Chapter 2 Why I Hate Jocks

THE guy in the doorway held out his hand and waited for a response. Any response. When none was forthcoming he repeated himself. “Um, am I in the wrong place? I was told a guy named Cole had a room available.”

“I, uh, yeah,” I stammered, like a fool. “I mean, yes, I’m Cole, and I have a room.” I swept my arm toward the interior, and he entered without more prolonged and awkward hesitation.

I could tell right away that his living here was going to cause me some undue stress. For one thing, his old, ripped-up jeans hung low on his well-designed hips! And for another, when he bent down to put his bag on the floor, that round butt of his was two seconds from being squeezed when a loud rush of noisy frat boys swooped in behind me and tackled him to the floor.

Exactly what I wanted to do!
“Hey, guys! How’d you find me so fast?”

One guy, the one with red hair and a baseball cap turned backward, answered, “Good news travels fast, my friend. Plus, Mike texted.”

I pushed my glasses up my nose and watched them wrestle. Too bad chocolate pudding wasn’t involved. On second thought, watching was a bad idea. It was obvious to me he was just another gorgeous straight guy that I was doomed to cohabitate with. Watching Mr. Blue Eyes wrestle would give other parts of my anatomy ideas I wasn’t able to follow through on. Nonsexual thoughts were best. Platonic thoughts. Even “he’s my cousin” thoughts were better than the ones zipping through my brain as I weaved my way around the heaving pile of arms and legs that moved around my living room floor.

This new roommate was only a friend—yeah, a friend; I could talk myself into believing that. It had worked all the other times I had to be around straight guys who were hot as hell!

“I brought beer!” yelled someone new from the doorway. He joined the fray, and hooting grunts soon filled my nice quiet apartment. Now there were six loud, muscular fratheads passing around beers, singing the school’s theme song, and chanting “Monty! Mon-ty! Mon-ty!”

A second later, a soccer ball materialized and Ellis started dribbling it in midair. Three bounces to his knee then his inner sole, a quick reverse and over his shoulder and then he popped the black and white back over with a contorted appendage. His feet seemed to hop so fast the ball barely had a second to descend before it was propelled upward again, dancing in the air around his body as a second skin. He was kicking the ball with such controlled manual dexterity that my normal tendency to cringe at the thought of something in my apartment getting knocked over was momentarily stifled. I was stunned by his sheer brilliance of foot.

Wait a minute , I said to myself as the revelation hit me. He’s a soccer player! I told Stan no jocks. Fuck! I snatched the phone off the breakfast bar and fled to my room.

Stan answered on the first ring. “Hello.”

I paced my room like a Jack Russell terrier on crack. “Stan! I told you no jocks. What’s with the gang of frat boys wrestling all over my mom’s rug and bouncing a soccer ball everywhere?” A small embellishment never hurt anyone.

“Oh, I guess I didn’t catch that.” His tone of voice told me he was lying.

Stan always had smugness to his voice when he was caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Like when he kissed a freshman nursing student in the press box of the stadium, he replied to the dean, “Oh, so that’s not acceptable behavior? Had I known it was frowned upon, I would have resisted her advances. I am so terribly sorry. It will never happen again.” How he retained his job is anyone’s guess. I’m just glad I got the lowdown on the whole story.

But I was in no mood to mess around. This could really end up screwing me if I had to spend my senior year with a jock! “So what are you going to do about it? I need a different roommate.”

“No can do, Cole. He’s the last one.”

“What!” My voice came out a bit shrill so I piped it down. “What?” I repeated. “I thought you had a list of fifty students to house.”

“Not exactly; I had six. But they’re all taken care of. Ellis is the last one. So what’s your beef against jocks, anyhow?”

“My beef?” I asked, but then the little movie camera in my brain started running in reverse and I was transported back to that day.

CUE flashback….

I was in high school when I discovered the kind of trouble the “jock” crowd would cause for me. It wasn’t because I hated sports, and it wasn’t because I sucked at sports. I avoided “jocks” because of the types of people who played the sports!

I suppose my introduction to the cruelty of adolescence could be traced back to middle school, where name-calling and humiliation were the staples of life. Middle school kids had no qualms about calling boys gay for no reason and for every reason. The word “gay” was a derogatory statement for any behavior that didn’t fit the accepted norm. For instance, if any boy student chose an instrument other than guitar he was teased for being gay. Choosing soccer over football—gay. Taking cooking over woodshop—gay. Even some guys taking honors English were teased, which I found completely ludicrous because every kid took English, so why would someone be gay if they happened to be smart enough to take an honors class? Stupid! Middle school was stupid!

