Fight Night

Names have been altered to protect the characters. Events have been slightly tweaked to protect the author.

Early 2017, around 7:00 pm, Sunday night. About a mile and a half from Highlands Ranch High School. The ring is ready, but the fighters are blissfully unaware, for the moment.

I know it was the afternoon because I had just gotten out of the shower. I know it was 2017 because I was nearing the end of my second year of middle school. I know it was Sunday because my father was very adamant that this was not the way he wanted to spend his Sunday night.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to fight night.

A few nights before, my good friend Jack Palmer had come over for a sleepover. It was rather out of the ordinary that Jack and I were friends at all; elementary school, and Eagle Ridge in particular, is a very simple, but very divided system. In high school, there’s a lot of sub-cliches, but elementary school has about two; athletic isolationists, and the people who get picked on by the former. There’s very little middle ground. Coincidentally, the middle ground is exactly where I’d place myself. Somehow, the stars aligned and I ended up sitting next to Jack at the coveted, but despised, “popular table”, and we soon became actual friends.

That particular sleepover had substantially less sleep than over. As sixth-graders do, we stayed up late into the night talking about our worldly concerns that at seemed as momentous as paying taxes or finding happiness in the adult world at the time. It was a tame discussion, until a period of silence came about that rang in my ears. The tuning-fork of quiet rebounded around the basement for at least a few minutes. This particular pause was so heavy-hitting to me because of the topic I was turning over in my mind, and deciding if I would say.

“Jack, I think I like boys.”

We talked about it for a relatively short time before succumbing to the sweet, sonorous song of sleep that had been nagging us all night.

The next morning, I felt like I had poured my soul out onto Jack’s feet and told him every other truth locked within me. He obviously didn’t feel the occasion was so momentous, because when asked how his sleepover was, the first thing out of his mouth was “Connor told me a big secret!” After what I imagine (or maybe hope) was a great period of pressing, Mrs. Palmer wrestled one of my innermost truths from her son. Minutes later, this news reached my mother.

Of course, this is speculation. The events may have played out differently. Jack could’ve threw my secret on the front steps of his house within seconds, and watched it thrash and die, as secrets do when revealed. He even likely did. We stopped talking after the sleepover, so I have no way of knowing.

Now it’s minutes before the big match. The fighters are in their corners, but three of four have yet to warm up. Only one contender knows what’s in store for the rest of the night; my mother. I imagine she received the call from Jack’s mother not long before she walked into my bathroom. I reminisced in the shower at the time, sitting on the raised bench to reflect. While hindsight isn’t always 20/20 in situations of high stress, the second the door opened, I knew I had been entered into a brawl I had no intentions of participating in. My mother knew I was in the bathroom, but came in anyway. I was the defending champion, and I needed to keep my title by any means necessary.

The first blow was a simple jab, but it stung plenty. “I just got a call from Jack’s mother. Come to the basement when you’re done in here.”

I finished in the shower and went downstairs. For better or for worse, the start of the fight has slipped through the cracks of memory, but the middle rounds remain as clear as ever. Sometime during the middle of the punchout, my father delivered the cutting question that I don’t believe I’m likely to forget anytime soon.

“What, do you like boys or something?” Simple, but strong. I worded my reply similarly.

“Yes.”

What followed that is a highly extended and terribly long-winded analogy involving family values, extension cords, and what is and isn’t natural in the modern world. This all rather effectively drove me out of the basement and into the backyard, and my father to his room. A dual knockout; unlikely, but possible. Only my mother and sister remained standing, for the time.

I went to the swing in our backyard for a few minutes before returning to the basement. My mother returned to see my successful recovery from the knockout, and offered some supportive words.

From a relative point of view, I had already beaten numerous challengers to claim my golden belt at the end of the bracket; a semi-steady sexual orientation label, and a reason to start thinking about the big showdown that I knew would come. My mother was halfway or so to her reward, which was an understanding of the information Mrs. Palmer had so kindly slapped her in the face with. My father retired at the first round, still a long ways from his reward, which is not all to dissimilar from my mother’s.

The fight didn’t end that night; it reached a stalemate. Neither party willing to take the steps to their rewards can kill any conflict in the blink of an eye.

We simply remain in our corners, awaiting the next ring of the bell.