Man Up

by Kim Oclon

  Feeling like I was in a sauna, I managed to hobble the remaining fifty feet as the snickers and whispers swirled around me.

  I traced a line on the floor with my eyes so I wouldn’t look at anyone.

  “Not your best time, Mr. Lukas.” Coach pressed a button on his stopwatch and didn’t look up as I limped past him.

  At the end of tryouts, Coach Kelly gathered everyone for the last time. After today, the three teams would practice separately and some of the players would be told they didn’t make the cut. “The list will be posted outside of the athletic office tomorrow morning by seven o’ clock,” Coach Kelly said. “Thanks for your hard work these past two days, gentlemen. If it is any indication, this is going to be one hell of a season for us. At every level.”

  Coach Kelly clapped his hands and rubbed them together a few times before folding them over the gray Lincoln T-shirt that stretched over his belly. “All right, that’s it. Listen to the announcements for practice info. Be prepared to go outside because as soon as it’s dry we’re going out the first chance we get.”

  Many of the freshmen and sophomores, plus a few juniors, hurried to the locker room, wondering about rosters and pitching rotations for the freshman and JV team. I overheard Alex telling Coach about a wedding he had to go to over part of spring break that was out of town. Mike walked past me, very interested in a loose thread at the hem of his T-shirt. I packed my equipment bag like I was arranging things in a suitcase and trying to make the most out of the space I had.

  “Hurry up,” Kevin loudly whispered to several of the pitchers gathered around him. “Before he gets in there.” It was hard to miss Kevin jerk his head at me.

  “Oh,” said one the pitchers who was on JV last year and was probably going to make varsity this year. He stared at me for a second and hurried away.

  Kevin’s voice dripped with sarcasm, slightly louder than necessary so anyone in earshot could hear him. With the other player, I heard embarrassment. As if all of them wanted to the grab every set of boobs that walked by. Little did everyone know that I had no plans of going into the locker room today or any other time we had a late practice. I could avoid the issue a little while longer. But now I was “the gay guy” on the team and while that was a very important part of me, there was so much more than just that. I hoped that maybe, just maybe some of the guys would think of the diving stops, the perfectly laid bunts, and pizza at the end-of-season parties when they looked at me. It might be a tall order considering my “best friend” seemed unable to remember ten years of friendship.

  I tried to ignore Coach Kelly as his head popped up when I was on my way out, but he called me over.

  “Quite a spill on the base paths today,” Coach said.

  “Yup,” I said, doing my best to hide the slight limp I still had. When I tore my sweats from my knee, I think some skin came with it.

  “He’s looking for a reason to have me kick you off,” Coach Kelly said to my back.

  I froze but didn’t turn around.

  “If he had been at tryouts the past couple days, he might have one. Don’t give him one.”

  Hoping my crappy car would be some sort of safe haven like it had been so many times before, I marched right through the group of underclassmen waiting for their parents. As I took the keys out of my bag, I heard someone approaching me, quick steps dragging on the gravelly parking lot. The noise made me think of Tyler running out of the forest preserve. I fumbled with my keys and couldn’t find the lock.

  “I don’t go around advertising everything about myself either.”

  “Huh?” My hand froze on the door handle. Patrick stood on the passenger side of my car, resting his arms on the top of it. He still wore his cut off sweatpants from tryouts and didn’t bother putting on a sweatshirt or jacket before coming outside.

  “I have two moms.”

  “Two moms?” I sort of remembered Patrick taking a picture with two women at the end-of-the-season awards night last year. They didn’t come to too many games. “I thought one of those ladies was your aunt or something.”

  “Nope. Two moms and no dad.” Patrick thought for a second. “Well, I guess technically there’s a dad but neither of them know who he is.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. Two moms.

  “I’m not embarrassed by them or anything.” Patrick adjusted the bag slung over his shoulder and straightened up, as if ready to get going. “It’s just nobody introduces themselves to me as, ‘Hey, I’m Some Guy and I have a mom and a dad,’ so why should I? They’re just my parents.”

