I’ve always loved sports.
I grew up in a rural town in Indiana, and sports were one of the things
that boys talked about. I sucked at
talking about some of the others – most obviously girls – but I could talk
sports. While technically I played
sports in middle school - football (cornerback, where I watched a lot of guys
run by me), baseball (where I spent a lot of time in deep center and right),
and tennis (where I’d swing for the fences every time the ball came at me far
more effectively than I ever had in baseball) - my love of sports was from
watching them, almost any of them.
I loved watching high school sports – and nine older
siblings gave me lots of opportunities to do that – and then college and pros
as I got older. In high school in the
80s I had a job selling soda in Purdue’s Ross Ade Stadium (capacity, 69,000;
average attendance, 17,000) and I loved it, even when I’d get heckled by
disappointed, wet, cold fans who would tell me to go find the hot chocolate guy
as the home team lost, yet again, in the 35°F-grey-and-sleet of late
November.
When we moved to a town closer to Indianapolis and I could
catch Colts games on the radio, that’s when I really fell in love. I would listen to every down of every game if
my parents let me, sometimes in the car parked in the driveway because that’s
the only radio that could get reception.
Despite the 3-13 seasons and the freezing temps of three hours sitting
in the car, I knew the roster, I knew the schedule, I knew the verbal tics of
the announcers.
And I really loved it.
I would read everything about the team I could get my hands on. I couldn’t sleep on Saturday nights before
big games, I’d be too excited. I
consumed so much football knowledge that years later, sitting in my regular
sports bar with other transplanted Colts fans, I’d be the one they’d ask about
a decade-old game score or the players involved in that three way trade with
Minnesota and Cincy that went bad. I
really loved it, and still do.
Some of my friends, my gay friends, don’t get it - certainly
some boyfriends haven’t - and sometimes they’ve been super judge-y about
it. I didn’t get that, at all. Not at
first. If it’s not your thing, fair
enough, but why is it a problem that it’s a thing for me? Why, for some queer folk, is it okay to know
every Academy Award nominee, but knowing the tie-breaker rules for how teams
get into the NFL playoffs is off-putting?
In 2013, I watched the Super Bowl at a (straight) couple’s
house; they have a lot of gay friends and there were a lot of people over.
During halftime Beyoncé performed - and I cleaned, restocked beer, and
freshened drinks. I wasn’t that
interested in (2013) Beyoncé - though I did learn that she had been in
Destiny’s Child, whom I’d heard of, and that she was married to Jay-Z, whom I'd
also heard of - I was far more
interested in the game. After the power outage got resolved in the second half
(the lights went out in the Louisiana Superdome for 35 minutes, leading to a
suspension of play) I was excited when the teams finally re-took the field so
we could unmute the TV and, you know, watch the game. One of my gay friends,
who is usually lovely, said: “Like there isn’t enough football. They’ll be
hours of it to go, we don’t need to hear this part.” I looked around the room – a room full of
guests at a Super Bowl party – and realized that at this moment most of the
people in the room were gay, and in assent.
Thankfully there was another TV in the house.
If this were the only time I’d heard something like this I
would have chalked it up to circumstance or a lapse in manners. But queer
friends have told me “you’re not really busy” when I say I can’t go to a movie
at the same time my team is playing – in the playoffs. That I’m wasting my time on a Sunday “sitting
in a dark bar, watching football” when I've begged off going to brunch. And, most annoyingly, some - including some
who I have just met, have given that look and said that acid, arch,
reductionist, tired “Oh, that’s so butch,” when I’m off to the bar to watch
sports. As if it were an affectation.
Why the disapproval?
As I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized that in at least
some cases the dismissal and disapproval that I’ve felt from gay friends
weren’t from bafflement as much as from discomfort or even intimidation. I’ve come to learn that some gay men would
feel very uncomfortable walking into a sports bar on a Sunday filled with
football fans; it’s not that they’d be bored – though there’s that, too – it’s
that they’d feel they didn’t belong.
