by Nick Gallup

The Home-Coming Football Game.  

It was the 1950’s, and I was a junior at Union High School in Fairfield, California. Although I was six feet tall, I only weighed 150 pounds. I’d gone out for the football team, even though wrestling was my preferred sport. More on that to follow.  

Football in the 50’s was all about size if you were a lineman and speed if you were a back. The only assets I had were as a result of my wrestling experience. I was adept at evading takedowns, and I knew how to sweep an opponent off his feet quickly and efficiently.  

So, Coach Beyers made me a 150-pound defensive end, which was a surprisingly wise decision, as it made maximum use of my shallow talent pool. Football teams in the day ran the ball 99% of the time, and they especially liked end sweeps. These plays utilized just about every player on the team and were grimly referred to as “Student Body Left” and “Student Body Right” endeavors. 

My heart still pounds as I recall 200-pound linemen stampeding towards me. Survival instinct kicked in, and I was usually able to finesse my way through the wave and take down the runner. Opposing teams tended to lay off me after a half-dozen or so failed attempts, and I could then resort to watchful waiting.  

Fine with me. I enjoyed watching a good football game from my defensive end seat. 

Kenny Myers was our RB and one of the best players in the state. He weighed 180 pounds and was like a speeding bullet when he hit the line. And, if they didn’t stop him there, he was gone. No one could catch him.  

We were playing our homecoming game against a team we always beat. Surprise, though, the team we always beat was much improved and it looked as if they were going to pull off a very unwelcome upset. 

High school teams couldn’t kick extra points in those days and forget field goals. The damned game was tied 18 to18 and there was less than a minute left. They were at our 10-yard line and on the cusp of scoring the winning touchdown. Our fans sensed defeat and had already gone into mourning. Forget about encouragement; they were ready to eviscerate us.  

Then a strange thing happened. One of the running backs on the opposing team came out of the huddle and lined up about five yards outside of me. I suspected he was going to do a crackback block on me, so I moved out nose-to-nose with him. 

The ball was snapped, and the RB, instead of trying to block me, dropped back five yards. His QB, who had passed little that night, now rifled a bullet to him. I stepped in front of it. Not being much of a receiver, it slipped through my hands and hit me in the chest. The ball bounced in the air, and the RB and I fought for it. I outjumped him and tipped the ball towards their goal line. I managed to catch it and tried to run, but he had grabbed one of my legs. I pulled a wrestling move on him and shook myself loose. But I had lost time and valuable ground. 

The only thing between me and their goal line and victory was 85 yards of grass.  

I looked to my left and could see bodies surging towards me. I was reasonably quick, but after 40 yards I tended to slow way down.  By the time I got to the 50, I knew I was in trouble. Instinct and Satchel Paige told me not to look behind me. They might be gaining on you! Focus. Hold on to the ball and just keep pumping legs. Don’t panic.  

Good advice. But I needed speed, not advice. 

I passed the 50-yard line, and one of their faster players, instead of waiting for ten more yards when he could have easily brought me down, panicked and dove for me. He got a hand under my foot and caused me to stumble. Somehow, I managed to stay up, but again I had lost valuable ground to my pursuers. I groaned when I looked back. They were only feet away from me.  

I looked further to my left. There, ten yards behind me and ambling along at cruising speed, instead of the warp speed he was capable of, was Kenny Myers, just taking it all in. It never occurred to him that he could’ve used his speed to get in among my pursuers and perhaps create a little havoc, maybe even a block or two, or at least just get in front of them and slow them down. No, he was just a damned observer. A desperate plan occurred to me. 

“Kenny,” I yelled. “Lateral.” 

He told me later he had heard and understood. 

I had to throw the perfect lateral, leading him by a yard or two. I also had to throw the ball behind me, or it wouldn’t be a legal lateral. All of this flashed before me in drowning-man syndrome. A split second before my pursuers caught me, I threw the lateral. On a scale of one to ten, if ten is a perfect spiral, my lateral pass was a wobbly three or four. As far as loft and timing and distance, though, it was a ten. Kenny had to change his course but little to run under the ball at full speed. 

He caught it at the 50-yard line and flashed towards the goal line. 

