#questionable cake

I had no friends until I was eleven.  And then my first friend was my best friend, of course, because she was my only friend - though she always had a couple other 'best friends' on the same level as me.  At thirteen, I managed a second friend, and by fifteen or sixteen, well, it got fuzzy.  But I had more than those two.  Probably.

But if I can have no friends till eleven (which, I did), why can't Jack have no friends till fifteen or sixteen?  It's a few more years, sure, but the first sounds just as hard to believe, I think, to most people, as the second does.

I want to discuss a few things in a little more detail.

From an outside view, it may have looked like I had friends as a kid.  There were other kids whose parents arranged with mine for us to have playdates: we did, sometimes.  At school, there was no one who'd talk to me voluntarily, no one I had any freaking idea how to talk to anyway.  But I picked a few kids in every class anyway as 'friends,' meaning that they'd let me do group work with them when we had do to group work, sometimes, if no one more desirable asked them first; they'd let me join them in foursquare or jump rope games.  Sometimes, maybe.

I didn't, at that point, get that a friend was someone who you enjoyed spending time with just because.  I didn't get that that was a thing that existed.  I thought friends were for doing stuff with, for having people to do stuff with, or, just, idk.  A fact of the universe that's inexplicable and axiomatic, like so much else (and also not for me).

It wasn't sad.  I wasn't lonely.  (Well, okay, I was sad for other reasons, and I wanted people to be 'nice' to me rather than 'mean,' but I never thought of myself as 'lonely cause I didn't have friends!')

So, back to Jack.  We have no idea how he and Kent became friends.  Or, later, how Jack and Shitty became friends.  But I do have a couple of ideas!

One is that both Kent and Shitty are very easy to read as the type of people who, basically, friend the shit out of everyone.  Normally that friendship would stay on a pretty low level.  No one can be or ever is best friends with everyone.  But I could easily see both Kent and Shitty taking the further step of responding to the difficulty of becoming Jack's friend, his silence, his standoffishness, etc., his weirdness and not-knowing-what-to-do-with-these-advances by redoubling and then doubling again their efforts.  They are gonna manage to befriend this tough nut, if it's the last thing they do.

Or - another idea I've had - specifically vis-a-vis Jack and Kent - goes back to what I was saying earlier about deliberately picking out 'friends,' because sometimes you need someone to do things with, before you ever have a friend for real.  And if that's something Jack did, and if Kent showed the hockey talent at 15/16 that he did at 18, I can easily imagine Jack deciding, okay, that guy's my new drill partner, seatmate on roadies, whatever it is you need a guy to do with you on a hockey team.

And, however the Jack-Kent friendship formed….  I don't think it's fair to assume that Kent was Jack's first best friend because Jack was a shitty friend, because he was an asshole.  (Though I agree that Jack is, frequently, an asshole!)  Jack may have been bad at being a friend, at first - or not!  I don't know!  He was, one presumes, very bad at making friends.  But that may be a different skill.

"How do I friend" is a real question!  I had no idea how to friend, before I apparently fell into it, by grace of another kid's not caring that I didn't know how, for once in my life.  I supposedly did a decent job.  (I still feel like I'm bad at it, a lot.)  It's not a skill that comes naturally to everyone - not to me, and that line implies, not to Jack.

I could write more about feeling you're the best because you're always told you have to be the best.  (Or could I?  I have a whole backlog of posts on that subject, and also notes towards an original novel.)  I could write more about about all my feelings re: Jack as a 2e kid, but… this post is more than long enough!  (I do keep getting swamped with those feelings, though.)

I want to say, though, just one more thing that's part of this discussion.  I don't have a diagnosis, but I'm probably Autistic: both the (awful) online test and my strong #it me reaction about many many many things that Autistic people who I've read say about it seem to point in that direction.  And, likewise, of course it's not canon, but I do read Jack as Autistic, too.

