After working at the Hard Rock in Baltimore for a couple of years, Lisa and I picked up and moved to Philadelphia completely on a whim. I wish I could give you a reason beyond “her lease was up and I was depressed,” but that’s just the truth. We didn’t know anyone there, we didn’t know the city, and we quickly realized that we didn’t quite know how to make friends in this new city. We started with work friends and that was good for a while. But then she got a job at an office and became a professional person, who got up at a decent hour and commuted and packed a lunch, and I remained a crepuscular barfly, waiting tables during the day and buzzing through gay bars at night. We drifted apart and then, all at once, we realized we had both changed, her for the better, me for the worse. We didn’t renew our lease and that’s when EJ, a gay, gym-obsessed man with a high-pitched giggle and a spare room in his house, came into my life.
On paper, EJ did not seem like he was on my team. He was a fount of bottomless joy, with pecs the size of cantaloupes and a love of Philly sports teams that elicited screams loud enough to shake the windows. While we lived in the same house, I was not sure we were from the same planet. Naturally social, he was always trying to get me to participate in the things he was into—working out, something called “meal prep,” and cheering loudly for the Phillies. At each invitation I was like, “Shan’t. Don’t feel like that’s part of my spiritual journey. Thanks for the invite.” I was really into making cupcakes and going on bad dates at this point. And while EJ was a very persuasive person and did seem to be having a good life as a sporty gay with muscles and friends, I was resolute about following my values.
Physical activity had never been my bag. Gym class was abhorrent in my nascently gay youth. Sweating, competing, keeping score, knowing what a first down was, moving: they were all atrocities to me. You can imagine my horror when I became an adult, came out of the closet, and found out that one of the central tenets of homosexuality is that all gays have gym memberships. I protested to the governing board, of course, noting that I’d seen Death Becomes Her twenty times and I owned one of those blue HRC bumper stickers with the yellow equal sign even though I didn’t own a car. Unfortunately, rules are rules and so I had to either join a gym or turn straight. I can only assume that I was on some spin-class-related endorphin high when EJ said, “Join that softball team with me,” and I said, “Sure!” when I really meant to say, “That’s gay.”
He’d long been a member of the City of Brotherly Love Softball League. A gay softball league. Indeed, each team is allowed a maximum of two players who identify as heterosexual. Any more and the team loses league funding. This was extremely gay. Corporately gay.
The idea was intriguing to me but only in the way that television is intriguing to a cat. I was pretty sure I didn’t give a shit about it, but because it was so foreign and yet so close to me, it piqued my interest. Softball? Full of gays? Every Sunday all summer long? Surely you’re misinformed. On Sundays, gays go to brunch and then put together IKEA furniture. In the evening they watch Desperate Housewives and write checks to charity.
Against my better judgment, and the strong suspicion that this was a vast right-wing conspiracy, I signed up. There was nothing in me that believed a fun Sunday morning would be primarily comprised of an activity I neither knew how to do nor was prepared for in the least. But after paying my dues and getting assigned to a team, it did occur to me that there might be some benefits to participating in this farce, that this inscrutable thing called sports might not be so bad. I was under the impression that there was a masculine energy that I had somehow missed because all my interests are fun and have award shows. Homosexual recreational softball, I thought, would be the key to making me a man.
As the first practice approached, I went to a Modell’s Sporting Goods to get all the things I needed for my first day of Man Practice. They required that I have a glove and recommended cleats and baseball pants. I love a costume, so the last two were no problem. The glove was a different story. Apparently, there are many different kinds and sizes of gloves. The sales associate asked me all these questions about size and features and I just stared at him blankly. Finally, I said, “Honey, let’s not do this. I’m feeling faint. Just give me something to put balls in. That’s what he said, by the way.”
So I had successfully procured a glove. EJ told me that I had to prepare it before using it. “Like a cast iron pan?” I said. “You want me to season my glove?” He seemed to have no idea what I was talking about but went along with it anyway. He gave me some lotion and told me to moisturize my glove and to tie a string around it to keep it closed. “My glove is wearing night cream? Is that what’s happening?”
He sighed. “Yes. Can you just do it?”
It seemed simple enough, so I acquiesced.
As I dutifully lotioned my glove every night (shockingly, not a euphemism), I began to panic. I really didn’t know how to play softball. I really was going to look like a big gay idiot out there. So I did what I always do when I don’t know something: I got on Wikipedia. After reading all night—or for a good twenty minutes between commercial breaks during Desperate Housewives—I had learned the following about this thing they call softball: (a) you throw underhand, (b) the balls are bigger, (c) that’s what he said. Here’s what I still didn’t know: how to throw a ball, how to hit a ball, how to catch a ball without screaming, how to get a home run (although I’m a pro at getting to third base).
