—You hear someone spewed in the locker room last night? —For real?
—Demetrius had a stadium this morning and stepped right in that shit as he was looking for the light switch.
—Getting drunk on a Tuesday night is ambitious.
—I bet you it was one of the Bobs.
—Nah. They were playing Madden at my place.
—Then maybe the coaches had a late celebration for Notre Dame.
—Maybe. Furling, what do you think?
“Gwen” was already starting to fall out of use with the players, but hearing my real name was almost as painful, since I knew it was being said out of pity.
I didn’t answer J1’s question and continued rehab. I was holding one end of a giant purple rubber band whose other end passed around the ball of my injured foot; the band created resistance as I moved my ankle back and forth, strengthening the tendons.
—Furling! Coach Hightower said as he ambled into the room. How’s the ankle?
—Fine, Coach.
—Good good. Look, we’re switching Farrell to linebacker from safety. Can’t afford to be shallow at Will. I need you to help him adjust. Packages, stance, everything.
My ankle clicked each time it rotated, a wet, thick, horrid sound.
—You hear me, son?
—Yes sir.
I dressed in full pads, wearing a red practice jersey for the first time this season, and walked down to the fields with Farrell. He was a sweet-natured white kid from rural Ohio who’d never called me Gwen, and as we walked he talked incessantly about how nervous the position switch made him. I understood his anxiety: the transition from safety to linebacker required him to make a hundred little recalibrations that would add up to an existential shift. His stance and footwork and how he used his hands would all have to change, as would how he visualized the field, how he related to other players, how he moved through football’s space. More daunting still, he was being asked to flush all the safety assignments he’d been stuffing into his brain over the last month and start absorbing a new, radically different set of tasks.
And how did I feel as I helped him start his adjustment? Did I seethe with envy and competitiveness as I watched this kid stumble through things I had mastered? Not really. I didn’t feel much of anything. I was a grayness, I was mobile meat, I was someone who—I smiled mildly when I thought this—gave new meaning to the term “lame duck.” Before today, I would have seen Farrell and thought he was taking “my” spot; but now I realized how foolish that was, how the spot had existed long before me, had continued to exist while I’d been injured, and would go on existing long after I moved on to whatever program I transferred to.
And when I transferred—couldn’t I recover my color, my zeal? Within the football encyclopedia that was my brain, wasn’t there entry upon entry of players who’d flamed out of their first programs only to then become phoenixes at the schools they’d transferred to, players who had gone on to become some of the game’s greats?
Of course there were. But I was tired—so fucking tired—and the idea of starting over at another program, matriculating at a new school, was tantamount to telling someone who’s just crossed the finish line of a marathon that, congratulations, you only have another twenty-six miles to go.
Nevertheless, I was still the good little soldier and dutifully drafted a list of programs for Coach Zeller. I brought the list with me when he called me up to his office an hour before Thursday’s practice.
He was once again at his desk when I knocked, and once more he told me to close the door. But gone was the sweet-sad bonhomie he’d laid on so thick the last time. He didn’t even look at me when I sat, too busy reading a sheet of paper. I waited, and waited, and once he was finally done reading, he tossed the sheet in my direction. The sheet had been folded into thirds, and its creased corners lightly scudded across the polished wood.
—You wanna explain this? he said.
On Thursday, September 2nd, Radon Hightower, linebackers coach at King, mocked me about a homosexual relationship I’ve allegedly been having with a fellow student. Coach Hightower called me “Gwen,” a reference to a nickname for the student I’ve allegedly been sleeping with.
The letter went on like that, in the first person, single-spaced. It summarized the torments to which my teammates had subjected me, and the failure of the rest of the coaching staff to defend me, and ended with Coach Zeller forcing me to transfer from King. I read the letter twice, though not because I missed anything on the first read, just so I had a little more time before I had to look at my head coach.
—This some kinda threat? he said.
—No sir, I managed.
—Oh no?
He took an envelope from his desk drawer and tossed it my way. It was addressed to Arnold Duffy, USA Today c/o George Zeller.
—Give me your phone, he said.
—Coach—
—Now!
I handed it over. My heart thrashed as he paged through the call lists, which I knew were comprised entirely of calls either with my parents or with Thao.
—Who’s this? he said, not showing me the phone.
—Who?
—“Whitman.”
—A classmate from my Melville class.
—Melville who?
—He’s—Whitman’s just a classmate, Coach. Zeller looked at me. He was squeezing my phone so hard the plastic started to complain.
—Let me ask you somethin’, he finally said. You ever heard me call someone a motherfucker?
—Sir?
—Mother. Fucker. You ever heard me say that to one of your teammates?
—Yes sir.
—How’d you take it?
—Sir?
—You think I was saying that player has intercourse with his mother?
—No sir. He nodded.
—You ever heard me tell a player he was a bitch?
—Yes sir.
—You think I was sayin’ he was a female dog?
—No.
—All right. So what about “faggot”?
He let the word resonate like a struck tuning fork. A cramp was forming in my lower abdomen.
—What about “faggot”? he said again. You ever hear me call somebody that?
—Yes sir.
—You
