Head coach Brian Olds was a decent sort, less naked in his ambition than Coach Redfield but ambitious nonetheless that Stanford should win the Rose Bowl. He admired Quinn's running game.
His teammates and classmates seemed less certain. There was a pecking order at Stanford—as Quinn supposed there was everywhere—one that would take longer to climb than it had at Misalliance High. One teammate in particular seemed to have it in for him, Casey Kasmerek. He was a defenseman whose tattooed, fat-dimpled arms looked like marbled hams hanging in a butcher's shop. It was definitely a tribute to just how grotesque they were, along with the belly spilling over his pants, that Quinn didn't first notice his most salient characteristic: He was nuts. Certifiable.
His psychopathic tendencies took the form of a relentless hazing that was characterized as "team-building" by the coaches, who, Quinn thought, were just too lazy or terrified to do anything about it.
Even Coach Olds told Quinn in effect to cowboy up, adding, "Consider it good practice for the day the doc tells you that you have Stage 4 lung cancer."
Needless to say, Quinn was not comforted. He learned to keep nothing of value in his locker, after Casey flushed his cell phone down the toilet and stomped on his laptop. Quinn also repeatedly instructed his absent-minded roommate—science whiz Ivan Ivanovitch, who spent most of his time in the lab—to keep their door locked at all times.
Quinn bore it when Casey shaved his head as teammates held him down or when he found his clothes shredded in the locker. In a way, he thought, it was only the universe righting itself. He had been given so much and deserved so little. Without him, Aunt Lena would probably have still been alive, enjoying her life and career in New York. He deserved to be punished, he thought. But when Aunt Sarah came to visit with some of her friends, and Casey set her in his crosshairs, Quinn drew a permanent line.
"I'm gonna rape her every chance I get," Casey texted him. Quinn, who was genuinely afraid that Casey was as much walk as talk, marched over to his stall in the locker room and in a loud voice announced, "You can say or do whatever you like to me. But if you ever go near my aunt, I'll kill you."
"Why, are you fucking her yourself?" Casey asked, laughing.
The beat down Quinn took after he decked Casey was brutal. His teammates didn't interfere. They thought what was at stake was nothing less than the soul of the team and what was being born of that ferocity was a man, a leader.
While Casey had a 50-pound advantage, Quinn kept fighting back, at times pummeling nothing but air. Casey managed easily to gain the upper hand, pinning Quinn to the locker-room floor.
"Finish him, take him," some of Casey's supporters—more like trembling lackeys—cried. But most of the team was yelling, "Come on, Quinn." No one had ever stood up to Casey. If Quinn could just hold him off, he and they knew, the team would be his to lead. It was at that moment that Coach Olds walked in.
"What the hell is this?" he asked, pulling Casey off Quinn. "Kasmerek, are you fucking nuts? Defensemen are a dime a dozen, but I can't replace a quarterback, not a quarterback of this quality. Understand this, gentlemen—and I use the term sarcastically---this isn't just our starting quarterback. This is a future Hall of Famer, one of the best that will ever be."
When Olds left and Quinn finally rose to confront Casey—who shook and snorted like a wounded bull—he was bloodied but unbowed. Looking around the room, Quinn wiped the metallic taste from his lips with the back of his left hand.
"That's right," he said. "You heard Coach Olds. This is my team now."
If Quinn were truly evil—well, maybe not a wholly evil person but just an instigator like the goddess Eris, tossing an apple of discord here and there—he realized he would've hacked Casey's email account and sicced him on Trent Birdwell, the president of the student body, who held sway in Professor Marc Dolenz's The Literature of Rejection class with a psychological menace that rivaled Casey's physical monstrosity.
Trent was a mediocrity with a huge ego, which meant, Quinn realized right away, that he would one day have a successful career in politics. Like many of those who talked about "serving the people," Trent had precious little interest in them. He was much more focused on sneering at jocks like Quinn, who had been given the rare honor of being admitted to one of the toughest electives on campus as a freshman, and on challenging Professor Dolenz, who, though barely thirty, had already written a number of critically acclaimed best sellers—no small feat given his discipline, the classics.
