by John Goode
“Right, the one who fought with the pretty guy from Pirates of the Caribbean!”
From the way they all looked at me, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer. “His name was Legolas, and he was an elf,” Andy explained with a cold tone.
“Okay, so I’m an elf?”
“You’re a dwarf,” Mike corrected me.
“No, we haven’t decided that yet. All we know is, he’s a warrior,” Jeff countered.
“But why would he be an elven warrior?” Andy asked from behind his screen. “The bonuses are just wasted on that class.”
“That’s not true,” Jeff began to argue. “There are elven warriors, and they have natural—”
“Guys?” I tried to interrupt to no avail. “Guys.” Still nothing. “Guys!” I barked. They all looked at me like I had grown a second head. “You do you know I have no idea what the three of you are going on about, right?”
They looked at each other and then back to me. “Okay, just do what we say,” Andy said as Jeff took the piece of paper from me and began to roll the dice.
For the next hour or so, they began to walk me through the story that I was this guy who learned how to fight and owned a sword or some shit; I didn’t catch it all. We ended up going to these abandoned mines where we were jumped by goblins, which, from what I gathered, looked like Gremlins when they went bad. I didn’t catch all of it, but what I did understand seemed very cool.
We were about to charge into the lowest level, where a black dragon had made a lair, when Mrs. Linson walked over to the table. “Okay, boys we’re closing soon, so wrap—” She stopped in midsentence when she turned from scanning the little study cubicles to look at the D&D players and saw me sitting there. “Mr. Greymark? Are you bothering these young men?”
And I had almost forgotten how much of an asshole I had been for a second there.
I was about to defend myself when Andy said to her, “He’s okay, ma’am. He’s just playing D&D with us.”
She looked at me skeptically, one eyebrow raised, as she asked, “You’re playing Dungeons and Dragons?”
I nodded, showing her my character sheet. “I’m not bothering them; we’re about to kill a dragon.”
I don’t think she completely bought it, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. “Well, be that as it may, I need to close up before the school board meeting.”
Fuck.
“Is that now?” I asked, jumping up.
“It starts in about thirty minutes,” she answered slowly, not sure why I would care about the school board.
“I need to go,” I said to the trio. “Do you keep this or do I?”
Andy looked at me. “You’re going to play with us again?”
I nodded, handing him the piece of paper. “I wanna see if the dragon has any phat loot!” He took it in disbelief as I ran out of the library. “See ya!” I called out as I exited.
Dark had already fallen. I didn’t like the feeling as I raced across campus.
I had no idea how I lost so much time pretending to be some guy with a sword, but I had, and it had been fun. Why had the jocks always picked on guys like that? What exactly was so wrong with them that we used to seek them out just to be dicks? Were we just a pack of wild dogs, sensing weakness in others and lunging at it? Was that what we were beneath the games and the jostling for position and awards? I felt sick to my stomach as I ran into the auditorium, hoping I wasn’t too late.
What I found was Mr. Adler and Mr. Raymond with five other old people sitting up on the stage behind a desk, looking at me, puzzled. There was a podium in the aisle where people could address them, I assumed. Mr. Adler called out to me. “Mr. Greymark, this is closed to students.” The “so get the hell out of here” remained unsaid but understood. A few people had taken seats in the first row. As I began to turn, I saw one of them was my mom!
“Mom?” I said, stopping in shock.
She waved but didn’t get up. Adler shouted now. “Out, Mr. Greymark!”
What the…?
I stomped up the center aisle, looking behind me about five times, making sure that was indeed my mom, and I wasn’t just having some kind of hallucination. The door closed behind me, and I knew there was no way I could not know what was going on in there. I smiled and took off toward the balcony where Kyle and I had started to eat lunch. If I stayed near the back and behind what remained of the stored chairs and tables, no one from below would be able to see me. Luckily, the stairway door was unlocked. Jeremy and his crew would have to come back to put everything away, so they’d left it open. Once I reached the balcony, I stayed low in case one of those old geezers had crazy eagle eyes or something.
I poked my head around the end of a table and began to eavesdrop.
“…over the previous minutes. We can move on to new business,” I heard Adler say in a pissy tone. He did not sound like a happy camper. “Coach Gunn, I believe you have something to bring up?”
I looked down and saw Gunn was sitting on the other side of the auditorium, almost as far away from my mom as possible. Any farther and he’d have been sitting in the side hall. He stepped up to the podium and began to talk to Adler and the board. “Mr. Raymond, members of the board, I have coached football and baseball here at Foster for over fifteen years. And in that entire time, I have to admit, I’ve never come up against a problem such as this. As you know, school sports are incredibly important to any school, and to Foster, perhaps more than most. A lot of our kids come from families that cannot afford to send their kids to a four-year college, and a sports scholarship is the only chance they have of attending a four-year university. Because of that, each and every spot of any team has to be considered not just for the student, but for the entire team. If we don’t win, they don’t go to college. It’s that simple. So when there is an element, no matter what its source, that disrupts team morale to the point of perhaps losing critically important players, we are forced to act for the betterment of the entire team.”