A few years ago if you’d asked me to walk into a crowded gay
Oscar party I’d’ve had a few drinks before I got there for sure – I’d’ve felt
very out of place. I’d’ve been keenly
aware that I lacked a shared experience and thus things to talk about; that
opening my mouth would reveal my ignorance; that I wouldn’t know the cultural
markers – sartorial, conversational, behavioral – to fit in. I get it.
For some queers, though, athletic contexts hold even deeper
challenges: they are fraught. They bring
back a moment in junior high when a conversation came up about sports that they
didn’t follow, or when a dad or an older brother told them to try out for a
team with an implication that this was a chance to show they were a man, and
they were terrified. I get that,
too. I was not and am not a graceful
athlete, and athletic prowess is one key way in which males are evaluated in
adolescence (and later). Some of that – feelings of evaluation and judgment –
can linger, and can affect how we see ourselves as men. And my love of sports perhaps puts me on the
other side of the divide from other gay men.
Not all, of course.
I’ve dated ex-college athletes (hoops and soccer), I’ve had gay
football-watching buds, particularly in the Midwest, I had an ex once look at
me across the table in a sports bar in New York City during a playoff game
surrounded by other fans of my (and now his) team and say, “Thanks for giving
me this. I had no idea it could be so
fun.”
So how did unathletic me develop this love of sports – all
sports, but especially football, that most macho of American sports? I can't
help but wonder if I love football so much, a love that really took root in
early adolescence, as a reaction - using the internalized stereotype to counter
my inability to deal with my own queerness. I had inklings that I was gay; in
my narrow, rural world view most gay guys don’t like football; I love football;
therefore I must not be gay. I don't think that's the case, but it's certainly
possible. I've read enough queer biography and hooked up with enough Marines to
know that there is a type of gay male who on some level tries not to be gay by
doing the most stereotypically un-gay thing he can think of.
Was that what I was doing?
Did my eleven-year-old self let heteronormative stereotypes define him,
even in a counter-typical way? We all have normed expectations that we marinate
in from birth, so what do we do as burgeoning queer children when we begin to
understand that we don't fit – fundamentally can't fit – our mandated
roles? Is that why I love sports, and in
particular why I freakin’ love football?
Is that why this particular entertainment interest of mine is
discomfiting to some queer folk?
I don’t know.
Maybe? But there really isn’t and
can’t be an answer. I’ve learned to be a
little patient with gay people who are inadvertently ignorant or rude about my
particular way of being entertained by baseball on summer afternoons at Chavez
Ravine and McCovey Cove or any of the 26 MLB parks I’ve been too; by basketball
as I tweet incessantly about the Pacers and my college team; and by football on
Sundays in the fall.
It’s a big part of who I am, and I love what my love of
sports has given me. Like talking to
group of four ladies of a certain age from Cleveland in big hats, sharing their
brandy with me on the Amtrak bound for Milwaukee where they were going to watch
their team play the Brewers. Or going to
the same sports bar with the same gear for 16 Sundays in a row and becoming
part of a community. Or walking into a
bar in a Pacers hat when I’m in whatever city and immediately getting included
in a conversation. Or sitting bleary
eyed in Guam, watching a playoff game at the one open bar on the island at some
ungodly hour. It’s comfortable for me in a way that an Oscar party will never
be, and it’s easy, and fun. It’s my church,
and despite what my team might be preachin’, I’m faithful.
And if you have a gay friend who’s sports-addled, well,
first, it’s just what he’s into. He’s
not judging you for not being into it or drawing any conclusions about you, but
it’s a hobby, however ridiculous (and he may well admit that it’s ridiculous),
and we like what we like. Second, he’s
got superstitions to maintain and a schedule to plan around upcoming games, and
that shit ain’t easy. If his team wins
on a week when we doesn’t have his cell phone, then he’ll never again bring his
cellphone to the bar to watch a game.
That’s just the way it works. And
finally, maybe ask to watch a game with him.
Not a big game, maybe, not a playoff game his team is in, but a
game. Maybe you can tell him about
Destiny’s Child during timeouts while he tells you a little about what’s going
on during the game. Maybe you’ll both be
a little more comfortable.