  Exactly. They’re just Patrick’s parents. I love Tyler. Tyler loves me. “Thanks for telling me that.”

  Patrick shrugged like I had thanked him for putting our ball for warm-ups away. “No problem.” He walked to the next space over and unlocked his tiny car. “Those sophomores were going around the locker room yesterday, saying stuff about the gay guy on varsity.”

  “I told them while we were running around the track,” I said, not surprised.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “I just said, ‘Hi, I’m David. I have a mom and a dad and I’m gay.’”

  Patrick laughed a little. “They didn’t say your name or anything. They were just talking loudly among themselves.”

  “It doesn’t really matter now.” In my three years of playing ball with Patrick, the most in-depth conversation we had was when the Sox’s season got off to a pathetic start and we wondered which trades needed to be made in order for them to at least have a decent pitching rotation. “How do you think the season’s going to go?” I asked, hoping Patrick would be honest with me.

  Patrick shrugged. “You heard what Coach said. Hopefully we make it to State this year.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking into my car so I could throw my bag in the passenger seat.

  “You just have to make sure you get a good pair of cleats,” Patrick said. “We’re not scoring many runs if our fastest player is falling down between third and home.”

  If it had been anybody else, I would have been pissed. “They’re in my bag,” I assured him. “Ready to go.”

  “Good because I bet the season will probably be a little rough at the beginning,” Patrick went on. “But I think it will be a good. We all know what we’re doing out there. Especially Kevin and his curve, huh? So, we should do pretty good.”

  “You think so?” I asked.

  “Kevin is an asshole. Nothing is going to change that.”

  “So, I should just expect him to be an asshole?”

  “Count on it,” Patrick said, sliding into his car and shutting the door.

  “Count on it,” I said to myself. Kevin would still be an asshole even if I weren’t gay or if he never found out. Something to remember. Just as I was about to close the car door, I saw Mike getting into his car a few spaces down. “Hey,” I called to him, unsure what I would say next.

  Mike looked at me without turning his head and barely breaking his stride. “You trying to turn Patrick gay too?”

  “Come on, Mike,” I said. “You know that’s not true.”

  “Well,” Mike said, stopping only because he got to his car. “I guess I don’t know a lot of things.” He managed to get in and start the engine in one motion before peeling out of the parking lot.

  CHAPTER 35

  DAVID

  Two freshmen I recognized from tryouts the past two days ran by me when I walked into school the next day. Judging by the direction they were headed in, I guessed they were on their way to check the list of names posted outside the Athletic Director’s office.

  I remembered getting to school early on this day of my freshman year because Mike and I had begged Mike’s dad to drive us to school instead of taking the bus so we could see the baseball roster as soon as it was posted. Both of us knew our names would be on the list, we had a good feeling, but we still wanted to see it for ourselves. Sophomore year, Mike and I harassed my mom for a ride. Since we had taken fielding drills with the varsit
y team, we were anxious to see if we’d spend the season there or on JV. Junior year, Mike drove us and we had gotten to school just as the warning bell rang because we had stopped for breakfast sandwiches at the convenience store.

  As I waited to fall asleep the night before, I didn’t have the knotted stomach that I did when I was a freshman. Instead, I thought of this scene from a TV show I had seen a few years ago. Something major had just happened, so the main character called her best friend who called her boyfriend who called his best friend and so on and so forth. The scene was mainly a series of shots of characters picking up the phone but it did a great job of showing how quickly the news spread throughout the student body. And how sometimes the news changed as it went from person to person.

  I wasn’t sure if any scene like that took place in the towns surrounding Lincoln High School after everyone had gotten home after baseball tryouts.

  Kurt and Alex walked by me when I got out of the athletic wing and I raised my hand to wave at them, but the two of them looked away, suddenly very interested in whatever was on their phones. I lowered my eyes, my hand still up in the wave position.

  “Hey,” a vaguely familiar female voice said.

