Over Time

by Kyell Gold

  It’s gotten dark outside in the time it took me to eat dinner. I wander under streetlights and pass a street where Lee and I had a shouting fight once, and then we grabbed each other and went back to his apartment and ripped each other’s clothes off. The memory makes me smile. In those early days, we were so passionate, so devoted to discovering each other and being together. Now our passions run just as strong, but maybe not quite as close to the surface. Is that what time does to passion? Was it the secrecy? Is the relationship less exciting now that everyone knows about it?

  I try to leave these thoughts at the door of Harnwell Hall. Game time, I tell myself, breathing in. Even without Lee, I can do this.

  The meeting is easy to find: it’s the room bustling with activity and noise. Chuck spots me when I poke my head in the door and waves me up to the front. “Dev! Can I call you Dev? Come on up!”

  Heads turn and the room goes quiet. I raise a paw and smile out at the thirty-strong group as I walk up to Chuck. Wow. They’re all about Lee-height, smaller than I am, except for one polar bear in the back. There’s a pair of arctic foxes, several ermine and weasels (when they have their white winter coats, they’re hard to tell apart if you don’t look at their tails), a couple skinny wolves, a puma, a raccoon…no red foxes, though. Wait, there is a silver phase red fox, bushy silver winter coat showing over his black fur, talking to the otter next to him.

  “All right, let’s settle down,” Chuck calls as I get up to the front next to him, even though nobody’s really talking anymore. “Devlin Miski, Forester alum and gay football player, has been nice enough to agree to come chat with us. He’s going to star in a Diversity in Athletics Day here at Forester in a month or so…” He looks to me for confirmation and I nod, and in that space there’s a smattering of applause. “And he’s dating another Forester alum from our very own little club, a Wiley Farrel. Anyone here remember him?”

  One of the arctic foxes says, “Oh, I do,” and the ringtail next to him nods with a smirk.

  “Cool,” Chuck says. “Anyway, I’ll, uh, I’ll turn it over to Dev now.”

  “Oh.” I look at him as he sits down, then at all the people staring at me. “I thought I was just going to answer questions.”

  “Sure,” he says, “you can do that too if you like. But if you have something you want to say…I mean, you’re gonna have to do a speech for Diversity Day, so you could look at this like a test balloon if you want.”

  “But I don’t have anything prepared.” He’s still looking at me expectantly, and I remember a conversation with Lee from a long time ago. “Well, hang on. Let me…”

  He steps back. My heart pounds and I look out at the sea of faces, all eyes fixed on me. My tongue dries up. How is this harder than tackling two-hundred-pound football players?

  I think again of Lee. I imagine him out there watching me with that smile, telling me I can do this. We got this, tiger. I take a breath and the knot in my chest eases.

  “I feel awkward saying this,” I start. “Because you guys are all out and proud and you’re fighting for gay rights. My boyfriend always talked really fondly about this group and it’s cool to see everyone here.” I breathe in again. “A lot of people view my coming out as a part of a movement, a blow; or an accident, a corner I was forced into. But…” Looking at the faces in front of me is a mistake, even though they look interested, worried, amused, concerned. In the back, a couple are whispering, ignoring me. I imagine Lee again and go on. “But it wasn’t those things. You guys know there were rumors, that—” Shit, Brian was part of this club, too, right? Better not mention him. “That my agent let them spiral out of control and I had to hold a press conference about them. But nobody was forcing me to come out. Lee wasn’t forcing me to come out. He didn’t even think I should.

  “I told everyone I was gay because I love him. And it didn’t seem right to lie about it. That’s all.”

  Nobody says anything. I don’t know what reaction I’d hoped for, but I go on, a little awkwardly. “So, you know, what you’re doing here is great, but for me, and I think for a lot of gay people—a lot of us—it’s about love. Have things been difficult these last few months? Hell yeah. I’ve been harassed, Lee lost his job. But…but we can be honest with the world about who we are and that we love each other. And that’s—I mean, that’s what you—we—should all be remembering.”

