As finals approached, I made up my mind. I walked from my dorm down State Street to Yost Arena to give Coach Farrell my decision. When I told him I was quitting, he was surprised and disappointed, but he wished me good luck. No hard feelings.
I wish I’d had the strength to fight my way through the issues at Michigan and to stand up for who I was. But I let myself get discouraged by racial problems, loneliness, and the gap between the starters and me—things I could have mitigated if I’d just kept working.
When I returned to my dorm room I called the head coach of Western Michigan, Bill Neal. I asked him if he remembered the black player on Michigan’s team who played in the exhibition game against them earlier that season.
“Sure I do.”
I told him I wanted to transfer to Western. He immediately said yes and invited me to a game they were playing in Kalamazoo the next night.
The following day I drove my “new” used car, a beat-up Oldsmobile Delta 88, through a serious snowstorm one hundred miles to Kalamazoo. I liked Western Michigan immediately, and this time I knew what to do when I got a small nod from another black student. All it took was a nod back, and I was one of them.
I had managed to get another fresh start the following fall.
CHAPTER 11
Falling in Love
AFTER I COMMITTED TO ATTEND WESTERN MICHIGAN IN August of 1974 I had to kill eight months in Montreal surrounded by my family and friends. I knew it was a potentially dangerous gap of time, given all my old habits that could easily resurface. On the drive back to Montreal I also worried my friends and former teammates would think I was a failure, washing out after only one semester, and I wondered where I could play that season, and where I would live.
Before I returned, my mother had decided to move Bernie, Gail, and herself from Montreal into a two-bedroom apartment in the tiny town of Ajax, outside Toronto. This time they moved because of the rising French separatist movement, which threatened to split the province of Quebec from the rest of the country. Among other goals, the movement wanted to make French mandatory in Quebec high schools. Bernie was a decent student but had difficulty passing French, which could jeopardize his chance at a college hockey scholarship—and his chances were much better than mine.
Ajax, Ontario, was on my way back to Montreal, but I didn’t stop to see them. I missed Bernie and Gail, but not enough to risk speaking with my mother for the first time in the four months I’d been away. I preferred it that way. Whether this was another sign that I was “just like my father” remained to be seen.
Instead I returned to Chateauguay, where the mother of my Little League baseball buddy Rick insisted I stay with them. She made me feel welcome, and she wouldn’t take a dime. I will forever be grateful to her.
As soon as I got back, just before Christmas, I went down to talk to Mr. Bougee, the general manager of the Chateauguay Wings. This time he was more than happy to take me back. No, he hadn’t changed his mind about me, but the Wings were terrible that year, and he could use all the help he could get. So within days of returning I was back on the ice playing competitive hockey, which always lifted my spirits.
But soon I was running with my old friends again, and that meant smoking a lot of grass and dropping acid just about every other day—not the kind of habits typical of top college players. I started to toy with the idea of not enrolling at Western Michigan after all.
Far more seriously, I revisited the idea of killing myself, which still came up occasionally. I didn’t scheme ways to do it, but I daydreamed about dying in a car crash or falling off a bridge. The idea of dying rarely left me for long, but the drugs I was taking numbed me enough to keep me going.
Fortunately I had some new distractions. I had been the first in our gang to escape Chateauguay and I used that to my advantage when trying to romance the ladies with talks of exploits that I no longer had to make up. But no matter how hard I tried, I still became every girl’s best friend instead of her boyfriend.
With only two games left in the Wings’ season, I decided I’d had enough—another sign of immaturity, depression, and my remarkable lack of focus. For our next game I didn’t even call and tell them I’d be missing. I just didn’t show up. When Mr. Bougee called me afterward I told him I needed to get away. I knew that didn’t sound good, so I added that I had to get a job to help pay for the coming year’s tuition at Western Michigan. Needing to get away and needing to get a job aren’t exactly the same things, but I didn’t care, and by then he probably didn’t care very much about me either. I can’t say I blame him.
So in March of 1974 I told my friends and Rick’s family goodbye, swallowed my pride, and headed to Ajax to move in with my mother, my brother, and my sister to save some money before enrolling at Western. Jamming four family members into a two-bedroom apartment made it easy to get on each other’s nerves, especially as they’d been living with each other for years, while I’d been making only cameo appearances. It wasn’t long before I had an outburst that I’m ashamed of to this day.
My sister was still the sweetest girl on the planet, but while I’d been away she’d started to grow up. She was almost fifteen, but she looked older and was trying to act it too. During my frequent absences Bernie watched her like a hawk, but one evening she stayed out past her curfew, which bothered me more than it should have. After all, she was a good kid, and Bernie had been the one holding down the fort, not me. But I still saw her as an eight-year-old girl and couldn’t fathom why she’d be out that late on her own.
When Gail finally walked through our door I stood up immediately and confronted her in a way I never had before. Instead of being the gentle listener, I acted like my father: obnoxiously self-righteous, even mean. It was a side of me Gail had never seen, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when she returned the insult.
“John, you’ve been gone such a long time, I can’t believe you’ve turned into Dad!”
