“A few.” He grins, almost defiantly.
“So what type are you?”
“Try me.”
And there’s nothing inside me, not much, anyway—or maybe just the faintest dying little trail of a thing—that makes me want to try at all. What about it? he’s saying. What about dinner? And I think: No way, forget it.
“Fine,” I tell him.
“Seven. Okay? Where do you live?”
“Around.”
“Weird address.”
“Um, look. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“Um, okay,” he mocks. And smiles, tells me where we can meet. And I don’t like him much, but on the other hand I sort of do; he’s all right, bright and funny in this cruddy kind of way, his body’s big, well-formed—an okay swimmer probably; face strong, calculating, handsome; and aside from that, there is something he might show me.
Watch, Liz. You’re not the only one who can be—what did you call it?—versatile.
I know then that I’ll do it: Dark rooms and beds, foreign tongue, a hard chest against mine.
Step into it, Delgado, step into the room, take off your shoes like you are stepping into something sacred. Step into it and try it and go through with it this time—and figure out, finally, what all the hoopla is about.
*
The thing with lots of guys—it was true sometimes with Kenny, too—is that they can keep talking about themselves for hours, never let you get a word in edgewise, never ask you a single question about yourself, and end the evening thinking that they’ve just participated in a great conversation. As Liz used to say, the difference between dialogue and monologue sort of eludes them.
What’s good about this is that you yourself are basically absolved of all responsibility. You can adjust to the fact that there’s a voice droning away in your face, make yourself nod or smile once in a while like you are interested, or understand, and set your own mind on automatic pilot. Think about all the things you really want to think about. Do a little introspection.
It’s relaxing, really. Like meditating in the middle of a hard day’s work.
You can’t drift off completely, though. If there’s a pause in the monologue, you have to fill it up with a short, giggly laugh. Even if what he just said wasn’t comical.
Then, if he looks perplexed, and leans across the table and says something like, “Hey, what’s so funny?” you give a sort of goofy, little-girl grin, and reply:
“I don’t know! I mean, you’re just so—intense!”
Anyway, I do all these things over dinner with Mike Canelli at the Donut Hole. Which, Ellie says, is where all the kids on scholarship or work-study go because they can afford it, and all the rich kids go because they think it’s cool to hang out with the poor—or, as she insists on calling them, “the working class,” which is what she calls herself, because her parents are retired and basically don’t have any money, and her father, who back in Europe was this very educated guy, had to come to this country and make his living driving a cab. I do all these surefire things, both of us eating the Donut Hole’s special of the day—some kind of pasta—and I imagine him naked and it feels sort of unreal, unconnected, but I think: Okay. Why not?
He pays. Cash. Though he makes a big deal of flashing all his plastic-covered credit cards. I am not impressed. My dad got me a whole slew of those before I went to college; obviously, Mike Canelli’s dad did too. And back when I was sixteen, some company that makes competitive swimwear sent me a Gold Card.
“Look,” he says, “I’ll walk you home.”
I try to come up with some reason for him not to. Even though I’m curious. I mean, what would really happen? But this anxious chill goes through me, I remember Ellie, and dinner at her place, and I’m already late.
I tell him no, but thanks, some other time, right now I’ve got to see a friend off campus.
“Ellie Marks?” He rolls his eyes. “Watch out for that one.”
“Why?”
“Never mind.” He grins. “Only, just don’t get too buddy-buddy with her—okay? She might develop the wrong impression.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, rumor has it that she’s one of those girls who, like, doesn’t date boys. If you know what I mean. And if you want my opinion, your lady coach falls right into the same category—so watch it.”
Like it is some shocking piece of news. Some phenomenon I have never even heard of before. Like he expects me to puke, or faint, or turn to him sweetly and earnestly and say, Gee Mike, you’re kidding! Thanks for the warning! I never would have guessed!
What I think of saying is: Oh, gag me. I mean, grow up. I didn’t exactly fall off some cabbage truck into the world of sport, you know. All the pools, showers, saunas, weight rooms, Jacuzzis, massage tables—all the damp nakedness, the hints and whispers, the sight and the feel of bodies touching, by mistake, or on purpose. Get on the clue train, pal. Physical people may inevitably do a wide variety of physical things. It’s how they express themselves—in winning, in losing, in love.
