In My Skin (14 page)

It was only later that year, when I finally learned about Baylor's written stance on gays, that I fully appreciated what those students were trying to do, and the risk they were taking just by having that meeting. I also began to realize athletes had an extra layer of protection, although one that came with its own set of handcuffs. I was on my way to class one day when I saw that someone had written “Love Being Gay” across the Baylor University sign in front of the school's main entrance.
That is awesome
, I thought, and then took a picture of myself standing in front of it, smiling big. But when I showed the picture to a gay friend of mine later that day, her reaction wasn't what I expected. She looked concerned, and she told me a pro-gay group had tagged the campus overnight, spray-painting messages like “Love” and “Pride” on signs and posters. “BG, you have to delete that pic,” she said. “You can't show it to anyone.”

I was baffled. “Why not?” Then she mentioned the policy, and I said, “Whoa, wait . . . what?” So she spelled it out for me, and my confusion quickly turned to anger.

“Fuck that policy,” I said. “What's the point of it anyway? Why have something on the books if you're going to look the other way when it comes to someone like me?”

Just so we're all clear, here is the human sexuality portion of the “sexual misconduct” policy as it appears in the Baylor student handbook:
“Baylor University welcomes all students into a safe and supportive environment in which to discuss and learn about a variety of issues, including those of human sexuality. The University affirms the biblical understanding of sexuality as a gift from God. Christian churches across the ages and around the world have affirmed purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman as the biblical norm. Temptations to deviate from this norm include both heterosexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual behavior. It is thus expected that Baylor students will not participate in advocacy groups which promote understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching. The University encourages students struggling with these issues to avail themselves of opportunities for serious, confidential discussion, and support through the Spiritual Life Office or through the Baylor University Counseling Center.”

Anyone paying attention knew that I'm gay, including the high-rolling alumni who supported our program and mingled with us. They had chatted up my girlfriend freshman year, when she was waiting for me after games:
How's Brittney? Does she like it here? We're so happy to have her at Baylor
. I didn't walk around campus holding hands with my girlfriend, but when we ran into each other on the way to class, I would give her a long hug or wrap my arm around her shoulder. My sexuality was an open secret—not a secret at all, really, except I was being told not to talk about it publicly, even though no one in a position of authority actually cited the policy to me. So, again, what is the point of the policy exactly? It seems like if you believe in something enough to actually write it down, then you should stand by it; otherwise, get rid of it.

The hypocrisy was hard to stomach. There is so much about Baylor that I love, especially the people I met there—gay people, straight people, all kinds of great people. It's not like I have some kind of vendetta against the school; that's not why I'm revealing the struggles I had there, how I felt silenced. I would love to be an ambassador for Baylor, to show my school pride, but it's hard to do that—it's hard to stand up and say, “Baylor is the best!”—when the administration has a written policy against homosexuality. I've spent too much of my life being made to feel like there was something wrong with me. And no matter how much support I got as a basketball player at Baylor, it doesn't erase the pain I felt there. The more I think about it, the more I feel like the people who run the school want it both ways: they want to keep the policy, so they can keep selling themselves as a Christian university, but they are more than happy to benefit from the success of their gay athletes. That is, as long as those gay athletes don't talk about being gay.

I know Kim walked that line. She was always talking about the image of the program, worrying what people would think. She hates tattoos, just like my dad does. She would say she was concerned my tats might give people the “wrong impression” about me, and Baylor, so she made me wear a T-shirt under my uniform to cover them up. We argued about it a lot my senior year, when we were butting heads all the time, about everything. But when it came to my sexuality, and the sexuality of other gay players, it's hard to know how much of Kim's don't-ask-don't-tell policy was about coaching at Baylor and how much of it was about living inside the paranoid world of women's college basketball, where too many coaches spend an unhealthy amount of time worrying about whether their programs will be seen as “too gay.”

All I know for sure is that I felt like I was carrying around a giant weight everywhere I went—a growing sense that who I am, at my very core, needed to be hidden away in order for me to survive my time at Baylor.

