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Julien is a 42 year old closet-case when a fourth liner on the Leafs gets forcibly outed.
It’s barely a week later when the Leafs’ star forward defiantly follows him out, and the media focuses on a single image for days, Marc Lapointe’s head ducked down to avoid the media camped around their apartment, Dan Riley’s hand on the back of his neck, nudging him out of the frame, the flashes of light.
Julien’s still 42. He’s still in the closet. Nothing’s changed, really. He’s retired, has been for years, and it’s been quiet out of the spotlight, so quiet when you do nothing worth paying attention to.
He hasn’t seen Alexei in ten years, hasn’t talked to him. Some naive, stupid French brat coming out and expecting parades is irrelevant to his life, except it’s everything he wanted at 21 and never got.
It doesn’t mean anything.
*
Alexei’s back in Russia, has been in Russia for years, since he got too slow for top-dollar, too old, worn out, and ran back for money, a familiar language, an easy out. Ran back out of cowardice.
That’s not fair.
That’s still true.
*
When Julien first saw Alexei, he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Alexei Konstantinovich, blond hair, blue eyed, with tan skin and a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. Big, clever hands, broad shoulders, gold chain resting in the hollow of his throat. Hockey players hated him because he was the guy their wives had crushes on.
Alexei came to Canada speaking a handful of fractured English, and Julien went to Vancouver with the same, uncomfortable with the language, the terrible, stuttered French everyone offered him when they tried to make the effort. Neither of them understood anything anyone was saying. They didn’t understand each other either, but for some reason it was easier, the two of them communicating with their awful, broken English, more hand gestures and exaggerated faces than words.
The Anglos all laughed at them for it, but Julien liked that better, the language they created between the two of them, the bits of Russian he gathered to his chest, the French Alexei would accidentally drop into English sentences.
It wasn’t love at first sight, not even close, but when Julien met Alexei, he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He still is.
*
It’s not like Julien’s been pining away. He’s dated. There was one guy that even made it to serious before he got fed up with the fact that Julien, one year past retirement, still introduced him as a friend. He’s had sex, he’s had romance, he’s fallen in love.
Alexei got married five years ago, bowing to his parents or the media or the scared little boy inside him. A pretty, blonde, buxom bride. He invited half of the old guard Canucks. Invited Julien too, out of what, propriety? Spite? Julien didn’t go, but that wasn’t strange. Moscow is a world away from Quebec City. No one would have expected otherwise.
He wonders if Alexei fucks her, if he makes himself do it, with that sense of duty he’s always had. Or maybe he doesn’t, maybe she doesn’t care, can spend his millions and she doesn’t even have to screw him. It’s a gold-digger’s dream.
*
Alexei came over in 1988 with the first wave of Russian players. Julien had been drafted the year before, but they’d kept him with his minor team, let him stretch, grow a little. They were rookies together, clueless together, trying to piece together their English, trying to piece together their hockey. Alexei had played a few years of pro hockey in Russia, and Julien had been amazed by that, impressed, deferred to him on all things hockey while Alexei referred to him on all things Canadian. That first year Julien had been so lost, so at sea, and Alexei was probably the only thing that kept him from running back to Quebec. He was probably the only thing keeping Alexei in Canada.
They were so young.
*
The media won’t stop talking about Marc Lapointe.
The Toronto media’s lauding him, holding him up as an icon, like he’s done something, like his very nature is suddenly a boon for the Maple Leafs, that he makes them modern, accepting, the first team with an openly gay player, and a Stanley Cup on top of it.
Quebec is conflicted.
That’s the history of Quebec in three words, so it’s not exactly surprising. What is surprising is how little outcry there is. Julien would have expected more. He was expecting the old guard Catholics to rear their heads, but the old guard Catholics have been dying for years, just keep dying, and Quebec isn’t the place he was born into, not anymore.
The American media’s a little more split, but who would have expected otherwise.
Lapointe looks a little like Alexei did at his age, not much, but enough to ache, to make Julien fight between the urge to read on and the urge to close the page.
He hadn’t thought about Alexei at all lately. He’d been doing so well.
*
The first time they slept together was almost four years after they met. They were drunk, they were plastered, had just nailed down the next five years, guaranteed themselves enough money to be comfortable for the rest of their lives, and they were giddy with the promise of the future, with the idea of a legacy, with their franchise.
Julien kissed Alexei because he couldn’t help himself, because his smile was breaking his face in two, because his cheeks were pink from the vodka and his shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, and because he wanted to, because he’d always wanted to, was tired of wanting and doing nothing about it.
Alexei went statue still against him, Julien remembers that, frozen, absolutely petrified, but that was only for a moment, and then he was kissing back.
The next morning Alexei got on a plane to Moscow, and ignored every call Julien made. If Julien hadn’t just signed a multi-million dollar deal, he probably would have gone broke, listening to Alexei’s voice mail, the clipped consonants, leaving long, sprawling voicemails he can’t even remember the contents of.
That was it, he thought that was it, that he’d broken them, taking what he wanted, but the first day Alexei got back he came to Julien’s door and kissed him like he wanted to crawl inside him.
Julien still doesn’t know what that summer in Moscow was like, whether Alexei gave himself permission or tried to talk himself out of it and failed. He still doesn’t remember what he said into Alexei’s machine, perversely safe at the time with the knowledge that Alexei wasn’t going to talk to him now, not ever, exhaling into the receiver and letting everything out.
*
When the media furor’s died down a little, Julien calls his former agent. They’re both retired now, and Noel greets him as a friend and not a client, but he goes businesslike the second Julien says his name the way Noel’s always hated, with the weight of bad news behind it.
