Page 45 of Rookie Mistake
The headline says: "Eli Mercer: The NHL's First Openly Bisexual Player."
By the third paragraph I stop reading with my eyes and start reading with my jaw, my shoulders, the old familiar clench of trying to smile before anyone can decide they've erased you.
The headline is wrong. I am not the first. Others said the word before me, in interviews and posts that the internet doesn't remember. The "first" narrative erases them and attaches the erasure to my name.
And the article says "queer" fourteen times and "bisexual" twice. The word I chose was specific. The article chose a different one.
The article is from a national outlet. The interview was last week: a phone call, forty-five minutes, a reporter who was polite and professional and who asked good questions and who wrote an article that is polite and professional and that reduces my entire identity to a label and then argues about the label for three thousand words.
The article says "queer" fourteen times and "bisexual" twice. I used one word. The article returns a different one, polished andmore marketable, like my own mouth needed editing before it could be legible.
I read the comments because I am a twenty-two-year-old with a phone and the impulse control of a golden retriever near a sandwich.
The comments are the comments. The one that stays: "Is he actually bi or is he just gay and not ready to commit to the word?"
Not ready to commit to the word. As if the word I chose, the word I carried for seven years, is a rest stop on the way to a real destination. As if bisexual is a phase and the phase will end when I'm brave enough to pick a side.
I said bisexual. The world heard confused. The gap is the erasure.
I close the laptop. My jaw aches. I've been clenching it for twenty minutes without noticing, the old familiar brace of trying to hold a face together while someone takes it apart.
The grin goes up.
It's been down for weeks. The apartment didn't need it. The team didn't need it. The ice didn't need it. The grin was retired.
The world outside brought it back.
At practice, I am electric. Twenty goals worth of electric. The speed is there. The hands are there. The grin is there, wider than it's been in months, deployed at full capacity, aimed at every coach and teammate and camera like a floodlight.
Bennett says: "You good?"
"Great. Never better."
Jonah says: "You see the article?"
"Yeah. It's fine. Whatever."
Jonah looks at me the way Jonah looks at people when Jonah suspects the words and the face are not in agreement. "If you want to talk about it..."
"Nothing to talk about. The article is the article. The internet is the internet. I'm fine."
I am fine. The fine is the grin, the grin is the wall, and the wall is back up.
The wall has been down for weeks and the down was the growing and the growing was the best thing that ever happened to me and now the wall is back up because the world said "confused" and the word hit the exact place where the wall used to stand and the place was vulnerable because the wall had been removed and the vulnerability is the cost of the removal and the cost is the sting and the sting is the grin.
Cole finds me in the weight room. Cole, who did this first. Cole, who kissed Mik on television and whose comment section was a war zone for months. Cole, who survived the surviving.
"The article," he says.
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. The article is reductive and the headline erases people who came before you and the comment section is a cesspool. None of that is fine."
"Cole..."
"You don't have to be fine. Fine is a performance. You taught me that." He pauses. "You taught the whole team that. Your face right now is the face you wore at camp. The grin. The wall. The face that says 'I'm handling it' when the handling is costing you."
I look at him. Cole Briggs, who walked this road. Whose road had different terrain but the same distance.