Meanwhile a tsunami came crashing down upon me. 

I survived and disentangled myself from the bodies just in time to see my teammates carrying Kenny Myers around on their shoulders.  

The Home-Coming Dance.  

The home-coming dance was that night. As I took my after-game shower, I fantasized about the hero’s welcome I would receive at the dance. First, people would praise me for recognizing the sneaky pass play our opponent had tried to pull on us; second, they would be pounding me on the back for making the heads-up interception; and third, they would be ecstatic at the skillful way I threw a lateral to Kenny Myers to win the game.  

Instead… 

…Instead, everyone laughed at me when I showed up at the dance. 

Here’s a sampling of comments. 

“Never saw anyone look as scared as you.”  

“You looked like a deer caught in the headlights.”  

“You couldn’t get rid of that ball fast enough.”  

“Wonder you didn’t throw it to someone in the stands.”  

“You had a ten-yard lead on them, and they caught you by the time you got to the 50.”  

Each comment was followed by howls of laughter. 

The comments hurt, but when they all started saying it was a good thing Kenny Myers had the heads-up to yell for me to lateral to him, I bristled. I strongly suggested it’d been I who called for the lateral and then fed it to him seconds before the tsunami made landfall.  

All to no avail. 

Samplings of additional comments received.  

“You just makin’ excuses, Eddie.”  

“Why don’t you admit you were scared to death?”  

“Thank God Kenny was there to save your ass.”  

“Kenny won the game for us.” 

And finally, “They ought to build a statue to Kenny Myers.” 

If they did, I swore I’d build a bird feeder next to it and lace the feed with laxatives. 

As bad as all that was, here’s the ironic part. The only person who had a kind word for me was Lizzie, and she was Kenny’s date for the dance that night. She should’ve been mine. I’d asked her to go to the dance with me at the start of the school year.  

“It’s too early to decide, Eddie. Ask me in November,” she’d replied. 

I asked her the first day of November.  

“I already told Kenny I’d go with him.” 

And here’s the thing. Kenny Myers couldn’t dance. Lizzie loved to dance, and she dragged me on the dance floor nearly every dance that night. When someone would make some smart-ass remark about my athletic prowess that day, though, I have to admit she rose to my defense. 

“Eddie won that game today, not Kenny,” she firmly announced. 

Full disclosure. I’d been in love with Lizzie since the ninth grade. 

The Ninth Grade. 

Union was a very progressive high school for the 1950’s. For example, it had one of the first Junior ROTC’s, culinary classes, and what they called a culture program. The latter taught us how not to eat like pigs, how to play bridge and chess, and even the basics of golf, or at least how to hit balls on our football field. They couldn’t quite afford to install a golf course for us. The school administrators even believed that every student should know the basics of ballroom dancing. They not only wanted us to be high school graduates but young ladies and gentlemen.  

I was introduced to ballroom dancing in my first days as a ninth grader. I was tall even then, and the first thing they did was group us by height. A tall brunet approached me and whirled me around until we were back-to-back. She placed a hand on top of my head and then hers.  

“Good,” she said in a relieved voice. “You’re taller than me. You’ll be my partner.” 

Mrs. Booker was an English teacher who also doubled as our ballroom dancing instructor. School legend had it that she’d once been a Broadway showgirl. Although she was in her forties, she was still slim and athletic looking, blonde and pretty.  

I noticed she’d been deciding who would be couples and who would not. Nor did she particularly care if the couples objected. “Mrs. Booker may have something to say about that,” I cautioned. 

She confidently waved the thought away. “I’ll handle it. What’s your name?” 

“Eddie. What’s yours?” 

“Lizzie,” she answered and gave me a quick onceover.  “You’re kind of cute, Eddie.” 

Which, to be honest, was not an inaccurate way of putting it. I was “kind of cute”, just not cute enough to make the cut for handsome. I had nice eyes and teeth and a ready smile, unless you hurt my feelings, and I had escaped the ravages of acne. My mother said I reminded her of Robert Wagner. My dad said I looked like his dad, God forbid. 

“You’re kind of beautiful, Lizzie,” I quickly countered. 

