Filed under: Queer Writing | Tags: Brendan Burke, Community, DADT, LGBTQ, Marriage equality, McColumn, Media, New York City, Personal, Politics, Prop 8
It’s been nearly a month since I’ve last written on the McColumn. I’m determined to avoid becoming one of those blogs that dots itself with updates – writing when the inspiration hits and dying out for weeks, months, years at a time – but the last month was a much needed time away from the McColumn and it gave me the chance to focus on tennis writing, working insane hours at my day job, and adjusting to life in 2010.
I’ve been mulling through a bunch of topics to hit on in this post, one that I’ve been daunted by and nervous about for a couple of weeks now. Whenever you go away from something – whether it be work or school or the tennis court or playing the piano – you’re nervous about how you’ll do when you return. How will my writing flow? Will I be able to get my points across in a direct, heart-felt way? I feel myself tensing up at times thinking about it.
The best approach for me is to sit down and pound through it. Basically, I sit down at the keyboard and close my eyes and let the thoughts and emotions flow out of me. Sometimes I blink them open when I think I’ve made a type-o, but mostly I’m breathing deeply and letting myself go, just letting the words come in a way that only keys on a computer’s board allows them to; no pen is quite that fast.
Life was fast, too fast, for Brendan Burke. He’s one of the reasons I wanted to get back into my pillow-laden bed and finally get a new post out on the McColumn. I wrote about Burke in December, following his public coming out on ESPN’s family of outlets. On Friday, the 21-year-old college senior died tragically in an automobile accident in Indiana. His life was cut painstakingly short; a young man that was surely to do phenomenal things in his lifetime.
I received a lovely note from Brendan around New Year’s after I wrote him congratulating him on his coming out and wishing him luck. He said he had received nothing but positive feedback, and hoped that things would only continue that way as his story spread. As much as I was weary that things would remain rainbows and butterflies for him, I admired his unwavering courage and confidence – they are rare these days.
But with the loss of his life on Friday, I feel as though my generation has let slip by a voice that could have been a great one. A person – a man – that could have bridged gaps that we are still unsure of how to navigate: those of sport and sexuality, masculinity and sexual comfort. There has been no true front runner in the bid to collect our voices in one thus far in history, just older, 30- and 40-somethings doing their piece to make do for the next (my) generation.
Brendan seemed to understand what he was doing, and that he was becoming a part of a historical narrative that was both important and fragile all at once. While the nation stands by and watches debates waver on either coast regarding Proposition 8 and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, it’s hard to see the queer community coming together around one youthful voice that can carry the children of the ’90s into the next step: the unknown.
I admire Lt. Dan Choi and the work he has done since being discharged from the military, crusading across the nation and taking his story with him. I’ve had the chance to hear him talk on several occasions and his astute approach is admirable if not somewhat off-putting: he’s done his time in the military and it’s apparent. His brashness connects him with some audiences that would feel ostracized by a different approach.
But for now, I’m still trying to understand where we will and where we can go as a community in the next decade. While individuals who are 10, 20 and 30 years older than us continue to work for the right to serve openly in the military and to marry the ones they love, my generation has done our best to assist where we feel as though we can assist. But what cause – what plight – might bring us together?
Simply, I think that Brendan might have had it right: coming out. Too many publicly-branded personalities have chosen to skip the coming out process altogether, taking the “I am who I am” road or staying in the closet for the time being. Anderson Cooper, a person and professional who I admire greatly, seems to think that keeping his sexuality a personal matter won’t effect his work. Though every time I watch his show and listen to his podcasts, all I can think is: “Coop, when’s it gunna happen?!”
The tracks have been laid by Ellen and Dustin Lance Black and many, many others before us, but Brendan proved that we have to continue to tread on them if we want to get to where we believe we belong: equality. If we don’t continue to remind others who we are, if we don’t share our stories of families, friends and communities coming together in ways we never thought they would before coming out, then we’re cheating ourselves in this foot race. We can get there, but we have to take each step to do so. Or, as Brendan would prefer, strap on a pair of skates and take it one glide at a time.
Filed under: Personal Life, Sports Writing | Tags: McColumn, Media, Personal, Tennis, The New York Times
Well I haven’t done a good job at getting The McColumn kick started this year, but you can bet your bottom dollar I’m out there still writing. With the start of the Australian Open this week, I’m a busy bee, actually.
