Silence. A bit of backbone was the last thing they expected from me.

  Then Tad said, “He’s got a point.”

  I smiled at him, my knight in shining armor.

  I loved hanging out with my knight, but there were drawbacks. He drove guys crazy, for one thing. They always came up to him—when we were in the bistro, or the cafeteria or walking to class. Some of them knew him and some of them wanted to know him. It made no difference to me. I hated them. They were so obviously queer. They batted their eyes at him and made those limp-wristed gestures, telling him bullshit stories about their little gay lives. They always ignored me. I bristled with palpable animosity, like a homophobic porcupine. I especially hated one guy who kept turning up. He looked like a “Baywatch” reject: tall and darkly handsome, with watery, inflated muscles and a little girl’s voice.

  “Hey, Tad, honey. Are you going out this weekend?”

  He’d cornered us in the cafeteria. I wanted to throw my salad in his face.

  “Maybe. What about you?’

  “I’m going down to Celebrities with a bunch of the boys. You should come.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that. See you, honey.”

  I stared after the guy, jaw tense. Tad couldn’t help but notice.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What?” I asked, acting innocent. “Oh, sure. Fine. What were we talking about?”

  “My new story.”

  “I haven’t read it yet,” I lied.

  I stabbed at my salad, deliberately ignoring him.

  Football practice started halfway through term.

  With Tad on my mind, it was hard to concentrate. As a tight end, my job was to crush people. I would run and smash into them. I rammed my helmet into ribs and kidneys. I dove and took out knees with a forearm or a shoulder. I tackled high and low and finished each game aching, exhausted, satisfied. I loved the physicality of it. I loved the skull-rattling, bone-jarring impact of body against body. But my fixation with Tad made me wonder if that love covered up another love. Did I only like football because I liked grunting and heaving and sweating amongst packs of guys? Was I out there involved in some great, grassy orgy, fumbling for the ball like a virgin for the right hole?

  I had to find out.

  I started peeking at the guys in the showers, trying to discover if I was gay. Amongst the smell of man-sweat and hot steam, I studied the smooth, athletic asses and the various-sized cocks, from slender and long to thick and stubby. Some of the guys had balls like dangling chestnuts, others had tight little acorns. But I’d seen it all before, and none of it interested me—my own dick never even quivered. I was safe. I wasn’t gay. At least, not in the strictly physical sense of the word. I didn’t want men in general. I only wanted Tad.

  Sarah spotted us one day while we were sitting in the Dugout.

  “Hey, babe!” she called, wiggling her fingers.

  I forced a smile to my lips as she came over. She looked good. That was nothing new. Sarah always looked good. She dressed like most of the sorority girls: short skirt, squeaky new runners and a snug T-shirt with the usual brand-name logo across the front.

  All that was fine—I’d never had a problem with her appearance.

  “I haven’t seen you for ages,” she said, tousling my hair. “You avoiding me, babe?”

  “Just busy.”

  “I know, don’t you hate school?” She pulled up a chair, raking it across the floor, and settled into it, making a big show of adjusting her top. Then she looked at Tad. “Hi!”

  I introduced them.

  “You’ll never guess what happened to me today…”

  We listened to Sarah tell inane stories about arguments in her carpool, about flirting with her English professor, about the terrible tempura she’d had for lunch. She talked and talked without saying anything. It was painful and a little embarrassing. After about ten minutes Tad politely mentioned he had a class to get to and stood up.

  “See you next week,” he said.

  Sarah and I watched him stroll away, lean and unflappable in his hip-hugging jeans and tight navy shirt: a little boy blue outfit. With his blond hair, he looked great in blue.

  “I love gay guys,” Sarah said. “They’re so sexy. How’d you meet him?”

  “He’s in my writing class.”

  She wrinkled her nose, as if she smelled something funny.

  “You? Writing? You’re kidding, right?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  “I mean, like, what do you write about?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff.”

  I didn’t want to tell her, and she didn’t really want to hear about it.

  “So,” I asked her, “you going to Kevin’s party next weekend?”

  “I can’t wait! It’s going to be so much fun.”

  That set her off. She loved talking about drinking and partying. I listened, nodding in all the right places, but apparently it wasn’t enough to fool her.

  “Wait a minute—you’re coming, right?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Oh, you have to come.” She put on a pouty face and shimmied a little, drawing attention to her breasts. “I mean, if you don’t come then who will I go home with?”

  It was a good question.

  “All right, man!” Kevin screamed. “You made it!”

  He grabbed me in a bear hug and held me off the ground. Lights and noise assaulted me from all sides. Kevin lived a few blocks off campus, in rented accommodations he shared with three other guys from the team. Most of our crew was there, a bunch of frat guys and dozens of sorority girls. Across the room, clusters of nervous freshmen were gathered like tadpoles around the keg, waiting their turn. Everything was exactly as I remembered.

  I felt nauseous.

  “Man, I’m so glad you showed,” Kevin shouted over the music, one arm draped drunkenly across my shoulders. “You hardly ever come out anymore. What’s up with that?”

  “Aw, shit, I’m super busy these days.”

  “You sniffing any pussy?”

  “Not much. You?”

