Pins: A Novel by Jim Provenzano Page B

coach.
      The ref twice said, “Off the mat,” but a few people began yelling, booing, including Bennie, who’d ripped his earphones off to stand, mutter a curse.
    The other guy’s coach and teammates stood around sheepishly, preparing to defend, as if to say, well, it happened. Too bad.
    The match went to the other guy. A few people booed. That didn’t happen very often, but with such an obvious blunder, even opposing team’s parents agreed, chattering away in the bleachers at the injustice.
    “I’ll go cheer him up.” Joey left Bennie at the bleachers to sit with Dink on the rolled mat in the back of the gym. Dink peeled his singlet down to his waist, tossed his headgear into a corner. Joey retrieved it, put his hand sympathetically on the sheen of sweat on Dink’s back.
    “Shoulda won that,” Joey consoled. He retracted his hand, but did not wipe it off.
    “I did.”
    “Yeah.”
    They sat together, Joey looking around, trying not to stare at the heaving, glistening torso of his buddy, Dink’s milky skin spotted with light shoulder freckles. A mole poked out of his skin near his right latissimus.
    “Could you get my bag?” Dink asked.
    “Sure.”
    Joey retrieved it, feeling a special privilege as he crossed the mat between circles.
    He watched Dink’s dad talk calmly with the ref over by the official’s table, then walk over, crouch before the two.
    “He even admitted it,” Mr. Khors said, apologetic. “It was a bad call. But they can’t use video to determine that. They never do.”
    “He can’t just change his mind, Dad. It doesn’t work that way.”
    “I’m real sorry, Donnie. You know you won.”
    “Fuck it. It’s just an invitational. I’ll get my stats up before the season’s out.”
    Dink’s father put his arm around his son. Joey turned away, felt a strange ache not incurred on the mat, as if he wasn’t part of that, a closeness his own father didn’t share. Sure, his dad was nice enough, gave him money for equipment. But he wasn’t there. He had to work.
    He’d called him Donnie. How would Dink feel if he called him that?
    Dink spoke a few words into his father’s ear. Mr. Khors went off to get something for him.
    Lamar Stevens came up to try to cheer the two. “Hey, what’s this?” He placed the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head, then pulled it down from the bottom so it fell away from his bald head.
    “I dunno,” Dink said.
    “It’s Neech gettin’ a boner! Ha Ha!” Lamar ran off to the practice mats. Joey jumped up after him, but he didn’t feel like completing it. Stevens could get away with jokes like that because anybody could pummel him, so nobody did. His sense of humor protected him.
    Joey wanted to stay with Dink, not let the wicked joke keep them smirking. Stevens had cheered them up, for a minute. But then he felt weird, comparing how he should feel if it were a girl coming up, saying a pussy joke to a guy. When guys talked about girls, they were outside, something over there. The way they talked about women according to their body parts annoyed him.
    He didn’t want to think of Dink as either somebody to have sex with or a friend. He didn’t know how they could be combined. How could he think about him like that, separate, when his whole life was immersed in what he loved? Dink was part of him, not someone he caught, the way guys talked about girls but never hung out with them unless they were going steady. He didn’t have to ask someone else to ask if Dink liked him. He knew what Dink smelled like. He knew every inch of his body.
    Several boys, knocked out of the running for the day, lay on rows of bleachers, resting, flat out, rows of bodies. All around the gymnasium, all the people, families supporting their kids, other kids from different teams, most in gray sweats with emblems, the names of their schools, all of them stirred in Joey a feeling of incredible belonging.
    But would he belong if he was honest about himself?
    He’d read news