My fun, light-hearted stuff (and video (!) analysis) is being posted on the tennis arts, fashion and culture blog run by my good friend Erwin called Tennis Served Fresh. Meanwhile, I’m also contributing to that little pub known as The New York Times, writing for their tennis blog, Straight Sets. You can find my posts here.
Don’t fret too much, I’ll be back with more cheesy life analysis in the near future. Happy New Year, all!
Filed under: Queer Writing | Tags: Internet, Journalism, LGBTQ, McColumn, Media, New York City, Personal, Politics
It’s not easy to keep up. The Internet helps make sure of that: the endless blogs; articles; video entries. They’re constant and consistent, unyielding and unfurled. It’s incredible how in the span of just a decade and a half we’ve gone from a truly paper-laden society to one that stares at screens, starts our days with clicks and keypads instead of coffee and conversation.
Growing up in Montana provided a rather slow existence compared to the life in New York City that I now lead. But as I returned to Helena this time around for Christmas, I did my best to slow down once again. No coffee shop work, no freelancing. I was determined to relax and enjoy my vacation the way I imagine my 5-year-old self believed I should when I had an “adult” job.
I returned to New York this past week feeling rather behind, however. The world didn’t quit turning, and – thanks mostly to the Internet – they’re are endless articles and events and writings and happenings to catch up on. The one, strangely, that caught my attention the most, was from afterelton.com, a gay news web site, which named Neil Patrick Harris’s coming out as the most influential coming out story of the decade.
Really? I thought to myself. Sure, Harris’s coming out was a great gain for the gay community, and his work has no doubt influenced many in a positive way. But of the decade?? It just didn’t seem to add up.
And then there was the runner up: John Barrowman. John Barrow-who? I couldn’t even place a face to the name, much less identify who the said gay male was who was who happened to be in a heated battle to be known as the last decade’s most influential homo.
In a simpler world, the gay community would have a single conscience. A singular existence that would allow us to know Richard Applequeer was surely the gay of the decade. We would all applaud and cheer and be merry and proud, for we knew exactly what Richard had achieved and what he stood for. But that isn’t what we live in, and that’s not how our community – or society at large – is chronicled. It’s a bit more complicated than that. A bit more confusing, er, well, fast paced.
That pace is what I see as both good and bad. In one light, the Internet has allowed weeds to spread across our culture like the ugly beings they are, ruining the vista and interrupting our view. In other ways, however, it’s allowed for greater acceptance, accessibility, coming togethers and coming outs.
As a continuing student of the media, I’m still unsure of where I stand. Do I frown at the mounting stack of must-reads that flash across my Twitter screen? Or should I be thankful for such access and exposure?
I wish I could rattle off the accomplishments of Neil Patrick Harris’s decade following his coming out. I wish I could say all the good things that John Barrowman has down for the community, the way he has been a leader and helped institute change. But all I know (after a little Barrowman research) is that both of these guys are actors. They’re both ingrained in the mainstream culture, both a welcoming and challenging part of their coming outs processes.
I’m currently reading And the Band Played On, the non-fiction piece that chronicles the spread of AIDS and the political, social and personal strife that surrounded the disease in the 1980s. What strikes me more than anything is how much I’m learning, how much I didn’t know about the disease and its history as I go from one page to the next.
In many aspects, we’re over-saturated with information, clouding what is important and what we should respect. But in many other aspects, we need these stories, we need these connections to help us continue to learn about who we are and what we can become, both as individuals and as a community.
I’m never going to read all of it – none of us are – and I’m certainly never going to know exactly who is who and what his or her story is. But I’m strangely thankful for the Internet tonight, thankful for the way it connects us in strange ways and lets us hear stories that we wouldn’t otherwise, and even find out who John Barrowman is. Actor and all. My coming out award for the decade? The Internet, god bless her heart. I always knew she had it in her. She’s brought us all together in ways we never could have imagined, for better and for worse.
(photo by Marcin Wichary via flickr.com)
Filed under: Poetry | Tags: Childhood, Family, Helena, McColumn, Pain, Personal
She stands
She feels like she’s slumping
The kitchen sink drips in front of her
Barely does she notice
She sees herself in the reflection of the window
The noise from the dripping
Are those her tears?