But living through those brutal years hardened me.

I wasn’t popular, and therefore the “in crowd” called me “gay” all the time. Me and one-third of the boys in my class! I wasn’t the most coordinated guy either; and being basically a nerd, I would have rather played chess, but since I wasn’t the only one who missed a pass and got hit in the head with a basketball, I dealt with the ridicule and made it through PE with at least a B. And the name-calling—I started not to care.

And to be clear, back then, the word “gay” never meant homosexual. For the longest time, I sincerely thought it was a madeup term created by bullies to denigrate the less popular, weak, and dare I say “smarter” kids in school. There was rumor of what it meant, of course, but no one had actually met a homosexual.

Enter me!

It was high school that confirmed homosexuality as reality. More precisely, high school gym class and the dreaded, yet appealing, showers.

I remember one year when baseball proved to be my nemesis. (Or rather baseball players!) My dad convinced me to try out for the team, again, because he had this notion that I’d excel at athletics if only I tried hard enough. So, because I wanted to make him happy, I went. Much to my chagrin, I made varsity.

Don’t get all excited! I only made it because they lacked players. It seemed many of the boys in the school didn’t like the coach, so they all went out for lacrosse that year. Varsity baseball had just enough players to play that season as long as me and one other sophomore committed. (Junior varsity, by the way, was made up of mostly ninth-graders and some sophomores who turned out to be less coordinated than I was! Amazingly.) Most of the time, though, I played right field and I can’t remember the ball ever coming my way.

The moment that stood out in my memory was during practice. I was fifteen. I was up at bat and a baseball was lobbed in my general direction. I swung and missed by three feet!

“Hey, Reid, you swing like a girl!” someone in the outfield yelled.
The pitcher lobbed another ball. Noticed I said “lobbed”; not zinged, or whipped, or even threw. Point being, he was trying his best to help me hit the ball by tossing it slow and deliberately in the strike zone. I swung the bat and missed it anyway.

“Strike three!” the umpire bellowed.

The pitcher—whose name was Brad—smiled and shrugged at me. He was trying. I gave him a half smile in return and trudged off the field, dragging the bat.

“Next time, Cole,” the coach encouraged, patting my shoulder. “You just need to keep your eye on the ball and follow through with your swing.”

“Thanks, Coach.” I nodded and took my seat at the end of the bench.

Coach Witts was a nice enough guy, but he always said the exact same thing. Every time I struck out he uttered the same advice for improvement, as if he’d run out of creative ways to say “you suck” and stuck with a generally optimistic “try harder next time” approach. I appreciated it, even if I doubted his sincerity. Come to think of it, maybe that was why everyone went out for lacrosse? If you couldn’t count on the coach to “coach,” then what good was he?

Anyhow, it was hot for late April, and sitting on the bench in the sun made me sweat almost as much as when I stood in right field, hoping nothing would sail my way. After, like, six hours in the grueling sun (I exaggerate), practice was finally over. The team picked up the equipment and lumbered across the fields to the school locker room. This was the part I hated the most—showers!

High school gym-class showers confirmed for me that I was indeed gay.

The difference was that in middle school, boys didn’t shower, and if they did it was half-clothed or over so fast that the stink didn’t have the chance to leave their bodies. In high school, boys are more aware of the need to look and smell good for the ladies. We sweat more and stink more because we are more aggressive and competitive. (I use the term “we” very loosely.) We need to shower after gym class and especially after baseball practice. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was the only one getting stimulated from being in the presence of half-dressed, muscular boys.

Not ninth- and tenth-graders—they were mostly feeble like myself; we’re talking seniors! Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds had nothing interesting to show (normally), but the seventeen- and eighteen-year-old boys, the ones with enough facial hair to order drinks at a bar without getting carded, they had muscles I would die for. The locker room became for me the equivalent of an all-youcan-eat buffet to a ravenous glutton. I yearned for those twenty minutes after practice as much as I dreaded them. The complication was in how much my parts noticed their parts, and how very different the very same sexual organs could appear to someone who happened to be attracted to said organs! So, that particular year, when Brad the pitcher walked past me in the locker room, strutting his god-like naked body into the shower, I looked.