~

Jack had screwed up at the game today, he knows.  Everyone's told him already.  It's exciting to be in Bantam and have the scouts come out to watch your games, cause for the first time they really matter, this is your future, right here -

Well, they told them the scouts were there.

And Jack couldn't go on the ice.

He was scared - he was scared - what if he wasn't good enough, everyone said he was the best, but what if he wasn't, fatso, daddy's boy, is your head broken, what if the scouts didn't know him, didn't like him.  What if they could tell.

But he was gonna go out anyway, he was gonna, shaking in his skates but he'd skate it off, but then Coach P said, "First line, go!" and Jack couldn't make his legs move.

"Zimmermann!" the coach is yelling, the other kids are already over the boards, then he says, "Screw it, Casey, go.  Zimmermann!  Are you okay?"

Jack's kneeling on the ground, hard cold under his knees, he hadn't realized.  His head's bent against the boards in front of him, breath coming loud and shaky.

"Jeez, kid," Coach P says.  Jack looks up.

"Don't bench me," he says.  "I'm fine.  Please, Coach, please.  I'm sorry.  I'm fine.  I don't know what happened."

Coach P shakes his head.  "Go into the locker room.  Dress down.  You're not playing today, not after that stunt."

Jack's never felt like a hockey game was too long to sit through, before….

~

"The kid got spooked," Papa says, now.  "What do you want, Alicia?  He's not going to be on Peewee teams forever.  Someday he has to play with the men."

"I just don't think all the stress is good for him," Maman says.  They're both whispering, but Jack's headphones block out the humn of the house's machinery - heating, refrigerator, the laptop on his lap that he's ignoring.

"Stress'll make him stronger," Papa says.  "It's good for him.  Besides, what alternatives would you propose?"

"Maybe he should drop down a level."

"No!"

Maman and Papa both turn.  Jack, who hadn't meant to shout, starts winding his headphone cord tight around his fingers.

"I'm not quitting the team," he says.

"Jack, take your headphones off."

He listens.  The silence is suddenly much louder.

"So you were listening."

He shrugs.  "You were talking about me."

Papa sighs.  "Jack - "

Maman puts a hand on Papa's arm.  "Jack, honey," she says.  "We're worried about you.  Your fainting goat spell at the game today - "

"I didn't faint," Jack says.  "I'm fine."

"Don't interrupt your mother," Papa says.

"No, you're not fine," Maman says.  "Coach P told us that your legs gave out, that you were having trouble breathing - "

"You can't take me out of hockey," Jack says.  "You can't."  His hands are shaking again, resting on his knees.  "Papa," he appeals.  "Don't let her make me."

"Alicia," Papa says, putting his hand over hers where it lies on his arm.  "Maybe we should let Jack here decide what he wants to do with his life.  If he wants to keep playing hockey, who are we to stop him?"

"His parents," Maman hisses.  She pulls her hand away from under Papa's.  "Isn't that our job?  To take care of him?  To make the decisions that a kid can't be trusted with?"

"Please, Maman," Jack says.  "I need to play hockey.  Please."  His eyes are filling, hot, frantic.  "You can't take me out of it, you can't, you can't - "

Whether it’s Suzanne being hurt that Bitty’s been hiding this from her, and guilting Bitty about it, making the issue into ‘didn’t you know you could trust me, am I a bad mother.’ - Which I think is in-universe the most likely thing to happen, though it’ll be glossed over super quickly if present at all on screen.

Or whether it’s George going ‘I was mad last night, but now I’ve moved on to being disappointed, you do realize that by doing this without talking to anyone you’ve made the fallout on everyone many times harder.’  And Jack feeling like this is unfair, but the rest of the locker room having mixed feelings.

But the point is that - one of my favorite things to think about in relation to omgcp has always been, just because you might need something from somebody, doesn’t mean they have to give it to you.  (er, this is mostly in relation to jack/parse, but the principle applies everywhere.)  Bitty and Jack coming out like this might hurt some people and frustrate others, people they care about, even, but it’s still.. their lives.  Their choice.

