For my brother and me, playing catch became an escape very early in life. We lived on the end of a dead end street, so we were lucky enough to be able to go outside to toss the ball around, whatever type of ball it happened to be that day. The road in front of our house became a bullpen one day and an end zone the next.

My brother and I went outside to play catch most days, just after school. He was usually the one who wanted to go do something physical. I preferred to stay inside and read or do homework, but he managed to persuade me to play catch with him at least half the time.

My brother and I played catch so much partly because my parents fought. In our small house, we could hear everything our parents said. Graham and I sat and listened through the walls as they fought. I usually sided with my mom’s overly-emotional pleas while my brother usually found my dad’s logic more compelling. We found that if we went outside, we didn’t hear their arguments.

We also liked playing catch because it provided a way to talk about intimate things without being intimate. Tossing a ball around made us both feel like "men" in the most macho, stereotypical way. Because we knew we were being "men," we could then talk about deeper issues.

He tossed me a knuckle ball.

"Are they fighting about money again?" I asked.

"They never fight about anything else," he answered as I tossed him the ball back.

"I heard ‘em say that we may not have enough money to pay for the broken water heater." Fast ball, high and to the left. "Ball one," I add.

"Same thing happened last month, too, when the car broke down." My brother windmills his arm to loosen it up more.

"Is that why Daddy had water instead of dinner the other night at Joe’s Cafe?"

"Yup." As the older brother, he always knew better than I did what was going on with my family.

When I finally Came Out to Graham, it wasn’t a coincidence that we were playing a game. He had just bought a hockey video game. We could talk about intimate things without looking at each other, without having the awkwardness of being too close.

"Graham, there’s something I want to tell you." He shot on my goal, missing, and recovered the puck.

"Yeah...?" he asked.

"I’m gay." I got the puck this time and made a fast break for his goal. The seconds ticked down on the clock.

"Are you serious?" I shot on his goal and missed. His electronic man recovered the puck.

"Yeah. That’s the real reason Kristine and I broke up." He headed towards my goal.

"Wow. That’s pretty...amazing. I mean, thanks for telling me. I really like knowing about your life." He scored a goal. The game paused and we were forced to look at each other.

"I just wanted to tell you, before you found out from someone else. I haven’t told Mommy and Daddy yet. I wanted to talk to you first to see what you thought."

"I’d wait a while to tell them. There’s too much going on in the house right now with both of us going off to school."

Our union in sports was strengthened by the fact we were the only people in my family who cared about them. My mom was apathetic. She was never interested in sports, either watching or playing. My father wasn’t apathetic, just hateful. He despised sports. He never really understood them, I think, so he considered them all a waste of time. He had grown up fatherless and without brothers or sisters. His only playmate had been his mother who was usually drunk two hours after she got home from school. Sports were, by their very nature, an activity which needed at least two people. When my dad grew up, he only had himself.

I don’t blame him for not encouraging us in sports. How could he teach us something he never knew? While my brother never blamed him, he harbored a resentment towards my father which seemed to only get worse with time.

Part of the reason for my brother’s animosity came from my brother’s natural talent for physical activities and the contrasting hate my dad showed towards sports. Graham picked up on pitches and batting stances and football plays quicker than anyone we knew. He could throw further than me, more accurately than me. He had a natural talent for doing things while I had one for writing them down.

By the time Graham started realizing his talent, he was already in high school. We had always played, tossing the ball around. When he to high school, he first started realizing that he was better than most kids in the activities we took so much for granted. When he had been younger, Graham wanted to play sports, but our parents urged us both to play musical instruments instead.

It is impossible to speculate what Graham could have done had he started to play on sports teams at an earlier age. He missed out on the Little League and junior high teams. By the time he hit high school, he was too old to be a beginner anymore. The coaches expected you to know something about the sport already. While Graham could hit a ball well and catch well, he was clueless when it came to playing a particular position or when to steal a base. He had the raw talent, but none of the finesse.

This past Christmas, my brother flew in from Chicago to be with us in our Southern California home. We don’t see each other often any more because 2,000 miles separate us. In keeping with his love of physical activity, he is a flight instructor now, on his way to becoming an airline pilot.

My brother now plays on volleyball and softball teams in his neighborhood. He enjoys learning the sport, whatever it might be. And he still plays better than most people on his team.

We played catch again for the first time in years. My parents didn’t fight very much any more; they seemed beyond that now. This time we played catch to have fun. We talked about his wife and my boyfriend and what our plans were.

He sent me deep for a pass. I caught it over-the-shoulder, something I had tried for years to master. My brother imitated the roar of a crowd as I made my victory dance in the imagined end zone.

Even though I had been home a week, I felt for the first time like I was home.