by R J Scott
I couldn’t make out the words, not clearly, but I winced at what I did hear. Fag. And that was from Ten. Disgust and disappointment welled inside me. Ten knew me, knew I’d had a boyfriend. He wasn’t a kid who crossed lines like that. I gripped his jersey, and with a tug so hard he flailed, I dragged him upward. Temper made me see red, and I yanked him across the ice. He couldn’t get purchase, off balance, and almost crashed to the rubber when we stepped off the ice.
“Jesus, Mads,” he said, and righted himself with a hand on the boards.
“With me,” I snapped.
The forwards coach skated over, but I waved him away. I was dealing with this, and even though he frowned, my counterpart let it go.
“Five minutes,” was all he said. “Then he’s mine.”
I stamped my way to the changing rooms and through to the skate-sharpening area, which was sound-proofed. I had words to say, and I wasn’t leaving them unsaid. Ten came in after me, and I shoved him aside so I could shut the door to my office.
“What the fuck?” I asked with restrained aggression.
“He fucking started it!” Ten said, touching the lump on his forehead. “Asshole.”
That defense meant nothing to me, and it was my turn to snap. I backed him up against the door.
“If I ever hear you using that word again, I will personally knock you the fuck out.”
I was shouting right at him, eye to eye, and I saw the moment when the temper in his eyes became something else. Confusion.
“I didn’t… I wouldn’t…”
“I heard you, Ten. You called him a fag—”
“No,” he interrupted me, and he sounded so hurt—defensive, almost. “He called me that, said I was showing him up, that I needed to slow the hell down, and then he called me a faggot, and I lost it, okay?”
Now it was my turn to be confused. “I heard you say…”
“That if he ever used the word fag again, I would bury him.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” Ten looked at me like I’d grown a second head, like I had something on my face. He was trying to find something there, and all I could show him was confusion.
“Did you do that for me?” I asked, and abruptly all my strength left me and I slumped against the wall for support.
“Jared—”
“Don’t do that, okay? I’m at peace with who I am, but I don’t need you to fight for me, you get that? You keep yourself safe and you don’t rise to what anyone says.”
“That’s bullshit,” Ten snapped. “That word is offensive and I don’t want it used in that way, demeaning, laughing. I won’t have it.”
“Why? Ten, there are ways of dealing with this. Official ways.”
“He kept saying it, and he knew…”
“Knew what? About me? The world and his wife know I’m bi; I don’t need protecting.” My confusion was growing, and Ten looked like someone had kicked him in the balls and left him to cry in a heap on the floor.
“He saw me, he must have…”
“Ten?”
“Okay, so it’s no big deal, right,” Ten began. “I took a guy back to my room when I first got here, and he saw.”
“What are you saying?”
Ten looked at me. “You’re not stupid,” he said. “I’m gay, Jared. I’m in the fucking closet, and I’m gay. Okay?”
With that, he left and shut the door behind him, and I was frozen to my chair. I rested my elbows on my desk, then scrubbed my face with my hands.
Abruptly, everything I felt and wanted was right there for me to take.
And I realized I was in shock.
Five
Mads
I followed him as soon as it hit me what he’d said. He was gay. He wasn’t out. He’d got into a fight with Addison, who knew he was gay?
Did his family know? Why hadn’t Brady told me? Surely, I could be trusted to have Ten’s back if he needed help on a new team.
The enormity of what Ten had just told me was too much for me to process, and I had so many questions.
“Jared!”
I turned at the voice, part of me hoping it was Ten, part of me dreading it, even though it didn’t even sound like him.
Coach Benning stood at the end of the corridor, arms over his chest, and he looked a long way past pissed.
“My office,” he said, and pushed open his door, gesturing for me to go first.
“I need to clear something up first,” I began, but he frowned and shook his head.
If this was about the fight and me taking Ten off the ice like I had, then I needed to confront and deal right away. Then I could find Ten and talk to him and ask him questions. So many questions.
