My Life is Gay (MLIG)
While on my Easter Sunday hike, an interesting topic of conversation cropped up. Matt asked everyone to share a story that exemplified just how gay they were as a child. Let me say this: I have some GAY friends. I’ll let them tell their own stories, but I thought I would capture mine here…
In fifth grade, I finally succumbed to what had been an almost constant pressure in my life up until that point— I decided to take advantage of my freakish height and play basketball. Deep down I knew that I would regret the decision, and I didn’t have to wait long for confirmation of my fears. Each team in the rec league was named after a college team and I was unfortunate enough to have been placed on the Syracuse Orangemen. As if having a big pom pom as a mascot wasn’t bad enough, it had to be an ORANGE pom pom. Of course my unoriginal coach was content to go with the literal interpretation of the team name and chose ORANGE as our shirts as our uniform. Young as I was, I still knew what ORANGE did to my skin tone and I was pissed.
I managed to cope with the uniform tragedy. It helped that there were some cute boys on my team. But not even my pre-pubescent hormones were enough to get me to return to the court following what must be the most embarrassing game of rec league basketball ever played.
The Orangemen were not what the French like to call competitive. In fact, we probably would have done ourselves a favor if we had just gotten out of the way of the opposing teams as they rushed towards our basket. I never really cared that we lost every game. Instead of using practices to improve my serves and field kicks, I spent the time making sure everyone else knew not to pass me the ball. This tactic worked pretty well. My teammates completely ignored me and I made sure never to make eye contact with them in case they would make the mistake of thinking I was feeling left out. The fact that we were so horrible meant no one really ever cared about my lack luster performance, and the season progressed slowly but without any major disasters. I had no idea that an entire season’s worth of work trying to be ignored could be reversed all in the course of a single game.
The game started just the same as all the others that had come before. I was busy thinking about an upcoming haircut and internally debating the merits of blonde highlights when disaster struck. The ball glanced off an opponents finger tips and zoomed towards my face. I caught the ball only because the instinct to protect my face was strong enough to override my natural aversion to the ball. Instantly all eyes were on me like I was a mute that just spoke for the first time. All the adrenaline from being the center of attention and having just escaped the need for a nose-job must have effected my brain; that’s the only possible explanation for what came next. The decision to take a shot on the basket was made in a few seconds. Not nearly enough time for me to notice that while I was preparing to shoot, everyone else was running back to the other end of the court…where the other team’s basket was. I didn’t stop think why no one was trying to block me. I just closed my eyes and took a shot. It was like a scene out of Space Jam: against all the odds, the ball made it through the hoop. It was only as I watched the score keeper sceptically give the other team two points that I realized what I had done.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been able to reason with myself and would have been happy to concede that the two points I scored for them were simply points the other team was inevitably going to score anyways. However, having not paid any attention to the game up until this point let alone the score, I now realized that my mistake had cost the Orangemen the first lead they had ever had over another team. All of a sudden it was like the entire gymnasium was screaming directly at me. So I did what any self-respecting closeted fifth grader would do in an intense sporting situation. I dropped to my knees and started bawling my eyes out so that my coach was forced to use our last remaining time out to console me and send in my replacement.
Since I never talked to any of my teammates, I’m not sure if they blame me for costing them that game. I’m wasn’t worried though. I was simply elated that my breakdown gave me the leverage I needed to secure an ironclad promise from my mother that she would never make me go back.
Like I said: MLIG.