~

re: this being objectively a terrible time and place to come out.

For Bitty, that’s almost entirely about his parents not knowing yet, right, but he’s been wanting them to know, and hasn’t been able to tell them.  Coming out like this is so much more doable, probably, than doing it directly to them in any way... and it shouldn’t lastingly affect the type or degree of supportiveness (or lack thereof) they give him.

For Jack: either he comes out sometime or he comes out never.  (I would bet strongly that before he fell for Bitty, he wasn’t planning on coming out till after it wouldn’t be too big a deal.  Which means, maybe, ever).  But if he’s in love, in this committed relationship, then either he’s in the closet and he’s looking over his shoulder all the time to see whether he might be poking a toe out by accident, or... he comes out, and has to get shit from other teams, referees, media, whatever part of ~the whole world~ he sees... but at least he’s not terrified of being accidentally (or maliciously!) outed, anymore.

So!  If he were to come out, what better time than when he’s proved all the doubters wrong?  If he can win the Stanley Cup, he proves that he really belongs, there’s no doubt, etc.  And he already has an A as the rookie, and he got the game winning goal, and the Conn Smythe!, and the Cup, like... if there’s one moment when he’s on top of the hockey world, it’s here and now, there and then.  What better time to say, ‘oh, and also, I love my boyfriend, so if you have a problem with that, f you.’

(I DID NOTICE by the way and I’ve been predicting that this would happen since forever - that Jack came out to the world by saying, or, actually, by demonstrating, that he has a boyfriend, not by ID-ing himself out loud as either bi or gay.  I suspect that he’s never going to label himself onscreen in the comic, and this reluctance is interesting to me.... /sorry, tangent over.)

So, it would seem to me like a GREAT time for Jack to come out, save the factor of not giving his team or agent any fucking warning, which he should’ve done, but I bet he was probably too full of complicated fears, and I get that, and, further, it’d be just as true at any other time... I’m not sure how ‘planning’ would be s’posed to help, anyway.  The league, the media, hockey fandom, etc., is gonna have just as much homophobia in it no matter what he and/or his team do!

EXCEPT, there’s this thing about hockey culture.  (I gather from reading and osmosis - I don’t know that much about hockey!)  You’re not supposed to “draw attention to yourself.”  ... Here, I just googled “hockey” “draw attention to yourself,” and look at this quote from The Hockey News.  2015:

As for why no NHL players have come out yet, [Patrick] Burke [founder of You Can Play] believes it’s more a hockey culture issue – the team is always more important than the individual and you never want to draw attention to yourself – than anything to do with fear of acceptance. “There are a lot of people who know ‘out’ retired players,” he said. “Those players just don’t want to do a newspaper article on it. I mean, we’ve had players criticized for high-fiving too exuberantly.”

*screams quietly*

FIRST OF ALL, (unless there’s more than one such incident), those players who were criticized for high-fiving ~wrong~ were P. K. Subban and Carey Price.  (Their personal celly was banned by their team, the Habs, it was crazy!)  It is... not a coincidence, surely, that these are two of the biggest PoC stars in hockey, which is numerically an overwhelmingly white sport.  So... when it says ‘don’t stick out, fit in,’ it really means it, so much more so, if you’re not white.

Or if you’re marginalized along some other axis.  (You already ~don’t fit in!~)  Which, of course, everyone now knows Jack is...

To me it seems ridiculous, outrageous, that coming out would be bad cause it’s ‘taking attention away’ from the rest of your team.  No one would want all that sort of attention; it’s not their fault they would get it...!  But I’m not immersed in ~hockey culture.~

Where people would absolutely say ‘just like a -’ (well, I don’t want to write the rest of that sentence, but you know), ‘gotta be the center of attention all the time, can’t let ordinary people alone,’ and then some really gross sex metaphors., (and okay, i am making myself feel sick now, but, that is the world!)

