`Time to hit the road!' Mickey said to himself.
It had been over a week since the accident and he felt like he was almost back to 100 percent. In spite of the doctor's orders, he had started attending classes just a couple days later and he now felt like it was time to resume his running and gym routine. Even Drew was skeptical, but Mickey claimed it was his visits and the regular physical therapy sessions that helped to accelerate his recovery.
One of his favorite jogging routes was the three mile round trip out to the off-campus athletic facilities. The journey was a mix of city and suburban blocks with a long stretch of open playing fields once he got out to the stadium area. The route would be too slick and treacherous in the winter, so he really wanted to take advantage of the great fall running weather as much as possible.
As he turned the corner around the stadium parking lot he came within range of the ball fields, where it looked like a big group was having some kind of event. There were lots of people and cars and smoke from barbecue grills, along with what looked like folding tables full of food and gleaming silver kegs. There was even a dog chasing a Frisbee, almost a classic picnic tableau, he thought. Mickey liked to run by these crowds if for no other reason than to check out the guys, so he slightly extended his loop through the field to get a better view.
As he passed by the first clumps of people milling around eating, he thought he heard someone call his name and quickly slowed down. Scanning the crowd, it appeared like one solid mass of bodies and so he couldn't identify anyone in particular. Maybe he had just mistaken a shout that was meant for someone else.
But just as he was about to speed up again he saw a hand waving near the dog.
It was Drew.
"Hey Mickey!"
"Mickey!" he called out again. Even though Drew was at the edge of the group, it looked a big chunk of the crowd was gathered around him. Mickey waved back and jogged over towards them, his pace gradually slowing until he came to a complete stop near Drew and the dog.
"What are you doing out here?" Drew asked.
The dog that was chasing the Frisbee was now hugging his side. And since Drew, like everyone else, was wearing shorts, Daisy's position as a decoy gave Mickey the chance to check out Drew's legs. Like the arms, they had a dense covering of blond fur but not enough to hide the thick muscles underneath. It was a way better view than he was prepared for and it took some real effort to pull his eyeballs back to Daisy and then to everyone's faces.
"Just on a ... run," Mickey replied, trying to catch his breath, his hands now resting on his hips. He himself was wearing a light, short sleeved t-shirt and running shorts. The loose shirt draped over his chest muscles, accentuating their shape on his thin frame below.
"Is anything wrong? Can you breathe all right?" Drew asked. He moved his hand as if he was going to touch his shoulder, but then held back.
"Oh yeah... I'm fine. I usually try to pick up the pace a bit here, so I get a little winded," he said, using his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow as he sucked in deep breaths. "So what... are you all doing out here today?"
"Oh, these guys do this every year, kind of a kick-off to the fall basketball season. I'd almost forgotten about it until I got an email reminder last night. They like to think of it as a fall basketball cleansing ritual, but it's really just an excuse to have a party and drink beer."
"Wow, sounds like fun," Mickey said, smiling, his breathing gradually slowing down.
It was kind of a strange feeling, but for a moment he felt like Drew had checked out his body, the blue eyes subtlety looking him up and down. Either he was checking him out (which Mickey dismissed out-of-hand as crazy and wishful thinking) or maybe his zipper was down. But he was wearing running shorts, so it couldn't have been that, he thought.
Mickey didn't mind looking at least a little sexy on these runs. They were exhilarating, and it did make him feel kind of virile and often very horny. And he knew that his chest muscles cast a clear outline, especially with the very thin cotton material of the shirt. But in front of all these straight guys it didn't seem like the best place to show off, even a little bit.
On top of that, he found himself doing his usual sideways turns to reduce the exposure of his scars to the crowd. As welcoming as Drew was, rowdy, drunk jocks made him especially nervous, and he decided that he wouldn't stay any longer than he had to.
Drew introduced him to a couple of friends who were standing close by, people who Mickey didn't know but a few whose names he recognized as likely scions of great wealth, like Drew himself. He did seem to vaguely recognize one guy in the crowd. Maybe from the law school, he thought, but he couldn't be sure.
