“And maybe Nikki.Could be a useful guy to recruit.”He was our biggest man, quiet, but a team player.
“Good thought.”
I hesitated.“What will the captain say?”
“You know what?”Bubs looked around at the half dozen guys changing out and pretending not to be listening to us.“Pete’s got two choices.He can come down on the bullies himself.Or he can stand back and let us do it.Frankly, I hope he’ll wake up and put a leash on Mortenson before something bad happens.”
I did too, but Petrov was cold and hands-off, and I wasn’t going to count on him.
Stacker came out of the showers, toweling off, and nodded to us.“Thanks.”
“Might not help,” I told him.“Might make things worse.”
“Thanks anyway.”Stacker dropped the towel and pulled on his underwear.
Bubs said, “I used to think, well, it’s just chirping.Harmless.Which of us hasn’t called someone a cocksucker out there on the ice?”
I’d never used that particular word, but I nodded.
He stared at the blank wall across from us.“I used to think, if it’d hurt someone, we’d stop.Like, you don’t chirp a guy about his mother when she has cancer, right?Then Edison came out as gay, and Tim Pedersen in Saskatoon.We got Dolan here, and the chirping didn’t stop.If anything, it got more vicious, at least in this room.”
“Yeah.”Last year had sucked.
“I kept expecting Cap or Coach Nilsson to do something, but then Nilsson left and we got Coach Frazier, and he doesn’t believe in ‘coddling’ us.”Bubs did air quotes and snorted.“So now, I figure it’s time to stop expecting someone else to do something, and be that someone.Ya think?”
I took a breath, because Bubs probably didn’t know what he was asking, but he wasn’t wrong.“Works for me.”
Bubs ran his gaze around the room.“Stacker probably isn’t gay, judging by that redhead he was kissing at the Christmas party.”He didn’t look at Stackhouse and the kid kept silent.“But what if he was?What if he’s the next Scott Edison, and we’re shitting on a player like that?”
I knew why Bubs brought up the Rafters’ gay All-Star.Easier to motivate the guys to protect a rising star who’d help the team— self-interest and all.I was just a mediocre forward who’d never get to the AHL for more than a few games in a row.They’d probably laugh if they were asked to protect me.Still, I appreciated his effort.“You’re a good guy, Bubs.”
He flushed and looked down as if realizing he was making speeches.“Yeah, well, anyhow, the answer to bullies is enough folks saying no.We’ll start with you and me.”
“And me,” Nikki said from the entrance to the showers.
Stacker nodded silently.A couple of the other guys rumbled agreement too, before we all went back to getting dressed.
That shift of mood in the room stayed with me as I drove home.I’d been telling myself coming out didn’t make any difference.There’d only been one NHL player who came out after Edzie, even though there had to be dozens of them out there, maybe a hundred of us between the three leagues.Edzie hadn’t opened some magical route to safety.But today, listening to the boys, I had to believe that Edzie and Pedersen and Rusty Dolan had shifted the needle, at least a little.
What good might I have done, if I hadn’t let Miles down and fucked up everything?
Back home, I tried to resist the lure of that familiar speech— Miles up on YouTube for everyone to see.I ate and stretched and lay down like I was going to nap before the game.Like I should’ve.But a minute later, I had my phone in my hand.Three letters and the search auto-populated.I definitely had a masochistic streak.
There was Miles, standing at the podium in front of a bunch of teenage athletes, their families, high school officials— a few hundred people associated with the Way to Play program.Except me.I was supposed to be there up front with two other hockey players, representing our sport.Instead, I’d been on a train headed north to Tacoma and the AHL.Called up to the Tornados for the first time in almost two years.
Of course I hadn’t wanted to miss that call-up.That wasn’t just my dream; I’d have been fired if I didn’t get on that train.I’d have owed a shitload of money for breach of contract.Miles himself would’ve told me to go.If he’d known.If I’d called him first, like I should’ve.
On screen, Miles finished his generic spiel about the program, the kids, the volunteers, praise and thanks.He gripped the edge of the podium and looked straight at the camera.
“But as wonderful as sports are for teenagers— and I firmly believe in that truth— there’s a dark side to boys’ and men’s sports in America.A side we haven’t done nearly enough to address.I’m talking about the bullying culture of locker rooms and games.We call it trash talking and chirping, and a lot of the time, it’s meant in fun.Unfortunately, too often, the trash talk slides from impersonal taunting and jokes to racist, sexist, body-shaming, and homophobic bullying.”
Even on the small screen, I could spot consternation on the faces of the program execs sitting near the podium as Miles went off-script.
If I looked closely, I could see the deep breath he took before he said, “As a gay man, I heard those slurs a thousand times, on the field and in the locker room.I heard them from my opponents, and also from my teammates and my coaches.”
In the background, the video buzzed with dozens of muttering voices.Miles continued, “I used to pretend the homophobic bullshit didn’t matter, that it was just random talk, that they wouldn’t keep using those insults if they realized I was gay.But at heart, I knew that wasn’t true.Itdidmatter that at every practice and every game, the worst insults my opponents and even my teammates could come up with was being like me.That my coaches goaded us with homophobic slurs.I also knew I couldn’t be the only gay kid, or the only gay man, in football.By the numbers, every team probably had at least one queer player.The coaches knew that.The other players could figure that out.They didn’t care.”
He swept the room with his gaze.“I stayed in the closet for over twenty years, through eleven seasons of pro ball, and even after I retired.I spoke up against racist bullying in the locker room, against misogyny, but not against queer-bashing, for fear someone might ask why.It took me all of those twenty-one years to work my way past the terror and yes, the shame, that the locker rooms of my youth dug deep in my soul.It took finding an online community of other queer men where my story was common ground, a place where I could explore my identity, to find pride in who I am.I walked a long road to find the courage to say these words out loud on camera here tonight.Part of that courage also came from finding a man I fell in love with, and recognizing that ‘love is love’ is a simple truth, not just a slogan.”
