Perverts

Smear the Queer

It was yet another Monday morning, and we were arguing over the schedule for the next week like we always did. Rasheed thought since he was taking Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week that he should get off easy with Tuesday and Thursday next week, but the problem was that Mateo was off for about a month with a broken collarbone, the smearing having gone too far last Friday, so we needed to pick up the slack.

Our boss, Lynx, had breached protocol and allowed some tipsy men into the park since it meant more cash in her pocket. At least that’s what I assumed, though she denied it to the ends of the earth. Mateo and I could smell their grainy sour breath when they tackled us, pinned our arms behind our backs, bent our legs this way and that, and reached the point where we were convinced we’d never breathe properly again. That was when I’d heard the snap of Mateo’s clavicle under the weight of a big burly woodsman, the founder of some camping app or what have you.

While we sat around the break room, sipping our coffees, reading the client briefs for the day, and rubbing ourselves with numbing lotion, I couldn’t stop thinking about the sound a bone made when it broke. I could almost taste its brokenness on my tongue, the baby birdness of it. Bile filled my throat and sinuses. Lynx was nowhere to be found, probably locked in her office schmoozing our big-­time clients, the regulars who flew in on private jets and paid in wads of cash. We were a pretty secret operation. Only the richest could afford us, and we were located in the middle of nowhere in a part of the country where they left well and good alone as long as you could pay off anyone who came snooping around, which Lynx could.

“It’s fine, I’ll pick up some of their shifts if someone else can take the rest,” I said. I nodded at my work bestie. “Max?”

Max looked up from their wrist tape job and surveyed the lot of us. Rasheed, me, Elliot, Mario, and Heath. The fall/winter crew. If we could make it just another month, until mid-­March, we’d have six months off to tend to our bodies (and maybe even vacation in Palm Springs or Vegas!) while the spring/summer queers took over. I know it sounds like a shitty gig, but I would be able to pay off my student loans in just a couple of years. And as a former rugby player, I thought, what’s a few more years of getting tackled? Turns out, it’s a bit different when the person wants you dead. Anyway, most everyone was in it to pay off some kind of debt, at least that’s what we told each other, but Max, I knew, was in it for the pain itself, the self-­hatred brought to life. There’s always one, though I suspect we all have our own private, f***ed-­up reasons for doing what we do.

“You all are a bunch of f***ing ball sacks,” said Max. “Except for them,” they said, tilting their head in my direction.

“I’ll give you my bonus,” said Heath, unaware that Max can’t be bought.

Heath had taken on a custom request a few weeks ago, an older woman from Montana who wanted to shoot a rifle at Heath and Heath only. We theorized that Heath, a blond beanstalk of a person, resembled this woman’s genderqueer kid, or maybe an ex-­lover who threw her world off its delicate little axis. The woman wasn’t allowed to actually shoot Heath, and her shooting test beforehand had been spot on—­twenty bullseyes in a row—­but once they were out in the field, one bullet nipped Heath’s side before lodging in a tree. Heath hadn’t seemed to mind too much at the time, bragging how they were finally able to get their mom that fake hip she’d been bitching and whining about for years, but I could tell the whole thing had rattled them. I heard they told Lynx they were no longer open for custom experiences, but that’s not how it works around here: She decides if and when you are open, and if you work here, well, you are never closed.

Max waved Heath off. “I don’t want your money.”

“But I do,” I said.

Heath grinned. “Too late, you already volunteered.”

“That’s what I get for being such a selfless leader,” I said.

Max turned to me. “You ready?”

I nodded, examining their body, which was taped up like a mummy. When I’d asked about the tape job, they said they liked pain, not injury. Injury kept them from experiencing more pain.

“Nothing special today, right?” I asked. I’d been too distracted to read over the client brief.

“Yeah, just the usual,” said Max. They seemed bored.

I quickly rubbed some more numbing cream on my knees, which felt twenty years older than me. They were bone on bone in there, nothing left to cushion my every step, my every faceplant. Besides the knees, I had a bum ankle, an arthritic wrist, a tilted pelvis, a herniated disc, and a shoulder that was constantly slipping out of place. It’s amazing what you can grow used to.

I followed Max out the door and onto the field. It was still early, the sun sitting low in the sky. We started tossing a football back and forth, another resting at my feet. That was our cue that we were ready, that Lynx, watching us on camera from the comfort of her office, could set the homophobes loose into the park, which was filled with obstacles like water pits and rope ladders and scalable walls. There were wooden structures Lynx had acquired from old playgrounds, big ships, and trains, ideal for a day of imagination and adventure.

The homophobes liked a bit of a chase, to hunt for their queers. And for the right price, we would let them. We would take on all their rage and aggression, give them somewhere to channel it so they wouldn’t take it out on some unsuspecting kid on the street or queers dancing at the nightclub who were hoping to get lucky in the bathroom or an alley, so their hatred could be contained, controlled even. We would do that for our fellow queers. We would sacrifice our bodies and our sanity. Though there was no proof our efforts were successful, we still fancied ourselves a ragtag group of martyrs. And we would never tell a soul, partially because of the NDAs we’d signed and partially because of our shame at believing we alone could change the world, that we and our little bullied days could make a difference, relieve the world of pain, if only by concentrating it.

River, my girlfriend, believed me when I told her all my bruises and scrapes were from jumping in to scrimmage with the rugby team I helped coach after school, after I was done being a gym teacher. It was easier that way. I didn’t want her worrying about me. As a nurse in the ER, she already had plenty of people to worry about.

Max and I each cradled a football in our arms, ready for Smear the Queer, the game of our childhoods. The door at the entrance slowly rose like an automatic garage door. We saw the homophobes’ feet first: New Balance dad shoes and black Crocs. Then their legs, both men in straight-­leg jeans held up by a belt, one black, one brown. One wore a Harvard T-­shirt tucked into his jeans while the one in Crocs wore a turquoise polo. As always, they wore ski masks so we couldn’t make out their faces, but their hands were pale, somewhat wrinkled, perhaps liver-spotted. The anonymity was part of it—­they wanted to hate us in peace. Hiding behind a computer screen wasn’t enough for some; they needed the real thing, flesh on flesh, a chemical reaction. And they weren’t always older men. Sometimes they were young tech bros. You could tell because of their $1,000 ripped T-­shirts and pants designed to make them look poor.

It was always interesting to watch the homophobes choose their target. Sometimes, like needy dogs up for adoption, I think we queers chose them. I don’t know what made me do it, but today I yelled out, “Hey, big Harvard man, come and get me!” It wasn’t my best line, but I hadn’t been hired for my creativity, now, had I?