Resigned, I went into Benning’s office, taking in the disorganized mess that was so unlike the repressed, organized kind of man Benning was. And there was Ten, hunched over in one of the guest chairs.
“Ten?” I asked, but I didn’t need to ask him what this was about; I knew what was happening here. This was no rebuke to me; this was way more serious shit than that.
Coach shut the door and moved behind his desk, sitting and lacing his hands on the surface.
“Ten has just made an announcement,” Coach said, and there was anger in his voice, alongside resignation. “As the team’s specialist in equality, this is something you need to hear.”
Specialist in equality? That wasn’t in my contract. Since when did I have that label? What Coach really meant was that as the only one in the building who had openly admitted he liked cock, I was some kind of expert.
“Ten?” I asked again.
“I’m gay,” he said simply. Calm as you like, his gaze not wavering from being focused right on Coach. He wouldn’t even look at me.
“Okay,” I said, just as calm, like this was the first time I’d heard the news and I was coming from a stance of inclusion and fairness to all players.
“And the reason I fought Addison is that he knows and used words that offended me.”
Seemed to me that Ten had been practicing those words, but only someone who knew him like I knew him, or at least thought I knew him, would have been able to hear the anxiety in his tone.
It was the same clipped tone he’d used whenever his brothers had pushed him too far when they were kids. Like he was this close to snapping and had to try really hard to keep himself steady and in control.
Coach stood. “You need to fight fires,” he said to me. “You have the room, and I’ll send Addison in. Management will need to know.”
I stood as well. What was Coach saying? He was leaving his office, and… what? I was the one who was going to be handling this shit, when all I wanted to do was get very personal with Ten and ask him how the hell he’d managed to keep this secret for so long.
“Coach, this isn’t my remit,” I began, and caught Ten glancing at me with hurt on his face.
I wasn’t backing down, though. As a friend, I would be there for Ten, but as an employee of the Railers I wasn’t the expert in equality just because of the sex I had. Right?
Coach stopped at the door, one hand on the handle. “I’ll discuss a salary enhancement with management commensurate with your new responsibility.” And with that he left.
All I could think was that I didn’t need money. I didn’t want to be the team’s equality spokesman. And hell, I didn’t want to be there with Ten at that moment. I turned from the door and leaned on it; at least that way we’d have some warning of Addison coming in.
“Your family?” I asked in shorthand, knowing Addison would be there any minute.
Ten didn’t turn to face me. “They don’t know.”
“How the hell… Jesus, Ten… Your family…”
Ten stiffened in his seat but still didn’t turn, and he didn’t say anything else.
There was a knock on the door, and I moved away to open it. A contrite Addison, with a butterfly bandage on his forehead and blood on his jersey, stepped in.
“Coach sent me,” he said, and he slipp
ed into the other visitor chair that I had just been sitting in.
Which left me in the Coach’s chair, like a principal handing down punishments for school violations. I could, at least, see Ten from this angle, and he looked like nothing I’d seen before. Deadly serious, frozen, unmoving. Next to him, Addison was a mess, his eyes bright like he wanted to cry.
I can’t deal with this shit.
I needed some kind of handbook on sensitivity training, I should be sitting there with all the right words, knowing exactly what to say. Maybe I could contact You Can Play, or better yet, they might have something on their website. Why didn’t the team already have someone in place?
What if I needed someone to talk to myself, as a bi man? Who was going to help me if I needed it?
I cleared my throat, and Addison jumped like I’d cocked a gun and pointed it at him.
“Who wants to go first?”
Ten said nothing, and Addison kept fidgeting.
I picked up the nearest object to me, one of Coach’s fancy pens, and methodically pulled the whole thing into its constituent parts, waiting for one of them to say something.
“Fuck,” Addison began, the first to break. “I’m sorry, Ten, I really am.”
“Uh-huh,” Ten said helpfully.
