“Hey guys,” I said.
No one said anything back. Derrick started hitting a tree with a stick he was using to chip away at the salt block.
Derrick asked the blind and deaf kid, “You ever jerked off before?”
Derrick was making fun of him, but the blind and deaf kid didn’t know.
The blind and deaf kid was even older than Derrick. He was twenty but there was something wrong with him besides being deaf and blind. Derrick smacked his stick against the tree and it made marks until the tree bark started ripping away and looked like the back of a slave.
The blind and deaf kid said, “What?”
Derrick shouted, “You ever jerk off?”
The blind and deaf kid was nervous wearing his oversized glasses that allowed him to see shapes and light.
He smiled nervous and whispered like a child, “No.”
I was trying to apologize to Derrick but it wasn’t the place. He wasn’t listening.
Derrick kept going after him. “You mean you never jacked off before? What are you a faggot?”
Derrick pulled at his own crotch and laughed. He took out his penis and then he put it back in his pants.
“What are you a faggot?”
The deaf and blind kid pushed his glasses up and said, “No.”
Then he started adjusting his hearing aids and they squeaked and creaked.
Derrick started getting meaner. He swung the stick around like he was going to hit the blind and deaf kid with it. The blind and deaf kid pushed his glasses up his nose. Derrick did it again. The blind and deaf kid flinched. Then I thought I heard my mom calling me.
“O shit,” I said and took off.
I ran down the hill. I balanced myself and stepped and crossed the warped board over the creek. I ran back up the path. I ran back to the road. I listened. She wasn’t calling me. It wasn’t her.
When I came back they were gone. I heard voices, and saw they were standing back deep in the rhododendron bushes. I walked back to them, and Derrick was holding his stick of wood, but the blind and deaf kid was standing there wearing only his shirt. The blind and deaf kid didn’t have any pants on now. He didn’t have any underwear on either, and he was trying to cover up his penis with his nervous arms and hands. He was shaking now like he was cold. Derrick kept taking out his own penis and twirling it around like it was a helicopter propeller. He took his stick and hit the blind and deaf kid with it, “Jerk off.”
The blind and deaf kid said, “What?”
Derrick hit him hard with the stick and the blind and dead kid squealed.
It left a red mark.
“Jerk off.”
He hit him again.
“Jerk off.”
The blind and deaf kid adjusted his hearing aids and said, “I don’t want to.”
But Derrick hit him again. The blind and deaf kid’s white legs were covered in marks that looked like tiger stripes if tiger stripes were red. The blind and deaf kid started acting like he was masturbating. He didn’t want to, but he did.
I didn’t say anything and walked away. I walked home and I started praying a prayer.
I prayed, Thank you Lord for making blind people blind and deaf people deaf, but thank you Lord for letting me see and hear.
Thank you Lord for letting me listen to a song and sing along.
Thank you Lord for letting me hear my mother speak and say “I love you.”
And thank you for letting me see.
Thank you Lord for letting me see Mountains.
Thank you for letting me see a smile smile.
And thank you Lord for this beautiful light.
There was a secret I knew about all of this life. The secret was this: I enjoyed it.
THE FOOTBALL BASTARDS
I started playing football after this because I thought I was gay. I showed up at football practice, all 5’6” 105 pounds of me. There were other guys there too—seniors who were like grown men compared to all of us boys. They had bushy beards and mustaches, girlfriends they had sex with. They talked about things like having sex with their girlfriends, or how they had sex with some girl who wasn’t their girlfriend. This is what they talked about as we walked up to the football field in the foggy morning mist.
Since we were younger, we all got the crappy equipment the older guys didn’t want. And since the coaches weren’t up to the field yet all the older guys lined up all of the younger guys in a row to play smear the queer.
O my god, I thought, they know about me. They know I’m not tough. They had us sit on our knees and put our hands behind us. Then one of the older guys, Eddie Harris, took off running as fast as he could, screamed “OLD GLORY” and then launched himself into the air like a rocket and smashed into the guy next to me, Randy Doogan, smearing the queer. Randy twisted and cried and disappeared beneath Harris’ big body.
Harris got up and whispered over crying Randy, “Quit crying, faggot. Coach is coming.”
Coach was coming. I waited and imagined a giant man with an iron jaw or a guy who was built like a coal truck. All of a sudden here comes trotting up the path—the giant man, the bad ass, the sergeant, the coach.
It was this sawed off five foot two guy, who had a baseball hat on and a whistle around his neck. He whistled from his whistle tweet tweet, which made his face turn red like a devil face, and we all gathered around him with the tweet tweet still ringing in our ears.
“I’m as tall as he is,” I thought.
Tweet tweet.
This was the sound men made?
Then he said, “All right now. I know a lot of you boys want to be tough. But if you ask me you’ve been sucking on hind tit too long.”
I didn’t know what hind tit meant, but I didn’t say anything because this was the guy who was going to teach me how to be tough. This was the guy who was going to teach me how to be a man.
He kept telling us we’d been around our mommies for too long. Then he told us we were a bunch of pussies.
He kicked a bag of footballs. His hat fell off and the veins bulged out of the top of his skull.
