Horizons (22 page)

“You shouldn’t have said that!” I yelled. “He’s done nothing to you.”

“He’s ruining your chances at the big time,” Dad accused. “You think we’re going to give him a medal?” He helped Mom tend to Zach, who had a profuse nosebleed. She got ice out from the freezer and pressed it to his nose with a towel.

“It’s my life and my career. Why are you all getting into my business?” My tears couldn’t be controlled, a default reaction to strong emotion. I was sorry I hit him, but sorrier still for his remark.

“Listen up, kid.” My father came up to me and held my shirt, speaking in his deadly prison-guard voice. “I’m going to say this one time and one time only. You are going to play in the NFL. You owe it to us and to yourself. This is what we’ve been working toward all your life.”

“Dad.”

“Don’t fucking interrupt me! If I hear one whiff of anything, about you, about him, about being queer, there will be repercussions. Do you understand exactly what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Now, get the fuck out of here. I can’t stand to look at you!”

T
HE
drive home was as bad as yesterday’s, except there was a part of me that was relieved in a sick sort of way. It was finally out in the open, and I could stop making myself crazy over a decision that had just been taken away from me.

Now the question was whether I would continue to play football. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I would keep on seeing Jody, my father’s threats be damned. We’d work something out, go into hiding or crawl into some closet, if necessary, but I wasn’t going to give him up.

I stopped at In-N-Out Burger on my way, shoving the fries into my mouth and chewing on the cheeseburger mindlessly. It took my thoughts away from what had just happened. I wondered how long it would be before I heard from Jason. He and I were always close, and it would really hurt if he chose to shun me like everyone else. I knew that Zach would never forgive me, but it was par for the course. He and I had butted heads all our lives, so this was no surprise. As for Michael and Robby, who knew? I could only imagine what version of this story they would hear.

“C
LARK
?
It’s Jason.”

“Hey! Where are you?”

“We’re on our way to your apartment.”

“Who’s
we
?”

“Mike and I.”

“How long before you get here?”

“About twenty minutes?”

“Okay.” It had been three days since the incident at my parents’ house, and Jason’s call was the first I’d heard from anyone.

I was at home, doing laundry and sorting through mail that had accumulated. Jody had teased me, telling me I should just pack a bag and move all my shit to his house, but I resisted. Somehow it didn’t feel right to be mooching off of him.

It was bad enough to be in debt to my parents. That had come as a total shock. All along I thought I was on a full scholarship. I should have known that my grades weren’t good enough to get me that kind of a free ride. Now I had to figure out a way to pay my parents back as soon as possible.

If I was drafted into the NFL, the money would come easily. Aside from the yearly pay, there’d be an immediate signing bonus. That would get my mom and dad off my back and allow me to live my life without having to answer to them.
If
I got picked.

My father’s words had not fallen on deaf ears. I knew he was right about rumors and how they could affect a potential career. I wasn’t that stupid to think that I could overcome those odds.

I loved Jody. That wasn’t the question. The question was how to reconcile football and being gay. It was all too new, and even though we had the time in Chicago when everything seemed so perfect, I knew that I didn’t live in that kind of a world. A professional sport was a business, and football was one of the most expensive and vicious of them all. The scouts wouldn’t hesitate to drop me if there were one whiff of a problem.

And being a homosexual was still considered a problem even in this day and age. I knew it, and so did my dad. If there were gay players out there, they were deep in the closet. The ones that had come out openly no longer played the sport.

All the pros and cons had been consuming me since the meeting in Folsom. I felt like the ball in a pinball machine, finding a solution for one question, only to be blocked by another. It was driving me crazy, and Jody as well. He knew I was on edge. He’d apologized a million times for going to Folsom and outing me even though I’d reassured him and told him that it would have happened eventually. Of course, I would have preferred to have done it my way, but it was done, and I had to move forward, learning how to deal with the situation.

My thoughts were interrupted by the buzzer announcing the arrival of the twins. I opened the door just as they got to the top of the landing, and we all stood there looking at one another like total strangers.

“Well? Do I look any different to you?” I was expecting this meeting to go from bad to worse.

“Come on, bro,” Jason said quietly.

“You may as well say it now and get it out of the way. Do you think I’m a freak because I’m gay?”

“Are you really?” Mike asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Yes.”

“How long have you known?” Jason asked. He seemed completely blown away by the whole concept of me being homosexual.

“A long time… I just kept resisting it.”

“Can’t you keep resisting?” Mike asked. “Maybe these feelings will go away if you try really hard.”

“It’s not a sickness, Mike. It’s who I am.”

“Shit, Clark! I feel like I’m on acid or something. This is going to take some getting used to.”

“Since when do you do acid?”

“I don’t! But I’m sure that if I did, it would feel as weird as this.”

“Do you hate me too?”

“Who hates you?” Mike asked.

I could feel the tears close to the surface so I chewed on my lip, trying to keep it together. “Zach hates my guts, and Mom and Dad are ready to disown me.”

“Fuck Zach.” Jason said. He grabbed me and pulled me tightly against his body. “I love you, no matter what you are.”

He held me while Mike watched. I could tell that he was undecided for just one second, but something must have clicked in his head because he walked toward us and embraced me as well. “Oh, what the hell, man. You’re my fucking brother.”

“Thank you.” Their confirmation of love made the tears spill down my face.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jason said, trying to soothe me, the way he always did when I was a kid.

“Can you promise me one thing though?” Mike asked, stepping back and looking me in the eye.

“What?”