What I say instead is: “Don’t worry, okay? I mean, I don’t exactly feel endangered.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve seen some things in locker rooms. That guys do, I mean. Makes me want to barf.” Standing there, helping me on with my coat, he wrinkles his nose, fakes vomiting sounds.
“Gee, Mike. That’s pretty small-town of you.”
“I’m a small-town kind of guy, Babe. Basic values. Narrow mind, big heart.” He hands over my bookbag. “And a thing for big strong dark beautiful females. But maybe you can enlighten me. Tell me all about the major leagues and the world’s great cities. Make me more sophisticated.”
I blush, I can feel it. He grins, more or less triumphantly. It pisses me off a little. But at the same time there’s something pleasant about all of his unpleasantness. Something genuinely hopeful and affectionate in his face, his eyes. So what can I say?
“Friday night, Babe. There’s this concert in town. The Deadly Meatheads.”
“Who are The Deadly Meatheads?”
“Local band. But they’re pretty good, and they’ve got this great drummer. A bunch of us are going. I’ll call you.”
Okay, I tell him. Then I’m immediately disgusted with myself. But part of me feels glad.
This part of me hopes that he does call, will hurt if he does not. Thinks he is conceited, even nasty, intolerant, intolerable; but also, somehow, adorable.
* * *
I’m later showing up at Ellie’s than I thought I would be. It’s one of those old run-down sagging student slum houses that are all over the place near campus. But walking up the porch steps, seeing some old couch there covered with a tarpaulin for winter, and a rusty watering can; ringing the doorbell, hearing feet on wooden floors, the creak of a shutter, something inside me starts to feel like I wish the place was mine, like I’ve been homesick for it, or for something like it.
Then the door starts opening, I can feel light flood my face and the sweat start on me even though it’s cold. I stare at her, beyond her to the old messy comfortable unfamiliar yellow-lit place, torn furniture, books and clothes thrown everywhere, smoke billowing from the kitchen. And something about stepping out like this, alone, at night, to actually visit someone, seems overwhelming. Too much to deal with. My throat chokes, and I’m afraid.
Then, too, there is all this unspoken emotional stuff to get through. I don’t know how to even describe it. She seems sad, like she did after morning practice—heavily, wearily sad, but unwilling to explain it. I don’t want her to be this way; I want her to be sunny and joking like always, goading me in fun.
Otherwise this so-called dinner will turn into a major bummer.
But I feel like such an inept jerk. There’s the familiar sensation, that returns to me as if it never left: of being a big, fat, sweaty freak, sticking out of my surroundings like a sore, sore thumb.
Ellie tries to pretend she’s cool, doesn’t care. But it’s all a sham: she’s embarras
sed about things not being right, food burned, dessert ruined, the place a mess. I want her to know it’s no big deal that the fish caught on fire and the ice cream melted—I mean, I don’t eat fish, and won’t eat dessert. I want her to look me in the eyes—which lately she has been avoiding—and mock me, and smile, and tell me to chill, seriously chill Delgado, everything will be all right.
But there’s been something lost between this morning and now. Neither one of us is saying anything about it. I wish I knew what it was; it’s in the air, almost, between her and me—like we just suddenly stopped being friends, and neither of us wanted that, but neither of us could do anything about it.
“I’m queer,” she blurts.
I have only known this all along.
Out of consideration for her, though, I do my slightly bewildered-but-well-intentioned fumbling jock routine.
I swallow hard, try to muster a look of surprise-but-not-horror.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, Delgado, I am distinctly not kidding.”
She’s freaked, I can tell—whenever she’s freaked, she gets this oh-so-tough tone to her voice. I rush in with some stupid words, like I’m trying to comfort her. “Oh, um, look, I mean, it’s okay with me, Ellie. You know. Whatever. I myself have—I have known plenty of gay people. I mean, people generally don’t think about it, but there are plenty of gays and, like, lesbians, in sport—right? I mean—um, well, it’s really okay with me.”