  I looked up and it took me a second to place the girl with dark brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail, wearing a black T-shirt that said Know Gays Aloud in a bright red font you might see on a sign posted outside of a child’s fort. I glanced at the shirt, smiled to myself, and caught sight of the rainbow wristband circling one wrist and noticed that the white canvas shoes still sported their thick rainbow laces.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, lowering my hand.

  “This is weird.” Anna looked around the almost empty hallway and back at me. “I thought you were saying hi to me so I said hi back.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I didn’t realize I left my hand up.”

  Anna laughed. “What?”

  I had to smile too. This was turning into a ridiculous conversation. “I was saying hi to a couple of my…teammates when you came by and I must have left my hand up.” I offered Anna a real wave this time.

  “Well, hi to you too.” She mimicked my wave.

  Just then Kevin came up behind Anna. He wore his Yankee cap backwards even though hats weren’t allowed in school. “Checking the roster?” he asked, seemingly unaware that Anna was practically standing between him and me.

  I wanted to rip the cap off Kevin’s head and stuff the stiff beak into his mouth. Instead, I just shook his head. “I don’t think I have to. But you seem to think you need to.”

  Anna sidestepped out of the way like a cartoon character tiptoeing past a huge sleeping dog. “Nice waving at you,” she said to me before tiptoeing away.

  Kevin rolled up the sleeves of his University of Illinois long sleeve T-shirt. “Just wanted to check it out, that’s all.”

  “Have fun.” I turned, but Kevin grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. I shook his hand off me.

  “I don’t care what the roster says. Even if it says they somehow managed to put you back on the freshmen team. No one’s going to want a cocksucker hanging around.” Kevin stood inches from my face.

  I ignored the slight tilt Kevin’s head had to do to look down on me and pushed him in the shoulder. He took a few steps back not because of the power of the shove but because he was probably surprised I had the balls to do it. “No one wants an asshole on the team either and somehow they keep you around.”

  Kevin’s brown eyes would have glowed red if they had the ability. His next move might have been to charge me if more students hadn’t started to filter into the building as it got closer to 7:45. “Don’t ever put your fucking gay-ass hands on me again,” Kevin said through gritted teeth.

  “Same goes for your fucking straight hands.” I turned away again. It wasn’t quite the “fuck you” I had wanted to say to Kevin a few weeks ago, but it was pretty close and it felt pretty damn good.

  As I marched to my locker, I felt Kevin’s eyes follow me down the hall. I sharply turned to go up a flight of stairs and was taking them two at a time when Carrie, Mike’s girlfriend, started coming down.

  Carrie stopped on the landing and grabbed my arm. I glanced at the purple fingernails gripping my arm.

  “David!” Carrie said, shaking my arm as she spoke.

  “Carrie,” I responded. I liked Carrie, but I probably would have never hung out with her if it weren’t for Mike.

  “I uh…I heard,” she finally said.

  “About what?” People were going to know. People I didn’t tell were going to know. It was part of the big telephone game played over and over again. But, it wasn’t the top story on the news, so at least there was that.

  Carrie let go of my arm. “Since some people are probably going to say some stupid shit, I want you to know that I think it’s kind of cool you’re being open about it.”

  “Uh, thanks,” I slowly said, thinking about how I wasn’t so open a few weeks ago. “Did Mike tell you?”

  “Nope. Natalia did. But I guess this explains why Mike has been really weird the past few days.”

  Sometimes it was hard to keep track of who was with who, but I remembered Alex going out with Natalia at some point, maybe at the beginning of the year. “Weird?”

  “Yeah, it’s like he’s been somewhere else. But the news from Kansas seems to have him back in this world.” Carrie adjusted the bag hanging off her shoulder. “Does everyone know?” She asked in a lowered voice.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by everyone. Everyone on the baseball team? Yes. Everyone in the school? Probably not. More people than who knew yesterday? Definitely.

  “I just started telling people,” I said.