I
spent a lot of my free time sophomore year the same way I spent it as a freshman: going out and partying. But there was something different fueling me now. My freshman year, I was enjoying the freedom of being away from home for the first time, the sense of adventure. My sophomore year, I was trying to escape the feeling that I wasn't free at all, that I was a muted version of myself. Although I stayed in Waco most weekends, I'm obviously easy to spot when I'm out in public, so I'm pretty sure that word of my, um, extracurricular activities got back to Kim. She would occasionally check in with me to ask how I was doing and if I was still seeing my therapist. She never specifically asked me about drinking or partying; she would just address it in her typical Kim way. “Gotta get your sleep, Big Girl,” she'd say. “You can't produce if you don't sleep.” Or she would talk to the whole team, but let her eyes linger a little bit longer on me. “It's the middle of a long season,” she might say. “Y'all need to be taking care of your bodies. You can't be out late.” I knew she was right. Just like I knew that drinking because I was mad or sad was only going to make me madder or sadder. What I didn't know was that I needed to feel worse before I could somehow start to feel better.

I needed a wake-up call.

Toward the end of sophomore year, there was a big Greek party at Baylor, the all-black party, where everyone was supposed to show up wearing nothing but black. The school year had started with the all-white party, but I never even made it to that one, because it was right around the same time I was going through my rocky breakup with my girlfriend from freshman year, and I ended up having too much to drink with my friends earlier in the night. Now everybody was talking about the all-black party, and I was amped for it. Basketball season was over (we had made it to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament), and I was more than ready to put sophomore year behind me.

A few of us went to the mall that day and bought fresh outfits: shoes, shirts, pants. Our game plan that night was to drink a little bit at my place, then go to another apartment where we would pregame before going to the actual party. (So my apartment was the pre-pregame party.) We bought a bottle of Ciroc Red Berry vodka, and we were drinking it straight up, either poured into cups or directly out of the bottle. Except I was drinking faster than everyone else, so I killed the bottle (with some help) before we even left for the second apartment.

I don't know who drove my car to the next apartment complex, but it sure wasn't me. As soon as I got out of the passenger seat, I realized I couldn't go into the apartment, because I could barely stand. I told my friends to go ahead, waving them on with a flick of my wrist, promising I would be along in a few minutes. Then I sat down on the ground with my back against the car, while everything else around me was spinning. After a few minutes (or maybe it was longer, who knows?), I was really struggling to remain upright, so I slumped forward against the left front tire, which was turned sharply to the side—because whoever drove my car to the party was apparently in such a hurry to park, they turned the wheel while getting out. Now I was hugging that tire like a pillow, fading in and out of consciousness. I remember people walking past me to go upstairs, and hearing them stop and say, “Oh my God, Brittney! Are you okay? What's wrong?” I kept saying, “I'm fine! Go on!” (Imagine me slurring my words and drawing out the word
fine
in one long syllable.) I also remember looking down at my brand-new black shirt and seeing a big dirty tread mark on the front.

And then I threw up.

When my friends realized I had never made it inside the apartment, they came back for me, and I told them to take me home right away. I don't really remember the car ride; the next scene in my mind is when I was stumbling through my front door, then going down in a heap on the floor. My roommate, Patrick—we all called him Stitch—had to carry me to the couch. I was burning up. He brought me water, and I drank as much as I could, but my body was rebelling against what I had put inside it. I was throwing up, then going through those other awful stages: fever, sweats, chills. At one point, I almost asked Stitch to take me to the hospital, that's how miserable I was feeling. I was having trouble putting thoughts together, and I wasn't even sure I could talk, because my body was using so much energy to counter the effects of the alcohol. I remember lying on that couch, desperate, and realizing I had made myself this sick. I had done this to myself. There was no one else to blame.

When I woke up the next morning, I was embarrassed. (I also had a pounding headache and my body felt like it had been trampled by bulls.) There were a lot of things out of my control—my mother's health, my father's relentless judgments, Kim's way of handling things—but I had lost sight of the fact that how I chose to deal with it all was still very much in my control. No matter what anyone else said to me, no matter how much it all hurt me at times, I didn't have to let it define me. Before I had even gotten up off that couch, I made a vow to stop running from the pain and to start channeling my energy into becoming as strong off the court as I was on it. Of course, it is often in our lowest moments when we make these promises to ourselves. What matters much more is the work we do every day to make the promises a reality and to learn from the struggle.