"And you must be Daisy!" Mickey proclaimed, crouching down and smiling at the dog.
"You remembered!" Drew said, the pleasure clear in his voice. "She..."
Before Drew could continue, one of the guys back in the crowd piped up, "Yes, that's Daisy; the world's most antisocial dog. Don't expect a friendly canine greeting," he announced.
"She's not antisocial, Dave," he responded with a mix of amusement and irritation. "She just has high standards," Drew continued, looking over his shoulder and addressing the rest of the crowd rather than Dave himself.
"No one meets her standard, except for you, Drew, and that's only because you feed her," Dave responded, to laughs from the rest of them as he crudely pushed through the crowd toward Drew and Daisy. He was a hulk of a guy, likely a football player, and Mickey could smell the alcohol on the guy's breath even before he approached.
"She won't let us pet her and she won't get the Frisbee for us, either. She acts like we don't exist. The least that she could do is just bark at us," he continued, to more laughs.
Mickey noticed that Daisy looked intently at Drew, then looked at Mickey himself, than looked back at Drew again. Mickey smiled when she returned the glance again. Then he held out his fingers.
"Here Daisy," he said to her softly.
"Don't hold your breath," one of them called out, to more laughs.
At first, she looked up at Drew again, who gave just the slightest nod of his head.
Slowly, she approached. Mickey put his open hand down in front of himself and just left it there, letting her decide what kind of interaction to have. She sniffed the air around him, then sniffed his leg, his crotch and finally his hand.
"Wow! See!" Drew exclaimed. "She doesn't hate people. It's just certain people, that's all," he exclaimed before giving a good stiff rub to Daisy's back. "I know that she doesn't like the smell of cheap booze or bad cologne, either."
"You don't have peanut butter smeared on your hands, do you?" One of the guys asked, his playful tone masking a suspicion of some kind of conspiracy.
Mickey held up both palms to the crowd. "Clean!" he called out.
"Let's try this," Drew said as he reached down to the ground and picked up a Frisbee. "See if she'll go for it."
"But I want to quit while I'm ahead!" Mickey protested.
"Yeah, that's the real test," Dave yelled out. "I think she even sniffed me once, but that was as far as I got," he continued.
"Oh that's the problem!" another guy called out, "she got one whiff and that was all she could take!"
"Very funny," Dave responded, not particularly amused when he himself was the object of derision. "So let's see if this attention is really authentic."
Mickey looked at Drew.
"Go ahead," he responded. "I think she likes you. I really do. Give it a try."
"Well... OK. Here goes..."
He took the Frisbee from Drew and waved it at Daisy, who followed it intensely with her eyes. The moment looked right, so he stepped back, twisted his body around like a discus thrower and flung the Frisbee as far across the field as he could
"Go, Daisy! Get it!" he yelled! It soared into the air, almost as high as Drew was able to pitch it. In an instant she took off after it.
But as soon as he thought that everyone else was focused on the flying Frisbee and Daisy's pursuit, Mickey wrapped his arms around his waist and quietly moaned to himself.
"Are you OK? That didn't sound good," Drew said as he approached. He was the only one whose eyes weren't locked on the Frisbee's trajectory.
Mickey slowly rocked himself back and forth. "mmm... no worries... I should have stretched a bit more before I did that. I guess I'm not quite limber enough yet, and Frisbee tossing can be ...dangerous," he joked, trying to get a smile from Drew.
"Damn! I shouldn't have asked you to do that, I'm sorry. You could really pull something out whack or hurt yourself again."
"Really, I'm OK," Mickey replied. "I'm getting much better, honest! A couple days ago that would have probably put me in the Intensive Care Unit. It's sore, but it's really not so bad."
"You're sure?" Drew asked, the skepticism clear in his voice as he reached out his arm in case Mickey stumbled.
"I'm sure," he replied, giving the outstretched arm a fist bump instead. He noticed that Drew seemed like he was going to reach out again towards his shoulder but was suddenly distracted by a panting Daisy dropping the Frisbee in between them.
