It was one of those fall Sundays that I loved so much. Sometimes the best thing was just to relax, hang out, not have anything expected of you. It was so rare for me, especially in the fall. We were now 4-0, having beaten Los Altos handily, 34-10. I’d played well, three touchdown passes, two to Rahim. My folks showed up, which was nice. After the game, Bryan had once again been there, and this time I just smiled politely. I avoided more weirdness by leaving with Rahim and Austin, going to a party even though I didn’t really want to go.
I’d almost told Coach on Wednesday. I went to his office and sat down, but all that came out of my mouth was more stuff about my parents. It was shameful, getting Coach to feel sorry for me and not telling him what was really up.
Yesterday, as I was doing homework, a call came in. It was an assistant coach from Stanford, telling me that he wanted me to visit Palo Alto to talk about the program. My spine tingled, but I acted all calm and collected and told him that I would, and that I would be taking trips to visit schools when the season was over. When I told Dad, I thought he’d go nuts, but instead he sort of smiled about it, didn’t get up at all. Hello? The one thing you seem to care about when it comes to me? Can I get a reaction? My dad is so weird.
As we watched the late game, Tennessee at San Diego, my father, who used to scream at the television through a game, kept dozing off. He’d be awake for a while, make his commentary, definitive statements no one should ever challenge about who the best running back in the game was, and then suddenly I’d hear snoring. My father never used to sleep through games. I didn’t say anything about it when he’d wake up and look around for a moment, and then close his eyes again.
My father nodded off and I watched Young in the midst of a pretty impressive drive against the Chargers. I was studying his footwork in the pocket when the doorbell rang. Mom was out. I paused for a moment to watch Young throw an incomplete pass before I hurried to the door.
Standing there, wearing an ugly purple windbreaker and a black fanny pack, something that hasn’t been in style in our lifetime probably, was Finch Gozman.
“Hey,” I said, less than thrilled. The talk we’d had two weeks earlier had been nice, but were we buddies now? We’d talked maybe twice since then, just “hey, how are you?” kind of stuff in the hallways at school. Couldn’t we just be people who talked in a parking lot after a game once and leave it at that?
“Hey, Bobby Framingham,” he said, a wide smile on his face. “Can I borrow you for a few minutes?”
Borrow me? Why couldn’t he just talk like a normal human being? Who went to someone’s house and borrowed the person who lived there?
Finch Gozman, apparently.
“Well, I’m kind of busy with my father,” I said. “Watching a game. Actually I’m watching and he’s asleep.”
“Well, if he’s in there, maybe we’d better talk out here.”
I sighed. I hadn’t agreed to talk to him, and now here I was, backed into a corner. “Fine,” I said.
We walked out to the huge oak tree at the foot of our front yard. When I was a kid, I sometimes used to try to climb up and sit on a branch. I broke several branches that way. We stood beneath it, and I leaned on it as Finch paced beside me.
“Stanford called,” I told him.
He adjusted his fanny pack, fumbled through it, before turning and looking at me and smiling. “Wow! How excellent. Are you going to sign with them?”
“No offer was made, Finch. I’m going to wait until December for all of that.”
“Wow. I doubt I’ll get in. Mrs. Markowitz said I need to write something great, something that’ll get me noticed.” He rubbed his neck.
“You’ll get in,” I said.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said.
And we stood there, awkwardly silent.
“I wanted to thank you for last weekend, listening to me whine.” I laughed. “You weren’t whining. Well, not much, anyway,” I said. “No problem.”
“Thanks,” he said, and there it was, the silence again. I looked at Finch and wondered if all he wanted was a random conversation with me.
“The thing is,” Finch said, “I kind of have to ask you a question.”
“Shoot.” I leaned against the tree.
“Remember our interview? I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. And there’s this one thing that I don’t know how to . . . I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is . . . are you gay? If you’re not, please don’t hit me.”
He sort of jumped back, as if he were afraid of me.
I kept still.
Inside, I felt the pulsing of my heart, the wheezing of air through my lungs. I said nothing. A flurry of thoughts flooded my head. I thought of Dr. Blassingame: If you can’t change something, you have two choices: you can accept it, or you can deny it.