No sooner had the words escaped her mouth than I slapped her across her face.
We stared at each other in disbelief. My mother started in, but I yelled at her to shut up. Tears welled in Gail’s eyes. I stammered an apology, but I quickly realized that even if she might forgive me, I could never forgive myself. I had just provided compelling evidence that Mom was right: I was just like my father. If true, I was also right: I should never have kids.
I ran from the living room, stuffed some pot and a bottle of whiskey in my bag, and left the apartment. I walked to a nearby shopping mall, found an outdoor bench toward the back, and lit up a joint. Who the hell had I become? Was I destined to become my father? I felt the burn of whiskey at the back of my throat. The only things I cared about—hockey, my friends, and now my sister—were slipping away. I finished the bottle and passed out on the bench.
Hours later a police car pulled up. The officer rolled down his window and hollered at me, “Get on home, kid!”
I got up and started walking. It was approaching dawn when I crept into the apartment as quietly as I could. Everyone was still asleep. I slipped into Gail’s room because I wanted to be the first person Gail saw when she woke up. I sat at the foot of her bed and watched her sleep, feeling dead inside.
At dawn Gail woke and her eyes met mine. I opened my mouth to tell her I was sorry, but she beat me to it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I watched Dad beat you. Call you disgusting names. Say how you were no good. I know that what I said hurt more than any slap to the face.”
That was wonderful to hear, but it only made me feel even guiltier.
“I’ll never forgive myself for hitting you,” I said, and started to cry.
She hugged me. I asked her if she’d braid my hair later that day, something she did to make my Afro fluffier.
“Sure,” she said.
She smiled and fell back asleep. We were okay.
That morning I headed out to look for work. My dad had offered to pitch in for tuition again, but I wasn’t sure how much he could afford, so I fig
ured I had six months to scrounge together enough money to cover my first year at Western Michigan. Ajax had some factories, so I shaved, ironed my slacks, and set off to find a job.
I started my search at Bailey Engineering, which produced silicon boards and connectors for electronic equipment. When they offered me a job moving parts from one assembly line to another, I was thrilled. One of my stops was the silk-screening room, where workers painted numbers onto parts. That’s where I met Fran Smith, an attractive woman in her mid-forties who wore her bleached-blond hair in a tight bun. She ran the department, and we hit it off immediately. During breaks we’d laugh and cut loose.
I’d been on the job for a month when I found Fran working alongside a younger woman who seemed to share the same bottle of bleach. But unlike Fran, this woman wore her locks loose. She was a little taller than Fran and very shapely. When I approached, she turned from her work, locked eyes with me, and smiled. I thought, Visits to this room are going to be more frequent.
“This is my daughter, Delia,” Fran said. “She used to work here and is coming back, starting today.”
We exchanged polite smiles and went about our business. But I was soon spending all my breaks and lunches with Fran and Delia.
At the end of work one day Delia told me that she and a bunch of her friends were going out that night and invited me to join them. At twenty-two, Delia was three years older than I was. She’d recently ended a bad marriage to a man she said she never loved. I told her the ex-husband thing didn’t faze me, and from that first night out we began spending every free moment together. Delia was adamant about one thing: “No sex.” I held out hope that this rule wouldn’t last forever.
When Delia and I began dating I was surprised when Fran turned cold. Delia told me that her parents didn’t approve of her dating a black man.
When I confronted Fran she said, “You’re a great person, but my husband and I just don’t think it’s right.”
But they couldn’t stop us. Delia moved out of her parents’ home and into a cheap apartment. I was nineteen years old and I finally had my first true girlfriend. For me, 1974 seemed like an endless summer of love. While Delia was an instant hit with my mother and Gail was indifferent, Bernie didn’t like her, and our father wanted me to stay away from girlfriends altogether, lest they distract me from becoming somebody. But I didn’t care. I was in love.
The night before I headed to Western Michigan Delia asked me to stay at her place. For the first time, we made love. We woke in each other’s arms the next morning, and I kissed her goodbye.
“I love you,” I whispered. It was the first time I had said that to any woman—although I had no idea what love really meant. She told me she loved me too, and planned to visit me as soon as she could. When I returned to my Mom’s home that morning I found my father loading up his car for our trip to Kalamazoo.
“Guess you slept with your little whore,” he said. I squinted—a habit I’d learned from him. Not getting the hint, he continued. “Last thing you need is to get mixed up with some man’s ex-wife. She’s used up. Damaged goods. She just wants to screw her way into your life.”
“You don’t know anything about her,” I said, seething. “You can go screw yourself.”
We endured the eight-hour drive to Kalamazoo in icy silence. My father never raised his gaze from the road, and I never looked at him. After crossing the American border at Detroit he finally spoke. “You know, your focus should be on hockey and school.”
“You missed your chance to give me advice,” I told him, glaring out the passenger window. “Just drive.”
When we reached Western Michigan I couldn’t even mumble a goodbye.
CHAPTER 12
Go West
BY SEPTEMBER OF 1974 I WAS IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME. I was attending a university with a brand-new Division I hockey program, and I was living in a dorm room with some of my hockey teammates. Compared to where I’d been just a couple of years earlier, this representeded progress on all fronts.
