk.

  I gave Corey a sidelong glance. “Maybe I don’t need to. Pittsburgh is a great team. And the captain is the hottest dude in the NHL.”

  “Jesus, not you too!” Hartley complained as I high-fived his laughing girlfriend.

  Corey put a hand over her heart. “It’s his boyish smile, you know? And he and I play well together. Right, Hartley? You owe me five bucks.”

  “Beginners luck,” Hartley mumbled.

  Corey just smiled. “Beginner’s luck means something different to Hartley than to other people. I’ve been kicking his butt for a year and a half now.”