Die With Your (Own) Boots On

Your 30^th birthday is one of those artificial markers that people like to use to divide their life. You better have it all figured out by then. Career. Love. Kids. Before he turned 30, the only pillar Andy had sorted was his career – in fact he had that figured out that much earlier, before he even turned 20 – but now, two weeks into his post-30^th birthday life, he had nothing. No life partner, no kids, and his career shredded into tiny fucked-up bits. Thanks Iron Maiden, thanks for fucking nothing.

He still had to think of a better story for the press. He’d been thinking about it for so long – over half his life – and now if he told the truth, he’d have to tell the nation that the reason he had finally come out to the British public, to his team, to the fans was because he misheard the lyrics in a heavy metal song from before he was born. A song he didn’t even particularly like. He’d have to say that the reason for releasing his news, the reason for being the UK’s number one trending topic was a rock song from 1983, not very Gen-X.

Big Vic had been playing it in the physio room when he went in for some treatment on his slowly healing ankle. It was only the day before that Andy had gone into the hospital for the removal of the huge moon boot that Andy had been lumbering around in for weeks. Vic flashed Andy a smile, his gold tooth flashing, “you must feel ten times lighter”, an oddly prescient thing to say.

           “Eh?” Andy replied, wondering if he’d misheard Vic over the music. Vic rolled his eyes and turned down the radio, almost all the way off but if you listened carefully you could still hear the song at a whisper.

           “Must be nice to get your own boots on again,” Vic said and Andy got his meaning.

“Yeah,” Andy said in an out-breath, probably not loud enough for Vic to hear but he hadn’t been waiting for an answer. Vic hummed to himself, not the song on the radio, something older and slower, as Andy hopped onto the physio bed and laid his head down so it was next to the radio. “Die with your own boots on,” the singer rasped, or that’s what Andy heard – a hand reaching out of the radio and towards Andy, and for the first time, he took it.

Andy decided not to tell anyone what his plan was, not his agent, not his manager, not his family. It’s not even like he had an actual plan; he only had a couple of metal pins in his ankles, some deep heat balm and some new laces for his boots – rainbow laces. Andy decided he’d wear them until someone asked about them, and if that took one game, or ten, he wouldn’t say anything until someone broached the subject. And only then would he tell the truth.

There’s no way Andy can say for certain whether the laces were at all connected to what happened in that game. It was only his third game back from injury, and that Geordie bastard King had always been a dirty player so it was probably coincidental. But either way, the laces were shunted down the list of things people gave a shit about; in fact they were cut away, along with his boots by the paramedics as they attempted to clean the area where the bone had broken the skin.

After the operation, settling into his room of flowers and cards and balloons (none from his teammates he noticed), Andy was painfully aware he might have missed the boat. Two serious injuries in one season, a handful of goals, and a few sulky post-match interviews – who even gave a shit about him anymore? For the first few hours, Andy stewed and said nothing, pretending to sleep. His mum stroked his forehead while his agent Charlie watched out the window like a nosy neighbour, and the one thing that everyone kept repeating was that nothing was settled yet and he should give it time. But Andy had enough waiting behind him to last a lifetime. (Love that line)

 And so, from a hospital bed, wearing a too short hospital gown underneath the heavy covers, and bleeding from his chin because his mum insisted on shaving him, Andy – a maybe/not quite retired midfielder from the West Midlands did a thirty second video posted to his personal twitter with a modest but not inconsequential following, telling the world that his ankle still hurt a lot, and that he was gay.

Two days later, Andy left the hospital in a wheelchair; the cruel coincidence of it being just a month previously that he’d had his moon boot removed from his other ankle at the same hospital not escaping him. He waited for his mum’s car to pull round, talking to Paul, the very good looking nurse who had been looking after him, and secretly hoping his mum would never arrive, feeling like a fourteen year old outside the school disco. He and Paul had been talking a lot in the last few days, and Andy felt like they’d known each other for years, with two totally fucked ankles, and a constant headache from the medication, he finally felt comfortable. Comfortable enough to reveal to Paul the story of listening to Iron Maiden in the physio room, a story that he had not expected to be greeted with gales of laughter from Paul. Andy blushed, and suddenly wished his mum would arrive right now to save him.

“What’s so funny about that?” Andy asked when Paul finally stopped laughing. “You know the song isn’t ‘die with your own boots on’? You’ve added that in. And that is not what it’s about anyway.” Andy couldn’t think of anything to say so he got out his phone, even though it had been turned off since the video. “So you are going to ask for my number, then?” Paul said with a wink, taking the phone from Andy and turning it on, “I was worried we’d run out of chances.” Then, at last, his mother’s Nissan approached the curb, Andy smiled and waved although his gaze never left Paul, “I get there in the end.”