This Coach Asked Me ‘You a Man, Boy?’ and I Said ‘What’s a Man?’ and He Pointed at Himself

In Year Seven, at the height of winter, we played basketball before school. And in the mornings on those freshly painted courts with the new hoops that the school had built down near the oval, with the cheerleaders practising their routines while the football players walked around in helmets carrying water bottles, yelling things and being ‘rowdy’, our new coach stood on the sidelines and watched as we ran suicides. He watched with his whistle in his mouth, and sometimes he took it out to yell things like, ‘You kids the future; you the future of this country.’ He separated us into shirts and skins, and we played five on five, diving after balls, trying to make the A team. I remember this kid stealing the ball at half-court and dribbling it down the other end, briefly looking over his shoulder before returning his gaze, taking two steps, and then dunking. It seemed insane: this thirteen-year-old just hanging on the rim while everyone ran over and held him. The coach blew his whistle. Training was over. We walked back to the locker room to get ready for school. Someone found a pair of tweezers in a locker and said, ‘Michael uses these to jizz,’ and Michael said, ‘Fuck up, you fucking faggot.’ The coach sat on a chair between the lockers and the showers and held our towels. Someone said, ‘Why you got our towels for?’ and the coach cleared his throat and said, ‘First you undress, then you get your towels.’ Everyone sort of looked at each other while I looked at the floor. Someone yelled, ‘I ’own’t give a fuck, I ain’t ’fraid to show what I got,’ while someone else yelled, ‘I ain’t no fucking pussy.’ The coach grinned and told us to hustle.