She smiled, and she had a knock-out smile. “Kind of beautiful” was a classic understatement in her case. She was all-the-way beautiful. She wasn’t Spanish or Portuguese, but she had that Iberian Peninsula look, raven-black hair and large brown eyes. I loved it.   

Mrs. Booker showed up and grabbed my arm. “I’ve got just the girl for you over here. “  

Lizzie pulled me back. 

Mrs. Booker looked at her questioningly. 

“We’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” Lizzie explained. “We dance together all the time. We’re not very good, but we’re used to dancing together.” 

“So?” 

“So, we could be your demonstration couple.” 

Somehow Lizzie knew the way things worked and that a demonstration couple would be needed. She had surveyed the boys available in her group and decided I was to be her partner. She was prepared to if not fight for me, then at least present a credible reason as to why we should be the demonstration couple. Boyfriend and girlfriend made as much sense as any argument I could think of. 

Mrs. Booker evidently agreed. “Okay, what are your names? 

“Eddie and Lizzie.” 

“Okay, Lizzie, you two stand by the table.” 

Lizzie grabbed my hand and led me to the table. “She’s going to start with the waltz, Eddie. It’s easy. Here I’ll show you.” She pulled me towards her. “Not that close, Romeo,” she chided. “About a foot apart. Put your right hand on my back and then take one step forward with your left foot. Now bring your right foot forward to where your feet are together. Now right foot to the side one step. Now bring your left foot alongside the right foot. Got it?” 

“So far.”  

“Now we reverse it. Right foot back, then left foot back, then left foot to the left and right foot over to square it up. Then do the whole thing over again.  Now let’s try it without pausing. Ready?” 

I nodded and executed the steps perfectly. 

She looked at me suspiciously. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” 

“It’s not exactly rocket science.”
 
Mrs. Booker was marrying off more couples. We still had a few moments. 

“Let’s try it again,” I requested. If dancing meant that I got to hold beautiful girls in my arms, I was going to be a dancer. The hell with wrestling, which I had been introduced to a few years earlier. 

“I’ll hum a waltz,” she offered. 

Her humming help, as for the first time in my life I realized the steps were designed to accommodate the music. Duh. We did a couple of turns. I did the second one very well, and I saw her long-lashed brown eyes light up. Not necessarily for me, but at the pleasure dancing gave her. Amazingly it did the same for me.  

She noticed my look. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” 

“Only when I’m dancing with my girlfriend.” 

We separated. Lizzie was blushing. Blushing, if nothing else, meant she was having some secret thoughts. I couldn’t help but wonder what they were. I hoped they were about me. 

We quickly became Mrs. Booker’s favorite couple. Maybe she was just laying it on thick to entice me, but she raved about how quickly I was picking up the various dances. At the end of the school year, she held a competition for the entire school, all classes. As freshmen, Lizzie and I were in the top three of every dance, the waltz, the quick step, swing, tango, and the rhumba. We won the waltz. Mrs. Booker teared up. She said she had never seen such an elegant young couple. 

 “I can see how much you two like each other when you waltz,” she complimented, although she did deliver one little critique. “Eddie, you’ve got to quit smiling at Lizzie the way you do when you waltz with her. The waltz is very Victorian, and young men didn’t smile at young ladies that way in those days.” 

  Lizzie blushed again.  

We won everything when we were sophomores. We were 15 then and Lizzie had transitioned from a beautiful young girl to a beautiful young woman. The tango is the sexiest of all dances, and Mrs. Booker had Lizzie dressed in a black slit skirt and fishnet stockings and high heels. Her hair was slicked back into a shiny, black bun. She was one hot-salsa chica. I had on what was supposed to be male-sexy clothes, but I didn’t have much of a body to show off. 

“Not to worry, Eddie,” Mrs. Booker said to console me. “The man is the matador. He is aloof and disdainful, almost murderous, for the woman is the bull, and he is about to slay her. She’s nothing to him. Perhaps she’s trying to tempt him into letting her live. I don’t know. Whoever invented the dance didn’t leave any operating instructions,” she laughed. 

“You’re asking the impossible, ma’am.” 

“Impossible. What do you mean, Eddie? You’re a very good dancer.”  

I swung Lizzie around where we could both admire her. 