I wasn't exactly sure how these changes would look. I just knew I wanted to make them.

O
ur perfect season started with a loss. On March 29, 2011, my sophomore season ended one game shy of the Final Four, when we lost to Texas A&M in the NCAA regional final in Dallas (yes, the team coached by Gary Blair, who had recruited me harder than anyone). We had already beat the Aggies three times that season; in fact, we had won eight games in a row against them. We had their number. Or so we thought. We were playing at American Airlines Center, and more than eleven thousand fans showed up. The place was loud, electric, the kind of stage you want for a big game. Except we didn't show up. We came out flat and stayed flat. We couldn't hit a shot to save our lives. We turned the ball over 20 times. I even missed a dunk. Nothing was working. We lost by 12 points, but it felt like we got blown out.

And that's exactly what we needed. After that loss, we had a come-to-Jesus meeting, just us players. The coaches had said all the usual things: “You have to put in the work and get serious about what we're trying to accomplish here.” But we knew as players we needed to get closer on the court. We needed better chemistry. So we decided to spend more time bonding that summer. Workout sessions, pickup games—that's where it all started. We also asked our strength and conditioning coach to arrange an outing one afternoon. There's an outdoor adventure area near campus, and it has a ropes course, one of those group challenge activities that help develop trust and teamwork. Each of us had to climb to the top of a telephone pole, then jump off to grab a bar a few feet away. We went in pairs and wore safety harnesses attached to a rope held by the team. If you jumped and missed the bar, everybody steadied the rope to keep you hanging in the air, so you didn't fall to the ground. But even with the harness, it's scary as hell—not just for the jumper, but also for everyone holding the rope. I know I did not want to jump. No way. I didn't want to trust everybody, my life hanging in the balance.
Coming up on News at 11: Baylor center Brittney Griner fell and broke her head today. We have the shocking details!
But I did what I had to do. I was paired with Jordan Madden, another junior, and we both jumped and grabbed the bar. My long arms came in handy. Phew.

We also did a group exercise down by the marina, on the Brazos River, where I would often go kayaking. We had to build makeshift rafts out of whatever material was available—inner tubes, empty barrels, PVC pipes, rope, duct tape. Then we had to float around for a while on the river and make it back without sinking. We were split into two groups, and the other team's raft sunk, which gave us all a good laugh. It might sound obvious, but those activities reminded us of an important lesson: everybody on a team has a job to do. And every job, big or small, is tied to a larger mission. The key is learning how to share the burden and find the right balance. That summer, we came together as a team. We would work out hard in the weight room, then go hard again in pickup. Everybody was putting in the extra effort to get better.

For me, that effort wasn't just about basketball. I knew I needed to grow up off the court. As a sophomore, I scored 23 points a game and was a first-team All-American, but I made things a lot harder on myself with all the partying and worrying about things that were out of my control. So I told myself, going into junior year, I wanted to have my shit together. That meant staying in more often, drinking less, keeping a tighter circle. If I wasn't kicking back with a few friends at House 4106—the place I shared with my teammate and good friend Shanay Washington—you could probably find me at House 41, the big red house, chilling with the bros. I had met Julio Trejo at a baseball game the previous spring, through mutual friends. We struck up a conversation during the game, and he happened to mention his birthday was in a few days. So I sent him a picture of myself on his big day, with the message “Happy Birthday, Princess!” He thought it was funny, and we've been close friends ever since. Julio lived at House 41 in Aspen Heights, off campus, with Nash Ingram and two other guys, and we all clicked hard from the start. Julio and Nash were big fans of Baylor sports, but they were also really down-to-earth guys who let me be myself. We played video games—
Modern Warfare, Madden, Assassin's Creed
—listened to music, barbecued, rode our longboards, and just hung out. As soon as I got out of class or practice, I headed for House 41. Sometimes I crashed there. I guess you could say I was leaning on those guys for support, without even thinking about it. We were just there for each other every day, kind of like holding the ropes. I'm not saying we acted like adults all the time; we still did some stupid things. But I felt like I had more routine in my life off the court. I wasn't bouncing from one place to the next, one party to another party, or sitting around feeling angry at the world. Spending time at House 41 was a much better way to unwind and have fun than just following the crowd, getting wasted, and waking up with tire marks on my shirt.