Yes, I thought, that sums up my career.
Then, as I approached the stage to give my acceptance speech, the audience rose for a standing ovation. An athlete’s great fear is that she won’t be remembered—that all the sacrifice mattered little—and here were two hundred people who did remember and seemed to care. Jim Wadley, the former owner of the Duluth Dukes, and his wife were there. So were my parents. I spoke of gratitude; I called my life in baseball “a fairy tale.”
One day at the academy, one of the guys called out, “Hey, Ila. Howard Stern’s talking about you on the radio. He wants to know where you’re at.”
I thought he was kidding until I heard Howard on the radio telling listeners to call in. I was not crazy about Howard’s shock-jock reputation, but the guys at the academy loved him. During lunch break I called the station. Why, you might ask, would someone as averse to the media as I was call the reigning shock jock who was all about sexuality? Peer pressure—the guys wouldn’t leave it alone, and I did so like being one of the guys. That and my own stupidity pushed me to it. I told myself, What harm could come out of this?
It turned out that Howard had an argument going that I could strike out “that fat little bastard Artie Lang.” Artie, a comedian who was part of Stern’s show, insisted he could get a hit off me. They were ramping up for a big battle of the sexes.
So I called and was asked a bunch of questions, inappropriate ones, of course, but still funny. They were trying hard to rile me up, but I didn’t bite. Then the invitation: would I go to Las Vegas and pitch to Artie?
I said, “Okay, but I would bet against me right now.” I explained that I had not thrown a baseball since retiring four years ago.
Howard told me to bring along a catcher. Our hotel rooms would be covered, plus we’d get five hundred dollars cash. I asked one of our firefighting recruits if he wanted to go, and he jumped at it. He was a big Howard Stern fan, and he liked the idea of staying at the Hard Rock Hotel and using his half of the cash to gamble with.
The Hard Rock Hotel parking lot had been turned into a mini baseball field on asphalt. There was a backstop, umpire, pitcher’s mound, nets all around us, and tons of spectators. And I thought, Why did I sign on to do this? I had brought my own glove and baseball, but when I got there they had their own baseballs—Little League size balls, as if this was a kids’ joke, and to me they felt softer than the ones I had thrown.
In the studio truck I met the crew. Howard Stern was tall and skinny, with lots of hair. Hair! I thought. At the firefighting academy, nobody’s hair could touch the collar of his or her shirt, and no matter how much I gelled or moussed my hair, it grazed my shirt. For the first time ever I had cut my long hair. I felt exposed without my long hair and braced myself for the ridicule from Howard I was sure would come. But Howard in person turned out to be the opposite from his manner on the air: he was friendly and polite, and so was his entire crew. Artie, though, was swigging bourbon and talking trash. I did not talk trash—I had a hunch I was screwed by my lack of conditioning. I went out to the mound and threw about ten warmup pitches. Ouch, it hurt. Holy crap—ten throws after four years. Then I got the Little League baseball, and Artie came up to bat. I threw three fastballs, but high around his head. Holy crap—the ball was dragging off my fingers so badly that I tried to almost throw it into the ground to approach the strike zone. I finally decided, Screw it, here comes a curveball. And Artie made contact—not good contact, just a nubber, a grounder to short. But Artie had won.
Afterward, furious with myself for not being better prepared, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I came back to the booth, said my good-byes, and headed back to L.A. My buddy, though, stayed on, partying with Howard’s crew. Back at the Academy he said he was forever grateful to me for the gig. And I was a minor celebrity. Thanks to YouTube, people still like to talk about the Howard Stern clip. Dang, everything you do really comes back to you.
I was honored to be named the first female recruit chief of the Santa Ana Fire Academy. I graduated in June 2004 with an associate of arts degree in fire technology. Along with about five thousand others, I applied for one of the twenty-four openings in the Long Beach Fire Department (LBFD). I had come in under seven minutes on the Biddle Physical Ability Test, and that caught their eye. The Biddle is a grueling test with eleven continuous events, from running up four flights of stairs with your pack and bundle to raising an extension ladder, and to pulling a 175-pound dummy around obstacles. To make the cut you must complete the test within nine minutes and thirty-four seconds. I knew of only one other woman at the academy who had come in under seven minutes. To me it was just another kind of spring training. In August 2004 I was hired on by the LBFD. I had to complete one year as a rookie on probation before the job would become permanent. I rented an apartment in the Belmont Shores area of Long Beach, right on the water. It was an active neighborhood, filled with Rollerbladers, joggers, dog walkers, and volleyball players—my kind of place. Long Beach had a good-sized gay community, but I was twenty-nine now and done running around looking for love. I liked staying home on a Saturday night, listening to the waves crashing on the shore, doing a crossword puzzle, enjoying a glass of wine, and chilling on my couch. When I did go out it was to visit a museum or attend a basketball or baseball game at Long Beach State, the University of Southern California, or the Staples Center. I was alone much of the time but didn’t struggle with loneliness. I was willing to wait for the right person, whenever she came along, but I wasn’t working very hard to find her.
