47. Jeremy

When Dec and Joe, the original owner of the bar near campus, took out notebooks and began to keep score, Jeremy did the next best thing. He stared at butts in baseball pants and wondered how that one extremely tall player got his curls to look so damn good during the game.

It wasn’t that Jeremy didn’t like athletics. He loved spinning and had even attempted cross country in high school. He had admired athletic forms of all genders in his figure drawing courses. But something about professional sports seemed off-limits for him. His parents were more likely to take him to a talk at the New York Public Library than take him to a Yankees game, and he had never had much interest, other than to hate the Mets like his dad had taught him. He knew, logically, that there was no reason that gay men couldn’t like sports, but there was something inside him, some internalized message that said not for Jeremy Rinci.

“How’d you get into baseball?” Jeremy asked Davis.

“It was cheap to play,” Davis replied. “Football cost too much for equipment, but every tiny town in West Virginia has a T-ball team sponsored by the local Dairy Queen or Tractor Supply.”

“What was your team?” Jeremy asked.

Davis chuckled. “I began my hall of fame career as a member of the Junior Mountaineers T-ball team, then I played for Whiting Savings and Loan before Little League, then I was catcher for my high school team.”

“How come I never get to see you in baseball pants and a mask?” Jeremy asked, nodding at the catcher who was heading to the pitcher with the same energy that Emmy had when Ryan was being purposefully difficult.

“Because you’ve never asked,” Davis said. “I do have this fantasy—”

Jeremy didn’t get to hear the rest of it, because Emmy, speak of the devil, appeared at the end of the row and sat down.

“Did you know the inventor of the high five was the first openly gay baseball player?” Emmy said by way of greeting, sipping from a canned cocktail and holding a beer for Ryan. “I was in line and bored, so I was reading the Wikipedia entry about baseball traditions.” She reached around the men and passed the beer to Ryan, who was asking Dec to explain why K meant a strikeout, much to the tattooed man’s chagrin. “History’s fucked, though, because I did read that he ended up unhoused. Of course he did, because why would anyone good ever get a happy ending?”

“You’ve really got a knack for bringing the mood down,” Jeremy said, wondering if it was acceptable to strangle one of his closest friends.

“Well, you’re partially right,” Davis interrupted, surprising Jeremy. “His name was Glenn Burke. He was out to his teammates, though. Not the media.” Jeremy looked, a bit wide eyed, at Davis. It wasn’t like him to correct people, and it wasn’t like most people to correct Emmy when she began to chat about history.

“Really?” she asked, looking at Davis.

“Yeah, I mean, the media outed him after he retired and he struggled with addiction and was diagnosed with AIDS, but he still played baseball as himself. I don’t like to think of him as an entirely sad story.” Davis, seeming to realize that he had begun to raise his voice, took a sip of his soda. “I listened to a podcast on it.”

“Can you send me the episode?” Emmy asked.

“Sure.”

“Have there been other queer baseball players? I mean, like, if there were, you’d know, right?” Emmy’s words, as they usually did, tumbled out of her mouth faster than her good sense. Jeremy thought back to his plan to find a way to cover her mouth with a baseball glove.

“Why are you asking me? Because I date men?” Davis said, his voice a bit tough.

“I mean, yeah, but also because you love baseball.”

“Would you ask Ryan about the queer history of…whatever his sport of choice is?”

“He’s a swimmer. We share a love of Ian Thorpe, thank you very much,” Emmy said primly.

“Do you know the history of every woman who does your sport?” Davis asked. Jeremy, for a moment, felt like he was at a tennis match with Davis and Emmy volleying responses back and forth. “I mean, I figure that there have been gay baseball players as long as there has been baseball,” Davis continued, using a nacho to push a jalape?o around in the cheese. Jeremy wanted to jump in front of Davis and tell Emmy that no one owed anyone an explanation of their sexuality, but if there was one thing Emmy hated, it was hypocrisy.

And Jeremy had told Emmy and Phoebe that Davis wasn’t out at work.

And Jeremy had let them know that he didn’t understand it.

And Emmy had a memory like an elephant.

“I guess that’s a good point,” Emmy said, her head moving from side to side as she thought over it. “I just feel like by now, we would have someone who is out.”

“Billy Beane came out after he retired, and there’s an out player in the league right now,” Dec called, not looking away from the field. “And can we not argue about this? What I care about right now is the fact that this damned player on deck hits a home run every time something bad happens, so stop arguing so we can get him out.”

“He’s superstitious,” Phoebe stage whispered, then stole a bite of Dec’s hotdog.

“Maybe that’s it,” Jeremy said, looking for an opening. “Maybe the baseball players are too superstitious to come out.” And even Jeremy knew that it was a sad excuse to end this…not quite an argument, but tension between his boyfriend and one of his best friends.

“Nah,” Davis said. “I think it’s more an issue of people thinking they’re owed every bit of a person all the time.”

“What do you mean?” Emmy said, and Jeremy couldn’t tell if she was genuinely curious or setting Davis up for failure. He hoped it was the former but worried it was the latter.

“Like, why does a baseball player need to come out? Baseball is a job about focus, about milliseconds, and the last thing anyone wants is a distraction.” Davis took a frustrated bite of his nacho. “If a player can field his position and maintain a decent batting average, and he’s fine keeping himself focused that way, why is it any of our business what he does off the field? He’s a baseball player. He gets paid to play baseball.”

“But what about little kids?” Emmy asked. “What about other people who need that encouragement?”

