by Mark Zubro
He tossed his clipboard and whistle onto the desk. He swept a stack of towels onto the floor and flipped the metal folding chair backwards, straddled his legs on either side, sat down, rested an elbow on the top and said, “What’s this I hear?”
I listened to clangs and shouts from the locker room. My back was to the window so I couldn’t see out.
“Hear what?” I asked.
“Couple of guys saying you like guys.”
“You mean Bert Blaire.”
“Doesn’t matter who told me. I can’t have that kind of kid on one of my teams. It destroys discipline. How can you rely on somebody as a teammate who wants them to bend over?”
“You mean the past three years the guys haven’t been able to rely on me? Freshman year I was named ‘team player’ of the year.”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense,” he said. “It’s not open to debate. You’re going to have to get the team together after school and put a stop to these rumors. You’ve got to tell them you’re not gay. Anybody who repeats the rumor is going to have to deal with me.”
I’d been sort of ready for this. On the Internet there are all kinds of court cases about discrimination against gay kids. A few kids who have been picked on have gotten a lot of money from administrators who did nothing to protect them. Hadn’t this guy learned the lesson that overt discrimination by a member of the faculty could get a person in a lot of trouble, and if the case got to court that the faculty member was going to lose?
At my hesitation, he said, “I don’t have all day for this crap. Either deny the rumor, or you’re off the team.”
“No.”
“No, what? You’re not gay? Good. Let’s get on with it.”
“No, I won’t deny the rumors. I am gay.” I found myself breathing hard and trying to control my anger. I wasn’t as emotionally upset as with my parents, and I for sure was not going to cry in front of this asswipe.
He lectured me for nearly five minutes. I felt myself turning red with fury. I wasn’t used to adults berating and bullying me. The ingrained dictums, don’t interrupt and always be polite to adults, were strong enough to keep me silent, but it also gave me time enough to calm down and think.
He finished with, “You won’t be playing baseball for me. I’ll be calling your parents to tell them about your disease.”
“They know I’m gay.”
“And they approve?”
“My relationship with my parents is not open to discussion with you.” I pointed a finger at him. “I don’t play. We file suit. I sit on the bench. We file suit. If you don’t know, antigay discrimination is illegal. You will not get away with it. Your day is over. I’ll play, I promise you that.”
“The hell you will,” he said. “And if you do, I’ll make it my personal business to tell every scout from any college who expresses the slightest interest in you, that you are a fag. I know the scouts. I’ll spread the word around. Any hope you have of a baseball career is dead.”
He sounded all-powerful and absolutely sure of himself. The stuff he said about the scouts had more sway with me than I cared to admit. He scared me, but I wasn’t about to back down either.
“We’ll see.” I wish I’d had a more powerful rejoinder, but I didn’t. I simply turned around and left.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Friday 1:45 P.M.
I still had ten minutes of class left, but I walked out of the gym. Thoughts of triumphing over Delahanty whirled through my head. Setting a match to a heap of his polyester shorts while he was tied down on top of them struck me as a great idea.
I wound up sitting at the outdoor tables. I found one seat sheltered from the drizzle by a foot or so of overhang from the building. I watched the mist accumulate on the exposed tabletops as I wondered what the hell I was supposed to do now. My possible baseball career down the toilet was an awful thing to contemplate. As for direct physical attacks, I couldn’t always rely on Jack being there to help me.
Steve hurried by. He clutched a stack of books to his chest. He saw me and stepped over to where I sat. The overhang didn’t have enough room to keep him and his stack of books dry. Beads of water formed on his horn-rimmed glasses.
“You okay?” he asked.
I smiled at his kindness. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
I didn’t want to confide in him. I wanted him to go away. I gave a cold monosyllabic answer.
Steve blinked at me uncertainly for a moment, cleared his throat and said, “I’ve got to deliver these books.” He began to move away, but the top book started to fall. He clutched at it and almost caught it, papers scattered.
I reached over and caught the book an inch before it hit the mud.
“Thanks,” he said.
I grabbed a few of the papers. They were sketches for the Riverside Drones comic strip. He grabbed them from me. He was the secret artist. I thought that was so cool. I forgot about myself for a minute.
“Please don’t tell.” He sounded in a complete panic.
“Never.”
“Please,” he said again. He stood there, rain dripping onto his head, water beading on his glasses, hunched over, arms shielding his books from the rain. He leaned toward me slightly and spoke so softly I could barely hear him, “I’m glad you’re doing something about Kyle. He didn’t deserve to die.”
“Were you his friend?”
He hung his head as if ashamed. “Not really.” He hesitated.
“What is it?” I asked.
“All I know is, I think, maybe, he complained once to the administration about being picked on.”
“He told you this?”
“I was in an advanced writing class. We had to read a story out loud to each other. His was about a picked on kid who had gone to the teachers and the principal, but nobody would help him. It was about a kid with no friends. It was sad. I asked him if it was a true story. He just sort of shrugged and said not really. It sure sounded like a true story. Maybe if I’d said something to him, been a friend.”