The Literature of Rejection was an enormously popular class that had students vying for places to plumb literary and historical figures who had displayed a disproportionate rage at being rebuffed—Achilles, Iago, Lucifer, Heathcliff, John Wilkes Booth, Hitler, Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden. It was a controversial thesis, and Professor Dolenz—boyishly handsome with a slight build and wavy, light-brown hair—was already drawing acolytes from both sexes and both sides of the political spectrum. Somehow, this only seemed to deepen Trent's scorn and sense of superiority.
"Jocks sit in the back," he announced to Quinn the first time he walked in the classroom.
"Oh, OK, thanks," Quinn said, already feeling put out and realizing that the caste system of the locker room applied to the classroom as well. It just took a less physical form.
"Don't mind him," the student one seat over said. "Some guys can't help being jerks."
When Quinn studied the face attached to the voice, he realized that this was Achilles or Alexander come to life, if not in temperament at least in sculpted line—the coarse, auburn hair curling over the nape of the graceful neck, the smooth planes of the cheekbones, high and wide; the lips, full and bow-shaped; the nose, long and straight; the laughing gray eyes the color, though not the character, of a stormy sea.
The body attached to that spectacular face was equally splendid—long, broad-chested and well-muscled, though not as big as Quinn's. But then, swimmers didn't have to be as big as football players, for Quinn recognized him as Dylan Roqué, one of the two best swimmers in the world.
If there was any doubt in Quinn's mind about where his sexuality lay, Dylan confirmed it. He was Quinn's first love, first crush, first hero—not that Dylan ever knew it. Quinn was too shy—paralyzed was a better word—to act on or even express his feelings. And he was glad of that, for it quickly became apparent that Dylan was involved with someone else. Quinn could tell from the way he smiled at times when he texted or said, "Hey, you" when he answered the phone. But it wasn't until Quinn saw Dylan at a Stanford swim meet a few days later with Daniel Reiner-Kahn—the top swimmer in the world—that it dawned on him that Dylan's love was a man.
"Hey, Quinn, there's someone I'd like you to meet," Dylan said afterward, his hair still wet. "Daniel Reiner-Kahn, meet our new star quarterback, Quinton Day Novak. Quinn, Dani."
"Hi, how's it going?" Dani said, giving him a fist bump.
"Fine, thanks, you?"
"Never better."
It occurred to Quinn then that had there been no Dani, he might've been Dylan's type, for Quinn was a slightly taller, heavier version of Dani with the same glossy dark hair and emerald eyes. He might've been Dani's younger brother—his darker, younger brother, Quinn reminded himself.
"Why don't we all go for coffee?" Dylan offered.
Something about Dani's manner told Quinn it would be a bad idea. Maybe it was the way he put his hand on Dylan's shoulder after he beat him in the 200-meter breaststroke. It was a gesture of consolation, protection, and possession, Quinn thought, and it made him realize that he both feared and disliked Daniel Reiner-Kahn.
"Thanks, but I gotta hit the books," Quinn said. "See you in class."
It was there that Dylan belonged to him. "We jocks have to stick together," Dylan said to Quinn with a conspiratorial wink. And Quinn's heart and groin leapt simultaneously as he realized that in class at least he wasn't alone.
"Who here has experienced rage?" Professor Dolenz asked as they prepared to plunge into The Iliad.
Dylan's left hand went up as he continued typing on his laptop with the unconscious grace with which he did everything. Quinn—more sheepish, searching to find that kind of courage in himself—looked around before raising his left hand. About three-quarters of the class—most of it male—joined them.
"OK," Professor Dolenz said, spinning a rubber band between his two index fingers. "Now, how many of you have been angry enough to kill? Be honest."
Dylan's left hand shot up again. Quinn's followed.
"It figures," he heard Trent sneer to Rebecca Turing. "I bet the murder rate is higher among jocks."
Rebecca, who was probably the smartest student in the class—in general, the women were way ahead of the men—simply rolled her eyes before disdainfully flipping her long, brown hair and then smiling pointedly, almost provocatively, at Quinn and Dylan. For someone who was in a classics course, Quinn thought, Trent seemed oblivious to having just been dissed by a goddess.