“I played baseball just fine for fourteen years with no queer men as role models,” Davis said, his face hardening. “I’m a damn good forester, too.” And Jeremy got the feeling that Davis wasn’t talking about baseball at all.

“What do you think, Phoebes?” Emmy said, calling down the seats.

“I think that baseball is like white noise,” she replied, focused more on the snacks in front of her than the men on the field.

“Ryan?”

“Nope,” he replied. “I’m learning how to score, not talking about the sociopolitical implications of baseball.” He looked at Jeremy, making very pointed eye contact and raised his eyebrows as if to say get your man in line.

But Jeremy, out of loyalty to Emmy’s friendship, but also maybe made a bit silly by love, wanted to hear more of Davis’s perspective. Because Jeremy had never questioned that coming out was a good thing. He’d never thought anything but the more queer people the world knew about, the better it would be for everyone.

Davis was still talking to Emmy, though his voice strained a bit. “I just think, and, like, I don’t know, ’cause I’m just me, but I think that people need to worry about themselves first. Like take care of your own backyard before you go tellin’ the neighbors what to do.”

Emmy opened her mouth to say something, but Davis set his soda down. “Gotta piss,” he said abruptly.

Emmy turned to Jeremy with a questioning look on her face.

“What the fuck?” is what Jeremy said.

“What?” She looked genuinely surprised.

“Why were you like that?”

“It’s just talking,” Emmy replied. “I wanted to figure out what he thought.”

“Emmy, I really like him, and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t, like, question his sexuality,” Jeremy said through gritted teeth.

“Where did I do that?” she asked, digging in. “We’re talking about baseball.”

“No you weren’t,” Ryan called, then leaned around Dec to continue talking.

“Andersson,” Dec whispered, wrapping tattooed fingers around Ryan’s forearm. “I swear to god, if you block this at-bat, I’m calling in favors with everyone I know in this state and making your life hell.”

“Fine, fine,” Ryan said, climbing over the back of his seat and making his way toward an empty seat behind Jeremy and Emmy.

“Yes, Doc?” Emmy asked.

“Look, I love you, but you’re being weird.” Ryan said it simply.

“I’m just being me,” Emmy defended.

“And you’re weird. I like your weird, but it takes getting used to. Especially to new people.” Jeremy suppressed a laugh, remembering the months Emmy had fervently declared that she hated her co-curator before a snowy evening, where Jeremy looked at the two of them and knew it was endgame.

He looked down at Dec and Phoebe, whose edible had clearly kicked in. She was now focused on the plate of nachos she had ordered instead of the way Dec was explaining scoring to her.

Davis came back and next on the other side of Phoebe, a pointed choice to avoid the conversation that had been occurring before. Jeremy got up and headed to the bathroom, hoping that a few moments away from that tension would help it all dissipate from the group the way that he sometimes took a midday spin class when he missed his parents something fierce. Something to distract him, to assuage the ache that threatened to split his chest open with the beat of the music and surroundings. Other times, he would call Yuna, or she would call him, and they would meet at her studio, a sunlit room at the back of a tattoo shop, and the two of them would play loud music and sketch, and they never asked each other questions about why they needed distractions. Since he was at a professional baseball stadium, he settled for the next best thing— heading to the men’s bathroom, which had a trough instead of urinals. He followed it with an aggressive hand washing and then waited in line for a soda, even though Jeremy really wanted a glass of the red wine that came in a small plastic cup. Taking his slightly flat, overpriced artisan soda back to his seat, Jeremy sat down next to Davis, who looked back over his shoulder and gave Jeremy a small smile. Jeremy watched the way he asked a question about Dec’s scorecard, then noticed— oh, Jeremy gripped his soda with all of his fingers as his heart clenched— Davis tentatively correcting something on Dec’s scorecard.

He looked down the line, to where Emmy was asking Ryan about college football coach salaries while he tried to listen to Dec explain scoring. To where Joe was asking Lina about her arm sleeve, pulling up his T-shirt sleeve to show a faded, vaguely military-looking tattoo.

The baseball game proceeded as baseball games were wont to do, in Jeremy’s limited experience— lots of talking between his friends in the seats, with the occasional interruption of the game on the field, a diving catch made by a player with a feral-looking beard or the crack of a home run, followed by the crowd cheering when a little girl held up the ball in the stands. The game ended with a home team loss, but a win for Jeremy, because as they left their seats and threw away their trash, Davis was smiling, talking to Joe and Dec about why someone named Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.

As they were walking out toward the cars, Jeremy saw Emmy tap on Davis’s shoulder and pull him aside. The two of them had a quick conversation and seemed to swap phone numbers, then rejoined the group. Jeremy breathed a small sigh of relief. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe Jeremy could have everything he wanted and more. Foster and Flo piled into the car, grumbling about how Mountain Friend still didn’t have the capital to get a satellite tap room at Coors Field, which expanded to a larger conversation about the present decline of craft beer after the boom of the 2000s.

“Did you notice they had Red Herring on tap?” Foster asked his sister.

“That damn beer has been a monkey on my back since Craig got hired by ABInBev,” Flo said, blowing a curl out of her face. “I’ll get a better red ale back, though.”

Jeremy, driving, looked over at Davis, who was doing a poor job at trying not to listen. “Craig was Flo’s ex-husband. Opened the brewery with her,” he explained, quietly. “They divorced during the pandemic lockdown, and he took one of her best-selling beers and sold the recipe to a big brewery.”

“Shit,” Davis breathed, then smiled at Jeremy. “Good thing you won’t be able to steal my dendrology knowledge.”

“Even if I could,” Jeremy smiled back, “I wouldn’t want to.”