  “Always, man. Always.”

  I knew I needed to start drinking, and quickly.

  “Where you guys hiding the booze in this shit show?”

  “That’s my boy!” He yanked me close in a playful headlock. “Come on—we’ll get you started with a keg stand. Later we’ll haze a few of these freshmen faggots.”

  Kevin loved bullying freshmen, probably because he’d gotten it so bad himself. He shoved a bunch of them aside, clearing our way to the keg, then stuffed the hose in my mouth and started working the pump. I sucked the beer back like a man dying of dehydration. Once I got going I couldn’t be stopped. I wanted more and more. I wanted to blot out the image of blond hair and mesmerizing blue eyes that haunted my days and nights. I blasted it with beer, bombarded it with vodka shooters, battered it with rum and coke. It almost worked. I got drunk enough to convince myself I was a man, virile and ready to fuck like a man.

  That was when Sarah found me.

  “What do I spy with my little eye?”

  She rubbed up against me, leering and breathing gin fumes. I didn’t resist. Somehow we stumbled our way up the stairs and into a room and out of our clothes. I clutched and squeezed and groped her, savoring the feel of hot female flesh, desperate to convince myself I still wanted it. All my wild-eyed pounding managed to fool Sarah, but it didn’t fool me.

  I knew who I was really fucking.

  There were dull echoes in my skull, like tiny hammer blows. They got louder and louder. Eventually they pounded me to awareness. I groaned and rolled over, squinting through sticky eyelids to get my bearings. Somebody was banging on the door from outside.

  “Hey—open up, man!”

  “Fuck off.”

  “That’s my room!”

  Dirty gray light seeped in through the window, oozing across Sarah’s pasty body. A puddle of puke was pooled on the pillow between us. I didn’t know whose it was, but the reek of sweat and sex and vomit nauseated me. I started retching and dry heaving.

  “I’m gonna break this door down!”

  “Just a second. Christ.”

  I stumbled to the window, fumbled with the latch, and opened it just as a bitter rush of acid, beer and vodka exploded from my throat. It spattered onto the back porch, bright and pink like strawberry juice. I felt better. I grabbed the puke-stained pillow and tossed it out the window. Then I lurched to the door and opened it.

  “It’s about goddamned time!”

  “Sorry, man.”

  I shouldered passed Kevin’s roommate. I had to get out of there.

  “Hey—what about your girl?”

  I leered at him, swaying on my feet. “She’s all yours.”

  I staggered the half-dozen blocks toward campus, leaving puddles of vomit in my wake. My throat burned, my head throbbed, my arms trembled like a palsy victim’s. I convinced myself that I was dying. Tad would never know how I felt about him. In some ways it was a mixed blessing. Nobody else would ever know, either. I’d die a straight man.

  I thought: Yes, let me die. I want to die. If I don’t die, I’ll have to tell him. I’ll have to approach him and ask him out. I didn’t want to do that. What if he said no? What if he said yes? It was terrible. Terrible. I couldn’t take it. I crawled into my room and into bed, a vampire tormented by the light of day. Yes, let me die. Now, I will die. Now. Now. Now.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t die.

  “The writing is just so, so beautiful.”

  “Some parts made me cry.”

  “I loved it. It’s perfect.”

  Listening to the others compliment Tad’s story, I felt like a steel spike had been driven through my skull, right along my spine, nailing me to the chair. It was as if he’d written it just for me, filling it with unrequited love, gay sex, homoeroticism, repression.

  Then it was my turn.

  “I, uh, really liked it.”

  A circle of unblinking eyes floated in front of me, waiting.

  “There are some really vivid scenes.”

  “Like what?” the teacher urged.

  “The sex.” My cheeks started burning. I shifted in my seat. “The sex is really vivid.”

  “Oh, yes, the sex!”

  Everybody loved the sex. They began discussing it. I sat back, sweating and exhausted, as if I’d just given birth. We analyzed the intricacies of Tad’s writing for the next half hour. I tried to say as little as possible, nodding and agreeing loudly to give the illusion of enthusiastically partaking in a discussion that actually left me vulnerable and exposed, like an overturned starfish.

  After class, as usual, we went to the Dugout.

  “You didn’t like it,” Tad said.

  It was the last thing I expected him to say.

  “No, no—I did.”

  He laughed. “I know you well enough to tell when you’re lying.”

  “I’m not. I swear. I liked it a lot. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  Finally, I looked up. I took a breath.

  “It hit a little too close to home.”

  His eyes went wide, filled with understanding.

  “Oh.”

  I put down my beer glass. It was already empty. I’d gone this far. I’d walked up to the edge of the cliff. Now it was time to throw myself off.

  “I was thinking,” I said slowly, trying not to mumble, “I was thinking that maybe sometime we could, you know, go out for a drink or something, something more than hanging out here. If you wanted to.”

  I was fumbling, falling, looking to him for a lifeline. He took his time, his expression distant and thoughtful. He knew what it meant, knew what it meant to me. Then he smiled.

  “You know, I’d like that.”

  I started breathing again. The beer was buzzing in my brain and suddenly I felt light, lighter than air. I wasn’t falling. Tad had been waiting right there to catch me all along.