I couldn’t change being gay. And now I couldn’t change the fact that Finch knew. No one would ask you something like that unless they were pretty sure about it. I pictured a football field, and saw Finch there with me, in the backfield. He was already there. Would I rather have him on my team, blocking for me, or the opposing team, chasing me down? I studied him silently.
“I didn’t come here to cause you trouble, Bobby Framingham. You know I consider you a friend.”
I continued to observe him, thinking back to the time in ninth grade when Dennis pinned a sign on Finch’s back that said I’M A FAG. The popular jocks were always picking on him. It was right after history class with Dr. Blassingame and everyone was laughing and pointing at Finch, and I could see the pain on his face. He didn’t know what was going on. When none of my friends were looking, I tapped Finch on the shoulder, peeled the sign off his back, and handed it to him. He turned bright red. I said, “People are stupid,” and walked away.
“Bobby?”
“Yes.” I scraped at the bark of the oak tree with my middle finger. I listened to the sounds around me. Silence could sometimes be so loud. The wind hissing through the rustling trees, some chirping birds, I almost never heard any of this, because I didn’t listen.
“So I’m sorry to ask you a personal question, but are you? Gay?” I looked around to make sure my father wasn’t standing there. “I just said yes.”
“Oh,” Finch said, and then his eyes lit up. “Wow.”
“Shut up,” I said, miserable.
I sat on the dirt under the tree and rested my face in my hands. Finch stood above me, and it was like this major power shift.
Finch smiled and knelt over me. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m cool with that.”
I looked up at him, surprised, but not shocked. “Really?”
“Sure.” He stood up and looked at the branch about two feet above him. He sort of jumped up, trying to touch it, but never actually left the ground, as if his feet were glued to the dirt underneath him. I can touch the branch. He didn’t get close.
“Thanks, Finch. It’s new; I’m just figuring it all out.” I found a twig and began tracing a pattern in the dirt, a circle. Was Finch becoming someone I could talk to?
“I think it’s an amazing story.”
I looked up at him in amazement, and shook my head, hard. “No. No no no.”
“Think about it Bobby. I did some research. Did you know that there’s not a single openly gay athlete in any of the four major sports? You could be the first! That’s incredible, that’s like, Jackie Robinson incredible. Don’t you see that?”
I stood back up and began to pace. “No, Finch. I’m not ready for that at all.”
“But—”
“No! I’m serious Finch. We’re four-and-oh, and I got a call from Stanford. This is my dream. You really think I want to ruin that?”
“How would you ruin it?” he asked.
Now I was pacing fervently in front of the oak tree, and he was standing still, watching me like he was watching a tennis match. “I can’t do that now. If Coach found out, I have no idea how he’d react.”
“Coach Castle? He loves you,” he said.<
br />
I registered that. “Yeah, well.”
“I know it sounds difficult, but I think you’re missing out on a big part of it.”
“What?” I stopped in front of Finch, hoping that he had some magic words for me that would make it all better.
“You’d make a difference in a lot of people’s lives. There are so many people out there who think all gays are wimps or something, and you’re not a wimp. You’re, like, the coolest guy in our school.”
I blushed. Actually, I hadn’t really thought about that before. How can who I want to sleep with and love have such an effect on other people?
It seemed so dumb, but it made a lot of sense when he put it that way.
“Finch?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks. You’re a friend and I appreciate that.”
He smiled and looked down, embarrassed. “Thanks, Bobby Framingham.”
“Maybe I can make a difference in people’s lives. I don’t know. I’m not ready.”
“I thought that might be the case,” he said. “It’s too bad, ’cause it’s a great story. I’ve been thinking about it and researching it for a few days now.”
“So you knew?”
Finch laughed. “Well, Bobby Framingham, if you don’t want people to know, you’d better tell those friends of yours not to make it so obvious. It wasn’t just what they said, it was how they acted. Of course I knew.”
“Damn. I’m gonna kill Dennis.”
“That would make the world a better place,” Finch said. “Sorry, just kidding. I know he’s your friend.”
I laughed. “No, you’re right.” I looked back at the house, turning away from Finch. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Gay?” I turned back and looked at Finch.
