I’ve never been one to fall for inflammatory content — those petty little posts that you know are just there to make you mad. But it’s certainly enticing that at any given moment I can give my brain enough primal stimulation to the point where my heart rate spikes, my breath quickens and my vision blurs. One click of a button, really. That’s all it takes. Click.
On Dec. 30, I took the bait. Duke basketball player Jared McCain was going viral, but not for an inhuman dunk or a buzzer-beating heave. Instead, then 19-year-old McCain was trending because he chose to paint his nails. And if I had any regard for my own well-being, I would’ve scrolled past it in blissful ignorance that maybe the online sports community was cheering him on for his self-expression. I knew that it wasn’t going to be the case, but I should’ve believed so anyways. Instead, I clicked.
“This shit is so gay.” My heart rate spiked. “Kick him out of school.” My breathing quickened. “The youngins need to get bullied.” My vision blurred.
Maybe I shouldn’t have cared, really. All I could do was yell my own thoughts into the void and preach to the choir. A tweet wouldn’t change people’s minds, but I tossed one into the universe anyway — not for McCain, but for me. Because under the guise of sticking up for him, I was standing up for myself.
***
I rode my bike to practice that day, feeling free, pretending my short hair was flowing in the wind in a long veil behind me, like a dress. I was humming a soft tune as my naturally rosy cheeks, soft jawline and round eyes all scrunched in the face of the evening sunset.
As I slipped my basketball bag off my shoulders and rested my bike on the small maple tree outside the gym doors, I reentered the real world. I felt comfortable in that gym, even as a freshly minted varsity player who only knew most of his teammates cordially. The high ceilings and stark smell of floor sealant provided a familiar, soothing environment — a reminder that I had been there before. I felt comfortable in the space, but, to be honest, I never really felt comfortable with the people. The team camaraderie of sports — the collective suffering and joy, the unity that comes with sweating together — often eluded me. Even then, before I truly knew the reason, I had the sinking feeling that I didn’t belong there — thoughts that start somewhere in your chest and flutter down to your waist only to sit there, waiting to be, but never actually being, acknowledged.
I hadn’t quite come to understand my Queerness yet. The idea of it was still a small seed in my brain; I just knew that I didn’t think like the rest of my teammates. That day, I started to understand why. It wasn’t like the movies. Everyone didn’t burst out in snickers immediately upon my entrance: I wasn’t jeered at. In fact, people didn’t notice until I began tying my shoes.
“Oh, shit,” one teammate commented. “Eli has pink nails.”
It wasn’t a malicious comment on the surface; it was simply an observation. Each one of my nails was sloppily painted in a neon pink, except for my ring fingers, which were coated in black. It was the deepest black my friends had. It was the type of black that I had imagined a black hole would be made of, the type of black I swore I could see my reflection in. I knew that wearing them to practice was a risk, but I didn’t really care. I was free that day.
“He’s been hangin’ out with the gays too much, man,” another teammate said.
“Faggots,” another corrected. My coach was in the room. He looked the other way. He used that word just as often as my teammates did. He had no reason to step in. Maybe I even saw the corner of his lips curl into a smile.
Those words hurt me on a level deeper than the anger I would feel for them saying slurs about others, but I wasn’t sure why. At the time, there was a feeling that, deep down, those words were describing me. My heart rate increased, my breathing quickened, my vision blurred. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t stand up for my friends or myself. Instead, I laughed along, agreed and locked myself in the bathroom as I scraped off the polish.
Basketball players didn’t paint their nails — not men, anyway.
***
Perhaps McCain didn’t experience what I did. Perhaps the Duke locker room was a much more accepting place than my semirural high school’s locker room was. Perhaps most of the hate McCain received was from lowlifes on Twitter with nothing better to do than make fun of a 19 year old. But then again, probably not, because it’s no secret that men’s sports aren’t a very accepting place.
Accepting or not, I stayed. I loved the game of basketball — its fast pace, its wit. It kept me coming back for more. But I also loved what it gave me. It put me out of harm’s way, acting as a mask to any of my un-masculine tendencies. In the locker room, I was an actor, pretending to be a hard, emotionally closed-off jock.
It’s almost like a game of “Who can be the most masculine?” I guess it makes sense that when you throw a bunch of young, competitive guys into a room together, it morphs into an unspoken battle of being the biggest, toughest man in the room — or, just the best representation of the prototypical “manly man.” It’s natural, I suppose, but it’s a vicious cycle: each person trying to out-man the one next to him. And this is the origin of “locker room talk,” the crude, often misogynistic and homophobic chatter that happens in changing rooms. It was this kind of talk that told me I didn’t belong.
Despite not yet really knowing that I was Queer myself, I had a lot of Queer friends. I was part of a 20-person fiddling band, of whom a majority were Queer in some form. In a way, I found myself on both ends of the spectrum. On one end, I could be freer and more open in my expression with very little judgment at all from my music friends. On the other end, I had to be very closed and purposeful with my actions and words so as to not be labeled as an outcast: an unmasculine man. I held my tongue as I heard slurs thrown around the locker room, slurs that I now know were describing me.
“If there was someone gay on this team, I’d make them change in the other room ’cause that’s weird,” I overheard one day — an homage to Tim Hardaway’s famous quote on a radio broadcast. Everyone laughed, agreeing. Yet there I was, right in the middle of the room, but the Queer still must hide.
In fairness, I am three years removed from my final days in a competitive sports team locker room. But I am not convinced that in my three years of absence, any notable strides have been taken. Stories like McCain’s and a similar situation with former USC quarterback Caleb Williams have drawn the homophobes of the sports community out in droves.
And this toxic culture doesn’t stop when an athlete enters the professional ranks. Former NFL player Colton Underwood, who came out as gay after his retirement, says that he used to have a folder of naked women on his phone that he would claim women sent him. He did this to “fit into that alpha hypermasculine culture.” The same teams that hold pride night and preach acceptance on social media have a deeply troubling culture behind closed doors. The walls of a locker room are well-insulated to protect against any change in societal climate — to protect the fragile representation of “manliness” as a concept defined by misogyny and homophobia that they hold on a pedestal.
I wish I would’ve stuck up for myself. I wish I would’ve told my teammates that they were wrong. Sure, nothing would have changed. Maybe I would have been ridiculed until I graduated, but at least I would have done something. Instead, I upheld a culture that I felt ostracized from. The only way to change a culture is to subvert it — being Queer in sports is an opportunity to turn the entire culture on its head. It can’t be quiet suffering anymore. I’ll paint my nails if I want to, because I belong in sports.
Statement Columnist Eli Trese can be reached at [email protected].