“It’s just, I’m not first line, okay? I can’t do this with you. You’re too fast, and my contract is up for renewal, and… fuck, I just lost it.”
Addison sounded miserable, and I looked at Ten to gauge his expression. There was a twitch of reaction, a tension in him, and I saw him briefly close his eyes. I considered stepping in at that point, wrapping up the meeting now that the apology had been offered, but Addison hadn’t finished.
“And my cousin is gay, you know, and I would kill anyone who said that to her with all that hate. You have to know it was heat of the moment, and if I could take it back, I would.”
Ten nodded, then turned to face Addison. “Is that the first-cousin you fucked and had kids with?” he asked, clear as day.
I didn’t have time to react, Addison got there first. “What the fuck?” he snapped, shocked.
“That’s what you hicks do in your state, right?”
Addison opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish, and then something snapped between them and Addison offered his fist, which Ten bumped, and I realized what Ten had done. He’d insulted Addison with the worst cliché he could think of, and Addison had seen it for what it was.
“Now we’re equal, right?” Ten said. “No need to walk around avoiding me—we have a game to win.”
“I’m so sorry, man,” Addison said again.
“Sorry I split your forehead open,” Ten offered, “and for implying you fuck your cousin.”
“Fuck, it was a good one,” Addison said, and touched the wound on his head. “Did you see the blood? It was, like, all over the ice.”
They both smiled, bumped fists again, then turned expectantly to me.
Great, now it was my turn.
“We are an inclusive organization, and welcome all orientations,” I began, and saw the smirk beginning on Ten’s face. I hated him so much at that point.
“Fag is a bad word,” Ten said, simple and to the point. “As are faggot, bum bandit, shirt lifter, and any and all variations on those.”
Addison nodded. “Agreed. I won’t use them again.”
“Although,” Ten said, “turd burglar was a new one on me.”
“Thanks,” Addison said. “I will ensure from now on that I don’t use homophobic language, and I also won’t tell anyone else on the team what I know unless you decide to make it public.”
He stood up, as did Ten, and they semi-hugged, with plenty of back-patting. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“Nice talk, Coach Madsen,” Addison said, and let himself out.
“Neither of you were taking that seriously,” I said as soon as the door shut.
Ten simply looked at me, and his expression was deadly serious. “That there was exactly how it needed to be handled—a one-on-one apology. I won’t make this bigger than it is. This is me, my identity, and I won’t sit here and let you tick boxes to define me and who I am, or how people talk to me.”
“Fag—”
“Is wrong. I know it, you know it, and one day it won’t be used again. One day I won’t want to kill someone in a face-off because he casually throws it around in every sentence, like punctuation.”
“Ten—”
“I have to get back.”
I let him go, because I didn’t know what I wanted to say at that point. I sat there for the longest time. Was Ten right? Was the way toward inclusion for the guys to be accepting among themselves? Would that spill outward to coaches and management and to fans of hockey? Being bi somehow gave me a pass. I slept with women as well, so people considered me undecided, which was complete crap, but I didn’t push it.
No one judged me, and anything that was ever said to me, I ignored. Maybe I should have dropped gloves over slurs. Maybe I should have been the one to start the revolution.
By the time I got outside, Ten was long gone, and he didn’t reply to my text asking to meet up.
And I resolved there and then that I needed to get the inclusivity, sensitivity, equality training, or whatever it was called, and really try to do some good.
Six
Tennant
My first preseason game in the Railers colors, and my head was off in the cosmos. Totally pulling a Doctor Who, my brain was skipping through time and space, then landing in some foreign place where I’d step out of the blue box that was my head, look around at the alien red landscape through my 3-D glasses and say—in a spanking British accent—“Nope. Not a clue where the hell I am!” Then I’d go back into the TARDIS and try another planet, where the same scenario would take place
“Hey, Rowe, we doing any training after the game?” I shook off the time travel stuff and looked at one of my teammates. He was shaking a new pack of Pokémon cards in my face. “I’m close to getting my Squirtle to his second evolution.”