Shannon. On September 25, 2005, I biked to my favorite coffeehouse, Peet’s. As I waited in line for my caffeine fix of choice, a medium skinny French vanilla latte, I opened a magazine to a feature about Joshua Tree National Park. I had bungee-jumped and ridden off rooftops on my bike but had never tried rock climbing. Joshua Tree, I read, was the place to go.
From behind me came a voice: “You have to go there.”
I was not in a sociable mood, and thought, Mind your own business, pal. Then I turned and looked into a face that beamed joy back at me. A face that seemed kind of shy yet confident, and quirky. Something leaped in my heart, and I smiled back.
The woman said that she often went out to Joshua Tree. I ordered my coffee and invited her to join me. As I sat at the table, I thought, What am I doing, inviting a stranger to hang out with me? I took a quick glance at the rest of her. About five feet eight and lanky, all arms and legs, with blonde hair and kind brown eyes—not usually my type, which was blue-eyed brunettes. She was oddly dressed in jeans a little too short and a blue oversized sweatshirt. Her name was Shannon Marie Chesnos. We talked about rock climbing, scuba diving, and firefighting, with no sense of time or the people around us. Afterward, we looked at one another with the same idea: Did we have time to bike along the Long Beach boardwalk?
I was not thinking romantically right then—I did not know whether she was gay or straight—I just thought, Wow, this is one down-to-earth, fun-spirited, cool person. So we biked to the ferry and back. Laughing like kids, we competed to see who could “surf” their bike. It reminded me of my days with Grandma, when I felt so at ease. Shannon was so alive—she did not seem to care what others thought—and her laughter was contagious. By the end of the ride my eyes were watering and my stomach hurt from laughing so hard.
We exchanged phone numbers and made plans to meet the following week at the bowling alley at the Pike amusement park. I got there early and sat on a bench to people watch, wondering whether my time with Shannon would go as well as it had the first time. My cell phone rang—Shannon was calling to say she was parking. Cool, I thought, she does not run late, a peeve of mine. I turned my head, and there was Shannon—gorgeous, but what was she wearing? Lime green, way-too-short pants. She gave me her amazing smile, and I got the vibe that she was interested romantically. Then I wondered, How is this person still single? Oh, yeah, it must be the clothes.
During our bowling date, neither of us held back. I was curious t
o see how she dealt with winning and losing. I won two out of three games but felt no sense of competition, only the joy of being together. Afterward we walked to Islands, which turned out to be Shannon’s favorite restaurant. Islands? I had been an island unto myself for so many years, but maybe no longer. I learned that she was an accomplished sailor and a master instructor of scuba diving. As we lingered over dinner, we discovered we were both neat freaks. While she was wiping salt off the table from her favorite french fries, I was wiping condensation from her glass of water. I knew right then I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.
We took our time getting to know one another. Shannon had a complicated past. She had been adopted and was raised in San Jose by a wealthy couple. While Shannon felt her parents loved her very much, she also felt they were out of touch with who she was. Her father wanted her to go into a high-paying career and to marry a wealthy man, rather than accepting her as the model–computer geek–sports-minded woman that she was. I found out what was up with her baggy old clothes. Like me, Shannon did not like to be an object of attention—she had endured much of that during her modeling days. She also did not like people to know she came from money. So she dressed frumpy, in oversized, holey sweatshirts and unflattering pants.
Out of the Closet. At age eighteen, Shannon had told her parents she was gay. Her father, she told me, had insisted that she was not. I understood. Just before I met Shannon, I had asked Mom to meet me at the track at Biola University. “Biola” stands for the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. It was a half mile from our family home, and I had been going there since age thirteen to shoot hoops in the gym or run the track. It wasn’t just a place to train; it was also where Mom and I went to talk. After Randall was born she had struggled with her weight, so I often invited her to walk with me there for exercise and conversation.
I had turned thirty and was fed up with living the Big Lie about who I was to my family. Mom had faced the reality of her failing marriage and filed for divorce in October of 2003; it had become final the following year. I thought the divorce might help her better accept the truth of my own life. The only one in my family who knew I was gay was my sister, Leah, and I turned to her for advice about how to tell Mom.
“Go to the track, Ila,” Leah said.
So here I was, walking the track of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles with Mom. I shook as I searched for a way to not tell her. She doesn’t really need to know, I told myself. Her response was likely to be bad. I was her firstborn, the responsible one. Now I would be the one who let the family down.
“Mom,” I began. “I’m going to tell you something you aren’t going to be happy about. I don’t expect you to agree, but I just cannot lie to you anymore.”
Deep breath.
“I’m gay. I’ve known it since I was five. I have prayed hard to be straight, but I’m not. I’m gay.”
Mom looked at me, puzzled. “But you’ve had two boyfriends.”
“They didn’t last very long, did they? And I wasn’t physically attracted to them. I dated them because I felt that’s what I was supposed to do.