“I sort of feel like that a little, too. You hear anything about what happened out there that night?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “No. I gotta go. I’m just glad… I’m glad…that…at least…it didn’t happen to me.” Clutching his books tightly, he rushed away.
Because Steve said he was glad it hadn’t happened to him, I pretty much presumed he was gay too. He could have said it because he thought of himself as a picked on kid, and sometimes I don’t have the greatest insight into people around me, but the intensity of his response sure led me to think it was more personal, more direct. I felt bad for him. He was kind of frail, and if he was attacked, he’d be hurt bad. Once again, I felt like I wanted to protect him, keep him safe.
I watched him slosh away, his feet squishing in the mud. He wore skinny leg, low-rise jeans that hugged his butt and thighs. His ass looked kind of hot. I’d noticed earlier that the snug fit emphasized the bulge behind his zipper.
I had to be honest with myself, I was attracted to a frail, thin, nerd. Who turned out to be one of the bravest kids in school, doing that comic strip. And he seemed to be a gentle person and kind. I remembered thinking about getting a cup of coffee with him the day before. I thought maybe I should try that after all the storms of the past few days had passed. And would he want to go out with me? What if I asked and he said no and maybe he wasn’t even gay? It isn’t like we come around with neon signs on our foreheads that read, “I’m gay.”
The bell rang sending kids spilling out of their classrooms. I wandered in the direction of my last period class. I’d worked hard at baseball for as long as I could remember. Too much was beginning to happen, and I didn’t know how to cope with it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Friday 3:00 P.M.
I don’t remember a thing about last period. Afterward I staggered to the newspaper. Darlene took one look at me and hustled me out the door. I didn’t notice who else was there.
; She suggested a soda. We walked to a series of machines near the lunchroom. Through the windows we could see that a true California downpour had started. We went outside and huddled under an overhang. I took a couple sips from the can of pop. We watched the downpour for a few minutes.
Finally she asked, “What happened?”
Even though I was in my lined letterman’s jacket, I shivered. I told her about lunch and then the coach.
When I finished, she said, “No way. He can’t do that.”
“Legally, he may not be able to, but he could spread prejudice just like Bert. He’s talking about the power of innuendo and smear.”
“But being gay isn’t a smear.”
“It is to some people.”
“It’s not right,” she said. “He can’t do that. You’ve got to fight this, filing a suit would be a start.”
The rain poured off the edge of the eaves. Many places in Southern California didn’t bother with rain gutters, especially out here in the desert.
“I’ve never felt less like fighting,” I said. “I’m too stunned right now.”
“You will. You’ve got to. People will help.”
“I just need time to think. Too much is happening too fast.”
“You can handle it,” she said. “You more than anyone. You’re going to be all right.”
“I hope so.”
She thought a few moments. “Maybe we could get all the kids to sign an online petition, or have all the guys on the team refuse to play unless you do.”
“Would kids really support those things?” I asked. “Would they really care enough?”
“Maybe we could run an exposé about Delahanty in the paper.”
“Trumble would never print it.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
Neither of us could think of one.
Darlene said encouraging things for a while longer, but I wanted to get going. She looked concerned as I left. I managed to dodge between the buildings and only got slightly soaked on my way to my locker.
The entire contents were on the ground. Bright yellow paint dripped from the edges of books and papers. “Faggot” had been smeared on the outside of the door.
Using paper towels from the boys’ john, I wiped off as much of the paint, rain, and mud as I could. I managed to salvage all but my Calculus textbook, no great loss really. I tossed its remnants into a nearby garbage can. I hurried out to my car. It had survived the day unscathed.
I jumped inside. I sat and tried to get hold of my racing emotions. The pounding of the rain on the roof of the car seemed wonderfully appropriate to the rotten mood I was in. I turned the key one notch so the battery turned on but not the engine. I selected a song from my iPod, 3 Gymnopedies: No. 1 by Erik Satie. I don’t listen to a lot of classical music, but this was perfect. I kept the sound low while I listened to the piano piece and nature outside do what it wanted, all untrammeled by human interference. I leaned back and let music and the rain’s peacefulness envelop me.
After being soothed for ten minutes, I began to think a little more clearly. I realized I needed help. My parents? Not right now. More bad news could set off another round of irrational fears and nutty decisions. I’d have to tell them at some point about the coach’s dictates, but I’d rather avoid it for now.
I called Jack. It was hard to talk much because he was at a crowded and loud freshman basketball game, but he caught enough. He was outraged for me, but he had no concrete ideas on how to stop Delahanty either.
I figured I needed the intervention of some adult who could counteract the spell Delahanty had cast. I wasn’t close to any of the teachers or counselors at school. Unless you were a problem kid, the guidance office didn’t pay much attention to you.
The only one I could think of was Bill Singleton.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Friday 3:40 P.M.
I drove to the paper. He wasn’t happy to see me.
“Mr. Singleton, please,” I said to his cold shoulder. “You’re the only one I can think of who can help me.”
