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You spend your whole life being called a faggot professionally, of course you’re gonna find Jesus — at least that's what Hayden figures.
“He’s the only guy who can get away with that long hair, you gotta give him credit," he jokes whenever Mitty gives him a hard time about his Sunday mornings. The truth is that Sundays close and personal with his Savior get him through.
Oh, he's lucky; who isn't lucky, to play a game for a living? But the game is a lie. Beneath, the killing instinct. Men have fought each other to the death for less since they first woke blind and crawling on the green earth. Tamed and padded, they still knock each other's teeth out, slash ankles and wrists. Hayden's no scholar, but his eyes work fine. He knows war when he sees it.
And men are made for war, no? All those fire and brimstone guys won't let you forget it. "For Christ," they say, "for Christ, we strike out! For Christ, we fight!"
But the reason Hayden likes Grace Crossing, the church where he and Jacki take their kids, is that their Jesus is a quiet man. A thick peace envelopes Hayden whenever Pastor Rob and his wife Sister Christi get up on stage, waving their hands toward G·d and inviting His Holy Presence. Like Jesus Himself has blanketed Hayden in some kind of weighted, impossible softness — like if Hayden were a fag, which he's not, thank you, just look at his hot wife and his four kids for plenty of proof, would it be so impossibly bad?
Hayden's no D-man thug (he's not Price), but in the ephemeral ease of Jesus's love, Hayden thinks he could — rest — cry, even; like he could finally let loose the tears that backed up red and could not fall when Jacki had been rushed into the hospital with toxemia during her last pregnancy. The nurses sent Arthur directly from delivery to the NICU without Hayden so much as touching his fragile skin or hearing him breathe or checking his little heartbeats. Instead he was forced to look at him inside his incubator from the observation window, like some alien, some stranger. The tears had threatened, of course. Hayden had wanted them. Show them what they've done to me! he thought, beating against the inside of his own skull. But the tears could not fall, too well-trained. Hayden is not, after all, a faggot.
But then —
"I'm, um," says your best friend, one night after dinner at your house with your wife and your kids, the guy you share a room with on road trips whenever the League decides to ignore your fucking contract, whose ass and dick you've flicked with a towel a million times. Your wife is filling the dishwasher in the kitchen. Your kids are laughing in the living room.
"What? A virgin? A loser? Tell me something I don't know."
"No, shut up. I'm being serious."
"Ooooh," you say, making spooky fingers, because you have no idea what's about to hit you.
"I'm gay," Shane says.
"Okay," you say, thinking that you'll have to talk about it with Jacki later, Jesus, stay with me, Jesus. But it's Shane, right? So —
"And I'm, like, in a relationship."
"Fuck," Hayden hears himself say, because it really shoves the gay thing out of the realm of the hypothetical and into the realm of assfucking, which is a little farther than he was ready for it to go. But it's Shane; Hayden has thrown himself onto men's fists for Shane; Hayden has shed the blood of other men for Shane; Hayden has torn not only his own body but the shockingly frail bodies of others for the bonds of men. "Okay. Um, that's cool, dude."
"Right," says Shane, uncertainly. He rubs his palms on his thighs, quickly, a telltale sign that there's more to come.
But what more could there be? Jesus, thinks Hayden again, half-prayer, half-oath. "And he's, like, a nice guy? To you?"
Shane's mouth juts up in a little half-crooked smile. "To me. Yeah."
"Okay," you say, already writing the e-mail to Pastor Rob, "good, yeah. Good!"
"I don't know how much you'll like him, though."
"Why not?" you say, indignant already, although you're not sure — how much you'll like a real fag.
"His name's Ilya," says Shane, and the whole thing comes tumbling into clarity.
For a second, Hayden fears himself. It happens only rarely. The tumble of blood in his ears. The cordon of muscle in his arms straining against the corralling flesh.
"Right," Hayden manages, clenching his hands around the arms of his dining room chair.
"He's not that bad," says Shane.
"If you say so," says Hayden, faintly.
Shane leaves soon afterwards. Jacki puts the kids to bed herself, no one waiting for a bedtime story from Daddy. She takes one look at Hayden and says, "You need to fix yourself before you come upstairs."
Hayden nods, tightly. He knows, he knows.
Hayden thinks desperately, Please, Jesus. Please, help me. Please, quiet my rage. But without the sermon, the church, the protective layer of thousands of connections to the Lord, the thick blanket of peace does not come.
The game is a lie. Here beneath is the truth: you know what happens to faggots.