No, it’s just the sink
She hobbles
Away from the sink
Away from the window
But not away from herself
Just slowly
To herself
Again and again
Walking, no, hobbling
Hobbling in circles
So slowly
The tears hit the floor in front of her
Her chin quivers
There is so much in life to be happy about
She knows that
She appreciates that
But that doesn’t stop the tears
The small steps make her feel inadequate
No longer bustling about
No longer holding the reins
Filed under: Personal Life | Tags: Childhood, Community, Family, Helena, McColumn, Personal
For the first in my life, I wasn’t waking up at 626 North Benton on Christmas morning. I wasn’t at home. I wasn’t in Helena, Montana, to soak in the freezing air, the snow-covered ground and the warmth of family and comfort on the day we always celebrate together. I was far, far away.
I thought it would feel beyond strange, but the day passed like any other would. I got to spend time with two good friends, have the day off from work and generally soak in enough joy and cheer to fuel me through the following days of work before I got to return home on Monday. I made it.
Coming home is always weird for me. A good weird. A weird that conjures up awkward memories of adolescence along with a mix of pleasant thoughts of childhood, when the world existed in a four-block radius from my house to Hawthorne Elementary school, and not much more.
Growing up in Helena, especially where my parent’s home is, provided an especially close-quartered first decade of life. It’s quaint and unthreatening, the kind of place where you know faces in crowds and spend more time at the grocery store catching up on your local gossip than actually looking for groceries.
Our relationship with the place we grew up in is a peculiar thing to me. Some of us don’t have one location where we ever felt settled, others – like me – have the same house to go back to that we took our first steps in, blew out our first teenage candles in and graduated from high school in.
This time around, as my miniscule twin-engine jet made its way into the Helena Airport, the vast landscape surrounding town had me in a state of awe. I didn’t know the world was so terribly large, even in Montana, and that we make up such a small portion of it. That’s easy to forget in New York, where you feel like you’re shoulder to shoulder with millions of others on a daily basis. But in Montana its apparent, even obvious, that we are but small creatures. Insignificant.
I still can’t quite put my finger on how I feel when I come home. I’m elated to see my family, my gorgeous nieces and nephews and my ever-loving parents, but the place itself – the town that I grew up in – conjures up something inside of me that I let lay dormant for most of the year in New York.
Today, as we prepared our New Year’s Eve feast, I told my mom that I had realized I spent a mere 10 days in Helena in 2009. The fewest day at home of any year, ever. “You’re a visitor, I guess,” my mom to me, an air of laughter in her voice. “Yeah, I think you’re right,” I told her, more seriously than I intended.
If I’m a visitor when I come “home”, then what am I when I return to New York? Homecomings will always change and shift with me – with all of us – as we grow older, their meanings molded differently as we ourselves alter who we are. But for now, I’ll take a little bit of solace in the fact that I can come home to my own bedroom, a family that supports me and a familiar community. No one Christmas away can take all that away so fast, I suppose.
Filed under: Poetry | Tags: Coffee, Longing, Love, McColumn, New York City, Personal
I’ve never written poetry before the last two weeks. When I wrote “Thank You” it poured out of me, and over the last 10 days I’ve pondered several different topics, and wrote on a few. This is another poem of love and wondering. Happy Holidays to all. -N
It’s good that the glass is blurred
I can’t see you that way
It’s good that I have to turn my head
In a way that’s awkward
That hurts my neck
For to turn to you
Towards the glass
Isn’t something I should be doing
But I guess I can’t help it
To look to the glass
When I hear feet
Your feet?
I wonder
His feet
I want them to be yours
For it to be you
I want to turn and see your silhouette
It’s unreachable
Like you are
Bulletproof
And I guess that’s why I want you
Think that I need you
There isn’t a way for me
To get my mind off of you
So I stand
And smile
And wipe my fingers
Across my forehead
The smell of coffee
Consumes me
Like you
I don’t like that you consume me
Through the glass
You smile
You wave
How noble of you
How kind
But the glass is still there
Still blurred
I can recognize you through it
Your walk
The way that you move
Your hair
Oh, man!
That dorky hair
But I can’t reach you
I can’t call through the glass
And make you hear me
It’s not possible
And I understand that
Or I guess it is
Possible
It’s possible to
Call through the glass
“Hello!”