“Look at how beautiful she is. How could anyone be aloof and disdainful of her?” 

More blushing. 

When we danced the tango that night for a packed gymnasium, they gave us, or I should say Lizzie, a standing ovation. When we won every category, they stomped and cheered and demanded an encore. 

“Which dance?” Mrs. Booker queried the audience.  

“Tango!” They screamed. 

All the males in the audience panted like dogs as Lizzie gave her sexiest performance ever. She really got into it. Her beautiful legs flashed and whirled. Her red lips pouted, and her brown eyes smoldered with rage and intensity. Her body language clearly signaled, “Here I am, matador. Spare me, and I am yours.” 

The temperature in the gym must have jumped 10 degrees. 

The dancing improved my wrestling, or at least my determination to be a good wrestler. You know what jealous guys say about male dancers. That’s right. We were all queer. I had to go out of my way to prove I wasn’t. Wrestling, however, was a sport no one paid much attention to. So, to prove I wasn’t queer, I’d gone out for the football team.  

Capisce? 

Sexual insecurity aside, there was one inexplicable thing to me. I knew Lizzie liked me, liked me a lot. I asked her for dates on an almost weekly basis, but she rarely said yes. An occasional double date, but she never wanted to be alone with me. 

 I invited her to every school dance, but she always went with someone else. Few of the guys she went to dances with cared much about dancing. I had no trouble getting other dates, as other girls liked to dance, too, and they knew I could accommodate them. But anytime Lizzie saw my dance card wasn’t filled, she’d grab me like she did the first time she’d seen me and lead me to the dance floor.  

Most times when we danced together, other couples would stop to watch us. We were excellent ballroom dancers for a couple of high schoolers. Mrs. Booker even entered us in local competitions. We did well there. If it were county-wide, we might win the tango and the waltz, but sometimes we failed to even place in the other dance categories. We entered a state-wide contest and got blown away. We talked to the winners and were discouraged about progressing to the big leagues when they told us they had to practice four hours every day. 

Back to the Home-Coming Dance. 

We were juniors the night of the infamous Kenny Myers incident, and Lizzie could see I was exceptionally down. I was down, of course, from disappointment at being accorded disdain and criticism for my football performance instead of the accolades I believed I deserved. That hurt. I was wounded already because Lizzie had accepted an invitation to the homecoming dance from a fellow footballer, even though she’d hinted she might accept my invitation if I tendered it later. Then the person she had accepted the invitation from gets the accolades and attention that should’ve been mine. And finally, I was getting sick of looking into her eyes and watching her blush because I knew goddamned well she was having secret thoughts about me.  

So, it all came to a head, and I blew up. 

The dance had just ended, and we, as usual, were the center of attention. 

She turned to leave, but I pulled her back. 

She immediately saw the anger and frustration in my eyes. 

“What?”   

“Why, Lizzie?” 

“Why what?” She knew what. 

“Why did you let Kenny Myers bring you to the dance instead of me?” 

“He asked me first.” 

“Bull shit! I asked you two months ago.” 

“I forgot.” 

“That’s not true, and you know it, Lizzie. Tell me the truth.” 

“I don’t want to get involved with you, Eddie.” 

“Why not? 

She hesitated too long to answer, which told me a lie would follow. “Because I’m in love with Kenny.” 

If that was a lie it was a damned good one. It floored me, and I made a huge mistake. 

“Are you screwing him?” I angrily asked.  

Pow! Just like that, right out in the middle of the dance floor with several hundred people watching, she slapped me in the face. There were lots of oohs from the crowd, even one clever retort. 

“What’d you do, Eddie, Three-step your two-step?” 

And a prophecy, too. “Kenny is gonna kick your ass big time, man.” 

After The Ball Was Over. 

I fully expected to hear from Kenny, or at least his seconds, but that didn’t worry me. He’d throw a punch, I’d take him down and pin him, bend his arm until he tapped out, and that would be that. Not arrogance. Wrestling psychology. We were trained to think we were invincible. 

