Chapter Six
Daniel
I can’t stop thinking about Tamsin.
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and I’m at football practice. As I lurch to my feet after a brutal hit by Andre—it’s his job to take me out of every play—Coach finally calls a five-minute water break.
“Hey,” I say to Andre as we grab bottles from the ice bucket. “You know Tamsin Shay, right?”
Andre nods. “She’s a friend.”
I chug water and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“What’s her story? I heard she’s been single for a while.”
Andre and I aren’t close or anything, but we respect each other. I figure he knows I’m not a player when it comes to girls, and that I’m not just looking to get laid.
But still, he stares at me for a few seconds before he answers.
“Why are you asking?”
Shit. Is it possible Andre has a thing for Tamsin?
“Hey, man. If I’m stepping on your toes, I—”
“No. That’s not it.” He shifts his helmet from one hand to the other. “It’s just I don’t think you guys are types.”
Types?
It’s early September, hot and humid, and I’m soaked with sweat. I wipe my face with a towel and look at Andre again.
“What do you mean?”
Andre looks at me kind of appraisingly.
“I don’t want to piss you off,” he says.
“You won’t.”
“It’s just…well, you’re a really nice guy, Bowman.”
“Is that the part that’s going to piss me off?”
He grins. “Well, it would piss off some guys. But you’re from, you know, this small town in Kansas or whatever and—”
“Missouri.”
“Whatever. And Tamsin is from San Francisco.”
I blink. “Dude. Our quarterback is Muslim and his girlfriend is Jewish. Are you seriously talking to me about the great divide between city girls and country boys?”
He grins again. “Okay, fair point. But it’s not just the San Francisco thing. I mean…” He hesitates. “This is the part that might piss you off. I’m friends with a girl you dated last year. Bree Simms?”
Shit.
I haven’t dated anyone since Bree. In fact, Bree is one of the reasons I stopped dating.
I think I know what’s coming. “Yeah?”
“Bree mentioned that you guys didn’t have sex.”
Yep, I knew it was coming. And it does piss me off.
“And that’s, like, news? The fact that we dated for three months and didn’t have sex?”
“Bree thought it was because of your religion.”
I start to say something, and Andre holds up a hand. “I’m not passing judgment on that. I don’t give a shit what you do or what you believe. But Tamsin…she’s a free spirit. Including when it comes to sex. And I don’t want to see anyone bring her down.”
I’m not pissed off any more. Just confused.
“Wait a second. You think if I dated Tamsin and didn’t have sex with her I’d be bringing her down?”
Andre rubs the back of his neck. “I just think the difference in your attitudes might make her feel…I don’t know. Judged or something.”
I feel my jaw tightening.
“You know what? I’m sick of people assuming that because I’m religious I’m walking around judging people.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I just asked if Tamsin was single. I’m not even planning to ask her out. And if I did, there’s like a ninety-nine percent chance she’d say no. So you don’t have to protect your friend, okay? Which, by the way, is kind of messed up. Tamsin can take care of herself. It’s not very feminist of you to jump to her defense. Isn’t that the patriarchy in action, or whatever?”
Andre doesn’t look mad. But then he hardly ever does, even when he’s tackling someone.
“What can I say? I’m from Louisiana. It’s hard to take the southern gentleman out of the southern gentleman. But I live in Bracton and I’ve been listening to the sisterhood for two years, and they kind of have a point about—well, everything.” He pauses. “Look. I know Tamsin can take care of herself. But that doesn’t mean she can’t get hurt, right? And I don’t want to see that happen. She’s in a really good place right now, and I—”
“Don’t want to see her get hurt. I get it. Now please, let’s get back to football. And this time I’m going to kick your ass up and down this field.”
I don’t, of course. But I make things as hard for Andre as I can, because it’s my job to get him ready for the game on Saturday. The role of a second-string athlete isn’t glamorous, but I take it seriously.
And between every play, I still can’t stop thinking about Tamsin.
She’s the girl who was so loud with Oscar the guy next door could hear her. She’s the girl Andre calls a “free spirit” when it comes to sex.
But she also told me she’s gone cold-turkey on relationships. Why isn’t she dating anymore? Did something happen?
It’s not just Tamsin’s relationship status that has me thinking. It’s also the stuff she said to me on stage and in the hallway. About abortion.
I don’t believe anything because someone tells me to. I mean, there are people in my church who think homosexuality is wrong. They don’t condemn the people—“love the sinner, hate the sin”—but they think the behavior is a perversion.
I think that attitude is a perversion.
There are plenty of issues where I can see two sides, but gay rights isn’t one of them. One side is right and the other side is wrong. Love is love, and I believe that God smiles down on every couple with the guts to commit to each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, till death do them part.
It seems obvious to me. And so does the pro-life side of the abortion debate.
After fertilization, an embryo has its own DNA, right? Distinct from its mother and father? That means it’s a separate, unique being. A human being. And I don’t believe God would let that happen if He didn’t want that embryo to become a baby.
There’s a bible verse pro-life Christians quote a lot. Jeremiah 1:5.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
And before you were born I consecrated you.
I know that if you’re looking for a passage from scripture to support your political position, you’ll probably find it. No matter what your ideology is. Even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose, and all that.
But those words are powerful to me. I do believe God knows us even before we’re born. And I don’t believe that we, as mere human beings, have the authority to decide which of God’s consecrated children live or die.
I believe that abortion is murder.
But Tamsin said that one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime.
One in four.
If that’s true, then doesn’t that mean at least one woman I know—probably more than one—has had an abortion?
