Hockey Players Don't Kiss Hockey Players

Maybe there's a thin line between love and hate, but there's no ref to call offsides.

Johnny Caro and I only lived a couple streets apart, but the gap was big enough to land us in different schools. We first met on the rink, and even as a little kid the rink gave me incredible clarity. There might only be a thin line between love and hate, but a hockey game has a way of putting its thumb on the scale.

Johnny was fast. He glided on his skates. With his slim, muscular build and his good looks, I think he could have gone to the Olympics as one of those ice dancers, and he probably would have brought home a medal. Not me, though. My team called me Dozer. They said it was because I was the guy who could doze off on the bus, but it really started because I skated with all the grace of a bulldozer.

Johnny was a forward. I played defence. So I could admire him as much as I liked off the ice, but once the puck dropped there was only hate between us. There had to be. He'd come scooting down the rink, and I'd do what I could to ruin his day. Our schools were rivals, and we were the best players on our respective teams, so we were rivals. It was as simple as that. When he managed to get the puck past me, the kids from his school roared. And when I managed to stop him cold, the kids from my school responded in kind.

I was sixteen when I noticed him. When I really noticed him, I mean. It was after a game, and everyone was heading on home, and he stood in the parking lot under the lights. His hair was still wet from the showers, and it was so cold out there that it must have been freezing to his head, and he looked beautiful.

Not a lot of hockey players are beautiful. Some of them are good looking in a rugged sort of way--that's what I hope I am on my best day. But a sport that regularly causes people to loose teeth or flatten their noses doesn't tend to involve a lot of beautiful men. But Johnny? Johnny was beautiful.

"Oh shit," I whispered, and I felt myself blush.

I thanked my lucky stars that Johnny didn't turn around and see me gawking at him. See, girls never did anything for me. No offence meant, of course. I'd had a number of great friends who happened to be girls. But they didn't make my heart pound or my breath get all shallow, and I was smart enough to know what that meant.

But I was also smart enough to keep it to myself.

People liked Dozer, the bullheaded defenseman. They slapped me on the back after games, and they cheered when I did a good job, and they considered me just one of the guys. But being just one of the guys meant hanging around in locker-rooms with half-dressed athletes, and despite all their bravado I knew how delicate that locker-room world was. If I told them that I'd never kissed a girl because I never wanted to kiss a girl, that locker-room world would just die.

And of course, those boys were all full of themselves. They'd assume that if I was capable of being attracted to men I would naturally, obviously, inevitably be attracted to them, and I was probably creeping on them in the showers. They'd never even consider the possibility that none of them were my type.

Even Johnny wasn't supposed to be my type. He was a hockey player, after all, and he'd probably end up with fake teeth after catching a puck to the mouth. But what a mouth that was.

The next time we played I stuck to Johnny like we were a couple of synchronised swimmers, and I forced him to have one of the worst games of his career. The team loved it, and we ended up winning the game 6-2. Towards the end of the game, when I was trying to clear the puck, Johnny gave me a good hit. I went down on my ass, and I stared up at him, and there was fire in those eyes. He'd known that I'd been fixated on him all game, and in that moment he must have hated me. I think I hated him too, at least a little.

Once we were off the ice it wasn't so simple.

He was in the parking lot again, as beautiful as before. I couldn't resist his pull. For years, I'd played the macho part in the locker-room because I loved hockey, but for just a second I felt a bit of that melt.

"You need a ride?"

He glanced at me. "Dozer, right?"

I nodded.

"You're good."

"You are too."

And we stared at each other for a second before he explained that his family would be coming and he had to go. And that was alright, because he was my rival after all.

Besides, he was beautiful, and I'm not. I'm not stupid. I knew that some of the girls at my school would have been delighted to accompany my rugged ass on a date. But I wanted to attract the sort of guy who I was attracted to, and sometimes it felt like there wasn't space for me in that world. I wanted to play hockey, and I wanted to kiss a handsome man, and I didn't want to choose between them.

Have I mentioned that he had nice shoulders? Because he did. Inside of his equipment and out of it. I caught myself staring at his back, wondering how it would feel to grab those shoulders and pull his chest into mine. If he'd been a female cheerleader or, hell, even a female member of the drama club, it wouldn't have been a problem. The guys would have slapped me on the back and told me to go for it.

