The Acentos Review

room to breathe: an essay on competition & toxic masculinity

I post on FB: Um ... shameful desire alert - anyone watching the fight tonight & want to invite me. Let me know. It’s Triple G (Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin) vs Canelo Alvarez, what many sports journalists are calling the potential fight of the decade. I perv out on Triple G’s nickname. Wonder if he is aware of its sex positive connotations. A few people (all men) respond saying: There’s nothing shameful in enjoying good, healthy competition between athletes. That’s sounds good & true. But then where does all this sick come from? This discomfort. Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps it’s self-loathing. Perhaps it’s just feeling so boy.

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My Intro to Creative Writing student explains to me he enjoyed the “competitive element.” He's responding to my question about last class’s writing workshop. I like him: young, possibly queer, a person of color. But something in his comment makes me squirm. Bodily. Because I agree. I know what he means. Competition makes things better. I fret it’s because we’ve been socialized male. I worry that somehow my teaching privileges this attitude.

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At the start of the fight, they play the anthem of Kazakhstan, Triple G’s homeland. A femme looking young man, perfect skin, ruddy lips, sings in a velvet cape; I can’t help but smile. Then, a very white passing Mexican woman sings “Himno Nacional Mexicano” & finally a Latinx woman sings “The Star Spangled Banner.” I turn my back in a lame attempt at solidarity & protest. No one in the bar pays attention. On phones & clinking beers & sucking chicken wings.

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I watch the fight at HomeTeam, a bar in South San Francisco, alone, surrounded mostly by men drinking & capping on each other. I can’t help by recall my father & tios talking shit about the Raiders & Broncos, their exuberance around sports. But I’m suspect about this one guy in the corner taking shots. He struts like he about to fight. He pushes & jabs at his friends. But in that way. He looks around like what. A older guy wearing jeans covered in drywall dust, sipping on a Corona, turns to me & asks, Why you rooting for Triple G? I don’t tell him because he’s good, giving & game.

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Statistics: From Rolling Stone’s June 2017 article on queer athletes: “There are still no openly gay [male] athletes in professional American team sports.” From Vice September 9, 2016 “Dr. Cheryl Cooky, president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, believes that it's going to take more than one individual coming out to change the negative connotation of the ‘gay male athlete.’”

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In the early part of the fight, between rounds, the trainers reach into the waistbands of each fighter's shorts & pull them out. I watch the fighters take gulps of air like they desperate for oxygen, for room to breathe.

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Aaron Hernandez, tight end for the NE Patriots, was convicted of killing another man because the man knew he was bisexual. Aaron was notorious for his anger, his bravado, his gangster mentality, all the definitions of toxic masculinity. Before he killed himself, alone in jail, he wrote three notes: one to his girlfriend, one to his daughter & one to an undisclosed person. That person was his male lover, also an inmate. I know this is not excuse, but if only he had room to breathe, to own all the sides of him, to not hide in violence used to assert manhood. There’s a Barbara Kruger image that to this day resonates deeply w/ me. It announces: you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men across an image of men street fighting. As child, the only time I touched other boys was through rough housing & play fighting & basketball & wrestling. Most of these activities ended in crying or anger. Always in winners & losers. Never comfort. Never joy. I know this is not excuse, but if only I had experienced other ways to play. Maybe though, this is only me.

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I enroll in an online writing class led by other writers who teach outside the formal educational system. Thirty dollars for a prompt a day, only requirement: post a response. The first few days pass & I find myself posting earlier & earlier. I finally realize I’m trying to be the first. I’m doing the work & showing off. I consciously choose to not post my response for a few days because somehow I feel embarrassed, a bit disgusted, too male.

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I write this response when the prompt asks us to remember a lesson:

a whole body

my father called me over    bent down    eye to eye    he stared at me    I tried to escape     I knew the tricks he played   later i’d come to know these as attempts to love    he held me close in the yard   I found you somethinggrab the tail        in his palm    a vibrant green chameleon    in the process of changing to earthy brown    the color of my dad's skin i’d think later    he said I did     my father let it go    I felt the lizard swing    sway    then watched the body fall    the tail left wiggling in my fingers    I screamed    dropped it   put hand to mouth    my dad said like fact     you killed it boy stop crying    the lizard’s fine     but it’s crazy what things will do     to survive    he picked up the tail     still thrashing     still acting as if it was complete    a whole body     he tried to give it to me & said   

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Timeout: As I’m writing this, as I struggle to unpack my own complicated desires around professional sports & toxic masculinity that equates violence w/ acumen, Trump calls on the NFL owners to fire every athlete who kneels. He calls them “sons of bitches.” As one person pointed out on social media, Trump didn’t even call the murderer in Charlottesville a derogatory name; in fact, he said there were “fine people” involved in the white supremacist rallies.

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Statistic: Stephen Curry maintains he will not go to the White House like every national champion has done in the past. Megan Raponi was the first white professional athlete to support Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protest. Only after he is blacklisted from the NFL, only after countless other black athletes defend & support his actions, does the first white male professional athlete of any sport participate. Draw your own conclusions.

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My son is a huge Raiders fan. He has a tattoo of their logo riding his shoulder. He has season tickets. I make an effort every time we hang out to not talk sports & I have never talked about lovers w/ him, other than to talk when he was a teenager about safe sex &/or sexual violence. I fear to even broach the subject of women because it’s equated to the locker room talk of Trump & other misogynists. I desire a way of relating w/ him outside these topics. So again & again our talk gravitates to sports. I soothe myself that at least I have never talked about women (or men) w/ him. I realize my son might think I’m asexual. But he knows I’m a sports fan.

