Athletic Support

No one needs to explain the hierarchy of the locker room. I spent my time there, back in the day. But it was the time I spent as a student athlete in junior high that let me know just how intimidating life can be even though I had ascended to the ranks of the elite: The Jocks.
Centennial Junior High was one of the first junior highs to have separate locker room facilities for the kids who were on their sports teams. When I was in seventh grade, I only heard stories about showers that were really hot. Lockers in which you could hang your clothes and had room for your books as well. And there was even a whirlpool. This was a radical step up from the ventilated baskets that we were used to stuffing all of our non-PE accoutrements while we were out in the gym. If you chose to try out for one of the varsity sports teams, you would be afforded a spot in that athlete's Valhalla, the downstairs locker room, providing you stayed on the team.
I spent a year upstairs, being tormented by the eighth and ninth graders, and the seventh graders who had the genetic advantage of size even if their brains and opposing thumbs were slow in development. It was part of the reason that I decided to go out for wrestling when I got to eighth grade. Even though I was a fixture on "B" mat, never quite good enough to make "A" mat, I was happy for the step up. The initial experience of being welcomed into this fraternal organization was a welcome change to the Lord of the Flies touring company I encountered upstairs. Saying goodbye to my nerdier friends as we entered the gym to go change with the other guys on the wrestling team before PE each day gave me the air of superiority. But that air was pretty thin.
As I came to find out, all the harassment I experienced upstairs was just distilled into a finer, more intense version with warmer showers downstairs. The towels still got snapped, and I still found crusty snot blown on my locker door by those who felt compelled to mark their territory by any means necessary. I didn't feel any of the security I might have expected. Rather I felt the pressure to maintain my position in this unnatural order of things. I chose to join the track team in the spring so that I wouldn't have to give up my spot downstairs.
I never stopped getting abuse, but I didn't want to surrender. I stayed and when I entered ninth grade, I went out for football so that I could be in the sports locker room year round. The name-calling and random abuse never fully subsided even though I was, by all outward appearances, one of them.
I wasn't really. I felt the sting of the homophobic insults and the snap of their rat-tailed towels. I stuck with it because I really believed that I would triumph via sheer tenacity. It never got any easier. Which is why when I got to high school, I left my athletic career behind and focused on music. I was in the marching band. We had lockers for our instruments in the band room. I got along with most everybody there. And I never once got snapped by a towel. Maybe Jonathan Martin should have done the same.