“Don’t touch him when I’m around. That would be too creepy.”

I laughed through my tears, and I grabbed him in a headlock. “I promise.”

“Okay, is that it, then? You got any beer in this house?”

I loved Michael. He never censored anything. He gave the words “open mouth, insert foot” a whole new meaning. Plus he never lied. My brother was as loyal as a dog, and just as ferocious when it came to protecting the people he loved. If he said that my being gay was okay with him, then I knew it was all good.

We spent the next few hours watching the most recent James Bond movie. Mike was a great mimic, and by the time the movie was over, he was speaking in a British accent and strutting around like Bond. We had pizza delivered and polished off most of the beer I had in the fridge. All in all, it was a pleasant visit. I missed these guys so much. We were inseparable as kids, and the thought of being alienated from them was too awful to think about.

Just as they were leaving, my phone rang. It was Jody, and I told him to come over and asked the guys to stay and wait for him. I wanted him to see that they were okay with this. It would reassure him that not all of my family members were homophobic pricks.

J
ODY
hung up and rushed to his car, pleasantly surprised the twins were visiting Clark. It was a huge weight off his back to know that someone in the family was on Clark’s side.

His guilt had weighed heavily for days because of what he’d done. Lil had told him to get over it, but he still felt sick to his stomach when he thought about the scene at the kitchen table. He couldn’t understand how parents could be so cruel to a child. It was beyond anything he’d ever experienced.

He knew that things had gone from bad to worse when he left the Stevenses’ house. Clark hadn’t given any of the details other than to say that he thought he may have broken Zach’s nose. He said it in such a nonchalant way, as if that kind of violence was commonplace in their household. It was hard for Jody to understand the dynamics of growing up in an environment with so much testosterone. He supposed that fighting among brothers was a common thing, but being an only child had him at a disadvantage since he’d never experienced the joys of sibling rivalry. He had no idea what it was like jockeying for a parent’s attention, begging to pick the TV show of the night, or fighting to sit up front instead of crammed into the backseat of the family vehicle. This was normal in a house filled with children, but to break a nose without so much as a second thought seemed a little extreme.

He pulled up in front of Clark’s apartment building and made his way upstairs. He knocked, and when Clark opened the door he said, “The guys are here, and I promised them we wouldn’t touch each other in their presence.”

“That’s fine.” Jody smiled. He supposed that it would take a while for Clark’s brothers to wrap their heads around the thought of their football star being gay. Hopefully, they would come to realize that this was not a death sentence and nothing had changed between them.

“Hey,” the twins both called out in unison when he walked into the apartment.

He nodded in their direction and reached for the beer that Clark was handing him. He took a long pull and a deep breath and tried to relax even though his nerves were on edge. Jody felt like he was on display as the two sets of eyes practically bored holes into him.

The twins were toned-down versions of Clark. Just as tall and blond, but not as arresting. They would be considered hot if Clark hadn’t been in the same room. Clark’s physical presence was all encompassing. Every part of him was perfection from the top of his platinum blond head to the bottom of his very large feet. He exuded a maleness that was hard to beat, and each time Jody looked at him, his heart rate would speed up automatically.

“So, Doc,” Mike said, rubbing the bottle of beer in between his hands. “Have you always been gay?”

Jody looked at him, surprised at his bluntness. “Yes.”

“Do you even like football?”

“Mike!”

“It’s okay,” Jody said, looking at Clark, who was starting to get agitated. “Actually, Mike, I know nothing about the game.”

“No shit? So what do you guys talk about? Or do you even talk?”

“Michael!”

“Oh, lighten up, Clark. I’m just trying to get to know your boyfriend.”

“You’re badgering him.”

“No, he’s not,” Jody replied, grinning at Clark. “Your brother is much more than football, Mike. We talk about a lot of things.”

“Yeah? You love him?”

“Michael!” Jason and Clark yelled at the same time.

Jody shook his head and raised his hand in a stop motion. “It’s okay, really. I do love him, Mike. Very much.”

“Well, you’d better, ’cause this is going to get ugly. I just know it.”

“How so?” Jody’s fears came rushing back when he heard that statement. Was Mike just stating a foregone conclusion or did he know something no one else did?

“My dad’s really pissed, and when he’s like that, it’s scary. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”

Clark sat down beside Jody, and despite his promise to his brother earlier on, took Jody’s hand and held it tight. “Don’t listen to him, Jo. He’s exaggerating.”

“You know he’s not,” Jason interjected from the other side of the room.

“Look, let’s not talk about Dad, okay?”

“Fine,” Mike said. “Just watch your backs, both of you.”

“What the hell, Mike! We’re not the fucking Sopranos.” Clark was visibly upset. “You’re scaring the heck out of Jody.”

“I’m sorry. I just think that you should be prepared.”

“We’re fine, okay? This will all blow over, and everyone will calm down in a few weeks.”

Jason and Mike focused their attention on our clasped hands and shook their heads.

I
T
WAS
March seventeenth, St. Patrick’s Day, and my twenty-third birthday. We’d decided to spend the day in Sausalito, browsing the boutiques and doing the whole tourist bit. We even planned on taking a ride on the Blue & Gold ferry, touring the bay with a glass of wine in one hand and binoculars in the other. I’d never done it before, even though I was born and raised in California. Jody insisted that it would be fun to relax for a couple of hours on the boat.

The only downside to the trip was the fact that we’d have to watch our behavior in public since I was bound to be recognized. I put on a baseball cap and sunglasses in the hopes that I would pass for an ordinary citizen.