Page 1 of Brat on the Ball

Chapter One - George

The lecture hall was huge and airy and yet somehow still stifling. However many years ago, someone had decided that painting all the walls a gross shade of beige and packing it with veneered benches and stuffy desks would provide an optimum learning environment. Judging by the game of hangman I was playing by myself and somehow losing, it seemed that the environment was doing very little to stimulate the mind.

There were a hundred people packed into the theatre and I could count on one hand the amount of people listening to Dr Ramoray’s lecture on Ethics in Journalism. I should have been listening. But I’d already read all the reference texts and written my assignment. I was only attending so I didn’t lose any marks for attendance.

“Try R,” whispered the pretty woman next to me. I had been in the same module as her since the start of term and still hadn’t learned her name. I hadn’t really socialised with anyone. It wasn’tmy thing, much as my reputation on and off the rugby field would say otherwise.

“Sure, R can be in there.” I popped an R in the middle of my five letter word. I still hadn’t decided what it was going to be yet, but her intervention had saved my poor man from an untimely death at the hands of the letter Q.

“E?” she asked.

“Why not?” I added an E after the R and decided then what the word was going to be. And it was pretty apt for two strangers playing hangman at the back of the class as the lecturer droned on.

“F?”

“Sorry,” I drew his left leg. “One more guess or he swings.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been so cruel. Playing against yourself and letting him get so close to death.”

“I should have guessed better letters then,” I sniped back.

“Fine. C?” she asked. I drew his last leg.

“Sorry, the little man hangs. I hope you can cope with that on your conscience.”

“What was the word, then?” she asked after a minute.

“Oh. Sorry.” I filled in the rest of the letters.BORED.

“So stupid,” she said. Pretty loudly. And the whole lecture theatre turned to look at us.

Dr Ramoray looked up. “Anything to add to mystupidlecture, either of you?”

The woman next to me seemed frozen, so I took my opportunity. The subject projected onto the whiteboard was something in which I had an unfortunate amount of expertise. “I’d say that outing any celebrity, no matter how important a journalistic scoop, is immoral and unethical, Dr Ramoray. It feels like early 2000s gutter reporting if I’m completely honest and I’m not sure anyone here would want the reverse to happen to them. As we’ve seen with Ireland’s Taoiseach recently, if someone’s sex life makes no difference to how they govern, act or play, why the fuck should we care?”

“…quite,” said Dr Ramoray. “But wouldn’t you argue that sexuality is in the public interest? Could the outing of, say, a professional rugby player provide a role-model to struggling youth?”

I knew exactly what he was referring to. We must have really pissed him off with our interruption.

“I was outed against my will by the tabloid press about three years ago,” I said. “I’ve never aimed to be a role model for anyone except how I play on the pitch. My sexuality is entirely incidental and makes no difference to how I play.”

“I only mean to say…” started Dr Ramoray, but I interrupted him again.

“I don’t care about anyone else’s opinion here, Doctor. I only care about how I’ll approach sports journalism. And I certainly won’t be forcing anyone out of the closet.”

The whole room had gone quiet, and the professor looked over his glasses at me for a long moment before turning back to the class at large. “Right then, that’s today’s lecture over. Remember, your final essay on ethical responsibilities in journalism is due on the first of February. I know that feels like a long time away, but you’ll be surprised by how quickly it comes, so I hope you all have at least an early idea of what you’re going to write.”

People were already packing up, so I stuffed my notebook in my bag along with my laptop and walked to the door at the front of the lecture theatre. “George?” Dr Ramoray called. “Can you wait a minute?”

“I’ll be waiting for you outside,” said the woman whose name I still hadn’t learned. I shrugged, and she walked out of the door with everyone else, leaving me alone in the big lecture hall with the professor.

“You had some passion for the topic of outing celebrities,” said Dr Ramoray, “have you considered writing your thesis on that?”

“No,” I admitted, though I had no idea what I was actually going to write my thesis on. “It all feels a little bit personal, if I’m totally honest with you.”

“But that’s perfect,” said Dr Ramoray. “You are your own test case. You have evidence in spades as to the effects of forced outings in the media.”

My mind flashed back to how it had all happened. Being caught kissing a man in a park at night — a park I’d frequented for much more than kisses.MORE QUEERS IN WALES’ CAMP?had been the headline. The irony being that it had put me off my game enough that I wasn’t called back for Wales for a very long time. I’d spent my exile getting paid lots and lots of money to play French club rugby and having sex with beautiful Parisian men. There were worse things to do after being outed.

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