Read Online Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? by Erica Orloff - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Erica Orloff
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her. So I was convenient. I got to absorb some of her intensity, her passion, her excitement. He got to remain a little distant.
Divorce always sucks—but I can’t imagine being postpartum hormonal and facing it. But we got through that. We got through my attending my grandmother’s funeral—my father hasn’t spoken to me since I came out in college. But cancer? I mean, cancer is always something that happens to someone else’s family. Oh, you know, this guy I work with, his sister’s brother-in-law has a brain tumor. It’s never up close and personal. Only now it wasn’t someone else. It was Lily.
12
Curveball
An excerpt from a novel by Michael Angelo
Sam opened his locker and a giant black dildo fell out. Not that he’d seen too many dildos, but this one was enormous, and it was wrinkled and lifelike. A giant black cock.
When the dildo fell, Sam felt eyes boring into him from behind. He didn’t turn around. He didn’t acknowledge the thing. A burning filled his eyes, tears he willed away. This is just locker room horseshit. I will not let them see me cry. I won’t.
But the tears were there. Sam had never felt so alone his entire life. Charlie, who had been a constant since the first day of orientation freshman year, had stopped speaking to him. Charlie slept at his girlfriend’s dorm room every night and wouldn’t look at Sam in class. Let alone the locker room.
And now, the dildo.
He could hear them snickering. But not a good kind of laughter. He heard the menace in it. Worse, he could feel a heat in the room. They may have been laughing, but they hated him. Like a flash of lightning striking the ground, an electric current seemed to pass from one guy to the other, and Sam could feel the heat growing.
He kept his back to them, but then he was aware two of them, his teammates—guys he’d spent three years with, on buses going to away games, getting drunk with, celebrating wins in the fall, and working harder in the hot days of spring following losses—were now next to him. Too close. In his space.
He could see them, sense them seething, from the corner of his eye. And then he was punched in the side of the head.
Sam had been in fights before. In seventh grade, he was jumped on the playground. But in high school, he had grown taller, developed his muscles, become a big-man-on-campus jock, and no one fucked with him. He was tough, but he wasn’t a fighter. He guessed his team was going to make him one.
He reeled from the shot to his head, crashed into his own locker, and then wheeled around, raising his fists and swinging, hoping to fight his way out of the locker room.
But there were ten of them and one of him. They kicked him and he remembered being pelted, full force, by baseballs hurled, he knew, by one of the pitchers who had a fast ball clocked at ninety miles per hour.
They were also hurling names at him. Queer. Faggot. Homo . Then he felt a bat land on his ribs and he heard a crack.
“No, no…” Charlie’s voice rose above the cacophony. “Off of him!”
The locker room was a total mess by now. Guys started pulling each other off of Sam. He was barely conscious, aware that he was slumped, unable to stand fully upright, blood pouring from his mouth. He could feel he’d lost a tooth. His nose was broken. He couldn’t breathe without pain. But mercifully, Charlie was going to stop this. So Sam had fallen in love with him, but they still were best friends. Had been best friends. That would win out over this insanity.
“Hand me the bat,” Charlie commanded to the one who’d struck him. “The bat is mine. ” And with that, Charlie swung, as hard as Sam had ever seen him swing, and hit Sam, twice, in the gut. He didn’t know what was worse, knowing they were going to kill him, or knowing Charlie was capable of it.
Sam fell to the floor, his head against the cool locker room tile. Charlie tossed the bat on the ground, and the team filed out, leaving Sam there. They shut off
Divorce always sucks—but I can’t imagine being postpartum hormonal and facing it. But we got through that. We got through my attending my grandmother’s funeral—my father hasn’t spoken to me since I came out in college. But cancer? I mean, cancer is always something that happens to someone else’s family. Oh, you know, this guy I work with, his sister’s brother-in-law has a brain tumor. It’s never up close and personal. Only now it wasn’t someone else. It was Lily.
12
Curveball
An excerpt from a novel by Michael Angelo
Sam opened his locker and a giant black dildo fell out. Not that he’d seen too many dildos, but this one was enormous, and it was wrinkled and lifelike. A giant black cock.
When the dildo fell, Sam felt eyes boring into him from behind. He didn’t turn around. He didn’t acknowledge the thing. A burning filled his eyes, tears he willed away. This is just locker room horseshit. I will not let them see me cry. I won’t.
But the tears were there. Sam had never felt so alone his entire life. Charlie, who had been a constant since the first day of orientation freshman year, had stopped speaking to him. Charlie slept at his girlfriend’s dorm room every night and wouldn’t look at Sam in class. Let alone the locker room.
And now, the dildo.
He could hear them snickering. But not a good kind of laughter. He heard the menace in it. Worse, he could feel a heat in the room. They may have been laughing, but they hated him. Like a flash of lightning striking the ground, an electric current seemed to pass from one guy to the other, and Sam could feel the heat growing.
He kept his back to them, but then he was aware two of them, his teammates—guys he’d spent three years with, on buses going to away games, getting drunk with, celebrating wins in the fall, and working harder in the hot days of spring following losses—were now next to him. Too close. In his space.
He could see them, sense them seething, from the corner of his eye. And then he was punched in the side of the head.
Sam had been in fights before. In seventh grade, he was jumped on the playground. But in high school, he had grown taller, developed his muscles, become a big-man-on-campus jock, and no one fucked with him. He was tough, but he wasn’t a fighter. He guessed his team was going to make him one.
He reeled from the shot to his head, crashed into his own locker, and then wheeled around, raising his fists and swinging, hoping to fight his way out of the locker room.
But there were ten of them and one of him. They kicked him and he remembered being pelted, full force, by baseballs hurled, he knew, by one of the pitchers who had a fast ball clocked at ninety miles per hour.
They were also hurling names at him. Queer. Faggot. Homo . Then he felt a bat land on his ribs and he heard a crack.
“No, no…” Charlie’s voice rose above the cacophony. “Off of him!”
The locker room was a total mess by now. Guys started pulling each other off of Sam. He was barely conscious, aware that he was slumped, unable to stand fully upright, blood pouring from his mouth. He could feel he’d lost a tooth. His nose was broken. He couldn’t breathe without pain. But mercifully, Charlie was going to stop this. So Sam had fallen in love with him, but they still were best friends. Had been best friends. That would win out over this insanity.
“Hand me the bat,” Charlie commanded to the one who’d struck him. “The bat is mine. ” And with that, Charlie swung, as hard as Sam had ever seen him swing, and hit Sam, twice, in the gut. He didn’t know what was worse, knowing they were going to kill him, or knowing Charlie was capable of it.
Sam fell to the floor, his head against the cool locker room tile. Charlie tossed the bat on the ground, and the team filed out, leaving Sam there. They shut off
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