I thought about it over the weekend. The adult in me told me I should grow the fuck up. Go to Lizzie and profoundly apologize, then erase any hope of ever having a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship with her. If she ever asked me to dance with her again in an exhibition, I should quickly agree to do so, do my best as her partner and then disappear into the night. I should go up to Kenny and tell him I was an asshole and let him pummel me a few times and salvage his honor as the maligned boyfriend. Finally, I should make an “I’m a Jerk” sign and wear it around school. 

Interesting theory. The problem was all the above was an admission of guilt on my part, and I sincerely felt I hadn’t done a damned thing wrong. Well, maybe the bit about asking Lizzie if she were screwing Kenny was a stretch, but was it illogical? Okay, okay, if she was in love with him, it was none of my business. But the way she looked at me sometimes? I knew, I just knew she… 

…She what? Liked me? She sure had a funny way of showing it. I finally decided I’d just misread the look. Her looks at me were simply expressions of empathy because she knew I was crazy about her, and she didn’t reciprocate. That had to be it and once I accepted that, it only increased how sorry I felt for myself. So, I rejected the adult reaction and chose instead the childish route. I would adopt the pouting mode.  

I decided to quit the football team. My mother was happy because she thought it was just a matter of time until she had to push me around in a wheelchair. Coach Beyers could have talked me out of it if he had said magic words like, “Damn, Eddie, that was a great play you made. I was proud of you.” That would’ve worked. Alas, no. Before I could even say, “I quit”, he started laughing about how scared I’d looked running down the field and how lucky I’d been Kenny had the good sense to position himself in just the right place and yell at me to lateral the ball to him. 

“That kid is really something. A hell of a player.” 

He meant Kenny, of course. 

I waited politely until Coach had stopped chortling. 

“Hope he can play defensive end.”  

“Why?” 

“Because I quit!” I announced with dramatic flair and quickly exited stage-right.

Next stop was Mrs. Booker. Despite being only in her forties, she really didn’t remember how the brain of a junior in high school worked, or more to the point, how it didn’t. When I told her I didn’t want to partner with Lizzie anymore, she didn’t bat an eye.

She took my hand and smiled understandingly, “I understand, Eddie, and I genuinely respect the courage it took for you to say that because I know what great friends you and Lizzie are. But I’d pretty much come to the same conclusion. I know you try your best, and you really are a good dancer, but you and I both know Lizzie has outdistanced you. She needs to move to that next level, and I’ve found a 20-year-old young man at Vallejo Junior College who’s looking for a partner. He wants to go hard at competitive ballroom. He watched you two perform at the county championships and called me about Lizzie. He wants to partner with her.”

I didn’t need Freud to tell me that I’d secretly hoped Coach Beyers and Mrs. Booker would talk me out of my “I quit” decisions. I knew it was just a plea on my part for a little attention and commiseration. Failed plan. So, now I really was stuck with my only option being to feel sorry for myself. It’s not the healthiest of choices, but, in some strange way, it was kind of cathartic believing the world took pleasure in dumping on my simple ass.

The football players noticed it first. “What the hell’s going on, Eddie? Coach told us you just walked in and quit. What the hell, Man? We got the play-offs coming up.”

“Bad knees,” I lied. “Had to give up dancing, too.”

My wrestling coach heard I was opting out, and he approached me also. “Heard about the bad knees, Eddie. You going to be able to wrestle this year?”

Wrestling season followed football season.

“I should be okay by then, Coach.”

“Good, hit the weights. I’d like to bump you up to the 160 class. You’ve got a large frame. You could easily accommodate another10 pounds, provided it’s muscle.”

“I’ll try, Coach.”

And then he endeared himself to me. “I saw the football game the other night. You made a hell of a good play. I don’t know how you ever made that lateral with that band of Neanderthals coming down on you. Fantastic play. Coach Beyers is gonna miss you at defensive end.”

The Wake-up Call.

I hadn’t heard from Kenny or his seconds.

The next football game was an away game. It was against a team that loved to run end sweeps. Coach Bayers put a big kid in to replace me. He was game but elected to meet brute force with brute force and got bruted under. Our team played hard but lost.

When I heard the score and after-action report, I wanted to gloat, but, in truth, I felt like shit. Because I chose to pout and act like a damned baby, the team had lost a crucial game and might not make it to the playoffs. I had let the team and the school down. “Screw ‘em,” I kept telling myself. “They weren’t there for me.”

