by Casey Gerald
Instead of a heart-to-heart over dinner—we never went to a restaurant, but he did buy me Taco Bell once—or coffee, which I didn’t drink, we rented a room at our go-to spot: a Motel 6 on the desolate edge of Grand Prairie, a suburb so unremarkable I have a hard time describing it other than saying that it was close to the freeway. I didn’t have the thirty dollars it cost to pay for this secluded clean bungalow in which to un-elope, so I appreciated him letting me save my lunch money along with my soul. I appreciated many of the other things he did on our Motel 6 visits—years later I drove through the western stretch of Kansas on my way to Colorado and, unable to drive any further into the night, pulled into a Motel 6 instead of the cheaper Super 8 next door, in remembrance of Red—but this visit was unlike the others because I’d made it clear before he came that this would be goodbye.
With only the television on and the stale white sheets around us, I could still see him lying there on me. His skin always seemed to glow in the dark and his face was so close to mine that I didn’t have to strain my eyes too hard to stare. If I could have turned him into a speck of cornea and carried him around transparently, forever, I would have done it—he knew that as confused as I was about so many things, I was unwaveringly obsessed with him, which gave him good grounds to tell me so often: Boy your ass is crazy. I took real pride in that. To provide a final piece of evidence, I lay there on my back, tucked my nose into the nape of his neck, and cried. I’m gonna miss you. He said nothing, just kept wiping my eyes with his rough thumbs until his hands were wet and my face was dry.
* * *
—
I see us there, in my mind, and think that Red should have done to me what the chief Vithobai did to the Christian missionary Pinmay in E. M. Forster’s story “The Life to Come.” Ever read that?
The story—tragedy, really—begins when a British missionary, Pinmay, is sent into an unnamed forest to convert the pagan natives, starting with the most stubborn among them: the chief, Vithobai, who hasn’t given the time of day to any of the seasoned missionaries, not even the brutal Roman Catholics, who’ve come and gone before Pinmay shows up.
Their first encounter goes as everyone expects, except Pinmay, who hasn’t even bothered to learn the language or customs of the people he intends to save. Vithobai has a servant inform Pinmay that he’s barking up the wrong tree, so to speak, and Pinmay is forced to spend the night alone in the forest, since he can’t reach his missionary camp safely until the morning. He finds a tree trunk to rest beside. He has a little lamp, the clothes on his back, a Bible, and nothing else save his disappointment. In the middle of the night, a figure appears. A man, naked except for a garland of flowers. It’s Vithobai.
I wish to hear more about this god whose name is Love, he says.
The missionary can hardly contain himself. Come to Christ! cries Pinmay.
Is that your name? Vithobai asks.
Pinmay straightens that out and invites Vithobai to join him by the tree trunk, to hear about his god. He reads the words from a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth—If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal . . . etc. etc.—words which move Vithobai so deeply that he rests his head in Pinmay’s bosom and blows out the lamp. Darkness covers whatever follows.
The next morning, not long after Pinmay returns, ashamed, to his missionary camp, word comes from the forest that Vithobai and his entire tribe have decided to give their lives to Christ. Pinmay must have been one extraordinary lay. Whatever the case, Vithobai is changed—his new name is Barnabas—and Pinmay is changed, too: now mean and dismissive, toward his first, most important convert. The table is set for disaster.
Come to Christ, Barnabas implores Pinmay the next time he sees the missionary.
Not yet, Pinmay replies.
He refuses to see Barnabas for five years, years during which, as you might suspect, the natives become riddled with disease, Barnabas loses his land, and Pinmay decides to marry a woman. Barnabas is on the outs big-time, but still attends Pinmay’s wedding with a fine gift and one final plea: Come to Christ. God has commanded them to love, Barnabas reminds the missionary, whose not yet becomes never. Pinmay fines his former lover for backsliding. At this point in Forster’s story it seems that Barnabas has either a seizure or a nervous breakdown, not totally sure which. He recovers, physically at least, and retreats high into the mountains with the woman he’s forced to marry. Next thing we know (though some years have passed), broken-hearted Barnabas is near death, thanks to a consumption outbreak that was started by one of the workers who’d come to civilize the village. Pinmay hears the news and, out of duty if not care, goes with Mrs. Pinmay to visit the chief one last time.