  “That’s great.” Carrie took a step down. “Really, I mean it.” She continued down the stairs, her many bracelets jangling against one another like bells.

  “Thanks, Carrie,” I said to her swinging long hair.

  As I unpacked my book bag in front of my locker, I had the feeling that had become too familiar the past twenty-four hours. The one from tryouts yesterday where eyeballs burrowed into my back. When I turned around, all I saw was a crowded hallway with no one looking in my direction at all. But on my way to Psychology, this guy in a Slayer T-shirt who I had a class with last semester shoved into me. “No homo, dude.” He held his hands up with a laugh.

  While sitting in Art Appreciation and not really listening to the teacher go on and on about performance art, I tried to untie the knots my insides were in. I had Facetimed with Tyler the night before from my driveway as soon as I got home. He sat on his bed in a pair of flannel pants and the team shirt from last year’s cross-country team.

  “Are you okay?” Tyler had asked me after I told him everything. Well, everything except what Patrick told me in the parking lot. I wouldn’t have liked it if Patrick went around talking to other people about me so I didn’t do it to him.

  “I don’t know.” I had trouble finding the words. “I feel lighter I guess. I didn’t know it was weighing me down so much.”

  “I was going to say something about your horrible posture the other day.”

  “Smart ass,” I said.

  “You have a sexy ass.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled to myself.

  “And how’s your knee?”

  I relived the moment I fell during tryouts and sprawled out in front of my teammates. My knee felt sore. “I won’t be on the DL or anything.”

  “And what about you? Are you going to be okay?”

  I tried not to think about my long limp to home plate but the snickers that followed me to the back of the line echoed in my ears. They would have laughed about the fall even if I weren’t gay. “Probably.”

  There had been a couple seconds of silence. Tyler glanced off to the side and I wondered if it was time to say goodbye.

  “So,” Tyler had slowly said. “What should I say if someone asks me if I know the new gay guy at school? Because you know, all of us gays know each other.”


  I had tried to imagine what it was like for Tyler to not say anything about our relationship with anyone at school. “Well, you know me, right?”

  “I do,” Tyler had said. “I really know you.”

  I was thinking about the sly grin on Tyler’s face as he said that when there was a knock on the Art Appreciation classroom door. The hairs on the back on Tyler’s head were sticking out every which way, probably from his hat. As much as I wanted the temperatures to rise I also knew that warm weather would force Tyler to retire his puffball hat for the season. I wouldn’t get to see Tyler wear it nearly enough next winter when he was away at U of I.

  Without missing a beat in her lecture about a woman who sat in a museum exhibit for days to send a message about human interaction, Mrs. Berns swished past my desk in her long skirt and dropped an envelope in front of me. I hadn’t even noticed the student worker deliver it to her and leave.

  The only thing on the envelope was my name scribbled in black ink. I couldn’t quite place the handwriting but it did look familiar.

  I saw Tyler turn his head slightly, his eyeballs all the way to the side so he could try to see what the envelope was all about. With a short fingernail, I tried to open the letter without making any noise, but each little tear sounded like someone was ripping open a bag of candy in a movie theater. Mrs. Berns even stopped talking long enough to look at me, silently asking me to stop.

  I dropped the letter in my open bag and waited for the bell to ring.

  During lunch, I sat at my favorite computer rereading the letter from second period. As I left him at the door to his sociology class, Tyler had said, “I want to know what that’s all about.” To which I responded, “It’s probably a formal invitation from Ms. Larson to join SAFE now that another gay is officially roaming the halls of Lincoln.”

  “Maybe it is,” Tyler said, ignoring my sarcastic tone. “If it is, I’m jealous. No one ever sent me a personal invite.”

  The envelope wasn’t from Ms. Larson. Inside was a thin piece of paper, apparently quickly torn from a pad because of the jagged top edge. On it, Coach Kelly had scrawled. “Just got off the phone with Anthony Rowen, head coach over at CNEI. Check your mailbox for more info.”