by Terry Crews
I was flailing. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Finally, there was no putting it off any longer. I gathered up my clothes and put them into garbage bags. I tied them up and stacked them against the wall. I called my parents to tell them the disappointing news and made arrangements for them to pick me up after my last exam. My college dream was over, and with it my football dream, too.
I HAD PUSHED MYSELF SO HARD. I HAD AIMED TO BE perfect. And I had failed. I hadn’t earned a scholarship, and my time in college was over. With the threat of my return to Flint looming, and the fear of my empty future pressing down on me, I wanted something, anything, to make the pressure go away.
I thought of the campus ministry I belonged to and the pledge I’d made to give myself over to God. That was what I needed to do, devote myself with even greater dedication to my beliefs and my community. I was in my Zimmerman Hall dormitory room, feeling restless and low-down, when I noticed a girl go into the room next door. We talked occasionally when we bumped into each other around the dorm. I took a deep breath, put on a smile I didn’t really feel, and walked over to her open doorway. “Hey, what’s up?” I said.
“Hey, Terry,” she said, smiling back at me.
“You busy?” I said.
She invited me in, and we both sat down on beanbags near the room’s wooden, loft-style configuration. Her roommate had already left for winter break. We made small talk as usual, but then I started talking about my life, and how I didn’t know what I was going to do next. We were listening to Michael Jackson’s “The Lady in My Life,” and as time stretched on, it was clear that neither one of us wanted to go. The next thing I knew, we were kissing, and then we were both stretched out on the carpet. Even as it was happening, I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t stop. For one perfect moment, my mind achieved that blankness I craved, the one I got from pornography. And then neither of us had any clothes on, and suddenly, I was very aware of being there with her. I knew I shouldn’t be doing this. There were many moments I could have stopped. Many moments I should have. But I felt like this was my chance to see what sex was all about. Finally, I was touching a real woman. We kept going and going until, eventually, I just stopped.
“Is that it?” I asked, the question more to myself than to her.
“Are you done?” she said.
“I don’t know, I didn’t …” I said.
I didn’t know anything, really. I was more confused than ever, and now the guilt was sinking in. I wanted to get away from her, away from the place where I’d gone against everything I’d been taught, and everything I’d believed in, and away from myself. I pulled on my clothes as quickly as I could, hardly looking at her as I ducked out of her room. How did that happen? How did that happen? How did that happen? The question kept working its way through my mind with no answer, and no resolution, and no end to my torment as I hurried into the shower and stood there under the hot water.
For so long, I’d been waiting to have sex, and fantasizing about sex, and thinking about the kind of woman I wanted to marry and have sex with, and now it had finally happened, but it hadn’t been at all like I’d wanted it to be. I was so disappointed. Is that it? I wondered again.
I felt contempt for the girl I’d slept with, but of course, even as immature and inexperienced as I was back then, I knew the person I really despised was myself.
And the worst part was that my circumstances were just as hopeless as they’d been before I went into her room. At the end of the week, I had to go back to Flint, for good, and I couldn’t stand the thought. Everything collapsed. I was beyond hoping that things would be better once I got home. I was beyond everything.
On Thursday, I was in my dorm room when I was called to the phone at the end of the hall. I figured it was my pastor or someone from home. I didn’t think I could bear to talk to any of them, not with the shame of what I’d done coloring everything, but I forced myself to pick up the receiver and see who was on the line. I was surprised when I was greeted by a deep voice. It was the head coach.
“Terry, we want you to come by the office,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Sure, I’ll be right over,” I said.
The coach’s office was the last place I wanted to go, as it was just one more reminder of my defeat, but as I pulled on my coat, I couldn’t help but wonder what his call could mean. Maybe they’d found me a partial scholarship. I knew it was dangerous to hope, though, as I doubted anything less than a full ride would be enough for Trish to let me stay. The walkways were too icy for me to ride my bike, and the winter air was frigid. I hunched my shoulders and hustled over to the athletics building. When I sat down across from the coach, he looked at me sternly. It felt like my humiliation would never end. I just hoped he’d get it over with quickly.
“Terry, we found one more scholarship,” he said. “One more.”
I don’t remember the next part of our conversation. It was like I was suddenly having an out-of-body experience. Finally, I pulled myself together.
“I’m on scholarship,” I said, still in shock.
“Yes, we have a scholarship for you.”
“Can I see it?”
I almost couldn’t believe it was true until I saw the words in writing.
“Yeah, we have all the paperwork,” he said. “We want you to go see the secretary and sign.”
“Thank you,” I said, standing and shaking his hand.
The coach was barely smiling at me, acting instead like he was some kind of magnanimous benefactor, reluctantly granting my request for a scholarship, but I knew he would never regret his decision. I had earned my place on the team, and now I would earn my scholarship, by playing harder and with more heart than I’d ever played before.
