Page 6 of The Jock
He found out they both attended the same campus in the University of Texas system, they were both going into their junior year, and that, when Wes said he played “some football,” he meant he was a tight end on Texas’s team and, had Justin ever turned on a game, he would have seen Wes on the field most Saturdays for the past two years.
“Football… that’s with the baskets, right? Orange ball?”
Wes stared.
“No, no, don’t tell me. They’re called goals?”
“Not quite.”
“I’m kidding. I’m Texan, I was born knowing football. And football is obviously played on a diamond. You’re the tight infielder, right?”
Wes laughed as Justin pretended to toss his hair and smirk. “Football isn’t my thing, but if you’ve ever scored a touchdown, I’m sure my dad loves you.”
Wes chuckled into his beer. The arches of his cheeks were dusted with burgundy. “I’ve scored a few.” He changed the subject, though, suddenly asking Justin about his major and his family. Where he was from.
Justin had been born and raised in a “best places to live” suburb outside Dallas, shuttled to school and camp and Little League by his mom in her SUV. His earliest memories were of hymns sung at church and the Sunday-best shoes that pinched. His childhood was a patchwork quilt of Bible studies, bake sales, and bicycles zooming up and down the block, little kids laughing away the hours under the Texas sun as their moms and dads drank margaritas in their driveways, condensation dripping down the glasses and onto their fingers, so that when one of them checked for bumps and bruises after a spill, their touch was as cold as the bag of frozen peas that would be offered for the boo-boo. He tasted salt and lime in his memories, heard laughter in the background, smelled fresh-baked cookies and cakes and pies. Football played on a TV in the garage. Dads from up and down the block would move from driveway to driveway, peering into car engines and changing tires. Tossing footballs and softballs back and forth. It was a storybook life. Until he turned sixteen.
Until he stopped faking it, stopped pretending he was going to bring home a sweet girl, stopped acting like he was crushing on the cute blonde in the choir loft. He was tired of the questions and the assumptions and, most of all, the pressure, the way his mom and dad looked at him like his life was already planned out, like they already saw him with his Texas bombshell wife and their two-point-five kids.Your future wife is praying to the good lord about you right now, Justin, his mom used to say to him every night.I can’t wait to meet the woman who will make you happy.
His parents always knew he was exceptional. Every finger painting he’d done in kindergarten was put up on the fridge, every macaroni necklace lovingly saved, every glitter ornament for the tree hauled out each year. His Little League photos and school portraits lined the hallway. He was taken to Aspen, Vail, Bermuda, San Diego. Nothing held back.
How were they to know he’d be one of the 10 percent of the population who was gay? He’d always been an overachiever. Exceptional in every way.
One night he sneaked out, took the DART to the gayborhood in downtown Dallas, faked his way into one of the clubs, and made out with every boy he could. He took selfies kissing guys, grinding with them against the dirty club walls and in the bathroom stalls, got an outrageous picture of an older man licking his bare chest as he threw his head back in ecstasy. And he sent them all to his parents.
His father wouldn’t speak to him for three weeks, and his mother burst into tears whenever she saw him. He was grounded for a year—no car, no outings, no going anywhere except school and church—but he didn’t care. He was finally free from their pressure.
His mother almost didn’t let him go to college four hours away. Almost insisted that he live at home and commute to a local campus every day, but he told her he was an adult and he was going, and if she wanted to see him ever again, she would be happy for him. “Of course we’re happy for you,” his mother had said. “We’re proud of you. I’m just so scared.” Scared for his soul, scared for his life. He’d seen the panic pamphlets her pastor had given her: gays and AIDS, the homosexual lifestyle, gays and drugs, gays and disease.
His father, though, surprised him. “You broke her heart when you sent those photos,” he’d said, talking to an engine block in the garage instead of to his son. “Why didn’t you sit her down and look her in the eyes and tell her? She deserved to hear the truth from you like you loved her, not have it thrown in her face like you hated her.”
So family was complicated. He didn’t hate his mom, and he didn’t hate his dad, and they didn’t hate him. He wanted to rip his hair out if he was around them for more than a few hours, and there were still times he caught his mom looking at him, something indecipherable and heavy in her long, silent gazes. But he called regularly, sent photos of him smiling and happy and, most importantly, alone, and told them about the tests he’d passed. They sent birthday and Christmas cards, care packages of cookies, fresh socks and underwear. They paid his tuition and told him they loved him, always.
“Family’s okay.” Justin shrugged. “I’m a nursing major.” Not prelaw, like his mother had planned. Or even business. His father was in sales, vice president of something, and he brought home a bonus every year that had Justin’s mother thumbing through the Porsche catalog and planning month-long trips to Italy for the two of them. His dad had sent him a check for five grand for these three weeks in Paris.
He studied Wes. “Football scholarship… You’re a general studies major?” He winked.
It was a joke how the star athletes graduated. Most of them, at least. Some really studied. But the ones who were going to the NFL and who saw college as a speed bump in the path to their destiny? General studies, GPA 2.5. Every class taught by one of the coaching staff. How much English and history was really imparted in those classes, or was it more like the verb tense of a tackle, and the point of view of a blitz? How to diagram a handoff to the running back?
Wes smiled again, batting the beer glass between his hands. “Public health.”
Justin’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “I have never met an athlete in public health.”
Wes stared out the bar’s windows overlooking the street, watched crowds of Parisians mingle. They were in an older neighborhood, and cobblestones faded in and out of asphalt. Tires clacked and rumbled as vehicles drove by, winding through the clumps of pedestrians clogging the road.
“I’m surprised we haven’t had any classes together.” He would have noticed Wes. He would have remembered him. “Some of our early health classes could have overlapped.”
“Nous pouvons être en français ensemble.”
Justin laughed. “You’re taking another year of French after this summer? Shouldn’t you have what you need to graduate?”
“Yeah. But I think I’ll take another year. Maybe go all the way.” Wes shifted. “If you want to work overseas with a lot of the medical relief organizations, you have to know French. And if you want to work for the UN, you need to be fluent.”
“You want to work for the UN?” And overseas medical relief?
Wes drained his beer and looked outside again. “Maybe.”
Justin studied him, the hard lines of his features, the bulge of his jaw. The corded muscles along his neck. The way his shoulders tremored, ever so slightly. “Guess you don’t make that many touchdowns,” he finally said. “Not trying to go pro, huh?”