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I text my son after the 8th round, Triple G acting like he got this. He texts, He’s a cocky motherfucker. The homies over here going nuts for Canelo. I text back: a thumbs up emoji. This, of course, bothers me. Our jovial conversation. In the writing class, I post this:

the hubris of parenting

i realize my son turns 27 soon   a man   no longer the boy    i imagine when i close my eyes    & think of him    i wonder if that is the hubris of parenting   the desire to remember your child as static   fixed in age or location   those moments that brought us that sharp joy only a parent knows    the time he picked up a dragonfly    & it lurched back to life    the look in his eyes    the wonder & fear    the way he jumped to me    or the time he called to me in the dark    sick & feverish    & i held him    but he is more than a feel good memory    he is mistakes & anger & selfishness & distracted & far away & calls infrequently & forgets my birthday     but when he says what’s up pops when i accidentally run into him at some store & hugs me   what’s a father to do    i hug him back like he was my little boy

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Men don’t hug. Don’t hold each other softly & w/ gratitude & tenderness. They bump. They lean in. This is not completely true (but what is). It’s a generalization. But I think it’s kind of true. How has patriarchy created this fear of touching other men?  Where does this momentary hesitance come from to curb my expressions of certain emotions: relief, fear, vulnerability around them. Thinking about this, I write & post this response.

do you understand your words

as boychild i loved rough play   the chase & yowl of tag   the arrogance to face speeding baseball & catch it w/o flinching    making my father proud    the crazy way dodgeball works    looking one way & slinging purple rubber ball another way    any one fair game    but one game haunts me   my favorite   played w/ a group of boys    though occasionally a few girls    if we were lucky    we threw football high into air    who ever caught  it    ran away   ran for their life   laughing & screaming    because every other kid tried to tackle them    & usually every other kid did     a massive writhing mound of prepubescent bodies   piling on top of each other   barely able to breathe   smear the queerplaying smear the queer    my dad called it & so did everyone i knew    for years   & one day my mother asked how i got bloody nose & ripped shirt     i boasted    to this day i remember the look on my mother's face    she asked do you understand your words   all i wanted to was hide    because once you understand what something means you can’t outrun that knowledge

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Statistics: by the end of the 10th round it is clear that Golovkin is winning the fight, that most likely Canelo cannot defeat him if it goes the distance. So he comes out swinging. At one point a barrage of punches rain down on Triple G. He defensively weathers them all & then adjusts his posture & nods his head at Canelo as if to say, Good but not good enough. Canelo nods back. I love the arrogance, the confidence, the comradery. I highfive the man next to me.

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I think of my interactions w/ young men. I think of teaching in the Fall semester of 2017 my basic skills class to mostly young men, a few young women, mostly students of color. We read Chimamanda Adichie’s book on how to raise a feminist. Not one student claims to be a feminist. We talk about tone in someone’s writing. We talk the sexiness of semicolons. The Raiders games & the sexism in professional sports. We talk taking a knee. One student says he would. Most nod in agreement. Another young male student writes an essay about hating addiction because he believes his mother is an addict. He felt ignored for years. He blames their poverty & white supremacy. He says this flippantly. Like fact. When we conference about his essay, I thank him for being so vulnerable. I hear myself say that word: vulnerable & I momentarily worry that I might have offended him. How much of this is me? How much of this is knowing other men? Years of observing the men in my family watching sports & threaten violence when called a pussy or a bitch or a girl. Meaning all the same thing. Meaning weak & less than. Meaning unmale. I watch his reaction. He looks up at me & says, Thank you. I nod. What else is there to say?

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At the end of the match, both fighters hug & touch foreheads. It’s a moment of beauty & respect. It’s tender & truthful. They turn away & each celebrate. I think of the times my father hugged me like that. Twice: standing firm in front of a fastball & graduating high school.

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I show what I believe to be a final draft of this essay to my partner. She has this way of holding her head & sucking in a breathe when she reads something she doesn’t agree with or questions or is critical of. I see this reaction as she finishes the piece. I say, Tell me. She says, Do you see the irony? I shake my head like: Yes, of course I do. But I don’t. She says, The way you describe the athletes as tender & vulnerable. When it’s a fight. It’s an act based on violence. On beating someone. I feel immediately like I failed something. Like I flinched. Because she’s right. Is it ironic or is it toxic? Is it plausible to be competitive & physical & still be tender & loving? Maybe they’re mutually exclusive. Maybe it’s just my bad logic. My blindness. To simply overlook the brutality.

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The drunk guy slouches in a chair. I have this desire to check on him, but I don’t. The crowd stares silent at the massive flat screen TV in HD. They are more than rapt. I would call this reverent. The announcer calls it a draw. There is no winner. At first I scream like everyone else. I call bullshit. I ruffle in anger. I walk quickly away like proving some point. But in the street at night I realize I’m glad there was no winner. Meaning no one lost. Meaning instead of victory, we must find solace in the act: two people putting all the talk & pomp & egos aside & risking failure, two people being vulnerable & beautiful & true. If only everyday life was like this. If only competition were its own reward. If only we could hug & walk away & celebrate. Not caring about victor nor vanquished but revelling in act. How might men be different? How might we all win?