Take Me Out to the Bawl Game

I’ve been meaning to ask you, John Amaechi. I need to have a word with you, Judith Arndt. Could we sit down and talk, Andrew Goldstein? I know you’re screening your calls, but I would appreciate it if you would call me back, J.P. Calderon. I understand you have a restraining order against me, but I want to ask a favor, Ian Roberts.

Could you all stop being so damn athletic? Thanks.
Seriously, professional gay athletes, you’re making the rest of us look bad. It was hard enough dealing with the challenges we faced while learning how to survive as a gay student in high school. Many of us hated P.E. and athletics, so we found other outlets by which to channel our energy. We joined the theatre. We became involved in student government. We developed an affinity for music. We pretended to date women. We understood that as long as we survived the 12 or so years of P.E. classes and peer pressure to be athletic, we would no longer be pressured into impressing anyone when we became gay adults.
Wow, were we stupid. Unathletic and stupid.
Now, I certainly don’t wish to imply that all gay men experience the same athletically-challenged childhood I had. I realize that I’m most likely projecting my own personal insecurities in the hope that I wasn’t the only 14-year-old queer who would flinch at the sight of an incoming volleyball in the way the French would flinch at the sight of the Red Baron. But setting aside the acceptance of personal blame for my own psychological insecurities, I can’t help but imagine that other people in the gay community feel similar. I have no problem with gay athletes practicing in the privacy of their own home between consenting adults, but why must they come out of the closet and compete in such public settings? The Gay Games, the World Outgames, the National Republican Softball League; must they be so proud of not being sissified, flabby non-athletes like me?
Please, think about the non-athletic children!
Approximately a year ago, a group of friends and I celebrated Independence Day by having a barbecue at a park. Food was present, beer was abundant, gossip was assumed, and then, reminiscent of Pee Wee Herman in an adult theater in the early ’90s, someone pulled out that ticking pigskin time-bomb: a football. Not only was I horrified that someone had brought a football to a gay barbecue, I was doubly horrified that anyone who happened to not be me was engaged in a very … let’s say, engaging game of football. Did I not choose to be gay and sleep with men so I could avoid this?
With the gay man’s eternal quest for perfection as a backdrop (an eternal quest at least as old as John McCain and at least as successful as his presidential campaign), it must be asked: gay athletes — good for the gay community, bad for our gay psyche? The rationale, of course, for gay men in sports is that they counter the stereotype that all gay men are indistinguishable, and show we can be as masculinely competitive as heterosexual men. I agree that gay athletics is a vital fraction of the gay community — a fraction so vital it reaches across all walks of life until it pulls a tendon. Gay men are not one-size-too-tight-fits-all; we choose the rainbow to symbolize our community because the rainbow inherently symbolizes the diversity in people.
Time has passed since the football-at-the-gay-barbecue incident, and while I’ve thought back on that event, as well as other invitations to play sports (Football? No thank you. Basketball? Not interested. Mini-golf? See you Tuesday), I realize that my own insecurity is not a good enough reason to ban gay athletics — as much as I would prefer that to happen. Gay athletics are an intrinsic part of the gay community, and unify the gay community in ways neither sex nor alcohol ever will. Well, at least in a way that sex never will.
But I’ll still blame Ian Roberts for making me look bad. Q