But no matter how well things were going, I could still see my low moods were lower than my friends’. So I loaded my class schedule with psychology courses, hoping to sort myself out.
I was grateful for a fresh start, but most of the players at Western were faster, stronger, and just plain better than I was. Something had to change—and it had to start with me. Western’s off-ice training was just as tough as Michigan’s, which came as a shock, but I was determined to work my ass off to stand out.
On our first day of dry-land training I met two of the team’s best freshmen, Neil Smith, a tall, blond-haired guy with a Fu Manchu moustache, and Bob Gardner, a high-flying left wing with a big shot and an even bigger grin. Neil came up to me and said, “I heard you’re from Toronto.”
“Ajax,” I said.
“Ah, that’s not Toronto!” He ran off to start our run, while I was thinking, What an ass!
Despite all the tangible signs of progress I’d made, I still felt inadequate. To avoid that horrible feeling, I stayed in bed—which only made everything worse. Sometimes I’d stay in bed until it was time for practice, and then I would get up and pretend to be everything I wasn’t: confident, friendly, and socially skilled. But most of the time I felt so unsettled, I actually wanted to throw up, and sometimes I did.
My teammates had no idea how I felt, even though we lived together, ate together, attended classes together, and played together. Soon Neil, Bob, and I became best friends, known around campus as “The Three Musketeers.” Outside of class and practice we engaged in the typical college fun. The drinking age was eighteen, and local bars charged ten cents a glass for draft beer, so how could we resist?
Delia and I wrote each other letters every week, and she visited a few times. She had my heart, but at nineteen I wasn’t oblivious to the looks the hockey players got from the flocks of pretty girls eager to meet us. Unlike at Michigan, where football was king and basketball a close second, at Western, hockey was the most popular sport.
I fought temptation, trying to be true to Delia. I thought my familiar role of being every girl’s “best friend” might finally pay off and I could keep things platonic. But after I lapsed one night, I hadn’t anticipated the guilt that overcame me, which felt like I’d swallowed poison. When I confessed to Delia, she was hurt, but she said her love was strong enough to forgive me—a great gift. After that I was tempted a few times but never succumbed again.
I was only beginning to sense how my far-too-early introduction to sex at age seven was affecting my relationships with women. I was fine with dating until things turned physical. Sex for me was unconnected to my feelings, something mechanical, something shameful. In all my relationships this would surface as an obstacle I would have to work past.
After I procured a beat-up Oldsmobile 88 on campus, I managed to collect enough parking tickets that the university police actually arrested me—not exactly the kind of thing a man hoping to become a responsible adult does. Sitting in my jail cell, I recalled that my father had promised if I ever got tight on funds, he would send me some cash to help out. He had told me to open a checking account so he could wire me money directly, and this time he came through. I don’t think I could have stayed in school without his help.
But as soon as I got out of jail I was broke again. I called him for more money. “The money’s on its way,” he assured me.
Thinking my problems had been solved, I cashed checks at a few stores to get some essential things I’d been putting off. A few days later I received an angry phone call from a grocery store telling me the check had bounced, and I was banned. The calls soon came in from stores all over town, with my name posted in each place as a deadbeat. When I called Dad he stammered that there must be some mistake, because of course he had sent the cash.
I felt like a fool. And here I was, collecting parking tickets, doing a bit of jail time, and bouncing checks. Why did I think I’d turn out any different than him?
When we hit the ice I
was determined to show that I could still play. I had to overcome two dislocated shoulders and four seasons spent mostly off the ice. I had been given another chance, and I was making the most of it. Even better, Bernie, who had torn up the Metropolitan Toronto League, turned down offers from Michigan, Boston University, and Harvard so he could join me at Western. We were looking forward to spending some real time together.
When the games started I was still in the stands, watching. But this time, instead of letting it get me down, I practiced harder, my confidence soared, and I was sure that soon I’d get my chance.
At the same time my relationship with Delia was approaching a crossroads, and I was torn. I finally had someone to turn to, someone who’d listen to my problems and help ease my pain, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for marriage. I wanted to get my degree first and see how far hockey could take me.
When I returned to Kalamazoo for the second semester the team was getting ready for a big weekend series against rival Ohio State. Two of our starting defensemen had flunked out, which meant I would get my chance—until I learned I had an incomplete grade in an acting class, of all things. My afternoon naps had caught up with me.
While I was getting that sorted out, I missed the trip to Ohio State, so I got ready to make my debut the following weekend. But during a midweek practice my future changed in an instant. In the middle of a drill my skates got tangled up with a teammates’, my arms ended up pinned behind me, and I came crashing down on the ice, face first. The ice cracked my cheekbone and knocked my teeth out, scattering them across the ice. I also dislocated my right shoulder—my “good” one.
I was done. To remove any doubt, I quit going to classes altogether, making it impossible for me to return to Western. Instead of admitting defeat and going home, I hid out in my dorm room for the rest of the semester because I wasn’t ready to return to Canada as a failure—again.
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