Kate Fagan - The Reappearing Act: Coming Out as Gay on a College Basketball Team Led by Born-Again Christians

Copyright 2014 by Kate Fagan

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Nim Ben-Reuven

ISBN: 978-1-62914-205-0

E-book ISBN: 978-1-62914-301-9

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Authors Note

I relied mainly on my own memory, journals, and notes while writing this memoir, although I did consult others, gathering their recollections, for certain sections. I have changed most, but not all, of the names of the individuals who appear in this book, in order to provide a level of anonymity. Occasionally, I also altered specific identifying details, but only when it seemed fair and appropriate to do so, and when it had no impact whatsoever on the substance of the story.

CHAPTER 1

March Madness

I sat in my car outside the arena, the vents releasing their last breaths of heated air. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt the nerves radiating through my body, my chest rising and falling as I deliberately filled my lungs, then slowly exhaled. My hands were trembling. I stared at them, concentrating, trying to still the movement. A minute or two passed, long enough that the inside of the car turned cold, my breaths like little clouds.

Then I gave up. My hands still shaking, I grabbed my backpack from the passengers seat and slung it over my shoulder as I stepped out of the car and headed toward the arena. On the short walk to the players entrance, I passed a large TV truck parked at the mouth of the Coors Events Center. My teeth began chattering, and I gritted them, the energy spreading to my jawline, making it vibrate. I pulled open the door and nodded hello to Ron the usher, the same usher who had greeted me at every home game I had ever played for the University of Colorado. Big one, he said, and I glanced at the large ESPN banner hanging on the wall over his shoulder. It is, I replied, giving him a high five, just as I had done dozens of times before. Could he sense my nerves? I tried to swallow them.

I turned right and walked down the hallway, stopping to poke my head inside the training room to say hello to Kristen, our head trainer, who was sitting behind her computer. In here whenever you need me, she said, her tone more serious than usual, because tonight really was a big deal. I nodded and said thanks. The locker room for the womens basketball team was only a few steps past the training room. The wooden door was closed; I was the first player to arrive. I walked in and glanced at the black couch to the left of the door, its leather cracked and wrinkled. I had napped on that couch a hundred times, in the long afternoons before late practices. I had even slept there all night once, just a few weeks earlier, when I couldnt stand the thought of tossing and turning, yet again, in my own bed. I had the urge to curl up on that couch now, hug my backpack to my chest, and close my eyes for a while.

Instead, I sat on my stoolthe one with my name written on it in cursiveand faced my closed locker. Our director of basketball operations had already hung our uniforms on the outsides of our lockers. I looked at mine, crisp and white, with Colorado written in black across the chest, just above my number: 1. How many times, in previous years, had I walked into this arena knowing that I would play only sparingly? A year earlier, during my sophomore season, I had sat on the bench inside Boise States arena and watched as our seniors, some of my best friends in the worldthe same friends whose support I was now about to loseled us to victory over Stanford and a berth in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. For years, I had waited for a moment like tonight. I would start and play most of the game, as I had done all season. But tonights game was more important than all the rest, the culmination of everything before it. Tonight, we were playing the North Carolina Tar Heels in the second round of the 2003 NCAA tourney, televised on ESPN.

And I couldnt even fucking concentrate. I chucked my backpack into my locker and looked down at my hands again, then started rubbing them together, as if warming them by a fire. I sat like that for a while, competing thoughts swirling in my mind, until the first of my teammates arrived. Hey you, said Jamie, our starting power forward. I turned toward her as she was taking off her coat and hanging it in her locker, and I realized I was still wearing my own jacket. I stood and started executing the first item on my pregame list, undressing and putting on my uniform.

Two hours later, the stands were filled with six thousand people. Beads of sweat dripped across my eyebrows, and I kept wiping them away. I looked at the referee, who was holding the game ball and watching the official scorer, waiting for ESPN to signal a return from commercial. I pretended to glance at the scoreboard, but really I was looking into the stands, high up in the corner, for someone who wasnt there. The referee blew the whistle signaling we were ready, then walked to center court, the ball resting on her palm as if on a tray. I arranged my feet around the jump circle, something I had done a thousand times in my life.

But this time was different. Because this time, as the ball flew into the air for the opening tip, I wasnt thinking about tracking it down while fighting for position with the player next to me. I wasnt even thinking about basketball. In that moment, my mind was focused on one thing in particular.

Holy shit... Im definitely gay.

CHAPTER 2

The Hot Cuts Experiment

M y mother, Kathy, offered her children the freedom of choice that her own mother had not. Her mother insisted she eat everything on her plate, regardless of taste preference, and forced her to drink all her cereal milk, including the discolored warm leftovers at the bottom of the bowl. These may seem like harmless edicts, but over the years I gathered they were only a microcosm, and that choking down broccoli was among the more trivial events of my mothers mildly traumatic childhood, which included a constant fear of judgment from my shockingly self-absorbed grandmother and many sleepless nights waiting for my irritable grandfather to stumble home from the local bar.

Once she became a parent, my mom vowed free choice for her two daughters. For me, this meant I could eat my broccoli or I could not. (I chose not.) I could wear my favorite McGraw Hill navy sweatshirt to school two weeks in a row if I so desired. (I did.) And, in what would become one of my childhoods most defining moments, I could cut my hair in any style I wanted. At the time, this last choice sounded fantastic. But I would soon learn that while certain decisions might be mine to make, the right to judge them remained everyone elses, especially the person giving me the freedomespecially my mother.

My life, or more precisely, how I perceived life, changed when I was eight years old. I wanted to wear my hair like my Little League teammates did. They were all boys. Baseball season had just begun, and I was in Double-A, which meant we were no longer using a tee. We didnt have fathers pitching, either. In my eight-year-old mind, this was big-time baseball. My team was the Golden Glovers; we wore black t-shirts and caps. I could field just like the boys and hit just like the boys. But unlike the boys, I had to constantly shove my curly mop under my cap. Every few minutes, I was tucking loose strands back out of the way, out of sight.