He said, “I meant to call you pussy cats, so don’t dare tell your mommies I called you pussies. Don’t need a whole locker room full of women ready to jump my ass tomorrow morning.”
He asked us if we wanted to be men.
I wanted to be a man more than anything now. We practiced all that summer, knocking each other down and puking.
We ran plays and got knocked on our ass and puked.
We ran gassers and did leg lifts and puked.
Then the coach yelled some more and shouted, “It’s the fundamentals, boys. You gotta get your ass down like you’re taking a shit. You can’t be little boys all the time.”
Then we puked.
I was younger than all the rest of the guys, but I ended up the quarterback on the varsity team. The whole time I thought they could smell it on me. I thought they could tell what I’d done with Derrick—the gay stuff.
The first game rolled around. I stood in the middle of the huddle, but I was so little I disappeared inside it. As I leaned over to call the play I heard laughter coming from the stands because I looked small compared to the other guys.
Look at him. He looks so small. Look at him.
But I bent over and tried calling the play but there were so many people watching, and I was so nervous my voice quivered and shook all high pitched as I called 29 Crossbuck pass on two.
I heard groans from the older guys saying, “Shut up. Let’s run the ball. Let’s run 29 Counter. You can’t fucking throw the ball.”
I told them, “But it’s what coach told me to call.”
I didn’t even want to be quarterback. I repeated 29 Crossbuck pass hoping that’s what they’d run.
“What the fuck did you say?” Eddie Harris said, just being an asshole.
“29 Crossbuck pass on two. Ready? Break.”
I walked up to the line hoping the guys would do what I said. I was so small my football pants did
n’t fit me. My knee pads were down hanging around my ankles but I pulled them up and kept going. I licked my fingers like I always did to make sure I could grip the ball.
I wiped the towel on my belt and then licked my fingers again and stood across from the defense who were already shouting at me. “Hey, you little pussy.”
The offensive line got down in their three point stance.
The defense kept going, “I’m going to make you suck my dick. I’m going to kick your ass you little faggot.”
I thought, “O god. Maybe they know what I’ve done.”
The referee rushed forward and told them to shut up.
But they said, “No, you shut the fuck up, ref.”
I shook nervous, squatted down behind center with my hands cupped beneath the center’s balls.
I said, “Seeeeeeuuuuuuttt.” in my long call. “Seeeeeuuuuttt. Hut.”
The ball was snapped. The lines crushed together full of pads smashing, voices shouting, curse words, motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker. I dropped back, faked the hand off to the 2 back going through the 9 hole, and then I looked down the field. I couldn’t see anything because I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I knew tough guys didn’t wear glasses. Then I saw this red streak zipping down the field. It was Eddie Harris.
I couldn’t see it was Eddie Harris but I imagined that’s who it was. I heaved the ball high down the field hoping he was one of ours and watched it go.
Then a linebacker on the other team came crashing through the line and knocked me on my ass.
I sat on my back in the wet dewey grass and listened to him shout over top of me. “Stay down on the ground, you little faggot.”
So that’s just what I did, listening to the crowd like they were in slow motion grow quiet—shhhh.
And then it was even more quiet.
But then.
But then there was a cheer—a cheer so fucking big I felt it bounce against the ground and then go jumping up my arms before gurgling around in my guts.
I hopped up and heard an even bigger cheer—ahhh, a cheer so much bigger that even now when I’m quiet I can close my eyes and hear it echo.
I ran down the field, tapped the big stupid linebacker on top of his helmet and giggled, watching Eddie Harris run the length of the field 25-20-15-10-5-touchdown. I ran over to the sideline and everybody smacked my ass.
It felt good when people smacked my ass.
Coach D grabbed a hold of my face mask and I knew I was on my way to being tough.
The next week, it changed.
It was at halftime of the game with Alderson when the score was 0-0. Coach was spitting and cussing and cranked up and punching lockers and shouting at us at halftime, “You gotta suck it up, boys. You gotta suck it up even when you don’t think you can anymore.”
Then he screamed at JJ Huston who was smiling now, who was just the kind of guy who was always smiling. “Wipe that smile off your face JJ. Wipe that fucking smile off your face.”
JJ stopped smiling.
Coach D punched a locker. “We’re all just too goddamn nice. We gotta toughen up. You gotta suck it up and ask yourself whether you wanna be one of them candy asses.”
“Now are you ready?”
We said, “We’re ready.”
He said, “What?”
We said, “We’re ready.”
He said, “What?”
I was confused by all this. Couldn’t he hear us?
We ran out onto the field after halftime screaming and punching and slapping each other and I didn’t think about anything else. I didn’t think about the fat women or the wah wah wah’s. I didn’t think about Vicks Suave or bed spreads or more wah wah wah’s. I played football and called the plays because I was the quarterback.
I called 40 sweep. We picked up 8 yards. I called 31 dive. We picked up 10 yards. I called them back to the huddle and giggled. A couple of the older guys were talking in the middle of my huddle. So I told them to shut the fuck up—guys who could kick my ass.
They shut the fuck up.
They listened to me.
I called another play and we gathered at the line.