And so you’ve got... I don’t even know WHAT sort of situation, where of course George and Marty and Thirdy and them are frustrated cause Jack gave them no cues as to what to say or do in this scenario, there’s no coordination, what interviews do we grant, we all wanted to be off elsewhere enjoying our summers, etc....

But also the press is being REALLY GROSS about Jack’s “selfishness” in making the Falcs’ first-ever Stanley Cup win “all about him” by kissing his boyfriend, cause like, it’s not like EVERY OTHER PLAYER who had one kissed their girlfriends or wives the exact same way.

And JACK, himself, also had a whole arc through the first couple years of the comic, of focusing on his own play to the exclusion of his team’s, epitomized in ‘it was a lucky shot’ and culminating in ‘learning to be a team player.’  ... BUT, that was with the Wellies, not the Falcs.  With the Falcs, we’ve seen him again beating himself up over his play in the playoffs, as if it wasn’t a team effort!  ... maybe he ‘knows’ better, in some sense, but focusing on things being all about you, a referendum on your inadequacies, even when you should know they’re not, is, in both my experience and my reading, a common issue with anxiety.

(I would bet he takes his anxiety out on other people on the Falcs, the same way he did with Bitty when they first met.  That he’s not that great of a team player, off the ice, even though it’s not about this thing, and that there’s some doubts in the room as to whether he’s earned his A.)

And then, THE COMIC, weirdly, though it includes quite a few of the Falcs as named and repeatedly-shown characters, also seems to be treating the Cup as a one-person victory.  Jack gets the GWG, and the Conn Smythe, and is the only one we actively see working on and worrying about the games, though we see the others just ~around!?  So.... it both adds bits of evidence to ‘boy has a self-centered approach,’ and, seems to justify this because a Jack-centered narrative of the playoffs is ~correct.

(And, I mean, clearly I’m being Jack-centered, when the narrative wants me to be Bitty-centered instead!  All sorts of biases and layers going on here.)

I am not sure how to sum all this up.  Just - that Jack has totally, demonstrably, been guilty of selfishness vis-a-vis his teams before, and there are bits of reasons to think that he probably hasn’t stopped!, and also that I don’t think, personally, that coming out at that time, in that way, is fair to label as ‘selfish,’ (though it’s a shitty situation for George and the team!) and also, that I bet Don Cherry et. al. are talking about how ‘selfish’ Jack and Bitty are right now in a sickeningly homophobic way.  But that doesn’t invalidate any of the earlier clauses in that sentence... it just complicates things.  Can you call your teammate out on his self-centered-ness, (like, throughout the playoffs), when that’s blasting from every hockey TV thing?  Would you still want to?  I sure as hell wouldn’t.

i don't know you but i want you all the more for that

oh my GOD.  It is the first episode; it picks up, thanks to time-skip magic, right after the last episode ends.  Blaine and Rachel are singing to Kurt and Blaine's BABY, that Rachel's carrying (cause if Glee showed us one thing, it's that you can totally have a musical number while giving birth!).  Kurt comes in, I think, on the chorus.

take this sinking boat and point it home we've still got time

What's happening?  Oh, just the incessant stresses of relationship drama that they're getting better at but still working through.  Having a kid is a scary thing, never knowing if you're going to be good enough.

But, yeah, back to RACHEL.

words fall through me and always fool me and i can't react

She's having the baby; she gets a plot too!  Cause there's no way this isn't relevant, somehow, to her own issues with her mother and her adoption etc.  She can be present for this baby the way Shelby wasn't for her.

So she needs to sing a song - and she and Blaine get at least the first verse of this song together, yeah, even though it's Blaine's and Kurt's kid, cause Kurt's dad is Burt Hummel.  He doesn't have these exact specific sets of issues.

games that never amount to more than they're meant will play themselves out

We know how it goes… that we don't know, that we can't know.  Things that are set for children without meaning to, by their parents, etc.

The second verse is almost never part of the in-show performance ;).