"Right," Professor Dolenz said, exhaling as he glared at Trent, "we are about to encounter a young man possessed of that kind of rage."
"Excuse me, Marc," Trent said to Professor Dolenz, breaching an intimacy that the professor—who always called the students Mr. and Ms.—had never invited. "But wouldn't you agree that the point of war is killing? So doesn't Achilles' rage merely help perfect a killing machine?"
Here Trent flashed one of his "got 'im" grins.
"Well, Mr. Birdwell," Professor Dolenz said, underscoring the form of address, "is killing the point of war? And is all killing in war equal? Is killing a soldier whose gun is pointed at a comrade the same as shooting a child? What about a child carrying a bomb? If killing effectively is the point, wouldn’t it be better to kill in cold blood? But that's good. This is the kind of dialogue I want us to have in this class."
It occurred to Quinn then that there were a lot more battles being waged in The Literature of Rejection than those on the plains of Troy. There was the tension between the women and the men, forced by Trent's aggressively clumsy wooing of Rebecca, who was, it was well-known—to everyone but Trent, that is—dating a physics major bound for MIT. Not that Trent—with his kinky hair, big nose, oily skin and small, flat fingernails that Quinn particularly skeeved—was her or anyone's type.
There were the class divisions among the pols, the jocks, the artistes and the brainiacs. And then there was the ultimate battle between Trent and Professor Dolenz for supremacy and the soul of the class.
Quinn watched it play out with amusement, knowing that Dylan had his back and he had Dylan's. At night, as he lay in bed stroking himself, he thought of Dylan. He told himself that he needed to be quiet so he wouldn't wake Ivan. But mostly he didn't want to admit to himself what he was doing even as he relished it.
There was something absurd about self-love as there was about all sex—something needy and greedy, naked and raw, terrible and addictive.
"Alexander the Great said sex—what the French would later call la petite mort, or 'little death,' referring to orgasm—and sleep were the only things that reminded him of his mortality," Professor Dolenz told the class.
"He mustn't have been doing it right," Trent cracked.
"Yes," Dolenz said, smiling broadly. "I'm sure a man who never failed at anything in his life had trouble in that department."
"Doesn't matter," Trent insisted. "There's a first time for everything. Nobody's perfect."
Here Professor Dolenz would sigh. Quinn knew exactly how he felt. Trent was sometimes, OK often, right, but did he have to be so damn annoying about it? He imagined Trent giving Alexander that kind of lip and the Greco-Macedonian conqueror's response.
"Shall I gather the wild animals to throw in the sack with him?" Quinn, always an aide-de-camp in these reveries of Trent's execution, would ask.
And Alexander, always gleeful, would reply: "Let's use a couple of boars, shall we?"
Quinn found this to be a satisfying fantasy, though not as satisfying as the ones in which he and Dylan were one with the Greeks on the plains of Troy, sharing everything two comrades in arms (each other's) could share, just like Achilles and Patroclus. And just like Achilles and Patroclus on the red-clay kylix that graced the cover of his copy of The Iliad, Quinn would carefully bandage a wound on Dylan's forearm as he manfully bore it, looking away.
Or Quinn would imagine himself and Dylan as Alexander and his soul-mate and right-hand man Hephaestion on the plains of Gaugamela, with Alexander applying the aloe vera sap to Hephaestion’s wounds as he had been taught to do by his teacher, the philosopher Aristotle, in the mountainous wood that was the Garden of Mieza. "You are so brave, my love," Quinn’s Alexander would say, finishing off his ministrations with a discreet kiss to Hephaestion’s forehead.
Sometimes in these fantasies, Dylan would shower him with his seed, then water, squeezing a soaked sponge above him, as Quinn, crouching and shaking his wet head, mouth open, laughed, reveling in the sensuous respite from battle. Later he would nestle naked against Dylan's side, trying to make himself small even though he was bigger, and Dylan—older and presumably wiser, definitely more sophisticated—would laugh indulgently and, clasping him by his perfectly molded buttocks, draw the muscular, curling figure to him, he who could never be mean to anyone.