  I look back to Chuck to make it clear that I’m done, and the room applauds politely. I don’t know what I expected, but as the stallion steps back up, I catch sight of that silver fox and otter with their arms around each other, kissing, and that makes me smile. That’s enough, I think Lee would tell me.

  Chuck pats me on the back. “Nice work. If you want help polishing that before the day, let me know.” He looks out at the club. “Any of you guys have questions for Dev?”

  I’m prepared to treat it like a press conference, but the first question I pick, from an ermine up front, is, “Do you look at your teammates in the shower?”

  Okay. It’s going to be one of those Q&A sessions. “I don’t hide my eyes,” I say. “But I don’t stare at them, either.”

  “Who’s got the biggest…equipment?” the ermine wants to know.

  “Let’s keep it classy, people,” Chuck says, saving me from having to answer, though I think later that I should’ve just told them it was Charm. He wouldn’t have minded and they would’ve enjoyed hearing it. But a season full of press conferences has made me wary of everything I say in a public forum.

  They ask about my boyfriend, about whether I’ve introduced him to the team, about the behind-the-scenes reception my sexuality has gotten, lots of questions I’ve already answered in press conferences, but I guess these guys probably don’t watch a lot of sports reporting. It’s okay; I’m good at answering inane questions politely, and these guys aren’t asking if I regretted coming out or why I don’t think any other players have—well, Polecki has now, so that’s not a valid question anymore. But mostly they want to know about my life on the team and outside the team: how people treat me, where I go for fun.

  And then the ringtail who said he knows Lee asks if I knew the guys who beat up the gay person a while ago and if I was afraid of them. I say that was before I came out, so I wasn’t afraid. I thought it was stupid at the time, and hateful (that last isn’t strictly true; I didn’t think about it much at all), but I didn’t really understand how it applied to me. The ringtail follows up by asking how I’d get straight people to understand how it affects them, and I say that’s why I’m doing this Diversity Day. He lets it drop there, seemingly satisfied.

  The arctic fox beside him asks how my boyfriend deals with my life. “You guys know Lee,” I say, because I think he’s the one who said he did. “He’s kind of passionate—strike that ‘kind of.’ We have fights, but we’ve been together three years and things are still working. He loves football too, and in fact he’s been working as a scout in the league, so we do share the same world, pretty much.”

  Where is he, they want to know, and I say he’s visiting family and will be joining us afterwards. “Were you in FLAG when you were here?” the puma asks.

  I shake my head. “I wasn’t out then. I mean, I…I wasn’t out to myself until my senior year, and then I thought that being gay would mean I’d get blackballed from the team.”

  “How did you find out you were gay?” a female raccoon asks.

  Wow. How do I answer that in ten seconds? “Well,” I say, “I saw this fox and fell for him, so that kinda did it.”

  They laugh in a knowing way, and though there are a couple followup questions, I deflect them. These guys aren’t as good nor as persistent as professional reporters. They actually have a sense that some things should remain private, or they’re too polite to go to those places.

  After about forty minutes, the questions die down. Chuck stands up again and conducts the official club business, which I’m allowed to remain for, though I sort of space out without listening. I’m more focuse
d on sitting in a room of gay people. I keep looking around at pairs sitting together, same gender, and thinking, “they could be a couple.” Especially the two arctic foxes, but their fur is so thick that their gender is hard to tell when they’re not talking, and then they hold paws partway through the meeting, so that takes the guesswork out of it.

  But just being in a room full of guys who have boyfriends and ladies who have girlfriends is strange, and it feels good. Here, the thing that sets me apart is that I’m a football player, not a college student. I can talk about Lee, and nobody here thinks it’s strange or a curiosity that I’m dating a guy. Nobody will ask if I’m not attracted to girls, or treat me like a museum exhibit or an ambassador. Everyone here understands about being gay, and they’ve all gone through their own trials. I think that I would like to hear some of their stories, too.