He finds Barnabas lying on an asphalt roof, naked. That is not the way a good Christian should die, Pinmay explains. Barnabas needs a shawl or something. He also needs to know, according to Pinmay, that what they did in the forest those many years ago was sin, not love, and Barnabas must repent before it is too late. Repent Pinmay begs—and also begs Vithobai, as he’s again become, to kiss his forehead, as a sign that the forgiveness is real.
Vithobai, nearly dead but not a fool, asks Pinmay to lie down on his now-skeletal chest so the kiss may be planted. Pinmay lowers his head, rests it on Vithobai, continues his entreaty:
We have erred in this life, Pinmay says, but it will not be so in the life to come.
Hearing this, Vithobai gets a little pep in his dying step—he had forgotten that his new religion comes with a major perk: once this life is over, he’ll receive a brand-new one. He asks Pinmay whether they will meet in the life to come, and whether there will be love in it. Pinmay assures him that they will and there will be.
Life, life, eternal life. Wait for me in it! the chief shouts.
And as he shouts these words, Vithobai drives a dagger through Pinmay’s heart. Poor man is dead before he even knows what hit him. Of course, since almost every homosexual story written in the twentieth century had to include a death or a suicide, after murdering the missionary Vithobai jumps off the roof and kills himself. I’ll excuse Forster for that—he couldn’t even publish this incredible story in his lifetime.
Anyway, I say all that to say that Red should’ve stabbed me, but he didn’t. And he didn’t jump off the Motel 6 balcony to his grisly death. He just held me and wiped my tears and drove me home. And I’m so glad he left me alive because I was having such a hard time securing salvation in the life to come that I couldn’t afford to jeopardize my chances in this one.
chapter EIGHT
Go to any Texas high school. Sit in a classroom. Stand in a hallway. You’ll see it: the glow above the head of the football player—his letterman jacket full of patches, his locker empty of books, the swagger that must be taught to most fashion models but that comes naturally to him, a seventeen-year-old boy on the varsity. He doesn’t know that this may be the pinnacle of his life. That his friends will never be as popular, that sex will never come as easily, that his name might never again appear in the paper for anything good. No matter. Even in the most meaningless worlds there are places of privilege. He is it. The Alma Mater says it all.
Hail Alma Mater!
Hail Gold and White!
We’re right behind you
As you go into the fight
Loyal and faithful,
Ever we’ll be.
South Oak Cliff, we love you;
Win a vic-to-ry
Victories don’t fall from the sky. Somebody’s got to suit up. Somebody’s got to lift and run and vomit and strain and weep. Somebody’s got to stand there in a jersey with salty sweat running down his cheeks and accept your loyalty and your faith. That’s what the boy down on the field is for. I wanted to be him. I wasn’t alone.
So many of us who became that boy have been broken because of it. They will put our body in the grou
nd a little earlier than the rest of you. Our tendons might be frayed and our bones might be chipped and our brains might be sitting in a lab somewhere. But man, even if it was just a little twinkle of light that we held on to like a dying firefly for the rest of our lives, the game gave a lot for all it took.
Some of it goes right back to what Oscar Wilde said: Everything in life is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. Well Texas high school football is perhaps the only thing in the world that was about both. You may not have been a star, but you were a member. And the only thing worse than being an insignificant member of something is to not be a member of anything. Jefferson should have put that right in the Declaration, so true is it of life in this country. As long as I was part of the team, I had a crew. I had memories to gin up and stories to steal. I had reliable Friday night plans and a secured seat during lunch and the right to leave class early for pep rallies. These gifts alone were worth a shorter life.