"Well, someone else on this earth actually does exist for her," one of the guys commented as they all crowded around.
"What else can I say?" Drew responded as he rubbed Daisy's head and pulled out a treat.
After another treat for Daisy and a few more minutes of bantering, Mickey decided he should get back to his run. In spite of Drew's undeniably welcoming words, he still felt out of place with the group. For the most part the guys there seemed like either stereotypical college jocks or the kind of people who populate the end zones at professional football games. It must have been the entire cohort of them at the Ivy League school, as it definitely wasn't the type of person that he usually ran into, even amongst the undergrads. With a couple exceptions, none of them seemed anything like Drew, at least the Drew that he knew.
"Are you sure that you're feeling better?" Drew asked as Mickey started bouncing on the balls of his feet to get warmed up again.
"Much better. I don't think that I can lift much at the gym or play basketball quite yet, but the legs are A-OK, so I can avoid feeling like a slug. Now I just have to stay away from Frisbees."
"Well, the invitation to play with us is still on the table," Drew said as he smiled at the joke. "I'll email you the schedule. I hope you can make it."
"OK, that sounds good," Mickey said as he started stepping backwards, readying himself to return to his course. "Let me know the details and we'll figure things out. It won't be long, maybe just another week or two, and I think I'll be able to join you."
"I won't push too hard, but we'll be ready when you are," Drew replied.
"By the way," he continued, his voice lowered so as to be only audible to Mickey. "Text me when you get back home, OK? Just so that I can make sure that you didn't get hit by a bus."
"Will do," Mickey responded. He suddenly felt very warm all over his body and was more anxious than ever to get going.
"By the way, glad to meet you guys," Mickey called out to the crowd as he started jogging away. A few of them gave him waves, but most of them just gave a brief, `yup' and returned to their conversations.
After waving a final goodbye to Mickey, Drew picked up a beer and returned to the crowd, most of whom were now milling around the barbecue pit. He could hear them talking very softly, in almost conspiratorial tones and was curious about what the big secret was.
"Hey Drew, who is that guy? Is he the teaching assistant or whatever that got banged up in that scuffle with the anarchists?" Most of this crowd, especially the guys, were very conservative, and any protester to them was an anarchist. This one time the title just happened to fit.
"Yeah, he was the one. He's a nice guy and we've gotten to be friends since then. You know, he's a law student, pretty smart, too."
"I know who he is, or of him. He was at Middlefield the year before me," A guy called out, mentioning one of the top boarding schools in the country, an ancient institution that saw itself as the breeding ground for America's presumptive ruling class.
"I think that he was one of those smart scholarship kids brought in to embarrass the legacies," he added.
"Nothing wrong with that, Andrew," Drew replied, addressing his former teammate from previous basketball seasons. "Sounds like they knew what they were doing there when they picked a kid like him." Contrary to the meritocratic system that he praised for finding Mickey, it was a running joke that a lot of his friends were proud of using their family's influence to get into the University. And it was even more ironic that, in his own case, Drew had accomplishments both inside and outside of the classroom that would make an `admit' decision easy in no matter what his pedigree.
"Did you know that he's gay?" Andrew asked.
Drew paused for a moment as a slight murmur came from the crowd. "Um... no," he answered. He looked back at Andy for a second, then turned away again to stare down at Daisy. It was a moment of confusion and distraction that they rarely saw from him.
"Ummm... does it matter?" he asked, continuing to look at Daisy.
"He's just sayin'," Dave, called out, his bravado leveraged by beers now too numerous to count, especially this early in the day. "Well, for what it's worth, I wouldn't have guessed it. He's not one of those obviously faggy types."
"Just be careful he doesn't try to recruit you," another said.
Dave pushed himself closer to Drew. "Yeah, it would be quite a scandal with your family. It would be all over your Mom's..."
"Stepmom," Drew shot back.