“With what?”
I began telling him about what happened at school. He stopped me after the third sentence. “Let’s go,” he said.
We dodged through raindrops to the coffee shop. I told him the whole story.
“Did you tell your parents?” he asked.
I explained why I didn’t want to.
“Whether you want to or not,” he said, “you’ll have to tell them. You want to wait until they go to a game and realize you’re not on the team? And if you decide to consider legal action, do you think you can do anything without your parents having some involvement in the case? I’m not sure I can help you, but you’ll need adult intervention.”
“I have to try something,” I said. “Maybe the paper could run an exposé.”
“That’s going to be nearly impossible.”
He let me argue and cajole for several minutes, then said, “Okay, let me take you around to the people on the paper who would have to help you.”
“You won’t get in trouble?” I asked.
“I’ll handle that if I have to.”
We marched back to the newspaper in the downpour.
He knocked at a door of an office separated from the general reporters by a half-beaded glass, half-green metal partition. At a gruff “Come in”, we entered.
A gray bearded gentleman snarled into the phone, “Get the tickets by ten tomorrow or be fired.” He smashed the phone down. He squinted at us through the smoke of an ugly, eight-inch-long, black cigar. “What do you want?”
“This is Gerald Archer, our sports editor,” Singleton said. “You can see that he isn’t as concerned about the rules as some of the rest of us.”
Archer put his cigar into an ashtray. Singleton introduced me and explained I played baseball for Riverside Memorial. Archer said he recognized my name. Singleton continued, “We’ve got an important story, Gerry. We’d like you to consider it.”
“You’re off your beat, Bill.”
“This will only take a minute,” Singleton said.
A curt nod. “I got thirty seconds.”
“Tell him, Roger.”
I began my story. I actually got to talk for two and a half minutes. At that point Archer picked up his cigar and pointed it at me. “I don’t run anything in the sports pages about guys with friends, male bonding, or perversion. I’m not going out on a limb for a high school kid, who I heard wasn’t supposed to get near this newspaper or one over-the-hill reporter would get fired.”
After we’d been ushered out, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Come on.” Singleton marched to one of the corner rooms. “You’ve got more to learn.”
“Tell me who this is before I meet them,” I said.
“The City Editor, Blanche Starmore, a friend of mine.”
We knocked and entered, introductions happened.
The City Editor said, “Bill, I thought old Pinsakowski told you not to bring the kid around here again.”
“Let the kid tell you his story,” Singleton said.
She agreed and actually listened for nearly ten minutes. When I finished, she said, “No way anybody in this town is going to print that. You’ve got the uncorroborated word of a teenager against a high school coach on an issue that a lot of people are going to agree with the coach on.”
“But he said all that stuff,” I said.
“I believe you,” she said. “The problem is you can’t prove he said those things to you. When the season shows up, and you’re not on the team, then questions could be asked.”
“Why not now?” I asked.
“Because no one will let me print it now. Because your buddy, Bill, is just barely hanging on, and if Pinsakowski knew you were here, Bill would probably be fired. Bill is my friend, so I listened. I am pretty much it, in the friend department at this paper for either of you, and I’m not willing to stick my neck out. I’m sorry. I feel bad for you, Roger.”
“
You won’t even try to run the story?” Bill asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Bill, you knew that’s what I would say before you got in here. Why’d you bring him?”
“I wanted him to see reality,” Singleton said.
Ms. Starmore said, “Aren’t there gay legal organizations who might help or the ACLU?”
Singleton nodded. “They might be a place to try.”
We couldn’t stop at his desk as I wasn’t supposed to be around. We hurried out and stood in the parking garage next to my car.
I asked, “Should I call the gay organizations, the ACLU?”
“Can’t hurt to try.”
“You think this is hopeless?”
“Kid, I hate to take away your hopes.”
“You’re a great investigative reporter. Can’t you think of anything?”
He shook his head. “I know it’s discouraging. Changing the world isn’t easy.”
“Should I have lied to the coach?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Teenagers have lots of dreams, maybe yours would have come true as a baseball player. I’m terribly sorry. Years ago I might have the influence to help you. I don’t anymore. I wish I could help.”
“I guess I’ll call those groups.”
“All they can do is say no.” As I swung open my car door, he said, “I went to the funeral today.”
“Did many people show up?”
“Other than the parents only a few, the Golds, a representative from the school district, not many.”
“Did you talk to the Golds at all?”
He nodded. “I talked to Morty and Nancy and even the parents for a short while. No one thinks it was suicide, but no one’s got any proof.”
“I’d like to do something for Kyle. I want to know if he died because he was gay.”
“How will that help?” Singleton asked.
“Maybe it won’t. But it’s the right thing to do. Somehow I’d feel more hope if he’d been strong enough to hold out, to keep trying.”
Neither he nor I could figure out any way to proceed with the investigation. I told Singleton about the two guys Jack had seen Kyle with that night. He offered to look through any documents from the police he could get hold of. He doubted if he’d get much.