And on the ending…

raise your hopeful voice you have a choice you'll make it now

* Kent reminds him of the worst times in his life, when he was fucked up on drugs and alcohol, and even more fucked up on the stress that he was using them to try to escape.  Kent probably enabled his substance abuse - that's something he would've heard at rehab - (and another post) - but even beyond that… Kent was likely there with Jack at his very lowest.

* Kent reminds him of the good times, too!  Back before he fucked up his life, seemingly for good.  When he was the top prospect, a ~generational talent,~ and not yet an irrepably labeled screwup… and Kent was his best friend, (#maybemore #itscomplicated), right there in all of it, with him.

* And ~NOW~… Kent has what Jack was supposed to have.  Not just playing in the NHL.  But he literally took Jack's draft spot, and is now leading what should've been Jack's team.  I don't think this is simple jealousy, like Shitty guessed, but a complicated mixture of things that includes jealousy in the brew?  Fuck yeah.  How could it not be - if less of 'I want that,' then instead more of 'I was supposed to be that, and I couldn't, and he could.'

And this idea of Jack not being able to deal with Kent, because he's just bound up in too much, too much history, too much pain of too many different stripes - it's so compelling to me.  Not because I want to excuse Kent from any of the things he did wrong, but as an idea in itself, from Jack's side of the situation.  Cutting people out of your life not because of what anything they've done, but simply for your own self-preservation, well, it's something that cuts close to the nerves and bone.

And, I should say, here - in the words of possibly my favorite character tag, ever - #kent parson did some things wrong.  It's not like I think he's blameless.

* Specifically, I doubt that the Epikegster's the first time he's tried to persuade Jack to go back to ~how things were before.~  With regards to their relationship, (#whateverthatwas), yeah, but, most of all - remember, he came to ask Jack to *play with him again.*  I don't think Kent's ever managed to understand or accept Jack's decision to spend all this time ~in exile~.  Coaching peewee, playing at Samwell, when he could be tearing it up on NHL ice.  And that pressure would, again, quite rightly, be something Jack feels he can't be around.

Not even to mention the horrible things that Kent attacked Jack with when he felt abandoned/rejected - I hope, for both of their sakes, that that may have been the worst such incident ever, but I'd find it hard to believe that it was the only one.  So that's absolutely another reason for Jack to keep Kent at arm's length once he's started, but… as for why he's decided to do that in the first place?

I just keep coming back to this thing that rings so true to me.

And another thing: Eric "Bitty" Bittle doesn't have to make a living.  Will, in all likelihood, never have to.  Jack makes more than enough money for them both.  And I don't see them splitting up, do you?

And another: Bitty's never had a plan for what to do after graduation.  Unless 'put off thinking about it for as long as possible' counts as a plan, anyway…

And: Well, Bitty doesn't have to have a job.  He can start a bakery (or a jam business, or whatever) with some of Jack's money.  It doesn't have to be cash-positive, not immediately.  Not ever!  It can run for years in the red on hope.  Or in the just-barely-black, what the startup world has taught me to call "ramen profitable" (that's where you're making just enough to feed yourself ramen)… earning enough to pay its own bills from quarter to quarter, barely anything else.

It is possible, if you have other sources of financial support, but still incredibly stressful to try to run a business this way.  You pour your heart and soul (and time and toil and tears) into trying to make it make money, get ~off the ground~ and ~take flight.~  It feels like you ought to make it.  You have so many advantages, the product's more than good enough, and you do have fans!

But all that's no guarantee of success.

And, meanwhile… you can only do this because you have outside means of support.  For Bitty, this means Jack.

(And his contract.  What if Jack gets traded?  Bitty's shop has to close down, and re-open in another city!?  -  But we're getting a bit off topic, here.)

It's nice, sure, to not have to work - to not have to succeed at making money.  To be able to do what you love, instead.  But there are downsides to everything!  Feelings of insecurity, the imbalance nagging at you - it's shitty, sometimes, to feel that you depend on your partner in all sorts of practical ways in which they don't also depend on you.

Independence is a nice thing to have…