"Well...'Stepmom's'. It would be all over your `Stepmom's' front pages, in every one of her rags, not to mention the TV network. You all could hide that attack on you by the crazy guy, but she couldn't hide that one. Nope. Nobody could. A gay Patterson?" he asked himself, then started laughing hysterically. "Nosiree!"
"Anyway, I wouldn't worry about being seduced. With his um... looks... I don't think that guy is going to be seducing anyone, boy or girl."
A few of them laughed or chuckled at the joke, but the now stony look on Drew's face seemed to silence the rest. He put his beer down on the closest wooden table where it made a conspicuous `thud.'
"I don't know how he got that way," Drew replied, "But I doubt that he chose it." If anything, it appeared that he was more shaken over the comments about Mickey's face than about him being gay.
Into the silence, one of the girls, like Dave lubricated with beer, burbled up, "I don't know about him being so unattractive," she added. "He did have a nice body underneath that shirt, I could sure tell that," she exclaimed, running her tongue salaciously around her lips. "If you can get around the face, he's got a lot to offer. And he is a law student, so the EP is very high."
"EP?" Dave asked.
"Earning Potential," she replied. "like, Cha-ching!. Pot of Gold! The Jackpot!" she said as she stumbled into Drew, who gently pushed her off and helped to get her steady again.
"Oh, I get it. But that means he will need to get a real job and work for it," Dave responded. "We just have to call the officers of our trust fund," he proclaimed as he clinked his thick glass beer mug with another guy next to him, celebrating their shared circumstances.
"Well, not all of us," another guy responded.
"Well, that means that you'll just have to marry it, too," Dave retorted before taking a final swig of beer and tossing the mug onto a nearby rock where it shattered into a million pieces.
"Oops,' he said as his way of apologizing before letting out a long, loud belch.
Dew rolled his eyes as he looks over at the glass shards strewn over the ground. "Thanks for that contribution, Dave. Now can someone help me go clean up this mess? Anyone but you," he said, looking back at the big lineman as Dave belched one more time. "I don't want Daisy or a little kid stepping into that."
"Let me get some stuff to clean that up and I'll join you," Andrew said as he went to the table and scoured around for bags to put the glass into.
"We'll stay here and guard the rest of the beers," one of the guys called out as the rest of them headed back to the tap.
As the two of them were down on their knees picking up the pieces, Andrew turned to Drew. "Hey, I didn't mean to bring that thing up about that Mickey guy like that. I kind of..."
"You thought that it was weird that a Patterson would be seen with a ... gay person?" Drew replied, not looking at his co-cleaner as he carefully began to drop the largest pieces into an empty potato chip bag.
Andrew looked away, shuffled his knees a bit, and then looked back at Drew. "To be honest, Drew, yes, I did. There's a great irony there that's difficult to ignore. So it was the first thing that popped into my head. And in this crowd, I knew that it would get a laugh, or at least a rise," he said, then continued, "but that was really stupid of me. He's your friend and I'm sorry that I said that or even brought it up."
Drew mumbled, "no worries," and just kept picking up pieces, clearly not yet happy.
"Look, I know he's a lot more than just gay, if that means anything," Andrew protested, now acutely aware of Drew's thoughts. "When you said that you invited him to play b-ball with us, I have to tell you that he's actually pretty good, at least for our league and our team. He'll do well. And you're right, too. He's really smart. He even got the highest academic award at his graduation."
"You know, he did college in three years," Drew replied, a sense of pride in his voice unmistakable.
"So he really is a second year student in the law school then, right?" Drew asked.
"Yeah, why do you ask?"
"Well, that explains something. I wasn't super sure that was him only because you introduced him as being a second year law student. The Mickey I knew of would have been first year. But in terms of his smarts it's not a surprise."
"Were you in class with him? Did you know him at school?" Drew asked.