At the first practice, they made me the catcher. Probably because when they asked what position I preferred, I replied, “Seated.” And it was there that I discovered my true gift. See, when you’re the catcher in slow-pitch softball, you’re only marginally in the game. Like Waldorf and Statler’s box seats on The Muppet Show, my comfy perch behind home plate gave me the perfect vantage point for watching the field and making snarky comments about the game in an attempt to mask the fact that I had no idea what the hell was going on. Occasionally, I would be required to catch a ball or something—which I invariably failed to do—but for the most part I was free to make all the puns I wanted out of the comic gold that is nine gays, a big stick, and a ball. And my teammates, God bless them, actually laughed.
Somewhere along the line my behavior began to turn on me. I think maybe it was the day I was assigned to center field during a practice. The outfield can be a real bore and it’s hard for people to hear you yelling “That’s what he said!” from all the way out there, so I decided to stay entertained by doing a split and singing quietly to myself. I had barely registered the crack of the bat when I looked up to find the ball sailing straight toward me. I cringed and prayed Not the face! as it landed just behind me. As I was still in the split, I didn’t know what they expected me to do, so I just shrugged and then whistled at a passing jogger.
It was in that moment that I realized I’d become the gayest member of a gay softball team in a gay softball league. I had to ask myself: Was this what I’d signed up to do? How was this reclaiming my masculinity? My shenanigans were all well and good, but what about the game? Didn’t I join to be part of a team and—beyond that—part of this vast, unknowable thing called masculinity? Prancing, cartwheeling, finger-snapping, ball-dropping, curtsying, and constantly doubling my entendres, I was—in my mind—acting like a real faggot. And hadn’t I joined the team so I wouldn’t be a guy people called a faggot? This was true, I thought, but who was calling me a faggot, anyway? In that moment, no one but me, actually.
After practice, our team manager announced that every player in the league had been given a rating based on their demonstrated skill level and that anyone with a rating under 7 would be invited to play in a special training game the following Saturday. Knowing that I was clearly going to be included in that motley crew and feeling a bit self-conscious about it, I released that old reliable sass to deflect any attention. “A game for all the players that suck?!” I exclaimed. “That sounds awful! A field full of old queens and nerdy faggots all scrambling desperately to get away from the ball? No, thank you. And I presume that since we all suck, some, if not most, of us are going to have to actually play in this game? I mean, they can’t put us all in right field and forget about us. Count me out, ladies.”
The bit got some chuckles—not enough, if you want to be frank about it—but the niggling feeling inside me wasn’t assuaged. I wasn’t fooling anyone with this performance. If I wanted to be a part of this game, I was going to have to do more than crack lame jokes in poor taste. I was going to actually have to learn how to play softball.
They even had an acronym for this skills game, which I suppose made it more official. They called it SAUSE, which, as far as acronyms go, is pretty adorable. It stood for Seven And Under Softball Event. Or maybe the last word was “Exhibition.” I could never remember. But I chose to use “Event” because it sounded far more fabulous and far more likely to involve a red carpet.
To my surprise there was no red carpet at this “event.” Just a bunch of players of varying skill levels being given positive, sound advice by more skilled coaches. What a letdown. As I did some yoga poses and ran lines from Damn Yankees in the dugout to warm up, I also discovered a conspicuous lack of ostracism. I was sure that the seasoned pros running this exhibition game on the island of misfit boys were going to have a blast mocking us for our lack of skills and our messy French braids.
The coaches, however, were just other nice gays who had, apparently, read the full Wikipedia article on softball. They had nothing but encouragement for us, which left the task of being a hateful bully completely up to me. After every mistake I would instinctually scold myself under my breath. And the words came out so naturally and with such vehement, muted fury that I was taken aback more than once. Who was this angry ballplayer and why did he hate me so much? After a missed catch, “Fuck!” After every swing and miss, “Idiot!” And by “idiot,” I meant gay.
Midway through the event, I stepped up to the plate to bat. There was a very nice lesbian stationed there to coach players on their stances, their positioning, and whatever else one does when one hits a ball with a bat. After a couple of misses, she advised me to stick my butt out, to back it up, to wait a little longer until I tried to hit it. The jokes were coming to mind so quickly that I had to literally bite my tongue to keep from cracking wise. I really wanted to get this right. It was me holding a bat going up against the behemoth that was a flying slow-pitch softball. All puns aside, in that moment I desperately wanted to connect. I wanted to be part of this thing. I could wrap a birthday present in less than a minute and make buttercream icing from scratch, but all I wanted in the world right then was to hit a ball.