  The meeting winds up quickly. Chuck takes me by the arm right away and leads me out in a casual exodus of people, out into the hallway and to the cold air of a campus street. All the way, he keeps talking about the club and how great it was for me to come and talk to them, how inspiring I am, and how much he enjoyed talking to Lee.

  At this, the arctic fox couple comes up alongside us and the smaller one, the one who raised his paw, says, “Yeah, how’s Lee been? He hasn’t exactly stayed in touch.”

  “Up and down,” I say. “Had a great job, lost it, got another one. He starts in a couple weeks.”

  “I tried to e-mail him when that article about him came out, but he never responded.”

  “He doesn’t have his Forester e-mail anymore,” Chuck puts in helpfully. “He said he didn’t get the alumni mailing.” Then, to me, “This is Misha Cameron.”

  “Ainsley-Cameron.” Misha smiles at the fox next to him. “This is Parlon, my husband.”

  “Misha,” I say, and the name rings a bell. I glance up at one of the buildings we’re passing, an engineering school, I think. It’s not the English building Lee pointed out, but it’s similar. “Wait, are you the one Lee—uh, I mean, did you and Lee—”

  He laughs. “Parlon knows about my past. Yes, I didn’t want to mention it, but Lee and I dated for a while. And yes, whatever he told you is probably true. What was it, out of curiosity?”

  I try to bring my ears up, without success. “He said he and you, uh, in the bathrooms of…the English building, I think…”

  “Oh, yes.” Misha grins, and his partner—husband—rolls his eyes. “There and about a half dozen other places on campus. He was never really worried about getting caught. Of course, we were all younger then.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “So fair’s fair. Where has he blown you?”

  The fox’s dark amber eyes glint under the street lights. I smile. “Uh, we had sex in an empty equipment room in the Dragons’ stadium. Other than that it’s been not really adventurous.” Then I feel like I have to explain myself. “See, it was hard for us to worry about being caught. Mostly for me, but he was working in football too, and that—well, it sort of ended up being why he got fired, when it came out.”

  Misha nods. “I read about that.” His long white tail curls back and forth, and brushes his…his husband’s (I force myself to use the word, even in my own head). “I’ll be honest,” he says. “I’m surprised he’s been with the same guy for so long. I think I was the longest relationship he’d had at the time, and that was, what, six months?”

  “Six months was his record.” The ringtail who asked about the football player has come up behind us. “Hey, I’m Allen.”

  I reach back to shake his paw. “Lee’s mentioned you, too.”

  “I’d hope so.” He laughs. “If he talked about anyone at FLAG besides Brian, I mean.”

  “Fuck, is he going to be here?” I say, not even thinking about it.

  But Allen just chuckles, and Misha smirks. “I see you’ve met Brian,” Allen says.

  “A few times too many.” I clench my fists and try to stop my tail from lashing, unsuccessfully.

  “He and Lee.” The ringtail shakes his head. “You either loved ’em or hated ’em.”

  “Put me down for one in each column.” I don’t really want to think about Lee and Brian together.

  “Wait,” Misha says, “so those two don’t hang out anymore? Who came between them?”

  Allen glances at me, and I see his deference. “Couple guys on the football team,” I say, and while I’m trying to figure out how to say more, the arctic fox’s eyebrows rise. Chuck, on my other side, murmurs something under his breath, so I know he knows the story. “Not like that. I guess he—Brian—was in a bar on campus—still don’t know which one—and he was mouthing off at them about something, and they beat him up.”

  I hate to make it stark and bare like that. I didn’t know the guys, a couple of the offensive line backups, but for months after that I heard from friends of theirs that they’d gotten railroaded, that they hadn’t deserved to be kicked off the team, that all they did was shove the guy outside so he’d shut up.

  Unfortunately, the guys in the bar could see what happened after they shoved him outside, when they followed him and threw several punches, and that’s why the team acted quickly and didn’t protest.

  Not that I cared about all that. Not at the time.

  “Oh.” Misha turns back to Allen. “That was what you asked about.”