Well, if I’d had any doubts this was about me, they were gone now.
“Now, I have no personal thoughts one way or another. But when members of my team come to me and say they have found out something about a student that makes it impossible for them to play on the same team as that student, I have to investigate.”
Mr. Raymond interrupted him to ask, “And what student were they talking about?”
“Bradley Greymark,” Coach Gunn answered.
“And what did they find out that made it impossible for them to stay on the team with Mr. Greymark?”
Gunn paused, taking a breath as if steadying himself to say it out loud. “They said he had recently admitted he was a homosexual.”
I heard a few people on the stage as well as in the audience murmur to themselves for a few seconds before Mr. Raymond got their attention. “And, Coach Gunn, did you confront Mr. Greymark about these rumors?”
“I did.”
“And what did he have to say?”
Gunn leaned into the microphone. “He admitted they were true.”
More murmuring, this time much louder.
This time Mr. Adler asked the question. “Coach Gunn, what did the students that came to you say was their problem with having Mr. Greymark on the team?”
“They said that they would feel uncomfortable about changing clothes with someone who would gain sexual pleasure from seeing them in a state of undress.”
Well, that was bullshit, because I knew the idiots that had talked to him, and they wouldn’t understand half of those words. This was starting to sound real rehearsed.
“Coach Gunn, do we have coed locker rooms?” Adler asked.
“No, sir.”
“And why is that?”
Like he needed to explain that?
“Because it would be highly inappropriate for boys and girls to be in a state of undress together. Especially at their age.”
A few people chuckled, but so far, nothing was funny to me.
“We
ll, it seems to me that we do indeed have a problem,” Raymond said, taking back control of the meeting. “What would you suggest we do, Coach Gunn? In the best interests of the team, of course.”
“I don’t think it is fair to make students who are clearly uncomfortable with his lifestyle be forced into a situation where they have to do something like expose themselves.” He made it sound so rational, so damn logical, that if he had been talking about anyone else but me I might have agreed with him.
“Sounds reasonable,” Raymond said, pretending to mull it over as if this was the first time he had heard the proposal. “Thank you, Coach Gunn, you may sit down.”
Gunn shuffled back to his seat, and I saw my mom glaring at him.
“Now, we have a proposal in front—” Mr. Raymond had begun to say when the doors burst open with a crash. Kyle walked down the aisle with a stack of papers in his hand.
The cavalry had arrived!
Kyle
I WAS late, and I knew it.
The parts of the city charter I needed weren’t online, and that had meant running all the way to City Hall to get copies printed. I had them; there was no way they could do this legally, and I had the proof. I ran down the hall, throwing the doors open in an explosion of noise that was as regrettable as it was unavoidable.
Every pair of eyes was on me.
I couldn’t see anyone in the seats because of the low light, but the school board was illuminated perfectly. If looks could kill, Mr. Raymond would have cut my head off by my first step down the center aisle. A small part of me screamed orders, telling me to turn around and run away, that this was not how I behaved. I was supposed to be invisible, unnoticed by everyone. I wasn’t Perry Mason, interrupting the trial in the middle of testimony to submit new evidence. Even though it was small, running was a powerful impulse, one I might have succumbed to last week.
Before Brad.
“I need to address the board,” I said, holding the papers up. “You can’t do this.”
Mr. Adler stood up. “No, Mr. Stilleno. You can’t do this. School board council meetings are closed to students, as we explained to your… friend, Mr. Greymark. You need to leave.”
I stopped halfway down the aisle. “Seriously?” That I did not know.
Mr. Raymond leaned forward. “Very seriously, young man.”
“Crap,” I said to myself as I started to think I might have done all my research for nothing.
“So you can rule on Brad’s future, and I don’t mean just at this school, but he can’t be in the same room to face his accusers?”
I froze as I heard my mom’s voice. She was sitting in the front row with two other guys I didn’t recognize.
“The rules are very clear in this matter, Ms. Stilleno. Your son will have to leave,” Raymond began to explain.
She looked back at me and just smiled. “Go on, we got this.”
I looked at my papers in despair. All that work for nothing?
“Mr. Stilleno, do you need to be escorted out?” Mr. Raymond asked.
I looked up at him and considered flipping him off but thought better of it. I turned around and walked out of the auditorium, pretty sure we were dead. I tossed the papers into a trash can as I passed it and began to lumber outside, dejected.
“Hey!” I heard someone whisper. I looked over and saw Brad standing at the stairs to the balcony. “Come on!” He gestured to me. “They can’t see us up here.”
I grabbed his hand, and we sneaked upstairs where we could see the entire meeting. “Where have you been?” he asked.
“Wasting my time, obviously,” I replied, feeling like crying, I was so upset. This was not how the story was supposed to end. I was supposed to charge in and knock down the walls of bigotry with my well-researched information. Not get shot down halfway into the room like an idiot. He squeezed my hand, and I looked over to him. He was just staring at me so intensely I wondered if I had something on my face. “What?”
“You’re a superhero,” he said, leaning in and kissing me. I could swear the whole room tilted as I closed my eyes and kissed him back.