Then there were the uniforms. All you have to do is watch the drag queen Dorian Corey sit in front of her mirror for almost the entirety of Paris Is Burning and you will understand how much care my teammates and I devoted to tearing perfect strips of bright white or jet-black tape to spat our cleats, pulling long thick socks above our calves, adjusting neoprene sleeves until the seams formed a straight line from our elbows to the opening of a sticky pair of gloves we begged for, fastening our glittering pants like corsets, squeezing too-tight pads over narrow shoulders, and finally placing a shiny domed crown on our heads—a helmet, with black paw print stickers on the sides and, for the chosen few, a clear or tinted or mirrored visor that kept stadium lights out of our eyes and fear in our opponents’ hearts. Look good. Feel good. Play good.
But first, the wait. The agonizing wait in the bowels of a rancid locker room. We sat there all dressed up, listening to the voices in our heads and the thick silence around us except for the patter of cleats on the concrete floor, sounding out the same journey over and over. To the mirror. To the toilet. There may be no worse wait than the one you know will end. This is one of them. We watched the clock wind down. Chewed our mouthpiece. Told a nervous joke. Then, by the awful grace of God, came game time.
For most of high school, my wait just led to more waiting. I spent sophomore year on the junior varsity squad, where we wore hand-me-down varsity outfits and played on muddy fields before crowds of seventy-five on a good day. There were only five or six games to our season, instead of the standard ten, and since my time at quarterback as a freshman had been such a disaster, the coaches decided to put me at defensive end. I was small for the position, but I was fast and wild. A bit like a rabid lemur.
One night we were being embarrassed by a team I’ve long since forgotten, and our offensive coordinator, Coach Wesley, was fed up. He hated losing and resented wasting his time with chickenshit underclassmen instead of the college-bound wide receivers he coached on the varsity, or the state champion–caliber sprinters he trained on the track team, where he paid special attention to me since I was among the fastest boys in my year, thanks to my father’s genes and Coach Walton’s instruction.
With the offense stalled and the playbook exhausted, Coach Wesley devised a new plan.
Casey!
I was idling on the other end of the sideline, probably staring off toward the highway. I hurried down to the offensive huddle to see what he wanted.
Put ya helmet on, man. Aight listen, fellas. Casey, you get in at quarterback. Shotgun. Now when the center snap the ball, I want everybody to run right. Casey, you run left. Understand?
Yes, sir.
Sure enough, the center shot the ball back to me, the other ten boys on the offense ran to their right, and I took off to my left—around the left tackle, right by a linebacker too slow and a safety too confused to catch me, and into the end zone for a touchdown.
Shiiiit same thang! Y’all run this way. Casey that way. You aight?
By this point we had run Team Right/Casey Left or Team Left/Casey Right about seven times in a row and I was sucking wind. But even if I wasn’t indefatigable, I was obedient.
Yeah. I’m good, Coach.
And it kept working. At least for that one game.
The following week, or maybe a few weeks later, we met the Lincoln Tigers in Pleasant Grove—the most feral neighborhood in Dallas and a perfect neutral site for the boys from slightly less feral South Dallas to come kick my ass. All night, the main attraction of the South Oak Cliff junior varsity was our Casey Run the Other Way package. But the Lincoln boys were a lot less dumb than they looked and a lot more vicious, so when my teammates ran the other way, they left behind a sea of death in purple jerseys.
The boys from Lincoln didn’t just tackle me. They hit me after the referee blew his whistle to end the play. They held me up to let their teammates spear me in the side. They pushed my helmet in the grass at the bottom of a pile and yelled into my ear Stay down ole bitch-ass nigga! They saw me trying to run out of bounds and sped up to throw me headfirst into the rocks that framed the playing field. But I kept getting up—kept running the ball, kept my mouth shut, kept taking the blows. Sometimes I just closed my eyes and savored the rush of being pummeled, the crack of another helmet on mine. I grinned, called a few time-outs to patch my wounds, went back for more.