  “Yeah. We were all hit by it, but Lee was worst. Brian went to some hospital and then transferred schools. Lee was just…quiet after that. And the next year, he disappeared.”

  I clear my throat. “I think that was my fault.”

  They all look at me. “It was his choice, I mean. But we were dating, and he didn’t want—he was worried that if he hung out with his gay friends, that he would keep getting into conversations about his boyfriend and eventually he’d spill the secret. So he sort of closeted himself away.”

  There’s silence until Allen says, “You must be a hell of a catch.”

  I feel warm and flushed and can only think to say, “I guess Lee thought so.”

  “Hah.” Allen elbows Misha and points at me. “Look, his ears have gone all back.”

  The arctic fox grins. “Adorable,” he says. “I’m starting to see what Lee sees in him.”

  “Only now?” Chuck says across me. “Have you looked at his butt?”

  “Hey,” I say. “Come on.”

  “I like arms, myself.” Misha glances at mine. “But also, you know, that thing you said about love…that was really sweet.”

  “It didn’t seem to go over well.” I step on a smaller footprint in the snow. “I guess you guys know that already and didn’t need me to come in and say it.”

  “Nah.” Chuck pats my arm, maybe a little more familiarly than is warranted since I just met him today, but I let it go. “I think it just wasn’t what they expected. You know, you’re a football player and they didn’t think you’d get all mushy like that.”

  “There was something of Lee in that speech,” Misha says, still smiling warmly.

  “More than a little,” I admit. “Basically he told me that a couple years ago.”

  “After we’d been dating.” Misha takes his partner’s—dammit, his husband’s—arm. “I guess we each had to find that out somewhere else.”

  “It was sweet.” Parlon, with a deeper voice, looks across him and smiles at me. “And it needs to be said every so often because it’s easy to forget.”

  We’ve gotten to Maple Street at the edge of campus, alight and alive even on a Sunday night in winter with shops across the way and the familiar green Starbucks logo half a block down to our left. I don’t remember a Starbucks ever being there, but enough here is familiar that for a few steps, I’m twenty again with no more worries than classes and practices where I didn’t have to exert myself to do well. Life was no more challenging or interesting than kicking piles of snow and avoiding patches of ice. And then, down that side street two blocks up, there’s a semi-underground bar where I once picked up a fox I th
ought was a vixen and changed my life.

  At the Starbucks, we crowd in, the cougar and raccoon rubbing the cold from their ears as the sturdy badger behind the counter says, “There you guys are.”

  Parlon walks up and hands a credit card to the barista. “I’m buying for everyone tonight. Whatever these guys want.”

  I should be doing that, but I didn’t even think of it, and now I feel like a heel. I mean, maybe Lee and I are buying a house, but I probably make more than everyone in this group combined.

  Misha puts a paw on my arm and I look down into a warm smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he says in a low voice. “Parlon’s young, but his family’s money, and he made ten million last year when he sold his business.”

  Maybe I should have guessed from the cut and smell of his clothes, but honestly they’re not much different from what my teammates wear when they’re not playing: fancy shirts and slacks, less jewelry, more fur conditioner and scent, I can tell now that I’m up close. Compared to the college students in their jeans and loose shirts, they’re a world apart, but I’d taken them for people with jobs, not necessarily with lots of money.

  So I say, “Cool, that’s great.”

  “It’s nice to be able to talk to someone who isn’t blown away by the numbers,” Misha says, again in that confidential voice. “I guess ten million is nothing to you.”

  “It’s a lot to me. I’m on my rookie deal, which is, well, considerably less than that.” I chuckle. “My new agent promised me more on my next deal, though.”

  “Do you get raises when you do well?” The fox’s ears flick out to the sides. “Sorry, I don’t really know anything about how it all works.”

  “Well…” I explain a bit about rookie pay scales, put into place so teams couldn’t give massive deals to unproven talents who hadn’t played a single game, and about the way the new contracts work, basically sky’s the limit but it can depend on who else at your position is also out there this year and so on.