I'd Give Anything(37)

Gray laughed, a rumbling, real laugh, one I hadn’t heard in a long time.

“Thanks, but you know what I think we should do?” he said. “Rise above. Let ’em know they’re not even a blip on our radar screens.”

“They’re ants,” I said. “Gnats. Amoebas.”

“Pond scum,” said Kirsten.

“Mycoplasma genitalium!” said CJ.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A parasitic bacterium that lives in the bladders, waste disposal organs, and genitalia of primates,” said CJ.

Kirsten reached over and gave CJ a giant, Kirsten hug that almost knocked him over.

“Perfect,” she said.





November 14, 1997

This morning, when Kirsten and I got to my locker, there was a paper pamphlet about AIDS testing taped to it.

“What the hell?” said Kirsten. She reached out to rip it off, but I caught her wrist.

“Leave it,” I said. “It’s not even a blip on our radar screen.”

When I got back from my second class, there was a condom taped next to the flyer. I left that, too.





November 18, 1997

Gray says that at practice today, Mongo and his friends, Pat and Kenny, started calling him Gay instead of Gray.

“Honestly, though, how could they resist?” I said.

“True,” said Gray. “They would have been remiss not to.”

“Almost too easy,” said Kirsten.

“And yet, they’ve probably been spending every waking minute of the past four days coming up with it,” said CJ.

We laughed. But then tonight, Gray called me to tell me how, after practice, Coach Tremblay had pulled him aside to say, “You couldn’t have waited till after the playoffs, son? We didn’t need this distraction.”

Gray had said, “I guess I thought the team would stand by me. Brothers, right?”

It’s what Coach always told them: that football is thicker than blood; that they’re more brothers than brothers.

“There’s a reason ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ exists,” said Coach Tremblay. “To uphold morale, not to discriminate against gays.”

“I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you on that,” said my brave friend Gray.

“Anyhow. A few guys have approached me with the request that you not shower with the team anymore. It makes them uncomfortable.”

“Oh,” said Gray.

“They’re shitheads.”

“Thanks, Coach,” said Gray.

“But, Gray, I think it’s best for the team if you wait till you get home to shower, just until this thing blows over.”

Gray said he stood there for a few seconds, staring at the floor, before he looked Coach Tremblay in the eye and said, “Right.”

Neither Gray nor I laughed at that.





November 20, 1997

Game day. I wore Gray’s football sweatshirt to school just like I had all season.

Someone taped a piece of paper to my locker. In Magic Marker, whoever they were had scrawled “FAG HAG.” I let it stay.

To the game, CJ, Kirsten, and I brought signs that said, “Go Get ’Em, Gray!” and “#10 is #1!”

As we walked in, I saw Gray’s dad. He wasn’t sitting in the thick of it all in the stands the way he usually did, talking a mile a minute and getting ready to cheer his head off. Instead, he’d brought a folding chair to the little bluff at the far end of the field and was sitting by himself, while Gray’s little brother, Jimmy, ran around with all the other elementary school kids. Gray’s biological mother died and his father and stepmother are divorced, like my parents, but they’re still friends, unlike my parents. His stepmom lives nearby and comes to all his games, too. But I didn’t see her anywhere.

Early in the first quarter, I made my way to where his dad sat.

“Hey, Chief Marsden,” I said.

I was still in Gray’s sweatshirt and was carrying my sign. Gray’s dad looked me over, and I think I saw his expression soften.

“Hey, Zinny. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “How about you?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze moved beyond me, to the field.

“They’re not really taking care of him out there,” he said. “Pilkington and Broward.”

“Screw Pilkington and Broward,” I said. “Gray doesn’t need them.”

And even though he never took his eyes off the field, I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure Gray’s father smiled.

I was right about Pilkington and Broward, too. Gray played brilliantly. Laser-beam passes and quick-as-lightning feet. No one could touch him.

Lucretia Mott won, 21–3. The guys didn’t lift Gray onto their shoulders, but I saw some of the non-caveman types high-five him or slap him on the back, and I could have kissed them, each one, right on the mouth.

Still, a few minutes later, there was Gray, walking into the school behind the pack of guys, alone, his helmet dangling from his fingers. And it occurred to me for the first time that, even before all this, while the guys on the team respected and even worshipped Gray, they weren’t really friends with him like they were with each other. He’d go out to dinner with them after practice sometimes, but mostly, he hung out with us: the artsy girl, the bombshell, and the geek.