Page 106 of The Locker Room

year-old man. Every coach they"d ever had would scream at them about

being whining little girls, even female athletes heard that, but Wallick?

His gold standard for the puling fuck-up was the “bitching little faggot.”

When Xander dislocated his knee in that first season with Coach

Wallick, he"d come back three weeks early, for fear of being a “bitchy

little faggot.” When Chris had broken his nose that year, he"d let the

court doc bandage his face, stop the bleeding, and had gone out on the

court and run his heart out, just so he didn"t have to hear those words.

“Whatsa matter, boys? You spend all night giving it to each other

up the ass? You wanna play better? Get a woman, fuck her hard, and

stop being a bitchy little faggot!”

It was hyperbole, sports talk, men-being-men, right? Except when

you had a secret the size of Chris and Xander"s, every repetition of the

word “faggot,” “bitch,” “man-gash,” “fuck-twunt,” “queer”—God, the

list went on and on and on and on—and it hurt worse, ripped worse,

scoured their skin with barbs worse each time they heard it. What used to

be just talk, just locker-room banter, just the same dumb bullshit they"d

heard all their lives—

Suddenly every word made them cringe.

It was that year, their second year, after Xander had won NBA

Rookie of the Year, after Chris had led the league in assists and free

throws, when everything should have been golden,thatyear, that Chris

started drinking.

It had beenthatyear when the third game of the month had started

to mean something horrible, had become some sort of festering black

mark of their own secret shame.

Because Coach noticed the two of them. He"d marked them—hell,

the whole media had marked them. They were the happiness twins,

right? They were the dynamic duo, Super-Xan and Bible Boy (Christian,

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