As I hurried back across the blustery campus, I could hardly feel the cold weather anymore. I couldn’t wait to call my parents and tell them I’d made good on my promise after all. Nearing my dorm, I thought of the substitute teacher in high school who’d never believed I could make it. I’d proved him wrong. And then I thought of Coach Lee, the first one to believe in me and plant the seed of my dream. I had done it. I had earned a full-ride scholarship at a Division One university. I had sweated, and fought, and in the end, the coaches hadn’t been willing to lose me.
As soon as I reached my dorm, I went right to the phone.
“Ma, I did it,” I said. “You don’t have to pay for college anymore. My college is paid for.”
Being able to tell my mother she had been right to believe in me was the best feeling in the world. I still get emotional when I think about that phone call today, more than twenty-five years later. Thanks to that one moment in my life, everything changed. The way I’d grown up in Flint, you either had it or you didn’t. You were either good at math or you sucked. You were either a foreman or you were on the line. There was no mingling between the two, and there was no chance to work your way over to the other side. In fact, if you tried for more, everybody would put you in your place as fast as they could, like, “Who do you think you are? You think you’re gonna do that? They’re not gonna let you.”
But at that moment right after I earned my scholarship, I stopped and thought: Wait a minute. No is negotiable. I can actually change where I go and how I get there. I can actually make my way over to the other side. It’s up to me. And all I did was I didn’t quit. Even when it was over, I kept looking for another way. If I’d listened to the negative answers people kept giving me, that would have been it. If I’d been depressed and given up when my scholarship didn’t happen the previous fall, that would have been it. But I took it to the end. And finally, a door opened.
That was a huge epiphany for me. I was hooked on the possibility of having that kind of next-level experience again and again. My one victory made me want bigger and better, and suddenly, the whole world opened up with possibility for me.
I can just keep doing this, I thought. Now, if I just keep going, nobody can stop me. Even if someone tells me I can’t do som
ething in the future, I’m not going to listen. I’m just going to keep on moving. And that way, I’ll be unstoppable.
What had been the end of higher education for me was now just Christmas vacation. I went home, and we celebrated the biggest victory of my life so far.
THE GOOD FEELINGS DIDN’T LAST LONG. I RETURNED TO school that January, prepared to work harder than I’d ever worked in my life. As I said, I’ve never shied away from extreme exertion, as long as it’s for a purpose, so that didn’t put me off at all. What I wasn’t prepared for were back-to-back experiences of disillusionment in the two areas of my life that had gotten me this far: football and faith.
As much time as I’d spent dreaming about my football scholarship, I’d been totally ignorant as to what the reality would be like. And my return to school was a rude awakening. First of all, I hadn’t realized that a college scholarship is a full-time job. More than full-time, it’s twenty-four hours a day. We weren’t allowed to seek out any other form of employment during the school year, so I was totally dependent on the football team for all I had. My coaches became my father, my mother, my everything. This was not a comfortable situation for a nineteen-year-old college sophomore, especially one with problems accepting responsibility. Here I had asked for, worked for, and finally received this scholarship, but instead of feeling grateful, I quickly acquired a sense of entitlement. Even worse, with how much I was practicing and working out, even before the football season started, I wasn’t concentrating on my schoolwork. Football had become my entire life, and I was so full of my sense of entitlement that I became resentful of the classes I needed to take in order to play. I began to feel the school should take care of me. I became angry—hostile even—toward the very people who had given me an opportunity. My bad attitude began to rub people the wrong way, and then I started to feel like the coaches had it in for me. I went back and forth between being grateful that I wasn’t stuck in Flint and bristling at the restrictions put on my life by my coaches.
The problems with my church life weren’t easy to accept, either. Feeling confused and guilty, I’d gone to my pastor after I lost my virginity. If I’d been a little put off by the way he pressed me for the intimate details of what had gone down, I was so focused on blaming myself for my misdeeds that I was mostly just glad to have someone to pray with and help me get back on the right path.
And then I went to Dallas with my pastor and the others in our church for a big conference of all the campus ministries. The centerpiece of the event featured a black pastor who introduced the guests of honor, who were essentially the mother and father of our church, and who also happened to be white. Amid applause from the audience, the church mother took the podium and spoke.
“We have to thank God,” she said. “We have to be grateful for the love of God, and for Christianity, and for all of you being saved, because if it weren’t for Christianity, all of you would be worshipping idols in the jungle.”
The members of the college ministries who were in attendance were predominantly African American, and it was as if there was a single collective snap in the audience, followed by the thought: She did not just say that.
I couldn’t believe it. As I tried to process what she’d just revealed about the church I’d devoted myself to, I didn’t hear another word she spoke. After she was done speaking, the black pastor returned to the stage.
“Now, you all know we needed to hear that,” he said.
No, I thought. The Kool-Aid may have gotten to you, but not to me.
Everything was different from that moment forward. I didn’t know what I was going to do yet, but I knew something had to change in a major way. I went back to the hotel where we were all staying, and someone from our ministry told me that my pastor wanted to talk to me down in one of the conference rooms. I walked into the room, expecting to see my pastor seated at the conference table waiting for me. Instead, ten pastors, including my pastor, sat in chairs in a semicircle, while one single chair sat empty across from them, as if it was some kind of tribunal.
