Page 28 of Cleats and Pumps

I’d been assigned to shadow a crusty old reporter for training camp, and mostly, he wanted me to watch and not say anything. When I ended up walking into Amos’s training camp and seeing him getting his ass handed to him on the field, I was glad I could disappear in the background.

I watched how he performed next to the other rookies as he was put through his paces. Amos was good. Out on the field, there was no doubt he could handle the pressure and the intense heat in this part of the summer.

I smiled when some of the other rookies fell to the ground, saying they were going to die of heat exhaustion. There were benefits to being from Texas, and learning to stay upright when the temperature was nearing triple digits was one of them.

When Crusty, as I secretly referred to my mentor, asked me what I thought, I was surprised since the man had never asked me anything, much less what I thought of players.

I ran through my memory, then mentioned which players I thought were doing the best. I skimmed over Amos, not wanting to show I had any emotions either way.

The old man looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “I heard Amos Clark was your roommate. I’m surprised you didn’t brag about him more.”

I blushed and shook my head. “I didn’t want to show preferential treatment. The truth is, he was the best rookie out there. He was cool and collected, and when the other players seemed to be melting, he applied himself even more.”

The old man regarded me for a long time. “I thought the same thing. The boy has potential if he can keep up this pace. What do you think? Can he keep up?”

I knew where this was going. The man was trying to pull information about Amos from me. I shot him a huge smile and said, “That’s yet to be seen. But if you’re asking me what I think? My money’s on him.”

The man laughed. “You’re not going to divulge anything, are you?”

I kept my smile in place. “If you're digging for dirt, you’ll have to dig elsewhere. Frankly, after living with the man for three years, if anyone’s going to print dirt about his college years, it’s gonna be me!”

Crusty leaned back in his chair and belted out a laugh. “I’m willing to bet you manage to pull this gig off after all,” he said, surprising me with the compliment.

We left the stadium, and that was the last time I was that close to Amos Clark. Until he blew up his career, that is.

12

Amos

Lifeflewatmefast, but I was loving every minute! That might be what most career athletes say, but it’s true. I’d been playing professionally now for five years and was in my prime, but it still felt like one minute I was just some football jock on his high school team, and now, I was full-out in the spotlight.

I loved almost everything about it, especially the audience in the stands, the ridiculous camaraderie between teammates, and the banter between rival teams. God, it was such a fucking rush.

Then there was the money, so much money. Make a stupid commercial and even more money could be made.

I was lucky my dad, ever the conservative fiscal guy, watched my money like a hawk, and the luck came in because, like so many other athletes, I’d have blown every penny, never thinking the day would come when the money would stop.

Performing was my thing, both on and off the field. Fortunately, my manager, Erissa, was a lesbian who understood my need to express myself. After almost getting caught at a club in downtown LA, she began to set up ways for me to get out, and guarded that side of my life. Not unlike how she handledmy professional career. Most of the time, she’d rent a room at a discrete hotel. I’d get dressed up, with her help of course, and then I’d leave in drag and stay in character until I came back to the hotel to change.

I always dressed in a hoodie on my way out, and no one was wise to my alternative lifestyle. I became so good at hiding my other persona that no one besides Erissa knew. Not my coach, not my teammates, not even my family. Although I felt guilty for keeping that from Josiah.

Regardless, that was the agreement I had with Erissa. No one could know. She controlled it. I let her, and as a result, I was allowed to have that side of my life.

It was fun at first. Erissa was so creative. Most towns we went to, my drag persona changed. In Chicago, I was Lady Bootylicious. Horrible name, but Erissa picked it, and it stuck. Denver, I was Obe Camiltoely, pronounced camel toe. Ugh, stupid names, but that sorta helped my anonymity. I was never going to be RuPaul. Keeping things camp made the public think I was just another big ol’ gay nobody queen who liked to dress and perform in drag.

What I hated was Erissa never let me sing my own songs. “You’d be too vulnerable and possibly recognized,” she told me. So, I had to lip-sync, and as a result, I got pretty good at it. I needed to get good at it ’cause when this all started, I’d sucked.

I built a few friendships in the drag world that let me be myself. Luckily, the queens I hung out with didn’t push too hard to know me personally. They accepted me at face value, and the few times I went out with them to Sunday brunch, which was seriously a thing, we all agreed to go in drag. Of course, that was mostly my doing. “Come on, girls, let the light hit those sun-deprived faces of yours,” I’d tease, and they always agreed. The couple of times they didn’t, I pretended to be under the weather, and that was that.

The downside was I never fully connected with my teammates like the other players did. The ones my age were wild and crazy about women. The ones who were married disappeared before the partying got too heavy. So I walked a precarious line between the two.

It wasn’t unusual for my teammates to crash at my place. Especially when they drank too much and didn’t want the girlfriend to know they’d gotten trashed. They all made my mysterious rendezvous into shit it wasn’t. I’d been caught a couple of times leaving with Erissa, a gorgeous and fierce Black woman. She wasn’t out in her professional life either, so most of them thought we were hooking up. Neither of us corrected them.

All the fun and games abruptly stopped when a few of my teammates and I went on a cruise together. I don’t even know why it became a big deal, but they had some sort of “Womanless Beauty Review,” as they called it. Tons of guys, including three of my teammates, dressed up and performed. I guess I was a bit too realistic though. For some reason, the reporters focused on my picture, decked out in a hideous dress and disgusting wig I’d never be caught dead in if I were actually doing drag.

The newspapers went nuts. Conservative talking heads began calling me out for being gay. My coach called me into his office and said I needed to be seen with a woman on my arm. I refused. Then, somehow, some way, a picture of me doing drag as Bootylicious surfaced. You couldn’t tell it was me, even though it was, but I refused to deny it, and so, as I knew it would, the bottom fell out of my career. Yay me!

13

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