The word was out, though. I supposedly quit the football team because of bad knees, but the wrestling coach had told everyone I was a go for wrestling later in the year. Anyone who knows anything about sports knows wrestling is much harder on your body than football. If you’re in shape for wrestling, you can damn sure play football. I wasn’t fooling anyone. They knew I was pissed over Kenny getting the credit for my takeaway. That was the feedback I got anyway. And it wasn’t inaccurate.

Suicide was an option. I thought about it for a second or two and ruled it out. Not only was it painful, but you didn’t get to reappear after people looked down on you in your casket and said they were sorry. I was too young to enter a monastery or join the Foreign Legion. Television was just getting started, but my dad was too cheap to get an antenna, so, unless I liked watching snowflakes with muffled voices in the background, it wasn’t much help in taking my mind off my miserable life.

A few days after the football game loss, Kenny sought me out during our lunch break. I was a little surprised. I figured if he were going to come after me, he would’ve done it sooner. Nor did he have a gang of gawking football players with him. Just him.

“Can I talk to you outside for a minute, Eddie?”

“Sure.”

I followed him outside. I had a little punishment coming, so I’d decided to let him whack me a few times before I pinned him. If the first one hurt, though, I might limit it to just the one. I cared about my health more than his pride.

Kenny looked like one of the beach hunks in an Annette Funicello movie. Tall, blonde-headed, with soft blue eyes, muscles, and a sunny smile. He was, by broad consensus, Mr. Everything to his classmates. Most athletic, best-looking, most congenial, you name it. He wasn’t a typical star football player, though. He didn’t swagger or strut or add and subtract with his fingers. I’d never heard him brag about himself or ever say a disparaging word about his teammates. He was the ultimate team player.

He stopped at a deserted area behind the cafeteria.

“For whatever it’s worth,” I said, preparing for combat, “I regret what I said to Lizzie.”

He looked at me curiously. “What did you say to her?”

I told him.

He shook his head as if he were disappointed in me. “You shouldn’t have said that to her, Eddie. It’s not true, and she doesn’t deserve to be talked to that way.”

“She’s in love with you.”

He shook his head. “We’re good friends, Eddie, but she’s not in love with me.”  

Very large accent on the word me.

He looked at me quizzically for a moment, as if debating whether to explain why. Finally, he explained. “She can’t be in love with me. I’m a homosexual.”

My jaw dropped into the grass. “Homosexual, you mean like a queer?”

His frown let me know he didn’t like that word. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Why? Because I’m not effeminate and don’t swish when I walk?”

“Well, yeah, that for openers. Why’d you tell me?”

“So you’d understand. Lizzie loves someone, all right, but it’s sure as hell not me.”

“Who is it?”

 “You don’t know?”

“Believe me, I don’t.”

“She’s in love with you. Maybe a homosexual is more attuned to things like that, but I can see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. You’re not as smart as I thought you were if you can’t see it.”

But that was just it. I could see it, and that was what got me so damned confused. “Why didn’t she tell me, Kenny? Why wouldn’t she let me take her out on dates? As far as she was concerned, I was just her dancing partner.”

“How old is Lizzie, Eddie?”

“She’s 16.”

“And what do you want from her?”

“Just to be with her.”

“How about sex?”

Long pause. “Well…I wouldn’t say no.”

“She said the same thing, and that’s why she won’t go out with you. Does it make a whole lot of sense to you for a couple of 16-year-olds to say they’re in love and start having sex? Hell, Eddie, you two aren’t even out of high school yet. What would you do if you got her pregnant?”

“I’d marry her.”

“Great, and there’s your life for the next 20 years. Raising kids. How would you support her? And what about college? I know both of you are planning on going to college. You got to think it through, man. If you got her pregnant, you’d be screwing up two lives. And despite how much she cares for you, she’s not gonna let that happen.”

“She talked to you about it?”

“Yes.”

“So I should just give up on her?”

“No, be her boyfriend. Just don’t put her in a position where she has to have sex with you. But, hey, man, you and Lizzie aren’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What, then?”

“Football, man. The team needs you.”

