Page 115 of I'm Your Guy
“Isn’t it beautiful?” my mother pipes up. “He’s so talented.”
I hold back a sigh.
Newgate sets his coffee down on a coaster. “I brought you something else,” he says, fishing an envelope out of his shirt pocket. “These are my comp seats for tomorrow night’s game. They’re for your friends—the ones who wanted the Pride jersey?”
“Oh, right,” I say, taking them in hand. “I’d forgotten all about this.”
“Can you still get the tickets to them? My, uh, article went live today,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “Making some dude’s day would take my mind off it.”
“Oh shit. Sports Illustrated, right?” I lean forward in my seat. “How’d it come out?”
“Fine, fine,” he says, worrying the rim of his coffee mug. “No surprises. The journalist did a nice job. Now we’ll see what the reaction is.”
“To what?” my mother asks, helping herself to a cookie.
Newgate chuckles awkwardly. “I gave an interview, letting the whole world know that my partner is a man. We’re actually getting married in the new year.”
My mother does a slow blink. And then she sets the cookie down on her saucer and smiles at my teammate. “Congratulations! That’s fantastic.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Maybe I should have gotten the team bottles of antacids instead of wine, though. There’s going to be some media attention.”
My mother flings her skinny arms out wide. “So what! You can’t live your life for other people.”
“That’s the idea,” Newgate says with a tense smile. Then he nudges me with his knee. “You probably haven’t been in your email, but Tate sent it around with some thoughts for all of us.”
“Oh, yeah?” I pull out my phone and check.
PLEASE READ is the subject line.
Boys,
Here’s Newgate’s interview. It’s very well done. Feel free to read it or not. Share it or not. If you’re on social media, messages of support are always welcome. But that’s not my big request. There’s something else I need from you instead.
Here goes: don’t read the comments.
No really. Don’t. That’s my job, and I’ll read every stinking one of them.
You shouldn’t, though, because they won’t capture this moment in the way it deserves to be captured. There are millions of people who will see themselves in Newgate’s act of bravery. You won’t be able to hear all their joy, but it will be real.
Conversely, the interwebs are populated by a lesser breed—the warrior trolls. They are few in number but have an overblown sense of the value of their voice. They live to say cowardly things from the safety of their hand-held device.
But if you close Twitter on your phone, do those trolls even exist?
Reading their shitposts is not your job.
Letting them take up space in your head is not your job.
It doesn’t matter what they say about us. We’re a strong organization, and we became an even stronger one today.
Go enjoy your holiday. Be well. Be happy. And I’ll see you tomorrow with your skates on.
—Tate
“Now look at that,” my mother says, reading over my shoulder. “This Tate person seems like a smart man.”
Not always. “He has his moments. Here—you can read the interview.” I hand her the phone.
My mother taps on the link. “Well, Mr. Newgate, you look very handsome in your photograph.”