The Alderson linebacker screamed at me, “Go ahead and throw it you little fuck.”
But I didn’t listen to them.
I giggled and said, “Seeeuuut hutt.”
The ball snapped. I faked the sweep, threw the flare pass out into the flat and watched Chris Timmons go zipping up the sideline.
But then something happened. The little Alderson nose guard must have been blocked to the ground, and as he rolled over, our legs became tangled and twisted together. I felt myself losing my balance. I felt myself falling. I felt myself flat on my stomach. I pushed myself up from the ground with my right arm and looked down and saw my left arm beneath me.
My left arm was broken. My forearm looked like somebody had broken and shaped it into a letter L. The bones were pushing out like the tips of broken toothpicks. The bones were jagged and sharp and their teeth were cutting the arm meat.
“O fuck.”
“O fuck.”
The referee leaned over and gagged. Then he gagged again and vomit came out of his nose. Then Coach D ran out onto the field. Coach bent over on his knees and pointed at a piece of skin that was hanging off the bone like a piece of used dental floss.
“Hey Coach, I think I broke my arm.” I said.
Then coach gagged too. He gagged and puked at the 48 yard line.
The crowd went “OOOOOOO.”
I didn’t say a word. I felt the paramedic cutting my jersey off of me. I guess the smell of the vomit was getting to him. He puked too. They put me up on the stretcher and another paramedic gagged but didn’t puke. He kept looking away from me so he wouldn’t have to look at my arm.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Coach told me.
I thought, “What a pussy.” But I just grinned a grin beneath the groans of the crowd and held my arm up, hoping they would all puke. “Puke you bastards,” I shouted and held it higher. The lights of the ambulance started flashing. The crowd thought I was trying to tell them I was okay. So they started cheering.
They started cheering so loud I could feel it inside me. I wanted them all to puke and cheer. Puke and cheer you bastards. And then I heard them cheering loud. I heard them cheering so loud because at long last I was tough. At long last I was the toughest faggot alive.
THE BASKETBALL MONSTER
After my arm healed and the cast came off and the broken bone stink went away, I started hanging out with girls. There was Sissy and there was Charity, and then there was Patty.
I wanted to impress them. I had a hoop outside of my house and it was a hoop you could adjust up and down. Evenings, Sissy and her friends came by and watched me dribble and spin and shoot.
I liked these girls.
One day I was shooting and dribbling and the girls stood in the street and giggled and whispered things back to one another and I didn’t know what they were giggling about. We listened to the chainsaws cutting at the mountain and the trees and then we watched the logging and coal trucks take our mountain away. I wanted to ask Sissy if she remembered the turtle we found when we were little kids. I wanted to ask her if she remembered it flying through the air and bouncing against the ground, but since the other girls were there I didn’t. I decided to impress them instead. I saw the wood fence and the adjustable basketball hoop. I set the basketball hoop to 8 feet. An 8 foot tall basketball hoop and a wooden fence meant only one thing: impressing girls.
I said, “Hey girls, watch this.”
Then I took off with the basketball, jumped off the wooden fence and slammed it. They laughed and giggled and their eyes opened wide. I was impressing them. I stood back—took off again, jumped off the fence and this time I did a 360 spin and slammed the ball. The girls applauded, I smiled. I took a bow and did it again.
I slammed and they smiled.
I slammed, they smiled.
I slammed and I imagine
d what they would do.
I slammed and I imagined them whispering, “He’s so hot.”
I slammed and imagined them deciding they needed to go to the woods with me. I imagined them giggling and taking off their tops, showing me their stuff.
I took off from five feet away and slammed.
I dribbled back and thought up my next dunk.
I bounced it off the backboard and slammed.
I dribbled back. Each dribble dribbled smiles of girls, legs of girls, and girl’s ankles.
I decided to do something to really impress them. I decided to knock the ball off the backboard, jump off the fence, do a 360 spin in the air, catch it, slam it, and then do pull ups on the rim before I dropped down. I took off towards the hoop, threw the ball against the basket backboard, did a 360 spin, slammed the ball, and then I started doing pull ups.
I did a pull up.
I did a pull up.
I did a pull up.
This was going to work. The girls were giggling. The girls were clapping.
It rained earlier that day. As I was doing my last pull up, I felt myself falling.
I was falling, but I was falling slow-motion style. Then I dreamed a dream about an elevator door, and a black snake and purple velvet walls. I dreamed about flying turtles and fat women and forest fires and strip mining and coal trucks loaded down with mountain chunks. It was like I’d been asleep for a whole night. When I opened my eyes all I could hear was laughing.
They didn’t see me fall, so they thought I was joking. When I opened my eyes all of the girls stopped laughing and the giggles were gone. I got up and looked at myself in the side mirror of my dad’s truck. My face was swollen up and bruised and black and looking like a monster face. My eye was hidden beneath a swollen and bloody looking tumor. There was blood coming out of the side of my head. I looked like a zombie. I turned around and looked at them and the girls started screaming. Two of them took off running as fast as they could. They were crying. They were crying and running away and flashing their arms and making noises. I couldn’t see them running. I couldn’t see at all.
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