  We arranged to meet up on the weekend, at an off-campus bar in Kitsilano called Nirvana. Tad wasn’t there when I arrived. I’d only seen the place from the outside. It catered to Westside yuppies and older students: low lighting, funky décor, candles on every table, chilled-out music, open mic Thursdays. I ordered one whisky, drained it at the bar, then took another with me to a corner table. I huddled there, tense and uncertain, for about a quarter of an hour. By the time Tad turned up, I was totally wired on nerves and booze.

  “Hi,” he said, slipping into the chair opposite me. He was wearing what he always wore—sleek jeans and a loose, button-up shirt—and he was drinking what he always drank—vodka seven. “I’ve only been here once or twice. What do you think?”

  “It’s great,” I said, a little too loudly. “I love it.”

  I looked around: at the other patrons, at the resident DJ, at anybody but Tad. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t shut up, either. I babbled on about inanities, sucking desperately at my drink, trying and failing to sound even remotely relaxed. At one point, in the midst of my frenzy, Tad reached over and squeezed my hand. The sudden contact startled me.

  “It’s okay,” he said, waiting for me to meet his eyes. “We’re just two friends out for drinks. It doesn’t have to be any more than that.”

  His touch was like a grounding wire. I could breathe again. I focused on that while Tad talked, calming me with his word-magic and his steady, hypnotic gaze. He talked about average things, everyday things, things that put me at ease: books and writing and stories.

  “Are you working on anything?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if it’s any good.”

  “Science fiction?”

  “No. Something different. Something new.”

  He held up his glass, a casual toast.

  “New is good.”

  As the place filled up, the DJ switched from jazz to funk. There was a small space in front of his booth that had been cleared for dancing. A couple of girls moved out to groove. The noise level rose a few decibels as voices and laughter competed with the music.

  Tad drained his vodka and stood up.

  “Do you want to dance?” he asked.

  “I can’t dance.”

  “You can’t or you don’t?”

  “I can’t. It’s a genetic defect. It’s pretty weird, actually.”

  He laughed and left me, sliding onto the dance floor to join the girls, wriggling his hips with expert ease. He danced like he wrote: carefree and uninhibited. It was as if he was the only one out there, as if nobody was watching. I wanted to dance like that, to move like that, to write like that, to be like that. Why couldn’t I? What was stopping me?

  “Dude!” A hand clamped my shoulder. “What’s up, man?”

  Kevin. I blinked at him, as if he’d just woken me up.

  “Hey, man,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think? Sniffing pussy.” He jerked his thumb toward the bar. “Me and a bunch of the boys thought we’d go hunting fresh meat. Who you here with, anyway?”

  “My buddy, Tad.”

  I gestured, helplessly, towards the slim figure shimmying on the dance floor.

  Kevin snorted. “He looks like a fag.”

  I didn’t say anything. Kevin looked at me, frowning.

  “He isn’t, is he?”

  “What?”

  “A fag.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  Noticing our scrutiny, Tad detached himself from the girls and sashayed over. I sat rigidly in my chair, gripping the armrests like a passenger on a plane going down, down, down. I knew there was nothing I could do. Sooner or later the plane was going to crash.

  I introduced them.

  “Hi,” Tad said, offering his hand.

  It was impossible to miss the freshly painted nails. Kevin looked like he’d been slapped. He glanced from me to Tad and back to me. Then he quickly grabbed Tad’s hand, touching it like he was fearful of infections, and, muttering some excuse, retreated to the bar.

  “Who is that guy?” Tad asked.

  “Our quarterback.”

  “Oh.”

  I was all too aware of Kevin and the others, whispering and staring in our direction.

  I said, “There might be trouble.”

  “Maybe I should go.”

  He looked to me for an answer. I was tempted. It would be so much easier.

  “No,” I said finally. “Let’s see this through.”

  He smiled. “In that case, I’m going to get a drink.”

  “I better go with you.”

  I followed him, ready to run the gauntlet. A wall of bodies blocked our way.

  “Hey, guys,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “You want a round?”

  Kevin crossed his arms, stepping between me and the bar.

  “Who’s buying? You or your boyfriend?”

  The others snickered. I stopped smiling.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “That’s what it looks like to me.” He poked me in the chest with his forefinger, sticking his face close to mine. His breath smelled of beer and garlic, and I could see hairs poking out of his nostrils. “You better come clean, man. Are you a faggot or what?”

  He was like a big, hairless ape, backed up by half a dozen other apes. At one time I’d been an ape, too. Now I was above them, looking down. A flying ape. Super-ape.

  “Maybe I am, Kevin.” I said. I felt strangely calm. “Does it really matter?”

  “Yeah, it fucking matters!”

  “Why?”

  “It just does, okay?” He grabbed Tad by the collar, jerking him forward. “Now tell it to me straight. You owe me that much, at least. Are you fucking this queer? Huh?”

  “What if I was? Would you beat the shit out of him?” Kevin hesitated. Our little altercation was attracting attention. People had quieted down to watch. Kevin glanced around. He hadn’t expected to be drawn into a debate.

  “Let him go, Kevin,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

 

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