Tension built up from Monday to Friday. Each day was progressively more suffocating than the one before. By game day, everyone was distracted. Nothing got done in classrooms. Energy was conserved for playing and cheering. The initial release came in the form of the pep rally in late afternoon. They tried having them in the mornings, but too many kids started bailing afterward. The important part of the day was done for them. When the state started threatening to pull funding if the truancy problem wasn’t fixed, pep rallies were moved to the late afternoon.

The whole ritual always seemed bizarre to me. The football team decked in our khakis and white shirts waited in the hall while all the other students filled the basketball gym. Parents and community members with nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon also helped to give the gymnasium an overfilled feeling.

When everyone was at a frenzy, the band kicked in “Dixie,“ and the team ran through the human tunnel that formed on the other side of the door. It opened and closed every pep rally, a constant reminder that I lived in a backward thinking black hole. What disgusted me most was that I liked it. It made me feel pride.

This rally went like most of the others. We entered the gym, held our helmets together in center court, then made our way to our position of privilege: folding chairs with a bag of candy arranged underneath the Falcon mural. Most of my comrades kept their eyes fixed on the cheerleaders in the way cheetahs watch a group of gazelle. Not that I blame them. Tradition dictates that they should be the object of desire for the entire male population. This is where I kept my eyes fixed as well. Keep a steady gaze and a smile. The brownie I had for lunch set in and I daydreamed about that Saturday night.

The parents were out of town, so that left me home alone with a bottle of cheap tequila. There were about ten of us with a good male-to-female ratio, so we ended up playing strip poker. We all ended up drunk, and most of us ended up naked. I ended up both and in my room with Haley, a chesty sophomore with a taste for tequila and a crush on me. One thing led to another led to a group of my good friends walking in on me at full attention with Haley’s right hand wrapped around the result of my Y-chromosome.

She let me know she had to get home to receive a phone call from her father. I threw on a pair of athletic shorts, and bid the party farewell for a while.

“Look guys, Haley needs to be home by 12:30 to get a phone call from Jim,” I told them.

“Ben, it’s not even midnight,” Toby said.

“Point being?”

“She’s a ten minute walk.”

“What can I say? I’m a gentleman,” I said.

On the way to her place, she maintained the tent in my shorts. When we parked the car in her driveway, she practically ripped my head off bringing my mouth to hers. As her tongue twisted with mine, the only thing I could think was, Damn she tastes like tequila. This should be easy.

After a few minutes, we made our way inside the small two bedroom house. She went to brush her teeth at my request, put on Mechanical Animals, and found me on the couch. Now she tasted like peppermint and tequila. The next thing I knew, she pulled me onto the floor and got rid of my athletic shorts. And for the first time in my seventeen years I looked toward my feet and found a head in the way. I was well upon my way to forgetting our original purpose when I caught a glimpse of the VCR. It read 12:32.

The phone on the kitchen wall started to ring. Haley’s face suddenly came into view.

“Oh, shit. Hold on,” she said, replacing her hand with mine. She ran to the phone.

“Hi, Daddy! I’m home. Everything’s fine,” she slurred. “Yeah. You what? OK.” She started walking toward me, holding out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

My brain collapsed on itself, and I took the phone out of her hand.

“Hello,” I squeaked out.

“She’s drunk. I know she’s drunk. What the hell, Ben?” Came from the other end. Haley decided to compound the problem by returning to her previous activity.

“Well, Jim. You know your daughter. It‘s not like I forced it down her throat,” I said.

“You better be gone by the time I get home.” Click.

“Ben.”

“Ben.”

I felt an elbow hit me in the ribs.

“Ben, you’re giving the speech with Fluffy today. It’s time,” Justin Dixon told me, snapping me back to reality. I gathered my thoughts and remembered the task at hand. I got up and side-stepped my way to the sideline, trying not to hit any of my teammates with my hard on. My heart rate increased with every step toward center stage, and the lump in my throat got big enough to choke a donkey.

Eddie Fuller was a typical prodigal son of Cherokee Hills. He made B’s and C’s in class, spent most of his day in the Ag Barn, and attended one of the two premier Baptist churches in town. Fluffy would speak first, considering his oratory skills were about as good as my levitating skills. But the man was the quarterback, so as long as he played well on Friday night, no one gave a second thought to the speech he gave Friday afternoon. The cute little bugger even had a note card.

“Uh, hey guys,” he adlibbed . “Our team is one and oh this season,” he read. “And tomorrow when we wake up, we’ll be two and oh. Because the days of Falcon pride are back!”

The crowd screamed and clapped. My nervousness momentarily left me as I laughed at how simple, yet effective my hapless companion had been. He handed the microphone to me and the crowd quickly silenced. I knew the coaching staff was more nervous than I was when my name was called. I slipped into character.

“How many of you read the Bible?” I asked the silent crowd. Everybody knew I didn‘t join the team for the Lord‘s Prayer after games. “There’s this verse I have memorized, Ezekiel 25:17.”

Crazy Ray Pullman whooped and applauded. No one else made a sound. With each word my stage fright shifted to intensity. I was screaming into the microphone by the end of that great Sam Jackson monologue. And a gym full of Christians cheered for the agnostic delivering the fake Bible verse when the band started playing “Dixie.”