I thought I was discreet. I knew enough not to ogle the curve of his ass or study the swing of his genitals as he walked past me. It was dangerous. No other boys did this! I knew because I always scanned the crowd for others scanning the crowd like me. I carefully enjoyed my view until someone shoved me from behind and startled me.

“Hey, what do you think you’re looking at, Reid?” Josh Green asked gruffly. He was one of the linebackers from the varsity football team: huge, intimidating, and another body I enjoyed fantasizing over. “Hey, Foley!” he called after Brad. “Reid’s eyeballing your ass!”

“No, I wasn’t,” I protested.

“Yeah, you were. I saw you,” he asserted, shoving me so my back was plastered against the metal door of my locker, thereby exposing my front for all to see.

“Oh shit!” Jeremy Sterner gasped as he pointed. “He’s hard!”

Josh Green’s fist connected with my marshmallow abs and every oxygen molecule exited my lungs like rats from a sinking ship. That first punch is all I can remember. The rest is in the abysmal, black recesses of my subconscious, never to resurface, else it would damage my now out-and-proud persona. I do remember talking to a counselor about “bullying” and being the recipient of what was basically a hate crime, but to this day it’s still a blur.

I blacked out when Josh hit me. The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and saw Nurse Pennell. She was pretty and kind, and always attended to my various stomach ailments without too much comment about hypochondria. She was the one who recommended a counselor, and she was the one who kept tabs on me after the baseball team voted me off the team.

My dad was disappointed, of course, and it took him the next two years of high school and a year of college to figure out how to talk to a gay son.

I learned my lesson the hard way and was officially outed in high school because of my lack of self-control. So, I kept my eyes to myself. I allowed my very boring, nonpopular self to blend into the background so that no one noticed me. I also suppressed all emotion, which kept me from getting beat up. Boys called me gay, but no one messed with me after a while because they couldn’t make me cry over it. They eventually gave up trying. I was left alone by everyone, even the people I thought were my friends. Maybe they thought homosexuality was a disease and they might “catch” it. I don’t know. School got very lonely after that.

After high school, I resolved to avoid “jocks” altogether to make my life easier. I figured if I avoided those I was most attracted to, then my overactive libido would stay in check. (Guys for the most part are touted as visual creatures, and I fit the stereotype.) Selfcontrol by avoidance became my creed.

WHAT was my “beef” over jocks? Stan had asked. Oh, nothing big—not!

Just like that, he hung up and left me listening to the beep, beep, beep on the other end. I was staring at the phone, wondering what the hell I was going to do next, when someone knocked on my door. I knew it was rude not to answer it so I stood up, but my door opened before I reached it, flooding my room with light around a single silhouette—Ellis’s silhouette. Anger flared. “Um, haven’t you heard of privacy, or were you raised by a tribe of hedonistic Vikings?”

Ellis stammered, obviously unaware of my normally blistering sarcasm, “Uh, I-I’m sorry.”

He started to close the door and I stopped him. “Whatever. Say what you came in here to say.” I could see a shadow flow over his abnormally gorgeous face. I think I hurt his feelings, but I wasn’t about to alter my behavior for a guy I’d just met. Especially a jock I’d just met!

“I only wanted to introduce you to my buddies, but if you’d rather do it another time, I understand.”

He looked hurt, and sounded hurt, and that made me feel like shit. Fuck! I knew one of these days my tongue was going to get me into real trouble, and this was the first time I almost cared. I did the unheard of—I apologized. “No, I’m sorry I snapped. I’ll come meet your friends.”

His expression immediately changed to hearts and sunshine. “Great!” He clapped me on the back and ushered me into the living room, calling to them, “Hey, guys, I want you to meet Cole….”

He let the “l” sound stretch out impossibly long and it was apparent to me he was searching his memory for my last name. I filled in the blank when the answer didn’t come on its own. “Reid.”

“Reid,” he reiterated. “Cole Reid, my new roommate!” He smiled and hugged me from the side across the back of my shoulders.

“Reeeeeid,” the Neanderthals hollered.

My knees shook as they descended upon me like vultures, squeezing the life out of my fragile bones. Never had I witnessed such a loud group of guys who got wound up so high over nothing. All they did was hoot over Ellis’s new apartment and belch the school’s theme song. Joy.

When they released me from their greeting huddle, I walked over to the breakfast bar and observed them with as much enthusiasm as… well… a nonenthusiastic person. If this was my life for senior year, Lord help me!