Page 1 of Hello Forever
ChapterOne
Axel
It all beganon an ordinary Fridaynight.
The ordinary part was that I was home alone and settling in to watch a basketball game. And if my favorite team—the Chicago Bulls—had been playing that night, my life might not havechanged.
The Bulls weren’t on, though. And I was enough of a basketball nut to find another game to watch. I loved the sport in all its forms. College hoops? I’m there. A pickup game at the gym? Pass metheball.
Basketball was my sport, my hobby, my obsession. But until that Friday night in November, I couldn’t have said that a basketball game changedmylife.
Now Icould.
The game I’d chosen to watch wasn’t even televised—I’d had to dig through several pages on the Barmuth University website to find a live-streaming link for the school’s game againstNorthernMass.
I’d wanted to see the Barmuth Brown Bears in action, because Barmuth U. in Henning, Massachusetts had just offered me a job, and I needed to know what I wasgettinginto.
Mightbe getting into. I hadn’t yet decided whether I was going to accept theposition.
The job offer was in their athletic department, where I’d be employed on their budding sports-marketing team. In many ways it was my dream job. I loved sports, and I had a newly minted degree in marketing. Instead of trying to push toothpaste or insurance products, at Barmuth I’d be responsible for marketing the school’s sports events to the community and to the college’s wealthyalumni.
It sounded like a whole lotoffun.
On the other hand, Henning was a tiny, tiny town a thousand miles from my mother’s home in Ohio. And it was two and a half hours from Boston and three and a half hours fromNewYork.
For a young, gay, single man, the location was less thanideal.
Then again, I didn’t have a lot of better options. I was living in my childhood bedroom, working an internship that did not pay. All of my friends had moved away from Columbus after graduation. There was really no reasontostay.
I was already lonely. How much worse could it be out in the woods in westernMassachusetts?
My boyfriend had dumped me the day before we both graduated from OSU. “We’re too young to be serious,” he’d said. But what I heard was,Later, sucker. Thanks for all the blow jobs that I didn’treciprocate.
So there I sat, my face close to the computer screen, watching a basketball team that would probably never darken the door of the NCAAplayoffs.
Barmuth was a small, private liberal arts university. It was prestigious for both its academics and its long history. I’d done a lot of reading on the school’s website, and it seemed like a nice enough place. They had an LGBTQ students’ union, which was a good sign. And theoretically, liberal arts colleges in New England were as gay-friendly as any place onearth.
But would all that rainbow-powered goodwill extend into the dusty corners of the athletic department? That was my bigconcern.
At the end of my interview, my potential future boss had asked if I had any further questions. My last question should have been, “Will it ruffle any feathers if the new marketing person is as gay as a rainbow parade?” But I hadn’t asked, because I wanted them to offer methejob.
The college’s anti-discrimination policy would be wholly on my side, though there were no guarantees. And moving a thousand miles away to join a department full of strangers scared me more than I wished toadmit.
On the screen, Barmuth scored a couple of three-pointers in a row. The team had some talent. I tried to imagine them asmyteam. In a month, I might be sitting at the officials’ table, making notes for a boosters’ press release and updating the team’sFacebookpage.
And here was a strike against Barmuth—the school’s colors were an unfortunate combo ofbrownand white. I’d be sitting at that table wearing abrowntie.
But a guy couldn’t have everything. At least the mascot was cute. I wondered who was inside that giant brown bearcostume.
When the announcer mentioned the game’s attendance was two thousand people, I cracked a smile. That was a far cry from an Ohio State game. But unlike my alma mater, Barmuth had offered to actuallypayme for my labor. And working for the Barmuth Brown Bears would be a hell of a lot more fun than ending up in a cubicle at some facelesscorporation.
I leaned closer to my screen, as if the proximity of my nose to the video feed would make the decision easier. When the refs stopped the game to review a play on video, I got a closer look at the officials’ table. There sat Arnie Diggs, the head of the athletic department. I recognized him from my Skype interview. He was an older man and the typicalplainspokenjock.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just wished I knew whether he was a tolerant man. Would I feel welcome in hisdepartment?
He wants to hire you, though, I reminded myself. His judgment couldn’t bethatbad.Obviously.
The camera moved slowly across the stands, and I scanned the basketball-loving population of Henning, Massachusetts for clues. Could I make a life there? As the announcer yammered about a two-for-one special on pizza slices, I watched the crowd’sfaces.