“Gee whiz Babe, gosh, um, thanks.” She crosses her eyes in jest, but sounds bitter. “I mean, God forbid that it should not be okay with you.”
Blank-faced, I blink like a moron and let that one slide.
“Listen,” she says, “just forget it, okay? Please? Just forget I said anything. And don’t tell anyone else. Especially anyone on the team.”
Just then the smoke alarm sounds off and she races into the kitchen. I follow, find her twisting around there like a maniac, smashing at the high-pitched-drilling little wall box with the stick end of a broom. When she’s exhausted herself, dripping sweat, and the alarm’s still ringing, I cross over and reach up and pull it off the wall.
The outside door slams.
“Oh, God. Ellie, is that you trying to cook again?”
The roommates poke their heads in. I’m surprised; the way Ellie’s always talked about them before it’s like they’re old enough to be her parents, but here they are just a year or so older than me, I think, and neither one looks much like I expected her to. I would have figured that Ellie, being such a dedicated jock, would be living with a couple of power lifters or discus throwers or something—and these two are anything but. Nan, the one with glasses, is a skinny little scholar type, kind mouth, serious wrinkled forehead. Jean’s heftier, a little chubby even, wears her hair long and dresses like some old hippie from before I was born; she has freckles, full lips, stern eyes.
Both stare at me a second, give each other glances, raise their eyebrows. Ellie blushes. Then she blurts out:
“Nan, Jean, this is Babe Delgado.”
“Whoa. Nice to finally meet you! We’ve been hearing so much about you!”
I shake Nan’s hand, hear EIlie cough off to one side like she wants to puke or sink into the floor or something, and then Nan says This is my lover Jean, so I shake Jean’s hand, and can’t really think of much to say. I mean, what am I supposed to say? Something like: Well, hi there, I guess you’re both lesbians too?
They spend some time then cleaning up, clucking over the kitchen. Ellie and I head out to the living room, such as it is, to blab about the team, and the lit. class, which I am currently flunking.
Later, when I leave, I turn around at the door, pushing it open, letting cold almost-wintry gusts in, look at Ellie fully for a moment, want to tell her things. But I wouldn’t know how, or even where to begin. She seems frail tonight. Not just frazzled but really, really tired, with a flush on her face like fever, and this angry defiant kind of hurt in her eyes. She smiles, briefly.
“Good luck with Mike.”
“Who?”
“Knock-knock! anybody home? Mike Canelli. The person we’ve just spent all night talking about.”
Tears come into my eyes, suddenly, irrationally, for absolutely no reason, and I step out on the porch, into the cold encircling all the deep protective warm folds of my coat, and blink them away, glad no one can see. It used to happen all the time when I first got out of the hospital. Unpredictably. I was at the mercy of these tears, in a way—never knew when they’d show, rivulet down my face unaccountably, put a fog and ache in my throat.
God, I mumble at the bottom of the porch steps, inanely, to no one in particular. Please, please, just love me.
“Huh?” Ellie calls from the doorway, arms guarding her chest from the cold. She coughs. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
My eyes are dry again. I glance up at her. “Nothing.”
“Well, look, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right.”
“And next time, you cook.”
Usually we’d both laugh on a line like this. But, tonight, neither of us does.
I want to ask her if it’s going to be okay. Will this stuff in between us come apart soon, so she’ll be Ellie to me again, the Ellie I depend on? I want things to be the way they were, less than a day ago. Before Mike Canelli. Before she said that stupid word, queer—a piss-poor way of describing how you feel love.
“Ellie?”
“Yeah.”
“I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She waves, steps back into the dim yellow light of the place, the piles of books and old clothes, wafting remnants of smoke from our ruined dinner. Against the backdrop of light I can’t see her face or eyes. The door begins to shut by increments, so there’s less and less of her. Wait, I want to say for a minute, wait, don’t go, let me back in. Let me back into this warm yellow old house with you, a house my parents and everyone on the team at Southern would despise, and let me stay in it with you, and live.
I have been so homesick.
The door keeps closing. Wind slaps my ears. The last things I see, in silhouette against the inside light, are her wiggling, waving fingers; then a fist, and one solid, firmly held thumbs-up gesture, before the light disappears and the door clicks shut.
