Eight

It took me a minute to calm down. Well, more like half an hour. Half an hour spent shuddering to myself under Marian’s warm arm. I had never imagined that one day I’d be forced to seek solace from a man five years younger than me whom I barely knew.

After my body was under my own control, I got up and walked over to my own bed, where I promptly lay down and tried to sleep. I spent about ten minutes in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, before I heard Marian speak again.

“Are you going to cry anymore?” he asks haltingly. Oh God, don’t let me have scared off my only ally. I’ll totally flip then.

“No. I’m going to try not to,” I said.

“Good. Because your spirit is stronger than that.”

Wow…never in my life had I heard words like that spoken about me. No one had ever told me my spirit was strong. All my life, the adjectives had been heaped on me—handsome, hockey player, individual, funny, weird. Never strong. Not once in my life. Until then.

And the waterworks start up again. I thought I was turning into a goddamn girl, I cried so much.

“Thank you,” I whispered. My voice was just about giving out by this point. Helpful Hint: the more you cry and talk at the same time, the more your voice hurts. It’s just not a good idea.

I didn’t know how I would face practice the next day.

Eight AM, bright and early. Too early for me, having stayed up since about two in the damn morning sobbing like a girl in Marian’s arms. Practice began at nine, so I showered faster than a speeding bullet and leaped into my clothes.

Practice, was, well, practice. Harsh. Boring. And when we were done, the locker room was blah. We sucked as a team, basically. We’d lost to some pathetic teams, so by this point, we were reveling in the suckiness. Well, I wasn’t, because I was depressed. The rest of the team was, though.

“So this gay guy and a donkey walk into a bar,” some rookie began. No, I didn’t know his name, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t want to.

“What about him?” I asked, my voice going gravelly. Oh, God, I thought. Please not another episode where my mouth acts independent of my mind. I made a conscious effort to control my mouth.

The rookie looked startled, but continued.

“Well, they walked into a bar, and they—”

“Was it a gay bar? Was it a sports bar? Had they been there before? Come on, let’s have some details about this gay guy and the donkey.” Someone in the room snickered slightly.

“Why, Miro, you interested in this guy?” they snorted. I turned slowly, still clad in half my gear.

“Why do you ask?” I said. The rookie stood.

“Look, no one here is gay. Now let me tell my joke,” he whined.

“Are you sure no one is gay? Are you very, very sure?” I ask softly.

“Um, yeah?” he asks.

“Are you positive? Would you stake your life on it? Would go up to someone and say ‘Kill me if I’m wrong’?” I continued. He screwed up his face and nodded. “Well then you would be dead. You would be deader than dead. And do you know why?” my voice quavered a little, but it was now or never.

“Because of me! That is RIGHT. I. Am Gay. And what’s more, I spent four years—four years!—in love with HIM!” I whirled around and pointed to Ziggy, who was trying to make himself disappear in the corner.

I stalked over to him.

“You,” I breathed. “It is your fault. It is your fault that I can never love anyone—anyone—else! It is your fault that if I ever do love someone else, I will see you reflected in their face! You are the bastard that ruined my life!”

Ziggy shook his head.

“Come on, we’ve been through this. It’s not my fault—”

“I am not through with you. I will not be through with you until see that it is your fault! It is your fault! Your fault!” My voice grew louder as the rest of the locker room remained in silence. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d found myself screaming at people in the last few days, or how many times I flew off the handle, or generally behaved like a spaz.

“But Miro, it really isn’t my fault. You’re the one who fell in love in the first place,” he pointed out. I took a deep breath.

“You,” I sighed, trying to begin a coherent sentence.

“No!” he stood up. “No more of this you stuff.”

“But—”

“No.”

I turned around, looking at everyone staring back at me. I tried to speak and my voice cracked; I tried to blink my eyes and they were dry; I tried to walk and was still.

“Somebody. Somebody. Help me,” I said, choking on my words. “Please.”

Absolute silence in the locker room. Everyone was staring at me—granted, I deserved it, but right then I would have happily driven a skate blade into my head. Finally someone broke the silence.

“Fag,” the mysterious person whispered. Instantly, twenty-one heads rolled around looking for the speaker, settling on Pavol Demitra. He grinned oddly, halfway between a sneer and a smile. Some more silence.

“Don’t call my friend a fag,” Marian said quietly. Pavol looked down his nose.

“Why, are you his fag buddy?” He turned to the rest of the room. “Did you all hear that? Miro’s gay, Marian’s gay, it’s a big old fag party here. How about that?” he laughed. He’d turned his back on Marian.

Seconds later, Marian lunged for Pavol’s back, and they fell onto the locker room floor, grappling with each other. The room erupted in shouts and cheers and boos and general noise. Marian had Pavol pinned on the floor, knee on his back. Marian was six-foot-one, Pavol six even, yet Marian was crunching him into the floor.

“Why don’t you consider taking that back, hmm, Pavol?” He shoved Pavol into the floor again. “Well?” Another painful-sounding groan.

“Stop,” I tried to speak, but my voice cracked. Marian looked up like a man possessed.

“No.” Finally Pavol sucked in a lungful of air.

“I take—it—back!” he shouted. Marian jumped back, this soft-spoken man almost afraid of what he had done.

Slowly, creakingly, Pavol hauled himself off the floor and wheezed a little.

“Gee, you think you’re in shape to play hockey?” someone joked. “Sounds like you could use a rest.” A circle around his eye was beginning to darken, and anyone could see the beads of perspiration on his forehead.

“I’m going to kill you, you bastard. You and your fag friend!” His voice was gravelly, eyes wild.

Suddenly there was silence in the room again, something in the atmosphere snapped and went spiraling off into space.

People began to gather their stuff and hurry out the door as fast as they could manage—away from me.

I ran back to the room and locked the door.