He looked up at the sky. “There was a time when I thought I was, but nah, I don’t think so. I like girls too much.”
I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved. “Do me a favor, Finch?”
“Sure. Anything, Bobby.”
“Please don’t tell anyone. I’ll make you a deal. If and when I’m ready to come out publicly, no matter when or where I am, I’ll call you and let you do the story.”
His eyes registered this and I imagined the victory parade in his brain. Score one for Finch Gozman. “Thanks! You think you could time it before my application to Stanford is due?”
I looked at him like he was crazy, and then he laughed.
“Just joshin’ ya,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s funny,” I said. “Anyhow, I gotta go back to my dad.”
“Sure, Bobby. Take care of yourself. If you ever need to talk . . .” I nodded and he got in his green Nissan. He turned on the ignition and drove away, the radio blaring. I watched as his car disappeared, thankful that he wasn’t a jerk.
14
On Wednesday afternoon during my free period, I decided to do it. My secret was coming out, little by little, and I thought about how Coach would feel if I didn’t tell him.
He’d be hurt, and I didn’t want to hurt him.
I walked to Coach’s office with long, self-assured strides, the theme from that Eminem movie playing in my head. I imagined telling Carrie that. She’d have a heart attack. I wasn’t a rap kind of guy, and she really hated Eminem.
But I had to stop worrying about Carrie’s reaction to stuff. She wasn’t talking to me, wouldn’t even look at me. People kept on walking up to me and asking if we broke up.
I just shrugged.
I’d seen Carrie in school just once since the laser-tag disaster, and she’d ignored me. I tried to approach her in the cafeteria, but she was with friends, and they’d all glared at me, while she put her head down in a very deliberate way. I pivoted quickly and walked away. Impulse. Very much like being in the pocket when I didn’t see or hear anything behind me but instinctively knew to get rid of the ball.
The gymnasium was loud and busy and I saluted half a dozen buddies who were there playing a pickup game of basketball, before heading down the hallway to Coach’s office.
Coach was in the middle of scripting plays on his computer. I could tell, because I know how he spreads everything out all over his desk when he does that—stats, scouting reports, play diagrams— and it made me think that maybe I should wait. The game against Laguna Hills was just two days away, and even if that was one we’d probably win, I’d hate to screw things up. But then I thought, if not now, when?
Is there ever a good time for a personal issue when you’re on a team?
I stuck my head into his office and quietly knocked on the door.
“Is this important?” Coach asked, looking up slightly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Coach looked up from the computer. “Well, either it is or it isn’t. Come on in, Framingham.”
I quietly sat down across from him and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and folding my hands under my chin as if to pray. On the desk in front of me were piles of articles chronicling the team’s victory over Los Altos. One had a picture of me dropping back to pass. I hadn’t seen that one. There was also a Cincinnati Bengals schedule, a testament to Coach’s fixation with the team he once played for. He was nothing if not loyal, and the guys gave him crap for it.
“Life is weird,” I said, after a short silence. Coach raised an eyebrow.
“Uh-oh, looks like someone’s been hitting the philosophy textbook a little hard again,” he said.
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Sorry,” I said. “I think too much.”
Coach turned to face me, giving me his full attention. He smiled. “What’s on your mind, Bobby?”
“I’m having dreams about men.” It had come blurting out easier than I’d thought, as if it had been hanging on the tip of my tongue. I’d figured it had been sort of stuck in the throat somewhere, figured it would take a long time, lots of stalling, but here I was, and my secret had popped out with very little prodding.
Coach remained expressionless, adjusted himself in his seat, and kept his eyes focused on me.
“What kind of dreams?”
“You know,” I said.
He adjusted again. “Have you acted on these dreams?” There was an urgency in his voice that scared me.
“No.”
“Good,” Coach said, clenching his hands together. “I don’t think you should.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” Coach said forcefully. “Look. Thinking things is one thing, acting is another. That’s not a good lifestyle, Bobby. Maybe you’re a little confused right now, but that won’t work for you, you’re not the right kind of guy to do that.”
“So what do I do?”
“Ignore it, Bobby. Look. What do you do when you go up to the line of scrimmage and you don’t like what you see in the defensive backfield?”
“I call an audible.”