“It’s a done deal, Kenny.”

“Hear me out, Eddie. First, I want to apologize. I definitely heard you yell out to me about the lateral during the game. I should’ve been up there alongside you providing some blocking help, but I was so surprised at what happened I just wasn’t thinking. And when you yelled, I was amazed you’d think of lateralling when you’re about to get run over by a freight train. Then you throw me a perfect lateral. We won that game thanks to you. And I’ll tell you something else. We would’ve won the game the other night if you’d been playing. They ran around your end all night. You got to come back, Eddie.”

“Coach Beyers wouldn’t let me.”

“Worse slam on you, Eddie, is you’re thin-skinned. Worse slam on us football players is we should’ve given credit where credit was due. We had a team meeting yesterday, and I told them just that. We screwed up by insulting you, and, after I chewed ‘em all out for the smart-ass remarks they were making at the home-coming dance, they agreed to apologize to you if you apologized for missing the game.”

“What’d Coach say?”

“If I can make that happen, you’re back on the team.”

“When?”

“Today at practice.”

“I’ll be there,” I replied, speaking finally as a man and not a boy.

“Thanks, Eddie. And listen, do I really have to say that what I told you about being a homosexual must remain a secret? I think USC is going to offer me a scholarship, and if they found out, that would tank the offer for sure.”

“I’ll take it to the grave. Does Lizzie know about you being, uh, homosexual?”

He nodded yes. “My sister and Lizzie are good friends, and she talked Lizzie into pretending to be my girl. Took a lot of heat off me. Sorry it messed things up for you, though.”

“Sure would’ve been nice if she had clued me in about the sex thing.”

“She didn’t think you’d go for it.”

“To be with her, I’d go for it.”

Mandatory Balcony Scene.

I went to practice that afternoon and shook hands with every guy on the team. They all apologized to me, and I to them. We had a good practice. I had a feeling the rest of the season would go well for us. They still razed me about being thin-skinned, but I’d grown up a little by then and just laughed it off. I had looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

Kenny stopped me in the hall a few days later to say he’d talked to Lizzie. He said she cried when he told her I was willing to take sex off the table. She found a beautiful girl named Denise who was a closet dyke, uh, lesbian, and agreeable to assuming Lizzie’s role as Kenny’s girlfriend.

Also, Lizzie wanted to see me. I called her, and she agreed to a Coke and a burger at a local drive-in restaurant. “You slap hard for a girl,” I said, rubbing my wounded cheek.

“You deserved it.”

“I sincerely apologize. You did some nice things for Kenny.”

“Thanks.”

“Whose idea was it about Denise?”

“Mine,” she replied. Her smile told me she thought it was clever, which it was.

“Sorry to hear about Denise. I had my eye on her to be my girlfriend.”

“You want another slap?”

“One’s enough.”

“And what’s this about you not wanting to dance with me anymore?”

“Doing you a favor. Mrs. Booker said that I was holding you back. Said she was going to hook you up with some guy in Vallejo. I said it was okay with me.”

“So, you were just going to forget about me?”

“Going to try.”

She took my hand and held it in hers.

“How can you be so dumb, Eddie?”

“Some things just come easy, I guess.”

“I’m not dancing with anyone but you. Eddie, and I really don’t care if we take our dancing to the next level or not. As soon as that couple at the state finals told us they had to practice four hours a day, that thought went out the window. I like to dance, but I love dancing with you. Provided, of course, you still want to dance with me.”

“How can you be so dumb, Lizzie?”

“It doesn’t come as easy for me as it does you, but I manage.”

I laughed.

“May I finally kiss you?” I asked.

“I’d like that.”

She leaned towards me, and we kissed. That look came into her eyes, the same one I had seen many times before. I finally understood. She loved me as much as she possibly could at that stage of her life. I had to settle for that.  

So, we danced happily ever after, or at least until we split for different colleges.

That was back in the day. But I still think about her, especially when I hear a tango.

She was one hot-salsa chica.

THE END

Nick Gallup‘s most recent previous feature story at New Pop Lit was “The Stenographer.”

(Above photo c/o Des Moines Register. Featured/Top of Pop photo c/o Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life magazine.)