Andrew Smith - Winger

I couldn’t wait to see Coach McAuliffe—Coach M, we called him—again. He was a little guy, a former winger too, and he was a transplant from England who could talk the most civilized-sounding shit you would ever hear, and he could cuss you out with the most vicious obscenities and it would sound like he was reading from Shakespeare. But Coach M was a die-hard traditionalist as far as the sport was concerned, and everything had to be perfectly maintained that way, from the words we used (and didn’t use, because on the pitch nobody could cuss except for Coach M) when we were around him, to the clothes we wore during practice. He’d make us wear the shortest rugby shorts anyone ever saw. Now, inexperienced observers do not understand why the shorts in rugby have to be the way they are, but just trust me, that’s how they need to be.

Nowadays, pretty much all the guys wore compression shorts under them anyway, and those would just about go down to our knees, but compression shorts were crucial because you’d almost never make it through a game without getting a square hit, punch, elbow, grab, or sometimes even the bottom of a foot, right in your balls.

One of the funniest things I ever saw happened when Seanie first started playing after he’d quit the basketball team. Since Seanie was so tall and skinny, Coach M wanted us to try to lift him in lineout practice. A lineout is when the ball gets thrown in from out of bounds and players can lift up a teammate (by his shorts, usually) so he can reach the ball. Well, Seanie, at the time, was just wearing boxers under his shorts, rather than compression shorts, and when the forwards lifted him, he said it felt like his balls ended up in back of his nipples. His eyes bugged out, his hands both went right down to his crotch, and he said, “Ohmyfuckinggod!” Of course, the ball just sailed past him. He had other things on his mind.

And he never came back to the pitch without some tight compression shorts on under everything.

We shook hands with the other guys (the team always had to do that) when we passed through the locker room, and the three of us walked together up the hill path that cut between the other practice fields to the rugby pitch. This, of course, took us right beside the fields where the soccer and football teams practiced.

We always got along well with the soccer team; they tended to be pretty clever with the jokes they’d play on us and were always appreciative of what we’d do to them. But, for whatever reasons, the football team just absolutely hated us. I don’t even think “hate” is a strong enough word for the emotions we stirred in them, which is why two of them had no problem whatever in deciding to put my face in a toilet the day before.

I figured there was a sort of predictable pattern to a football-player-versus-rugby-player exchange that went something like this: The football player fires a put-down he’d probably been thinking about all day; then the rugby player comes up with an even more-scathing comeback and laughs; then the football player, who can only think of one thing to say and nothing else, says something about wanting to fight and walks away.

So, as I fully expected, when JP, Seanie, and I passed the football field, Casey Palmer, the quarterback and practically my next-door neighbor in O-Hall, and Nick Matthews, his roommate and coconspirator in the give-Ryan-Dean-a-welcoming-bath-in-the-toilet plot, were standing by the fountain trough at the edge of the sideline, and Casey shouted to us: “Oooh! Rugby players! Nice shorts, gayboys!”

Good one. What a predictable dipshit.

And Seanie, as stoic as ever, said, “You wanna know how I know you’re gay, Palmer? ’Cause you got a picture of some guy’s ballsack on your MySite, that’s how! Ha ha!”

“Are you the one who did that, Flaherty? If you are, I’ll fucking kill you!” Casey yelled back.

JP and I just looked at each other, and then at Seanie.

“Does he have a picture of some guy’s balls on his MySite?” I asked.

“Sure,” Seanie said. “Haven’t you seen it?”

“No.”

“No,” JP added.

Then Seanie just looked at us with his cold reptilian eyes and said, “Okay. It took me about ten straight hours on Friday to hack his password and put that picture on. I guess he hasn’t been able to resolve the issue yet. Maybe he’ll figure it out if he goes home this weekend. I sent a mass e-mail out to everyone on the football team, saying, ‘I wonder why there is a picture of some guy’s nutsack on Casey Palmer’s MySite.’ ”

JP and I began laughing, staring right at Casey, who looked at that moment like he could kill someone.

“The best part is, they’re my balls,” Seanie said, absolutely straight-faced. “I have a printout, if you guys want to see it.”

“Sean Russell Flaherty,” I said. “You are so disturbed.”

“That’s fucking demented,” JP agreed. “In an elegant way, though. And, no, you don’t have to show me the printout of your balls, Seanie.”

“Dude, Seanie,” I said. “You put a picture of your own balls on the Internet.”

“I know.” Seanie actually laughed. Twice. Monotone. Weird.

“This is probably the best reason I have right now for why I don’t have a MySite,” I said.

“Oh, but you do have a MySite, my friend,” Seanie said in an incredibly creepy voice. “I’ve seen it. You friended me. And JP’s got one too.”

“You are fucking kidding me,” JP said. He sounded pissed.

“Ha ha!” Seanie said, “Yeah. I’m just kidding.”

And again, that was what was so fucking creepy about Seanie. Who could tell if he really was kidding?

And then, as we were about halfway up the hill toward the pitch, as if Casey Palmer’s inflated sense of masculinity hadn’t been assailed enough, we all heard a soft, familiar voice with an English accent say, “Why are you boys staring at my players’ asses?” Because I guess Casey and Nick just kept watching us as we walked up the hill.

Coach M knew what was up. He’d never let the football team get away with any shit on us.

Not ever.

PRACTICE WAS LIGHT. COACH M said we weren’t going to start hitting until he could see what he had; and I was okay with that because I was weak and felt so shitty after what I’d gone through.

We ran through a usual warm-up: a slow jog, some stretches, a few quick-hands passing drills, then we ran some forties and suicides, and that’s when Coach M noticed that I was definitely not the fastest guy out there.

He said, “Did you slow down over the summer, Winger? You’re going to need to put on some speed if you expect to keep your job.”

And that made me feel even worse, because not only did I screw things up for myself and Annie, but I let Coach M down too. So, before we broke up into teams for a little touch sevens, I asked Coach M if I could talk to him.

“I’m sorry, Coach, I’m just really sick today. I’ll be back up to speed tomorrow.”

“What’s the matter, Ryan Dean?”

“I just . . .” And then, “Last night was my first night in Opportunity Hall. And I couldn’t sleep at all. I feel horrible.” It wasn’t really a lie.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I understand, Ryan Dean. Let’s hope you can get your shit straightened out this year and get out of O-Hall.”

See? That’s just how he talks, but it sounds so musical and soothing with that English accent. And then he added, “Before Chas Becker turns you into an asshole.”

Coach M picked four guys to be team captains, and then we had a little sevens tournament. Sevens is a scaled-down version of rugby where there are only seven, as opposed to fifteen, players on a team. And we were playing touch instead of tackle, so the entire game was really based on speed and ball handling.