I might have stayed in that coma if I hadn’t heard Mr. Raymond call the meeting back to order. “If we can continue, we have a proposal in front of us. Does anyone have anything they want to add to the discussion?”
“I do,” a woman’s voice called out.
“That’s my mom!” Brad whispered.
I could hear Mr. Raymond sigh from up here. “Mrs. Greymark.” He gestured toward the podium.
Brad’s mom walked right up there looking three kinds of pissed. I had only seen her that one time at Brad’s and wondered how someone that small could hold her own against the behemoth that was Brad’s father. Seeing that look on her face, I understood now; he was the one I should be worried about.
“Mr. Raymond, members of the board. If you think I am going to sit back and let you discriminate against my son like this you have another think coming.”
“Mrs. Greymark—” he began to explain, but she just kept talking over him.
“My husband and I pay taxes in this town. We have donated a sizable amount of money and time to this school and the baseball team. In fact, I have personally baked cookies to raise money to go to state last year. Where we won a championship, if I remember, based on my son’s performance. While the years of effort, training, and sacrifice that my son has dedicated to this school obviously mean absolutely nothing to you, they do mean a great deal to me and to my husband. With all that in mind, please justify to me your decision to remove Brad from the team. Now.”
Mr. Adler waited to see if she was done this time before talking. “Mrs. Greymark, we are in new territory here. We have never had to deal with an openly gay student, much less an athlete.”
“But you have had gay students before,” my mom said, standing up.
“Mrs. Stilleno, you do not have the floor,” Mr. Raymond protested.
“If you thought you were going to treat our sons like second-class citizens and then have an orderly meeting where we pass the conch around to talk, you’re dumber than I thought.” There was laughter from the audience, and I saw Brad look at me in amusement.
“Dude, your mom is epic!” he said, smiling.
“Yeah, when she’s sober,” I said, more to myself, but he was right. She did sound kind of badass down there.
“You have had gay students and athletes before,” she said when the noise quieted down.
“If we did I didn’t know of it,” Mr. Adler admitted. “In fact, I don’t know a gay person in all of Foster.”
“Yes, you do,” a male voice said as someone stood up next to my mom.
“Holy shit!” Brad said, his eyes wide with shock.
“Who is that?” I asked, squinting my eyes.
“Mr. Parker,” he said, obviously amazed.
“Mr. Parker from the sporting goods store?” I asked, stunned. “Mr. Parker is gay?”
Brad nodded. “Yeah, and he’s way cool.”
I was going to ask how he knew that, but they started talking again.
“Mr. Parker,” Raymond said, obviously upset. “You’re gay?”
“Yeah, so you know at least one,” he answered proudly.
Raymond and Adler talked among themselves for a second as they tried to regroup. After a few minutes, Adler looked over to him. “Be that as it may, you were never a student here, Mr. Parker, so your point is moot.”
“I also know for a fact that Matt Wallace is gay, and he played football here for three years.” More talking and argument, but Mr. Parker just kept talking. “Now, two of those years Foster went all the way, so you’re telling me there were morale problems then too?”
“No one knew he was gay!” Adler protested.
“Yeah, we did,” another voice called out. I saw Scott Ritchie, one of the best quarterbacks Foster had ever had, stand up. “We all knew, but we didn’t care.” He added in a gruff voice, “He played as hard as his brothers did, and that was all that m
attered.”
“What exactly do you think we would do in a locker room that is so different than what we’ve been doing for years?” Parker asked. “Do you think we’re going to start touching guys? Molesting them? Are you saying gay guys, unlike straight guys, who are models of chastity, are just unable to control their urges? We’ve been getting naked in front of you guys for years, and no one ever died from it. So what is different now?”
Mr. Raymond’s face was getting red now. “Mr. Parker, it’s like the military. Though we can’t condone it, if nothing is said—”
“No, it’s not,” another voice said, standing up. This one was in Navy whites and looked like a big guy.
“No fucking way!” Brad exclaimed.
“Who’s that?”
“Aaron White. He played ball for Granada last year.” Brad was obviously blown away.
It was obvious Raymond was losing it. “And who are you, young man?”
“Petty Officer White, and I can tell you that this hellhole is nothing like the military. I spent four years here hiding who and what I was, hating Foster the entire time because of it. I couldn’t wait to get out. What you’re doing is going to crush not only Brad but any gay player that comes after him. And you can try to justify it as morale or for the team, but it’s really just about you not liking gay people.”
Now they weren’t murmuring. There was outright talking as people began to argue with each other. Mr. Raymond was trying to get control back, but there was too much chaos. Finally he slammed his hand down on the table a few times and screamed, “Order!”
Everyone jumped at that and began to take their seats, well-behaved, former high school students to the end. “Be that as it may, we have lost sight of the reason for this meeting. The proposal is to prohibit openly gay students from playing on any school-related sports team. We have heard your concerns: now let’s vote.”
Both of our moms screamed bloody murder, and I saw Mr. Parker stand up too, but it was obvious that the board was going to vote no matter what anyone with a brain might say.
“All in favor of the ban?” Raymond asked.