I stand and watch maybe a minute or two. There’s a lamp on behind ratty old window curtains, shadows moving across it.
Then the wind starts to freeze my earrings and I pull the rim of the wool hat down over them, over my eyebrows, hoist the bookbag onto my back and head for campus. The ankle’s starting to act up again, aching fire near tendon and bone, and both knees hurt too, and neck, and shoulders. Bren told me she understood; once she herself had been pretty addicted to aspirin, she said, and to this painkiller they inject right into a joint or muscle that numbs it, but she had to cut all that out. So from one old breaststroker to another she was advising me seriously to stop taking Tylenol 3. And I did, but go tell that to the pain. It won’t be impressed. It will dance around like a mockingbird, right in your face, and bubble up, and thrive. You’d think that you would finally get used to it. Only you don’t. Pain doesn’t get easier to take with time—it gets harder.
And I have been around that, too, for most of my life.
* * *
Days start to swing by in this blur, all of a sudden, I don’t know why. There’s morning workout, afternoon workout, weights three times a week. I make every workout—always a little late, as usual, but always there—and somewhere around then I hear that Ellie is sick, really sick, pneumonia, might be out the rest of the semester but no one really knows. A bunch of them call her from the phone in Brenna Allen’s office. I figure I’ll do it in private—from my own room, thank you. But a couple of days go by, everything’s normal for me, workouts and class as usual, I miss her, but I feel okay, and I don’t.
Then a couple more days. I know something’s tugging at me, making me want to call her and also not want to
call her. There’s this war in my guts, like some big old jellyfish is getting wrenched apart in there. In between, in the jelly of the jellyfish, is me—and the struggle terrifies me, paralyzes me. I do not call. Sometimes, when the phone rings, I don’t pick up.
Whenever I do, it is Mike Canelli. Gossiping about stuff happening on the men’s team. Cracking jokes. Putting Coach McMullen down. Asking about my classes. Pestering me to stay on the phone longer, meet him for coffee at such and such a place, for a beer on such and such an evening, go out to this movie, or that bar, to see such and such a band. I don’t like him, but I sort of do.
“There’s this great steakhouse in town, Babe. Prime cut. Sirloin. Have Amex, will travel. I’ll take you.”
“Don’t,” I say, “I’m vegetarian.”
“You’re kidding. For how long?”
“I don’t know. More than a year or two, I guess.”
“Very cool, Babe. Very Thoreau of you. What on earth made you do that?”
The fog sets in again, inside me, around me. Oh, I tell him, never mind.
“Well, what about Italian? You know, pasta, carbohydrates, yummy yum yum.”
Sometimes if a day goes by and he doesn’t call, I start to feel kind of relieved but also very bad, like I’m losing something, like I’m being rejected. Then, too, I’ll start thinking, Screw Mike, what about giving Ellie a call, Delgado? I mean, what in the world is wrong with you?
I’ll think about my hand reaching for the phone, dialing her number, and I’ll just freeze up inside.
* * *
We go to the Italian place on Saturday evening: Mike and I, and his roommate Jeff Brader, a backstroker who does the 100 and the 200 and the 4 x 100 medley relay, and Jeff’s girlfriend, Emma, who is slender and blond and wears some nice fourteen-carat jewelry dangling from her ears and neck and wrists, and has these really fantastic clothes and these great leather shoes she says her mother bought for her in Los Angeles. The three of them pick me up on campus, and we head toward town in Mike’s car. Jeff bullshits with me a little about team stuff, gets rowdy with Mike, doesn’t seem to have much to say to Emma. She, likewise, doesn’t seem to have much to say for herself—to him, or to anybody. I look at the good makeup, the expensive jewelry and terrific silks and cottons and leathers of her getup, feel a little ashamed somehow—although not of myself, really—just somehow embarrassed in a way, for her, and full of a strange kind of pity. I ask a couple of questions, just to try and be polite. Like, what is she studying? and she says she doesn’t know, a little bit of everything. I can tell by the questions she asks Jeff that she’s not an athlete herself.
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