I would call
Standing on my tip-toes
To shout
You would stop
You always stop
And smile
And I would call through the glass
The way I shouldn’t have
The way that I can’t
For the blurriness of the glass
Would blur my words
They wouldn’t come out right
You wouldn’t hear them right
Because of the glass
You would only hear the glass
Not my voice
And you would nod
And smile
I dream of the glass shattering
Of you standing above it
And it comes crashing down
Landing on the ground
As soft as snow
But then you’re not there
You’re gone
Like the glass
And still
My neck hurts
(photo by Mg Yoe via flickr)
Filed under: Personal Life, Work Life | Tags: City living, Community, Journalism, LGBTQ, McColumn, New York City, Passion, Personal
There is a swelling within each of us that aches to activate itself. It wants to be a part of who we are, it wants to wake up with us everyday and climb out of the right side of the bed with us, wants to make sure that we put on one sock at a time and brush our teeth before we enter the outside world.
This ache, swell, fire can’t stand all of the mundane parts of our day. The parts where we’re forced to do the little things that get us from one big event to the next. So annoyed and frustrated becomes the swell that it enters our mind and our heart at this time, giving us the freedom to think during a shower or the encouragement to ponder such a theory or idea while cooking a meal.
Whatever you want to call this thing – an ache, a swell, a fire – it’s known as passion most frequently by you and me. It’s what we dedicate our lives to, what we stand to give to the world in a way that is careful, intentional and full, the sort of end product that is the result of internal churning, burning and a need to be a part of something bigger in what can often be a frightening, chaotic and too-big world.
My friends and I wonder about our passions daily. Who doesn’t? We wonder where to put our energy, how we can useful in this world, what difference we can make and if what we do is actually making a difference. How can it all add up if each of us is doing so little, making such a small impact while we try to stay busy and make use of where we are?
I’ve again come to a sort of crossroads when it comes to passion. I’m passionate about gay rights. I’m passionate about writing. I’m passionate about tennis. I’m passionate student development and the way we work as people. But which passion will play a foremost role in my life? Which passion can I put to use? Which passion will get me paid?
Transitioning from the realm of undergraduate academia to the always-feared “real world” presents this difficult-to-decipher stage for us all, or at least for me. I can’t figure out exactly where to put my energy or how to make a difference, and when I become too engrossed on one thing or the next I can only think of what I’m not contributing, obviously a trait that doesn’t help me in trying to get it all nailed out.
Development comes in small stages, in bursts and leaps both internally and externally. It’s impossible to know how things will turn out, but as my road continues to swerve and curl, I have to be careful to know exactly how to navigate it. Wrong turns are okay, roadblocks are inevitable. Perhaps the passion – the ache, the fire – will present itself if only I keep on going.
The everyday can feel mundane, it can feel exhausting and pointless and frustrating, but to know that it leads to something bigger, and it can encompass something so large in the span of a few hours is exhilarating. Passionately exhilarating.
Filed under: Videoblog | Tags: Britney Spears, Comedy, Dance, Friends, McColumn, New York City, Personal, Song, Video
I guess I’ve done a pretty good job of presenting the “emotional” and “critical” me on The McColumn, processing life’s challenges as I’ve met them over the last year. So as Christmas approaches and I near the one-year mark with this blog, I decided it might be fun to show the light side of myself, as well.
Two Christmases ago, while in Seattle for my senior year of college, I started humming Britney Spears’ “Piece of Me” to a holiday tune. The idea launched into a full-blown Christmas-party performance, where me and my roommate Lauren re-wrote the entire song with holiday lyrics. Eleven months later, the video was picked up by BritneySpears.com, and we were suddenly (Z-List) YouTube stars.
Rather than gawk at my Z-List status, I took it as a compliment. So last Christmas, after we made our BS.com debut, I convinced a different friend in New York to make another Britney spoof to one of her new songs. Thus the Britney Holiday Re-Make tradition was born.
Year three finds me still in New York, still spoofing Britney, and still somehow not being embarrassed by the whole ordeal. This year things got a little sideways – literally – but the lyrics and ridiculousness of it is all still there.
Merry Christmas, all!