“How do you come out?” Julien asks.
Noel’s quiet for a long time, long enough that Julien’s starting to think he’s hung up, before he says, “You want to do this now, Jules?”
“I don’t know,” Julien says, completely honest.
“And Konstantinovich?” Noel asks.
“It has nothing to do with him,” Julien says.
Noel’s silence is judgemental. Julien chews his lip, waits through it, because Noel likes to be dramatic, and sure enough, Noel drops it, says, “You want me to set things up?”
“Yes,” Julien says, before he can talk himself out of it. “Please.”
*
Noel found out about them after it was already over, after Alexei went back to Russia, after Julien took a trade to Quebec City to serve out his remaining years. The entire city of Vancouver mourned that year like they’d died and taken the franchise right with them, and Julien mourned too, in his way, drank too much, until his play started dropping enough that it couldn’t be ignored.
Noel had a key to Julien’s, had for years, let in the housekeepers bi-weekly when Julien was in Vancouver. He found Julien and a bottle of vodka, and instead of doing what he probably wanted to and pouring it down the drain, he poured himself a glass, sat across from Julien at the kitchen table.
Julien stared at the wood grain until it swam, and then said, “I’m gay,” to the table’s surface.
“I know,” Noel said, and Julien looked up, didn’t see anything on Noel’s face except placid acceptance, no surprise, nothing.
“He left me,” Julien said, bleak.
“Who did?” Noel asked.
Julien took a sip, bitter. He’d never liked the taste of vodka. He didn’t know why he was drinking it. Or, he did, but he wasn’t proud of it.
“Who do you think?” he asked, and Noel looked at him for a long moment before he knocked back his drink, fast and neat.
“I think I need to drink more for this conversation,” Noel said.
“Welcome to my life,” Julien said, and then, with Noel’s gentle nudging, let the story unravel, slow.
*
Two weeks after Julien comes out, two weeks buffeted by the media frenzy, Noel books him a spot on a talk show focusing on the recent emergence of gay hockey players. Noel has clearly forgotten that he’s retired, that they both are, but Julien needs to leave the house anyway, get out of Quebec, so he takes the invitation, gets on a plane to New York.
Marc Lapointe’s the other guest, because you can’t put together the words ‘gay’ and ‘hockey’ without hearing his name, right now. Beyond a quick introduction, they don’t say a word to each other before they’re shoved in a green room and forced to stew, but Lapointe makes up for it fast once they’re in there, starts talking and doesn’t stop. Julien doesn’t know if it’s a nervous habit or what, but it only makes the room feel worse, smaller, stuffier.
Lapointe’s English is better than his by miles, Julien already knew that from interviews. But his French is better too, a good Montreal accent, polished, while Julien’s never managed to get the Joual out of his voice, never been able to scrub his French neat, so he feels like an idiot, listening to Lapointe chatter while they wait, the neat, considered tone of his voice, cultured. Brought up nice, no scraping the money together for a second-hand pair of skates, no praying you won’t grow out of your pads, just one more season, please.
He’s halfway ready to hate him when Lapointe shyly asks if he could get an autograph for his boyfriend, the one who didn’t get a choice, got thrust into the whole frenzy instead of stepping into it, like Lapointe did. Like Julien did, for that matter.
Julien takes the pen and paper Lapointe offers, looks down at it, stuck, until he writes the only thing he can say, the thing that he needs to say, you are so much braver than I am.
*
Once, Julien made the mistake of telling Alexei he loved him.
It wasn’t repeated.
*
Alexei hosts a charity event, something he founded, something about hockey, Julien guesses, his Russian still not good enough after over 20 years, not enough to follow everything.
Noel sent him the link,and Julien listens to a Q&A that consists mostly of praise. Alexei’s gone to seed, gone middle-aged, some grey at the temples, soft at the middle. He isn’t that golden boy that came to Canada and made all the Vancouver girls swoon whenever he touched the puck. Julien could pass him in the street and he wouldn’t look twice.
It still hurts to look at him, and for a few minutes he wonders why Noel’s sent him it at all, whether he intends to torture him with this, thrown in the face of the enforced absence he’s clung so hard to. His Russian isn’t great, but he knows enough to catch someone in the media go off script from adulation of his generosity, ask him if he knew Julien Perreault was gay, if he knew he’d shared a team, a locker room, a line with a pedik.
That’s a word he’s heard enough, the Russians threw it around enough that everyone started to use it as a slur because the refs didn’t know it, or pretended not to. He’s been called it enough times, though it hasn’t been stated like that, matter-of-fact, a simple truth, until now.
The video quality isn’t great, a little grainy, but Julien still recognises the way Alexei’s jaw tightens, the way he swallows, hard. He does that whenever he knows he shouldn’t say the first thing that wants to come out of his mouth.
“Next question,” he says, clipped, and someone returns to the ‘Compliment Alexei Konstantinovich’ script, drags it back on track.
*
That night Julien calls that number he has memorised, dialed painstakingly over the summer of radio silence, later called just to share breath with Alexei across the line, worlds away. He doesn’t know why he does it, he hasn’t used it in ten years, there’s not even any reason for landlines anymore, but he does it anyway, habit, his fingers taking over. He listens to the hollow ring.
He’s laughing at himself, a little, preparing to hang up, when the voicemail catches, and it’s the same voice it’s always been, the same message, Julien wouldn’t even be surprised if Alexei never bothered to change it. He closes his eyes, and when the tone sounds, instead of hanging up he manages, “Alyosha,” rusty on his tongue, before he realises he has nothing else to say.