“Yeah, good. Hit me up after the game and maybe we can set something up.”
I got a grin and a slap on the back.
I looked over at Stan seated beside me. His gray eyes roamed over my face. “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz?” the gigantic Russian asked.
“Do you live in TV Land or something?” I enquired. Stan quirked a thick, dark eyebrow. “No, dude, I’m not sick, just spaced out.”
“Ah! Space. Final frontier.”
“Totally.”
He grinned because he thought he had figured it out… I guess. I wasn’t sure how much of what anyone said to Stan he understood, aside from the translator who helped him with media stuff. He seemed happy enough, though. Wished I could get to that happy place. Coming out to Mads had been epic and terrifying all at once. I mean, on one hand it might be okay to have a man to talk to about gay stuff… not that he was gay, he was bi, but seriously, he got it. Try sitting in a room filled with guys talking about pussy all the time when you’re gay. It’s like being a vegetarian in a room filled with meat-eaters discussing all the steak and pork they’ve had or plan to ingest.
Management knowing was another story. Soon the whole team would know, or maybe already did. Did management want me to come out publicly? My family didn’t even know yet. I’d have to tell them first. Christ, I did not want to have to do this. I just wanted to play hockey and see Mads smile at me in the morning as we shared the same pillow. Simple pleasures, you know?
Stan stood up, plunked his mask onto his head, and walked out of the dressing room. I looked at the clock over the door.
“Fuck.”
I rushed to finish dressing and taping. Maybe being on the ice would center me. It always had before.
There was no avoiding Mads or his blue eyes, but I did my best. And he didn’t push in any way. I did catch him looking at me with concern once from the other end of the bench, but the game took precedence. The sound of my s
kates cutting ice began to gather my thoughts and weave them back together. We were playing New Jersey tonight. And yes, I knew it was a nothing game. All preseason games are. They’re mostly to get the lines figured out and gelling while helping the coaches whittle down their rosters. So, while the games counted for nothing standings-wise, there was pressure. I felt it even though I was pretty sure I’d have a starting spot. See, I was out there to get the first line center position. I’d play second line if that was where I was assigned, but I wanted first line bad. And our captain, he felt me breathing down his neck. He knew the young guy was hot for his spot. Whether that spurred him to play better or not, only time would tell. I knew that I was going to play balls to the wall.
The first twenty minutes had been damn sloppy, but it always was. I’d never played with any of these men, and so timing was off. Some hadn’t come into camp in great shape, although most had. Those who were slow were dragging down those of us who had worked all summer to stay in shape and hone our skills.
The second period broke open a little about the same time the goalies were switched, which was ten minutes in. New Jersey coughed up the puck at the red line, the cross-ice pass from one winger to the other easily picked off by a center with legs. That would be me. I passed it along to one of the defensemen, since we were heading for a line change. He banked it off the boards for some unknown reason, and New Jersey gobbled it up. Our backup goalie was cold from sitting, and the weak slap shot rolled right through his five hole. I sat down on the bench and listened to Mads shouting at his defensive players. When it was time for us to be on the ice, I climbed over the boards filled with determination.
My chance came quickly. The puck had been dumped into the visitors’ end. One D-man for Jersey was behind the net trying to tangle up Lee, while the other defenseman in red was off puck-watching, even though he knew he should have been in front of his goal. Being the good kind of guy that I am, I filled his slot in the goal. And what do you know, the puck found its way to my stick, and with a flick to elevate it over the goalie’s shoulder, it was in the Jersey net. Boom. Pretty as you please. Red light flashing, hugs from the team—including Lee Addison—and lots of knuckle-bumps. God, I loved this sport. It was the only steady and constant thing in my life right now. Once I was seated and a different line rolled out, I removed my helmet and toweled off my head. Peeking down the bench through the damp cotton, my gaze touched Mads, and the swirling space-and-stars stuff started again.