My arms were so bloodied by the end of the game that I went to school the next day with dirty bandages in place of shirt sleeves. My friend Junebug, who was already a varsity running back and who sounded like a chopped-and-screwed Sly Stone record, saw me in the locker room and slurred Damn, kinfolk them niggas turned you into a mummy! Everybody on the varsity had either seen or heard what the Lincoln Tigers did to me the night before, so they also knew what I had not done: quit. Thanks to one play and one night of punishment, I had what I’d long wanted—a little respect and a spot on the varsity. This was the first time I learned how far you can make it in America if you have enough disregard for your personal welfare. Maybe that’s why football is the national pastime.
* * *
—
Listen up, fellas. Lemme tell you why the game of football is so incredible. Where else can you beat the shit out of another man and get away with it? No goddamn where.
That was Coach Jasper, a man so squat and black and round that he looked like a doo doo bug who had grown up to be a Homo sapiens. I can still see him now, waddling up and down the practice field with those gray cotton shorts riding up his heart-shaped ass, and those little hands desperately clinging to each other in front of his stomach. Every now and then he’d waddle over to a huddle, tilt his too-small head back, put his tongue under his jutting front teeth, and share his thoughts on the game of football, or life, or our futures.
In the middle of a lackluster practice junior year—one of those practices that gets off to such a lazy sloppy start that all you can do is wait to run gassers and go home—Coach Jasper blew his whistle to stop our drill. He leaned that little head back.
You know what? You niggas is sorry. Look at ya! Missin’ tackles. Forgettin’ assignments. Loafin’ around here like it’s a goddamn picnic. Sorry! And you know what? Most of you niggas gone be like this for the rest of your lives. You gone talk sorry. You gone work sorry. You gone . . . fuck sorry! I can’t even stand to look at this shit no mo’.
And he waddled right off the field.
Coach Jasper’s prophesy remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, but it also said a lot about the purpose of high school football in the eyes of the adults who led us. The program did not exist to develop boys into men or even better players. It was a stage—a place to reveal, based on the slightest evidence, whether a teenage boy already had what it took to perform. One play could make you a star. One mistake could end it all. Your bad day, your meltdown, your injury was just a symptom of the fact that you were a sorry-ass nigga and would always be one. A cancer. A pussy. A has-been. We were not a team but a collection
of final products that, if we stayed healthy and in the coaches’ good graces, could be displayed to the men who came looking for us like johns after virgin prostitutes: the college recruiters.
* * *
—
Say, man, lemme tell you somethin’. Any recruiter that come up here I’ma tell ’em to look at Casey Gerald. I tell you niggas all the time: be good to the program and the program will be good to you.
Coach Jasper again, this time in the hallway outside the varsity locker room. He pulled me aside in the spring of junior year, which he and the other coaches said mattered more than any other because it was the year we earned our scholarships. You got to show up on film this year, fellas, they stressed. Ten short weeks in the fall would set the course for the rest of our lives. We had one shot.
That was all I needed. My junior season had been a banner year for the Golden Bears, since we had more top-shelf talent than any school in the district: a wide receiver headed to Kansas, a defensive end headed to Missouri, and a freak of nature headed wherever he wanted. Larry Hughes was the best guard on a basketball team that would win the next two state championships; ran a 20-point 200-meter dash, a 47-second quarter-mile, and could hurdle when he wasn’t too bored by it. He was the best receiver, the best running back, the best safety, the best quarterback, and the best kicker on the football team; one of the most sought-after recruits in the country; and the most gifted athlete I have ever played with or against.
The only thing Larry could not do better than everybody else was read, which he could hardly do at all. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t taken economics a year early and sat across from him his senior year in a crowded classroom where Coach Taylor typically instructed us to watch a movie or pretend to copy stock prices from the business section of the Dallas Morning News or just sit and talk for fifty minutes, as long as we weren’t too loud.