Page 3 of The Poster Boy
It sounded so simple. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
Spring rolled around and my team was out in the first round of the playoffs. Not that I saw a lot of ice time anyway. Our starting goaltender was on fire, leaving my ass parked solidly on the bench. Now that our season was over, I thought maybe the whole gay hockey player story would go away, but the first time I showed up at the youth center to play hockey with the kids, there were pictures on the news the next day. Calls for talk shows came in.
Suddenly, I was a gay icon. A poster boy for gay hockey players. For gay people in professional sports. And only a small part of me hated it. The rest of me liked the attention, and I didn’t ever stop to ask why. Instead I threw myself into the role. Giving interviews and playing floor hockey with local youths all summer.
It continued into the fall…right up until I arrived at the rink for the last practice before a three-game road trip. I’d barely walked into the locker room when Coach Sweeney appeared out of nowhere.
“Keep your shoes on, kid, and come to my office.”
Puzzled, I frowned but followed him down the hall.Waiting inside Coach’s office was the GM. I’d met him once, only briefly. Mostly he dealt with Coach and left us players alone.
“Take a seat, Myers.” His voice was gravelly and deep, authoritative, like a principal.
Suddenly, the back of my neck was damp with nervous sweat. I very much felt the rock of doom in my stomach.
“We recognize the energy you’ve put into making it on the team. We value the hard work you’ve put in, on and off the ice, but the distraction of your personal life has put strain on the other players. It’s taken focus off the game, son. We’re sorry to lose you, but for the sake of the rest of the players, we’ve traded you.”
“Traded me?”
“To the Vancouver Vikings.”
I dropped into a chair as the bottom dropped out of my world. The GM didn’t even stick around after that, striding out of the room and leaving me alone with Coach.
“Traded?” I repeated dumbly.
“Sorry, kid. I argued like hell to keep you, but it’s out of my hands.”
Fuck.
Chapter 2
Jay
Practice dragged on forever. Coach O’Neil could be a hardass when he was pissed, and he’d been unimpressed with our on-ice performance at the last game. The worst of it was that he wasn’t wrong. We’d been an unfocused mess and could only blame our loss on ourselves. And if we felt like being assholes, we could blame it on our goaltender. We knew no one player won a game, and no one player lost a game.
But it would still be easy to blame him.
When practice ended, Coach waved Tony Church over to him. It wasn’t unusual for Coach to pull someone aside after practice, but it was unusual for that person to go white as a sheet. For his face to turn to thunder and to storm off the way Church, our Holey Goalie, just did.
It wasn’t me who’d come up with that particularly unfortunate nickname, but the fans had when Church kept letting easy saves through. The worst of it was that Church was a good goalie when he was on. He just hadn’t been on lately. I was better with my fists than I was with pep talks,or I’d have said something to him, but there wasn’t much that would come out of my mouth he’d want to hear.
On the ice, I let my fists do the talking. Off-ice, I didn’t see the need to talk much at all.
“All right, guys, that’s a wrap. Bring it in real quick for me.” Coach O’Neil waved us all over to him.
“Uh-oh, he has his serious face on,” Boone said as he skated up next to me. Boone Weimer was a left wing I liked to keep around because he did the talking for the both of us. Never shy with the comments or the chirps, he’d given me more than a few of his messes to clean up on the ice.
I liked Boone because he didn’t require me to respond. He could carry the whole conversation himself, and I think he preferred it that way.
“I’m going to cut right to the chase. We’ve picked up a new player. This one comes with a bit of media attention, which I know some of you will hate, but lucky for me, you’re all grown men who are capable of acting like adults, right?” Coach didn’t wait for us to answer before continuing. “Right. Good. The new player is Marek Myers.”
“Isn’t he the gay one?” Griffin, another defenseman, piped up.
“Myers’ sexuality is a non-issue. He’s a solid goaltender. I expect you to treat him with kindness and respect, the same way you treat any new player. He’ll be joining us for practice in a few days. His first game as backup goaltender with us will be our final home game before the road trip. Now hit the showers.”
No one said anything until we were in the locker room, and then the chatter suddenly roared to life. Some of the guys were clearly relieved. The truth was that Myers had good stats. He was a solid goalie with a lot of potential. But he came with a ton of baggage. The kid had gone andfucked a movie star, and when he got caught, he’d shrugged it off and somehow became the poster boy for gay hockey players. He wasn’t even the first gay player, but he sure as hell acted like it.
His smug face had been on every talk show I could think of. His blond-haired, blue-eyed, boy-next-door look had been on a plethora of magazine covers. He was more celebrity now than he was hockey player, and I resented him for it. The media loved him. They ate up his happy-go-lucky attitude, not realizing it was fake. It had to be. No one was that goddamned perky all the time.