Maybe I’m dumb, but it honestly never occurred to me that someone I know might have ended a pregnancy.
Maybe feminists are right about one thing. Maybe women—including pro-life women—have a perspective on abortion that’s very different from a man’s.
But that doesn’t mean my perspective is worthless. And as I think about all that stuff Tamsin said to me, I want to argue with her about it. I want to make my case, because I believe in it.
And that’s when I know I’m not dropping Experiments in Drama.
* * *
Beeker has a late class, so it’s just me and Trace having dinner tonight—pizza and leftover Chinese. I make the mistake of bringing up abortion, because I was looking for someone who’d be on my side of the debate.
But I’m starting to think Trace is someone you don’t want on your side. Ever.
“The whole abortion thing is such garbage,” he’s saying now, as pizza grease drips down his chin. He wipes it off with his sleeve. “It’s just about women who can’t keep their legs closed and their panties on.”
I try to imagine what Tamsin would say to that.
“Thanks, man. Thanks for making me think feminists have a point about men. Especially since you slept with at least ten girls last year, and never once complained about them losing their panties.”
“Well, Jesus. I’m not a fucking idiot. We used protection.”
I finish my last piece of pizza and sit back on the sofa. ESPN is on the TV, but even though they’re talking college football I’m not paying attention.
“What if the condom broke? Or something else went wrong? What would you do if you got a girl pregnant? Would you marry her?”
Trace frowns. There’s a spot of pizza grease at the corner of his mouth, and for some reason it bugs me.
“Well…yeah. Sure.”
I pick one of the girls he slept with last year—one I know for a fact he didn’t even like.
“So Mary Beth Donnelly, then? If you’d gotten her pregnant, you would’ve married her? Promised before God to love, honor, and cherish her? Forever?”
Trace shrugs. “I guess.”
I don’t know if I believe him, but I give him the benefit of the doubt.
“And what if she didn’t want to marry you? What if she wanted to get an abortion? What would you do then?”
“What do you mean, what would I do?”
“Well, you don’t believe in abortion, do you? So what would you do?”
Trace reaches for the last piece of pizza.
“I don’t know. Try to stop her.”
“How? There’s no legal way. You can’t get a restraining order or anything.”
Trace drops the pizza slice back in the box. “The law is never on the father’s side. I’m telling you, the odds are stacked against men in this fucking country. How disgusting is it that a man can’t stop some bitch from murdering his kid?”
“Some bitch? Aren’t you talking about the mother of your child?”
“Yeah, but—” He stops and glares at me. “What the hell is this, anyway? Why did you even bring this up?”
Good question. “Believe it or not, I was looking for some good pro-life arguments before my next drama class. I just went to the wrong place.”
He points a greasy finger at me. “No, you didn’t. Let me show you.”
He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling.
“What are you doing?”
“Pulling something up on Twitter. There’s a pro-choice group right here at Hart that tweets about this shit. Now they’ve got people all around the country on their threads. I trolled them for a while and they blocked me. So I created this new account for a college girl who ‘isn’t sure’ about the whole abortion issue. Man, it’s fun to watch them trying to indoctrinate me with their bullshit. Here you go. This is from last night.”
I take the phone he hands me, ignoring the greasy fingerprints on the screen, and look.
But what if the baby really IS a baby? Doesn’t abortion stop a beating heart?
That’s a tweet from what I’m guessing is Trace’s sock puppet. He’s named her Lisa, and her avatar is a golden retriever looking at the camera. Her profile reads, I’m a college freshman looking for answers to life’s biggest questions.
“This is messed up, Trace.”
“No, it’s hilarious. Read the thread.”
I scroll up to see what’s above Trace’s tweet. He said this started with a group here at Hart, so I look for familiar faces.
Yeah, there’s a girl I’ve been in classes with—Mena something. And Hannah from my old dorm. And—
Tamsin.
I freeze for a second. Then I read her tweet.
What if the mother was raped? Is that a gift from God, too?
I freeze again. There’s a tightness in my muscles, a spasm of nausea in my belly.
Why did Tamsin ask that question? I look at the tweet above it, which was Trace’s.
Isn’t every baby a gift from God?
I said something like that in the hallway after yesterday’s class. I said that if a couple tries not to get pregnant but does anyway, the baby must be part of God’s plan.
It makes me sick that Trace used that argument as part of his fucked-up Twitter game.
I don’t want to look at “Lisa’s” reply to Tamsin’s question, but I do.
The rape isn’t a gift, but the baby is. And most rapes aren’t REALLY rape. Just women changing their minds the next day.
Oh, God.
I make myself read Tamsin’s reply, which is pretty restrained, all things considered.
I don’t know your history or why you would say something like that, but it’s not true.
And she linked to an article about campus sexual assault.
I can’t look at Trace. I feel the tension in my muscles that comes before violence—the violence I channel into football. I hand his phone back and get up from the couch.
“I’ve got to study,” I say, and head for the stairs.
Trace says something as I’m leaving, but I don’t answer. I need to get away so I don’t punch him in the face.
After a fight turned ugly back in high school—I ended up breaking a guy’s nose and fracturing his wrist—I decided I wouldn’t ever use my fists in an argument again. Which means I have to turn my back on Trace right the hell now. I need to get away from the guy who could say shit like that about rape. Who could use rape in his stupid trolling campaign. Who could be flip about it, insincere about it, and a fucking douchebag about it.
Some things aren’t okay, and that doesn’t make me Galahad.
It makes me a human being.