Instantly uncomfortable, I stood awkwardly behind the chair.
One of the pastors gave me a hard look.
“We heard about your infidelity,” he said.
I looked at my pastor. “What?” I asked, incredulous.
“I told them about what you did,” he said. “And now we’re going to get over this together. These men are going to help you to overcome your demons.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling uneasy, but sitting in the chair, as they’d indicated.
“Terry, you know that’s wrong, right?” another pastor said. “Sexual sin is something that will take you out for the rest of your life.”
One at a time, they all lit into me, telling me I’d done wrong.
“You were representing this church,” another pastor said. “You are one of our leaders, and you cannot behave in this way.”
I already knew what I’d done didn’t line up with my beliefs and the person I wanted to be. I felt bad enough as it was. And now I’d been betrayed. I pretended to listen, but I was already gone. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I looked over at my pastor. You’re the guy who said don’t tell a lie, I thought. Let’s start with that. You said you wouldn’t tell anybody, and you told ten people, at least.
My pastor caught my expression.
“You needed it,” he said, giving me the smuggest look.
After what the church mother had said, and now this, I felt empty. My pastor was my ride back to school, so I kept my mouth shut. I went to the rest of the events. I endured the drive home. I played nice, shook hands, and acted all kumbaya.
But as soon as I got back to my dorm room and closed the door behind me, it was a wrap. When I didn’t show up for the next meeting, I started getting phone calls from my pastor and the other members of our church. I didn’t go to the next meeting, either, and my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Finally, I answered.
“I’m gone,” I said. “It’s not working.”
“Well, you know, Terry, you’re making the wrong move,” he said. “God’s not going to let you go.”
He proceeded to tell me all of the scary stuff that was going to happen to me if I left the church. But I was tired of being threatened by people I didn’t respect.
“Well, it’s just gonna have to happen, because I’m not coming back,” I said.
“I’m sorry, man.”
Instead of feeling elated that I’d stood up for myself, I was devastated. I was the loneliest I’ve ever been. Because I’d joined a church group that looked down on our classmates as sinners, I’d never made any friends. I didn’t hang out with the football team. I was completely alone.
———
LUCKILY, I DID HAVE ONE FRIEND, JOSEPH APPLEWHITE, who lived near me in the Zimmerman Hall dormitory. He was at Western Michigan on a track scholarship for the long jump, and this brother could leap and fly like a gazelle, yet he never really cared about his athletic ability. He was as laid back as I was driven. When he first got to school, he’d visited a Maranatha meeting and decided it wasn’t for him, and so he understood what Maranatha was all about. He was the only person I felt like I could talk with about what had happened, and his perspective was a lifeline for me. Not long after my phone call with my pastor, I started worrying that I’d made the wrong decision. Even though I knew I couldn’t associate with people I didn’t fundamentally agree with, it was even harder not to associate with anyone. I needed a deprogramming, and without it, I was afraid the bad things my pastor had predicted would happen. I was bereft. I was scared. For the first few weeks, I was a zombie.
Finally, Joe invited me to go with him and his girlfriend, April, to another area church, the Christian Life Center, for their Wednesday night service. Even though I felt like a third wheel, I was so lonely I would have accepted any invitation.
We arrived at a very small, traditional-looking white church on Kalamazoo’s north side. As we entered amid the requisite churchlike smell of Pine-Sol
, I noticed three women we’d think of now as Real Housewives of Kalamazoo singing into wireless mics. The music was really good, not religious-sounding at all, with a definite groove that made me nod my head. Then I saw the pianist. She was bowed over the keys of a late-model synthesizer like Schroeder from Peanuts. Only she was really pretty. She was skinny, with very short, curly hair, and as she glanced up to connect with the singers, I strained to guess her ethnicity. Her hair was sandy brown, with scattered blond highlights, and she had high cheekbones and a slight overbite that made her look very exotic. With her olive skin, I suspected she was Hispanic. Whatever she was, she was beautiful. She left the keyboard and sat a few rows ahead of me.
It felt good to be there, away from the dormitory and all of its raucous, juvenile behavior, in a place that felt clean, like everyone in the room was trying to be a better person. As the pastor spoke, I stole looks at the keyboard player.
“Amen,” she said, leaning forward. “Amen.”
Maybe she was the pastor’s keyboard-playing, sermon-agreeing wife. Feeling guilty, I averted my eyes. But I couldn’t keep them away for long.
When I made a move to leave at the evening’s end, Joe held me back.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said.
I nodded absently, my eyes instantly returning to the keyboard player. Just then, someone handed her a little blond baby. Now I was really in trouble. She was someone’s wife, someone’s mother. I tried to distract myself by looking for whoever Joe wanted me to meet. That’s when Joe waved over the woman I’d been admiring.