I came upon a poem that is, on the face of it, one of the least remarkable things Whitman wrote, yet is the tenterhooks that have held me fast to the study of literature ever since.
Lover divine and perfect Comrade,
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,
Be thou my God.
Thou, thou, the Ideal Man
Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,
Complete in body and dilate in spirit,
Be thou my God.
Thou was Thao, Thao-Thou. With that poem Whitman became a portal to my crush, and no matter how laughably unrelated a poem might have been to the King College junior who kissed me on the cheek, all of Whitman’s words became imbued with the warm, pit-of-stomach sensation Thao made me feel last autumn. Thao-Thou, Thou-Thao—the simple act of holding the collection was enough to put me in a good mood.
—Yo, is Reshawn lookin’ a little pale to you?
—Yeah, man. Shit is concerning.
I smiled but didn’t look up at Devonté and Jimbo, who were teasing me as I sat on the floor in front of my locker, reading a last few lines before I dressed for morning workouts.
I throw myself upon your breast my father,
I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm till you answer me something.
Kiss me my father,
Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,
Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of …
—The fuck is this faggot?
Chase snatched the book from my hands. The “faggot” he was referring to was the image of Walt on the cover of my paperback, a daguerreotype circa 1854. Walt is about thirty-five, with a shaggy beard and a roughhewn haircut in which his bangs are trimmed all the way up to his hairline but the sides hang loose over his ears. He wears a white smock whose left collar is flipped upward, as if badly ironed. His lips are sensuous and a little small, his eyes a pellucid color—blue, maybe gray-green—and stare at you with unapologetic frankness. The collar, the lips, the eyes come together in an almost disconcerting eroticism, which I presume is why Chase chose “faggot” to describe it.
—You’re creasing the cover, I said, rising to take my book back.
He made a pouty face and ripped the cover off, tossing it at me like a Frisbee. I stepped forward to grab the rest of my book before he did more damage. As I reached for it, Chase dropped the book and swung his fist. The punch wasn’t clean, more a chip than a punch, but his knuckle still struck the top of my cheekbone and it hurt like hell.
When Chase stepped up to punch me again I wrapped my arms around his knees and drove him back, upending him onto the purple carpet. I pinned him against the floor with my hips and jammed the heel of my hand under his chin, hearing his teeth clack. I wanted to keep pushing until his head popped off his neck, and I very well might have, had our cubemates not pulled me off.
Chase sat on the floor grinning at me, having finally gotten in a sucker punch to return the favor from Stefan Knows.
I could already feel the bruise forming. And yet I felt giddy, nearly victorious, as I stared back at him. No way could I have held my own had I not gained so much weight and strength.
Reshawn, Jamie, and Professor Grayson started their five-hour drive to Savannah after classes ended the second Friday of March. They had the whole weekend to authenticate the newspaper essay signed “CSK,” and there was no question in my mind Reshawn had structured the trip such that he’d be back in time for Monday workouts. So when I didn’t see him in the dorm room Sunday night, I thought he must have simply slept over at Jamie’s. And when I found his locker undisturbed at 6:35 the next morning, I figured he would show up any minute. But twenty minutes passed and still there was no sign of him, and after another round of calls and text messages I gave up waiting and followed the rest of the players to the second floor where, in lieu of normal workouts, everyone would participate in a fitness game based out of the Terrarium.
The working image you’ve probably had of the Hay’s second floor is a warren of hallways dotted by meeting-room doors. That’s accurate enough, and all you need to do now is add one more room to your mind-map. Next to the staircase to the first floor was an enclosed, warehouse-sized space that featured a 50-yard field made of the artificial turf just then being popularized: green rubber blades molded to look like grass and ground-up black material simulating soil. A King Football alum before my time had nicknamed the room the Terrarium, and the term suited this place perfectly. It really did remind you of a gigantic version of the cages elementary school students use to house class pets.
While the players spread out on the Terrarium’s turf to stretch, the strength and conditioning staff finished arranging five huge tractor tires along one end of the field and, at the other end, five steel sleds, each bearing two 45-pound weights and equipped with harnesses.
We finished our stretch and separated into groups of five. I was in the first group.
—Go!
Each of us flipped a tractor tire over and over, the length of the Terrarium. Next we were harnessed to the steel sleds and had to sprint back across the room dragging the sleds and their extra 90 pounds of weight. After that, we sprinted across the room once more and ran down the open staircase to the weight room, where we completed 25 unassisted pull-ups on the squat racks, 50 pushups, and 100 sit-ups.
