Page 150 of The Locker Room

point/half court drills. Free throw line, shoot, retrieve the ball, run to the

half court, back to the three-point line, shoot, retrieve the ball, run to the

half court, shoot, retrieve the ball, run back to the half court, then back to

the free throw line, shoot… and so on. It was mindless, it was

mechanical, it was Emily Dickinson"s poetry, where the secrets of the

universe were encapsulated in body and motion, sweat and breath,

physicality and physics, and best of all, he could do it alone.

The Locker Room 129

He drilled for an hour, and it began to rain, and he continued. The

court became slippery, and his vision was blurred, and his eyes stung

with sweat and rain and maybe something else, but he was damned if

he"d stop. His foot settled into a steady, aching, swollen throb, and he

ignored it, because everything was just so pure out there with the ball in

his hands. It was so simple, so easy. Hands up, sight your shot, shoot, run

the play, score again. He could do it for hours.

He did it for two hours. Leo came out in a trench coat with an

umbrella and told him that his lips were blue, and he said “So the fuck

what!” Leo turned around and left.

He did it for three hours. He couldn"t see the basket in the dark,

and barely noticed when the all-purpose light snapped on overhead. His

muscles trembled and his knees ached, and his foot was a bloody ring of

fire, but every step had the whole of his heart in it, and every shot had his

every concentration, and every run back was the run of a man pursued by

a legion, at least, of hell"s nastiest demons, the ones calling him a faggot,

and telling him that what he"d had in his life for the least twelve years

hadn"t been real, not real at all.

He was in his fourth hour when Leo came out again, trench coat

collecting new water droplets on its matte gray water-repellent exterior,

matching umbrella held close to his chest because the wind had picked

up. He was shouting something, but Xander didn"t want to hear it, so he