#carterbio

Carter Phipps is a 36 year old roller-skating 50′s waiter who works at Mallory’s. He’s been living in Edens Town for 10 years and he knows everybody. A flirt, a southern gentleman, and a certified dog dad, Carter knows his way around a burger and fries. He’s a full-time doofus with a heart of gold. Please read more about Carter under the read more! 

THIS IS YOUR GAME

Name: Carter Maddox Age: Twenty Two Class Year: Fifth Year Position: Striker, #20 Hometown: Hoboken, New Jersey This character must be played as a trans man.

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

TW: abuse, implied transphobia

By the time he was ten years old, he was already somebody else. He remembers driving across the country with his mother, hardly stopping the entire way, remembers her peering nervously around every time they did, like someone could be following them; and then, he remembers his father sitting him down in their new house and telling him that, under no circumstances, was he to ever tell anybody his birth name again. In New Jersey, they’d been the Roscoes; in Los Angeles, they were the Vaughns, and they had to pretend that it was who they had always been. Everything depended on it.

Six months earlier, his father had beaten his mother so severely that the neighbors called the police. Carter remembered both of his parents being taken away that night: his mother in an ambulance, his father in the back of a cop car—and, as he’d watched them being driven away, left behind with his neighbors to watch him, he didn’t know whether or not either of them would come back. Things happened so quickly after that: his mother came home, but his father didn’t, because the police wouldn’t let him. They wanted to charge him with attempted murder, despite his mother’s lack of cooperation. And then, one day, he was in the backseat of the car, and all his mother told him was they were going to meet his father—he’d paid his bail and ran, and convinced her to come with him, that all three of them could be a family again in Los Angeles. That they would have to lie, and to hide, but they could be happy.  

And maybe he was just young enough to, but Carter took it all in stride. He may have had a new name and a new house in a new city, but he had his parents and he had Exy, and that made everything seem alright. And Carter was good at Exy, something that had always made his father—who’d played Class I in college, but failed to get drafted—proud. And though it went against everything they stood for, the carefully crafted rules meant to keep them all safe, his father never said no to Carter when it came to Exy, wanted him to succeed even though it was dangerous, even though it put them all into a bigger spotlight.

At twelve years old, Carter was playing Little League Exy on a team affiliated with the USC Trojans and Los Angeles’ professional Exy team—a team built for success. Arguments in his house were always loud, screaming affairs, but the night before he was supposed to leave for the national Little League championships his parents had whispered heatedly behind closed doors: Was it a good idea? Should he be allowed to go? Carter might have felt guilty, or selfish, for thinking that nothing could keep him from the game, if not for his father insisting for him that he be allowed to play. But maybe he should have stayed home, maybe he never should have played at all—because they lost the championships, and when they got back to their hotel after the game, there were U.S. Marshals there waiting to take his father away, and Carter couldn’t help but feel that it was his fault, that he’d led them right to him. 

When his father went to prison, Carter thought his life was over—but instead, when it was just him and his mother, he knew peace for the first time. There were so many things that he’d accepted as normal, that he’d never even questioned: the way he father couldn’t be disagreed with or questioned, the rages he flew into, the heavy-handed way that he treated Carter’s mother—the way that he’d almost killed her, all those years ago. He questioned them then, asked his mother the things he’d never thought to ask her before: Why are we here? Why did we run? And, most of all: Why did you forgive him? And the answer he got was simple, but that didn’t mean he understood it: Because I wanted us to be a family. Because I wanted you to have a family.

And, when it was just him and his mother, he had the space to think about things he never had before—who he was, who he wanted to be, why he’d only ever felt comfortable in his own skin on the Exy court, when he was covered in armor and strong, and what it might feel like to feel that way all the time. It was then that he started testing out the name Carter, his mother’s maiden name, as his own. And his mother supported his explorations, offering him a gentle acceptance that his father, always so certain that what he wanted was what Carter wanted too, never had. But when his father was released from prison during his senior year of high school, she warned him that he wouldn’t understand, that it was best to keep it just between them. And, as though intent on acting like he’d never been away, his father took immediate control of their lives again, as harsh and uncompromising as ever, like they hadn’t lived five years without him—like, as Carter had finally come to believe, they hadn’t been better off without him.

SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT

Is your father going to be a problem? Wymack had asked him, with uncanny intuition, when he showed up in LA during Carter’s senior year of high school to offer him a contract. And Carter had smiled and said no, with much more confidence than he felt. Because even though it was a chance to play Class I Exy, his father was enraged when Carter told him: how dare some man who didn’t even know them suggest that he had failed in raising his child? I gave you everything, he’d said. And this is how I get repaid? And he gave Carter an ultimatum: if he walked out of that house and onto that team, he’d better never come back. 

Carter knew what he’d be sacrificing if he left, knew that his father would keep his word, knew that his mother would choose him, as she’d always done, that those five years they’d survived together wouldn’t be enough to show her that they didn’t need him. But Carter also knew what he’d be getting—not just Exy, but freedom, a future and a chance to be himself for it, to not deny himself and cut himself down into a shape his father would accept. And so he’d showed up on Wymack’s doorstep the day after his high school graduation with a backpack full of Exy gear on his shoulder, and Palmetto has been his home ever since. What name should I be putting on the back of your jersey? Wymack had asked him, that first summer he’d spent living in his apartment, trying not to doubt his choices. And Carter had been a Roscoe, had been a Vaughn, but it was then that he decided that—though he would keep his mother with him, he would keep Carter—he was going to go into his future as his own man, with a last name that was just his own. And, since that day, he’s tried his hardest not to look back, to take the Foxes as his family and Coach Wymack as the closest thing he has to a father—a family that would never keep him down or hold him back.