Back in his room—far from the plains of Troy or Gaugamela—Quinn would arc and flood the tissues that enveloped his cock, stilling his staggered breaths as he savored the pleasure that tingled down to his toes.
The reality was, of course, quite different. He would look up to the stands to see Dylan, and his heart would sing. Then he'd notice Daniel was with him, and the same heart would recoil as if stabbed. How could he be so jealous of two people who didn't know he was alive romantically? But he was. And then he'd wonder, should he tell Dylan how he felt? What was the point when Dylan and Daniel were so clearly, in his mind, a twosome? You can't, he decided, build your happiness on the back of someone else's misery. And anyway, who was to say he and Dylan would've been happy? Wasn't there a reason Dylan wound up with Daniel?
As it was, both Dylan and Daniel sent him separate congratulations when he won the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore. Even Trent and Casey had to offer him grudging respect then.
"A tremendous accomplishment," Professor Dolenz emailed him, "made all the greater by your being as fine a citizen and scholar as you are an athlete. You truly embody the Homeric ideal of arête."
The honor took him to New York, which disappointed Quinn, not because the city failed to meet his expectations but because his visit was too brief, void of people he wanted to share it with (Aunt Josie and Uncle Artur weren't up to the journey) and filled with those he wished hadn't come.
"Is there someone else?" Abigail asked. "Someone you've met in college?"
"I'm afraid there is," Quinn said, flashing on himself being forced to suck Dylan off while on his knees, a deliciously cruel strap winding its way about his neck down his back and fastened arms to his tied ankles as Daniel prepared to enter him, murmuring encouragement.
"Well, I can't say I'm entirely surprised—or unhappy," Abigail said. "I, too, have found love, at Ole Miss."
Then why had she bothered to come all the way to New York with Aunt Sarah to see him win the Heisman? Part of him—the cynical part—assumed she craved the attention. But maybe she just wanted to let him down easily and felt that the Heisman would soften the blow. What if he hadn't won, for it wasn't a foregone conclusion? Would she have withheld the revelation?
As happy as he was with the Heisman—cradling it, his eyes closed, his head thrown back in sheer bliss—he knew his collegiate career wouldn't be complete nor his NFL ticket punched until he won a bowl game. The Stanford Cardinals had had their chance when he was a junior but had come up short at the Rose Bowl. Quinn was determined that wouldn't happen again.
"I pledge to you and to this school that this time I shall not fail," he said as he did his sun breaths before the makeshift altar on his dresser that included images of
Jesus, St. Michael, Alexander the Great, Achilles, and Aunt Lena.
That promise was fulfilled as Stanford blew out USC 42-3 in the Rose Bowl his senior year. Quinn looked up into the stands to see Sydney, Chandler, Aunt Josie, Uncle Artur, Aunt Sarah, her friends, and Dylan, who had long graduated and was now the top-ranked swimmer in the world. By then, Quinn recognized that Dylan had been an infatuation rather than a great love, spurred by a mix of hormones, loneliness, insecurity, and genuine affection. And Quinn marveled at the way you could be so disappointed—no, heartsick—in love only to recognize later that it wasn't love at all, or at least not that kind of love. For by then, Quinn was dreaming of two quarterbacks who were already making their names with the Miners and Quakers.
Still, when the terrible news about Dylan came, Quinn thought, too, about how you could love someone you never really knew and mourn his loss sincerely and profoundly.
"Dylan Roqué came into my life at a time when I was a college freshman in desperate need of friendship and a role model," he posted on Facebook and Instagram. "He offered both, and I will always be grateful for that. I pray that his family and loved ones find comfort in his memory and that God grants him eternal peace."
But that was in the future. For now, Quinn was delirious to have finally landed in New York as the first-round draft pick of the lowly New York Templars. The team's status didn't matter. Few knew that this was no mere trip across the country. Rather it was a journey of 10,000 miles and twelve years, and he could not help but be moved by it.
As he exited Liberty Newark International Airport, he bent down and kissed the ground.
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