It was the first time he ever used my real name, and it was a moment for me. He respected my wishes because I had something he wanted but wouldn’t give up easily, and that was the only reason why. I had asked him to call me Nanette many times during my freshman year when I was competing for a varsity position, but he’d completely ignored me. I suddenly felt an unfamiliar sense of power.
“No, you won’t,” I said. “I quit.”
Coach shook his head and then retreated.
Dad said, “Why are you doing this?”
“She doesn’t like playing soccer,” Mom said. “Simple as that. It’s just a game.”
“A game that could pay for her college education.”
“We have a college fund for her. We’re not exactly poor.”
“That’s not the point!”
“She was playing for you, Don. But she’s not a little girl anymore.”
“Sports make women out of girls. Statistically speaking, girls who play varsity sports are more likely to—”
“Please,” Mom said. “Like that’s the reason you want her to play.”
My parents argued like that for a time, and at some point I got up and went to my bedroom. I’m not sure they noticed.
Shannon called and yelled at me for making her look bad in front of the team—for “undermining her authority”—calling me a “crazy bitch traitor.” She was ranting and raving when I hung up on her. She called back several times and left messages on my voice mail, but I didn’t listen to them.
I called Alex and told him that I was not afraid anymore—that I had quit the soccer team.
“They’ll try to make you afraid again,” he told me. “But you have to stay strong for a little bit before they’ll leave you alone. Trust me. I know the drill.”
My teammates e-mailed and called, and Shannon visited my bedroom, trying a different tactic—all of them begging me to play “one more season,” Shannon saying she needed me to get her assists and lock up her scholarship. “I need a goal-scorer to finish my crosses!” Suddenly, I was no longer a “crazy bitch traitor.” But I had made up my mind and didn’t return to the field, which felt sort of thrilling—making a choice for myself.
To solidify things, I cut the first day of my senior year and had Alex drive us to the beach.
Cutting was an automatic suspension from the team, and one of the few rules that was actually enforced. So I called the school secretary and told her I was cutting. “Call my parents. Report me to all the appropriate authority figures. I expect to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Please let Coach Miller know.”
Alex cut his school because I asked him to—I said that I needed him.
I had never needed a boy before, and I wondered if Booker had some type of psychic powers.
Could he see the future?
After an hour’s drive, we found a beach that didn’t have a lifeguard and therefore wasn’t all that crowded.
We swam out into the Atlantic and floated on our backs.
I thought about Unproductive Ted and why he sat alone all day long on his rock.
I was glad to have Alex with me, but I also felt like I could be alone with Alex, too, which was a new feeling—being alone with another person.
I swam over to Alex and kissed him on the lips.
He kissed me back using his tongue.
My first French kiss.
We wrapped our arms around each other, and soon he was hard—I could tell because it was pressing up against my naked stomach below in the sea.
Neither of us said anything about that.
We only kissed.
And I wasn’t afraid, like I thought I would be.
When I returned to school the next day, none of my teammates looked at me—not even Shannon. I heard a few kids cough when I walked by and then say “Um—muff diver” really fast. Or “carpet muncher.” Or “scissor sister.” And I wondered if the head of the Gay-Straight Alliance could be up to her old tricks again. I was exercising my heterosexuality for the first time in my life, but that wasn’t something I wanted to share with the idiots who attended my high school. So I wore the lesbian comments like a mask that kept everything I really loved private and safe and beyond the dirty grasp of the people who didn’t know the real, true me and never would. And regardless, I had nothing against lesbians. My classmates were ignorant douche bags.
When my father stopped eating dinner with us, Mom brought up his chewing again, saying, “Well, at least there will be no mouth-breathing.” Then she said, “I don’t know if I love him anymore, Nanette. Does that make you hate me?”
It was a shitty trick to play—her being honest like that—when I was just starting to be honest myself. It didn’t seem like everyone could or should be honest at the same time—like maybe the structure of the world wasn’t built to handle such mass amounts of truth. Or maybe I sensed the cracks in my parents’ marriage long ago, and that’s what had finally freed me to start being me no matter the cost.
I had Alex and my secret world with Booker, both of which were so much better than anything my high school or my family had to offer.
“I don’t think it really matters, Mom,” I said. “Because I won’t be here forever, will I?”
My mom looked at me for a moment and then she started to cry.
13
The Boy Can Be a Boy
SO I PLAYED THE CYCLOPS
By Alex Redmer
There’s a place where middle
School kids go to fight
And everyone knows where it is
Even the teachers and parents