But not Johnny Caro.

During our next game, it was my turn to flatten him. It was a clean hit, and he went down without damaging that beautiful face, and the game went on. But I stopped. And before I could change my mind, I held my hand out to him, and I helped him back on his feet.

"Thanks."

We played rough. At the end of the third period, when I got between him and his opportunity to tie the game, I thought that he might drop his gloves. And if he did, I'd drop mine too. Because that was how the game was played. We were never going to swoon over each other on the ice. We couldn't.

But he didn't drop his gloves, so I didn't drop mine. My team beat his by one point, and he looked like he might break his stick in frustration.

I didn't try to see him after the game, but I thought about him. I resisted the urge to search for his name on the internet, because I might find pictures of him with a girlfriend. It was brutally difficult to resist the urge, but I refused to raise my eye to that digital keyhole and see what lingered on the other side. Instead, I turned to my own imagination. I was driving my pick-up, and he was in the passenger seat, and we were headed to a game that we'd play together. And in that world, our whole team knew about us, but no one cared.

If I found out that he had a girlfriend, I wouldn't let myself live in that imaginary world anymore, and as my seventeenth birthday came and went, I needed that imaginary world.

"Hey, Dozer." Johnny leaned against the lightpost, right where I'd first noticed that he was hot. "Well done in there." We'd just finished playing another team. For months I'd been playing better than I ever had before. Even when Johnny wasn't around, I imagined that he might be, and I wanted to beat him. Coach had asked with a bit of wonder, What's gotten into you? And can you get a dose for the rest of these guys?

"Thanks."

He stepped into my space. Somehow his lips looked even better up close. I wouldn't have believed it, but it was true. "You're better than the rest of them, you know?"

I did, but it wasn't polite to admit to that. So I shrugged.

"What do you say? You, me, one-on-one."

My heart was pounding, but I could never accept something like that. There was too great a chance of me exposing things that were supposed to stay secret.

"C'mon," he said, and he pounded my shoulder with his fist. For a second, I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arm under his armpit and pull him close, but I didn't. I couldn't. "I know a spot."

"You just want practice getting into my net."

He smirked. Those lips... If I saw a picture of him kissing a girl with those lips, I thought that it just might kill me. I was seventeen years old and I'd never been in a relationship because I needed to protect my life as a hockey player, but those lips were destroying me.

"Sure," I said. "If you want. We can play."

I wanted him to know everything about me, but I also wanted him to know nothing about me. He gave me the address of a small park with a frozen pond. It would be secluded, but seclusion is such a double edged sword. I'm not stupid. If he realised that I couldn't stop myself from staring at his lips, his invitation to a secluded spot could be wonderful or fatal.

Maybe it was time for our rivalry to involve fists. Maybe not.

The park was empty when I arrived, except for Johnny. Instead of a real rink, there was just the frozen pond and a couple of pylons. Neither of us bothered to get into full gear. It was just a casual match anyways.

Without his gear, it was so much easier to see the beauty in how Johnny played. It was in his hips. There was a control to his motion, and it all branched out of those hips. It was mesmerising. Frankly, it was unfair.

We laughed. I was on edge, still expecting his buddies to emerge from somewhere to screw me up. But the longer the talked and laughed, the more relaxed I became. And in our little one-on-one, I proved that I could still go the distance with him.

We didn't keep score.

When the sun set and it was time to head back to our homes for dinner, I helped him gather up the pylons and carry them to his car.

"We should do this again sometime," he said.

And I took my chance.

I grabbed one of his perfect shoulders, feeling the heat burning through his shirt, and I pulled him close. After our exercise, even on a cold winter day, his face was sweaty, and his mouth was hot. His lips were a little cracked from the cold, but I didn't care. I pulled his chest against mine, and I felt my own body tense.

Then he melted into me.

I couldn't say how long it lasted. I was still scared, and I think he was too. But when we pulled apart, he was smirking.

"Don't expect me to go easy on you next time we play," he said.

And with a stupid grin on my face, I said, "I wouldn't dream of it."