Did you know you can rent the Joe? Of all the legendary barns of the Original Six teams, only two stand out as having hosted a substantial amount of the golden era of NHL hockey. The Bell Centre, the TD Garden, the United Center are all fine arenas, but their identities are firmly rooted in their corporate sponsorship and mid-90s, post-lockout origins. Maple Leaf Gardens became a supermarket, and the ACC has identity crises of its own. Only Joe Louis Arena and Madison Square Garden can still claim a legacy of hosting both legendary franchises and that awkward-yet-entertaining brand of rough, 80s style hockey. No one will pick up the phone in New York City for less than $5,000, so when an ambitious gentleman over on reddit found out that you can rent the Joe at a remarkably reasonable rate and started assembling teams, I made sure my name was at the top of the first-come, first-serve list.

The package deal, which included game tickets and two hours of ice time, came to $45 per person. I can't even park at the Verizon center for that rate, so I ordered an extra ticket for my wife, and we jumped in our truck and made the drive from Charlottesville, VA early Friday morning. We arrived just before game time, and my plan of parking and saying, "hi, I'm with the reddit group, where do I go?" was substantially complicated by the anime convention happening just next-door. Nevertheless, we made it to our seats, beer in hand, just before puck drop. The game itself was unremarkable, but with every CRACK! of the glass, every goalie snow-shower, and every line-change, I couldn't help but think, "that will be us tomorrow."

The day of the event, we had to wait. Our ice time was bumped because the Red Wings decided to hold a morning skate before departing to Ottawa. Parking in the executive lot and walking into the side entrance of the Joe with a bag full of hockey gear is a blend of emotions: on one hand, it's awesome beyond belief; on the other, you cannot help but feel like an interloper. Arena staff had to corral us while the team was on the ice--there would be no spectators at this practice, but that didn't stop us from peeking through a crack in the curtains and watching them skate.

Eventually, we were led to the visitors' dressing room. I'll be honest--I've seen better amenities in Connecticut prep schools. We all got dressed: 60 players, 4 goalies. The C/D level players would take the first 50 minute session, and the A/B skaters would close out the second hour. I skated in the second group, and while we all waited in the visitors' entrance tunnel for the Zam to finish, there was a mixture of nervous chatter followed by a period of silence. I could tell everyone was thinking the same thing I was. Gretzky walked through here. So did Bourque and Lindros and Selanne and Lemiuex. Messier and Jagr. Coffey and Hasek. I looked around. The entrance tunnel has a fairly low bridge: the bleachers' substructure was about a glove's width above my head, and I'm maybe 6'-1" on skates.

"Whaddya think Chara does?" I asked, breaking the silence.

The ice was, of course, magnificent. We all did our laps, and took in the sights. The Jumbotron is so much closer than it looks on TV. The benches are tiny--we could hardly fit 11 beer leaguers on there, how does an NHL team fit 15 guys plus coaches and trainers? The boards, oh my goodness, the boards. I snapped one puck into the zone on a dump and chase, and the sound it made as I watched it curl effortlessly around was satisfying in a way you can never imagine. The games were beyond fun--I don't remember who won and who lost, and it doesn't really matter. It was 64 guys and girls living the dream for less money than it costs to take your family to a movie. It was the old barn nearing the end of its life, doing what it was built to do: provide joy and entertainment and a sense of community through the language of sports.

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This trip meant something more to me, though, than just the chance to play hockey in a fancy arena. This year, I came out as transgender. Transitioning is a long and complex process with many steps (almost none of which have anything to do with surgery, in case you, like everyone else, wonder). And daily life during this process is even more confounding. Simple tasks become overbearingly complicated.

"Can I get your name for your latte?"

"Emily."

"Excuse me?"

"Emily."



"What?"

There is a legal ballet that has to be performed. Before you can get a new ID, you need to get a name change, which requires a judge's order, which depending on the judge may require a hearing. But not having an ID means that I have to use my old name for everything: I need ID to get the tickets at will-call; I need to provide my legal name to sign the waiver to skate; I need to use my driver's license to check into the hotel. My name-change hearing is scheduled for mid-November. This meant that this trip would be the last hurrah for my old identity.

Hockey has always been a big part of my life. I played for some good teams growing up, winning a state championship here or there. It was--still is--the thing I look forward to most on a day-to-day basis. But as I got older, things got more complicated. I had known I was transgender long before I knew that there was a word for it. Other kids got rapidly bigger and stronger than me, and hockey became more and more like a sea of masculine identity that I didn't want, didn't understand, and didn't identify with. With every practice, every shift, every hit, I was being told that this is what it was to be a man and that I was failing miserably at it. For an insecure adolescent boy who never failed at anything in his life, the shame was unbearable. And so at 15, I hung up my skates.

It would take me fourteen years to put them back on, and another few after that to accept my identity as it was. When I made the decision to come out, hockey was my biggest worry--not friends, not family, not work. Will post-game beers get weird? What locker room am I supposed to use? Am I going to get chirped over this? I thought long and hard this year about hanging up my skates again, this time for good, because quitting would mean I'd never have to find out the answers to those questions.

The hormone replacement regimen I am taking is decreasing my muscle mass and I have to work harder than ever just to maintain my strength. I drove back to Charlottesville to make a Sunday afternoon game for my beer league team, and unfortunately, during that game I found that the answer to the question, "will I get chirped?" was a resounding and unfortunate yes. I'm playing the best hockey of my life. This year is likely to be the pinnacle of my career. Hockey was the greatest thing about my former identity, and what a fitting way to send it off by skating at Joe Louis Arena, on the same ice where Steve Yzerman would score his slapshot overtime winner against the Blues, where Lidstrom would raise his first Stanley Cup, and where Gordie Howe would skate in his last All-Star Game.

As soon as our ice-time ended, everyone talked about the next time we do this, whether it's next spring, or next year, or as frequently as possible until the Joe closes for good. I don't think I'll make the drive for those meetups.

But I won't be quitting hockey--not again, not ever again. Hockey may be the one thing that I keep constant as everything else changes. The new Joe will have a new identity, but it too will keep some things the same. (Let's hope it's the boards.) And if the management of the new Joe decides that it's still cool if a bunch of beer leaguers rent it out for a skate on a Saturday morning, well, I'll make the drive for that, and its new identity can become a part of my own.