“Oh, but maybe it’s just a phase.”
I could see why she might think that, given that I had been living a lie for so long. She started to cry. I had hoped that coming out would be a huge relief; instead I felt terrible. “I’m so sorry.”
“I just worry about you,” she replied. “I love you and know that people are going to be mean to you and call you names. It hurts that my child will be ridiculed.”
I saw no anger in her eyes, but I did see fear. I looked at her, as if to say, Mom, I’ve lived with name-calling and ridicule all of my baseball life.
Mom sighed and said, “Well, I’m still going to pray that you meet a nice man.”
We left it at that. Mom stopped asking questions about my personal life, and I did not offer any information. For me, the burden of secrecy had been lifted, only to be replaced by another weight. I was no longer the good daughter who upheld our family’s Christian image. Yet I realized that Mom had let me down, too. No matter how much we love someone, they can fail us. Only God can supply the great doses of unconditional love that I as a gay woman so badly needed. I did feel that love but still feared that friends and family would view me differently now.
I knew I was lucky, though. Some of my gay friends had been kicked out of their homes or shunned by their families. Shannon had suffered, too. For years her father had set up Shannon on dates with men. She rebelled by moving to Hollywood, where she became a model and a singer. She got into alcohol and methamphetamines. Unable to come to terms with her family’s response to her as a gay woman, she tried several times to take her life. I found it hard to believe she had lived that sort of life. Then Shannon showed me the scar on her butt, the result of an accident after she overdosed at her dealer’s house. “It’s all true,” she said.
Eventually she quit drugs and alcohol cold turkey. Seeking a sense of community, a place where she might find acceptance and where people sought to live morally, Shannon turned to the Church of Latter Day Saints and at age twenty-five converted to Mormonism. It sounds self-destructive, but many gay people turn to the place least likely to accept their sexual orientation. It’s a bargain with God in hopes of a miracle that just maybe they can turn straight. Shannon prayed that God would do just that. She dated guys. A Mormon man wanted to marry her, but she refused to pretend to love someone in what would have been, for her, a sham. Shannon also objected to the expectations put on women and their behavior. She often talked with her Mormon friend, Susie, who probably knew she was gay. Susie had explained the church’s three levels of heaven. (The Mormon Church lists the Telestial as the realm for unbelievers, the Terrestrial for religious non-Mormons and Mormons who have not met the requirements for full holiness, and the Celestial for select Mormons who have kept all of the church’s laws and ordinances.) Didn’t Shannon want to be up higher, where Susie would be? But Shannon remained concerned with the religion’s sense of exclusivity. And, like me, by age thirty she no longer wanted to live the lie of who she truly was. She left the Mormon Church. A year later, I was her first date.
Our weekends were a bonanza of bowling, rock climbing, swimming, Ping-Pong marathons, and movies. I had discovered the Southern California landscape first through the baseball diamonds I played on and later through biking the hills of Los Angeles; now I saw the area through love. It was a watery world: we went deep-sea fishing out of Newport Beach, snorkeled in Laguna Beach, and kayaked the canals near Long Beach. We crowded so much into our days and nights. Well, we had been looking for each other for a long time. If I had to come up with only one word to describe our life together, it would be laughter.
I had waited to tell her about my baseball career. When I did, she was intrigued. “You have to write a book about it,” she said.
We’d go up to the field at Long Beach State, where the Dirtbags play, and I’d throw to her, though I made sure not too hard, or I’d hit ground balls to her. Shannon was a big fan of the Angels and one day surprised me with tickets to one of their games. “You know,” she told me, “If you ever want back in the game some way, I’ll support you.”
My family liked Shannon from the start. Mom said she had never seen me so happy and stress-free. She was able to look past the gay part and appreciate our relationship for what it was. She knew I had met someone special and wanted me to be happy. Dad, though, was in denial. He and I had never had the conversation about my being gay—Mom says that she told him but he never brought it up with me.
Shannon’s Mormon friends disapproved of her gayness but kept contacting her, urging her to return to the church. She stood fast but began reading the Bible, trying to find her way to God. Meanwhile, I was still recovering from my Southern Baptist upbringing. At one point, I asked what she believed in: “One heaven, one hell, and that good works can get you to heaven,” she answered. We prayed together, and Shannon accepted Jesus Christ into her heart. We both wanted to find a p
rogressive Christian church that would accept us as we were—definitely not one that taught we were going to hell for being gay. Our conversations made me reflect. God had answered my lifelong prayer to play professional baseball. Now, while I was on a new path as a firefighter, my second lifelong prayer had been answered: I had met my soul mate. Had I met Shannon earlier, I might have been so focused on my career that I would have passed her by. God’s timing had been perfect. I’ve been asked why I give God the credit when something goes well but none of the blame when things don’t. I believe that God is good and just but that there is a continuing struggle with evil in this world, and he has given us free will over our choices. I don’t think God allows bad things to happen; they happen because we have free will.
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