I took a breath, raised my bat, and concentrated. The ball came sailing toward me; I could tell it was a good pitch, right over the plate. I swung, hard. And missed. Hard. I swung so hard that my foot popped up like when they kiss in the movies and I did a little pirouette. I came to a stop dizzy and chagrined. The shortstop looked bored; the boys in the outfield were braiding each other’s hair. The very nice lesbian approached me again. “Okay,” she said. “That swing was a little gay. You need to butch it up.”
And as many times as I’d told myself the exact same thing, as many times as I’d muttered it under my breath as I struck out, it didn’t mean the same thing when she said it. It meant something completely different. It wasn’t the derision bored teenagers casually toss at you for sport or the word I’d turned into a weapon aimed at my softest self. The one word, a simple, meaningless word, dropped into context in her comment. I knew she could say it, she could use it, because she was it. And it was safe. And if she was it and I was it, then she and I were us. And I was on the inside. She was gay and I was gay and my swing was gay. And it was fine and dandy and didn’t have a thing to do with me hitting the ball. And my objective was clear. So, when the pitcher threw again, I followed her advice, I backed up, I waited to swing, and I hit the ball. Because that’s what I was actually there to do. And I followed it with my eyes for a second, like a cat watching television, until I heard her yelling, “Don’t just stand there. Run!”
I only lasted one season on the City of Brotherly Love Softball League. I had a wonderful time, and I got a great tan, but I really wasn’t very good and I wasn’t interested in getting better. So, when fall came, I gave my glove away and promptly forgot literally everything I’d learned about the sport. The next year, EJ was on the same team again and he said that they missed me. “You were very funny,” he said, in his relentlessly positive way. “You should come back. As a cheerleader.” Up until this point, I hadn’t been sure that anyone appreciated my presence. Sure, they laughed and they gave me good advice, and they celebrated when I got to first base and literally never any further. But I felt that same discomfort around them that I felt at random parties or sometimes at work or sometimes just walking down the street. And I’d assumed that what I was intuiting was the truth about them—that I just wasn’t man enough to be a part of their group. When, in reality, I was slowly realizing the truth about myself—that I had more work to do on my internalized homophobia.
It felt safer—and to be honest, more comfortable—to perform a kind of camp and use gayness as a punchline like a problematic eighties comedian. Better to be thought a queen than to open your purse and remove all doubt, isn’t that how the saying goes? I never felt that I was particularly flaming—would that I were; I feel like I’d be more interesting! But I knew that I wasn’t overtly masculine either.
On occasion, people will yell “gay” when they walk by me. Teenagers or whatever. Which I think is ridiculous. Even as I speed up my step to try to run from the sound. It’s a little bit of violence, a muted fury that I still cringe at like the brick to the side of my head. But in and of itself it doesn’t make much sense. It’s an absurdly un-insulting insult. “Gay!” they shout, always out of context and dangling dangerously without the anchor of a pronoun. “Gay!” It’s like, duh. Are you trying to tell me something I don’t know? How kind a gesture that would be! Some person with really extreme gaydar just tumbling through the world alerting people to their own sexual orientations. Like a blessing.
“Gay!” people shout. For whose benefit? I always wonder afterward, as they are walking away, or in the case of one strange man in South Philadelphia, continuing to sit at a red light while I stood on a street corner and stared at him. He had pulled up in a truck, immediately rolled down the window, and started yelling at me about how I was a faggot. And also a nigger. This was an intersectional moment. I just sort of looked at him, mostly out of surprise. And then out of confusion; I was wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt. This guy must have been a professional faggot-spotter. It was almost impressive. After letting me know who and what I was, he then rolled his window back up and stared straight ahead, waiting for the light to change.
When the fact of your being is used as a weapon against you, the process of relearning who you are and what your value is, is a long one. I don’t know that I’ll ever be finished. I don’t know that I’ll ever be fully there. But I’ve learned I can’t be the first person out there calling myself a faggot just to get it out of the way. That’s not how one stays safe and that’s not how one creates community. That energy doesn’t go out into the world lightly or without cost.
Years after my time in a restaurant and my brief stint on a softball field, I am more at home in myself than ever, and it’s due in large part to those experiences, the people in those spaces who accepted me in all my unresolvedness and problematicness and taught me how to tell the truth about who I am, without burying it in a joke. For years, I thought that the way to keep from getting burned was to set myself on fire first or to snuff out my light. I didn’t know that I was a phoenix, growing more powerful with every unsuccessful attempt at the drag of presentability, every hurled insult, every strike, and every split. The flame is not my liability but my strength. It was inside me all along.
(That’s what he said.)