"Like I said, not really. He had such a high academic reputation it was hard to not know of him and I have to admit that I was even kind of jealous. My Dad had gone to Middlefield, and so did his Dad, not to mention numerous aunts and uncles. But then this guy comes in, definitely from the `other side of the tracks,' as they say. Public school kid from Ohio, I'll bet it was his first time out of the state. I mean, I even heard that he was one of those kids who was so poor that the school had to help buy his wardrobe, you know, the jackets, ties all that stuff that we had to wear to class. Anyway, this guy comes out of nowhere and he's like an academic superstar. I felt at times a bit like, sort of bred-out hothouse WASP compared to his hybrid vigor," he added.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not a humble person, I do really think I'm a star, too," Andrew said, playfully sarcastic about himself. "And I didn't do so badly, either. But Mickey was at the top."
Drew smiled back at him, his mood starting to warm up. "I'm sure you did well Andrew. After all, you did get into this school. Somehow."
"Thanks, Drew," rolling his eyes but smiling back. "Well, anyway, like I was saying, here comes this guy from the boondocks with no pedigree or fancy training whatsoever. But in the classroom he could not just compete with these rich kids, he could blow away most of them. And the fact that he could even hold a basketball..."
"You were hoping that he'd be a big si..."
Andrew thought Drew was going to say `sissy," as he paused.
"...klutz.'" Drew said instead.
"Yeah, klutz. I was hoping he'd be a klutz," Andrew replied. "If he was also a great athlete it would have been too cruel. Fortunately, though he really is pretty good on the court, he's no Michael Jordan," he said, then continued. "And regarding his scars. To be honest, his face never entered into any of this. I don't know what happened to him, but whatever it was it happened before Middlefield."
Drew stopped picking up glass and looked at Andrew. "Did people pick on him because of it?"
"I don't remember any big confrontations or events myself. But that doesn't mean that he didn't have any problems. And to be honest, with kids being kids, I can't imagine that absolutely nothing happened in his four years there."
Drew looked down at his bag, then started again to pick up pieces. "How did you know that he was gay?" he asked.
Andrew was somewhat surprised about the abruptness of the question. It sounded like one of those comments that someone was anxious to ask but was looking for the right moment.
"It wasn't that big of a school, so you kind of know those things, at least if someone was open about it. Come to think of it, I think he may have gone to the prom with a guy in my house. Anyway, I guess that it was just another one of those characteristics I remembered in context with him seeming so perfect. Phew,' I could tell myself. At least I'm not like that, I'm not gay.' Kind of stupid, I know, but that's what I had thought back then."
"No worries Andrew," he responded, this time sounding a lot more sincere. "I appreciate your being honest with me."
"You just wish I wasn't such a dickhead today, though, right?"
Drew just laughed. "Maybe. But at least you know when you're one. I usually don't figure it out until it's too late."
They both laughed together as they used their bare hands to carefully sweep up the last fragments. Andrew mentioned that it might be better if they had a broom or even washed down the spot, just to make sure that everything was collected. But at a certain point he realized that Drew wasn't listening,
"Um... Earth to Drew. Are you there?' Andrew asked, his head cocked sideways to get a better look at Drew's face.
Shaking his head, he turned back to Andrew. "No... sorry. I didn't mean to sound like I wasn't listening. I was just thinking, that's all," he said.
It was a very strange encounter for Andrew. Not that he had ever heard Drew say anything at all about gays in the years that he had known him, but part of his family's reputation, especially his stepmom, was earned through financing blatantly homophobic political candidates who would spread their social and economic agenda. Andrew wasn't exactly trying to suck up to him with his first comments about Mickey, but the reaction was not what he had expected.
Continuing to look at Andrew but at the same time reaching down to seal up his bag after getting all the pieces he could, Drew said, "Anyway, I appreciate that you took the time to talk to me about this. You've actually painted a pretty good picture of him, at least I think it's a good picture. I hope the rest of the guys give him a chance. I think he'll make great addition to our team, besides just being a good guy."
"Well, as far as basketball goes, I think that you're right. He'll do great. But as far as a lot of these guys warming to him. I don't know, Drew. You saw some of the reactions."
"I'm hoping that was the alcohol talking," he replied.
"I think it was alcohol talking, too," Andrew responded. "But I don't think that alcohol makes people lie."
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