Filed under: Personal Life, Poetry, Queer Writing | Tags: Boys, Friends, Love, McColumn, Personal, Poetry, Self love
For talking today
I feel weak
I wish I could just figure everything out
With ease
But I can’t
And that’s when I appreciate you the most
I wish we were close
At least so we could snuggle a little
No one here to snuggle with
To touch
I like to touch a lot
To be gentle
But hug firmly
Hug lovingly
I wish that I could do that with you
To hold you in my arms and let your head rest on my chest
I want that
I want to be close to you
Even though you’re married
My best friend
My itty bitty
I can’t tell you about this ache in my chest
Or I guess I could try
Since I’m sure you’ve felt it before
But you got what you want
And I’m happy for you
I’m truly happy about it
About the wedding
I just wish that this feeling would explode into flowers and rainbows
But it feels like rainclouds and sloppy fields
Stuck in my chest
Beating
Tearing
Aching at me
Like mud
I wake with it and hold my pillow tighter
That’s all I hold at night
Pillows
And not even one
I sleep with four
Does that make me unfaithful to you?
To him?
To what I want
What I need
I want to be holding him in the morning
To turn around and meet his face in my back
His nose squished between my shoulder blades
Does that actually happen?
I mean his nose?
Or would he not be able to breathe?
I bet I would be sweaty in bed
Only wanting one blanket or so
But, naked
Butt naked
I would want that in him
In our nightly routine
In me sleepily brushing my teeth
And trying to talk to him
Wanting him to decipher what I’m saying
You know
Like you used to do
You were so good at that
The deciphering part
Mostly while I was just in my underwear
More of A Poem: “Thank You” after the jump.
Filed under: Queer Writing, Sports Writing | Tags: Brendan Burke, Journalism, LGBTQ, McColumn, Media, Sports
I wondered about Brian Burke’s comment as I read it. You wish that someone else carries that burden first… There will be a great deal of reaction, and I fear a large portion will be negative. Was this Burke, the father of a gay man, being a closet homophobe? Was he actually angry with his son for putting him in such a public, possibly embarrassing situation? Could he not handle the fact that his hockey-bred son was a queer?
But the more I read about the story – the story of Brendan Burke, 20 years old, just a senior in college and a hockey team manager at Miami University in Ohio – the more I believed his father Brian’s words. The more I saw the truth to them.
Brian Burke is a hockey staple, a household name in the sporting world with a resume to last three lifetimes. He’s hockey’s Steven Spielberg crossed with the frostiness of Anna Wintour, the power of Donald Trump.
So when his son, who had grown up around hockey and toasted with his dad when the team he managed won the Stanley Cup in 2007, came out publicly this past week, it was front-page news in the sporting realm. Brendan immediately became the face of gay hockey, a heavy burden for a college student looking at law school, not to mention a guy who had had little public exposure before such action.
It was a brave and commendable thing to do, something Brendan obviously took behind-the-scenes steps to do, perhaps helped by his powerful father and family along the way. But I dare to ask this question: why Brendan?
Why this kid, who at 20, is still a student, still around hockey, a manager, a fan, a son? Why is sport stuck in a place that Brendan is the one who is making headlines while he should be making study guides, should be preparing for finals? Why is the son of a well-known hockey insider doing the dirty work for hundreds – dare I say thousands - of pro gay athletes around the world just because he’s well connected?
The first answer is the admirable one: because Brendan Burke seems to be that brave. He doesn’t seem to mind that he’ll get peppered with questions, receive letters of hate and shame, and even a few threats on his physical safety if history is any indicator. He doesn’t seem to mind that his is now the face of gay hockey, of all the little boys and girls who put on pads and skates each winter in Minnesota and Oregon and Vermont to protect not just their skin and bones, but their scared and vulnerable selves, too.
The second answer is the despicable one: there is still no present-day face of gay hockey. Nor is there one for gay basketball. Or gay soccer. Sure, we’ve made strides with athletes like Billy Bean in baseball, Esera Tuaolo in football, Greg Louganis and Matthew Mitcham in diving and Amelie Mauresmo in tennis, but in the ultra-hetero, testosterone-run sports of baseball, hockey, football, soccer and basketball, our generation has nothing. Nothing? No gay athlete has stepped up and said, This is me. Deal with it.
Enter Brendan Burke. Enter a kid who shouldn’t have to be doing what he is doing on a campus where the Greek life dominates, J Crew prep is more than popular and the GLBT population struggles daily with a very homophobic climate.
But he is. And Brendan isn’t just giving speeches or holding up a sign or participating in a panel, he’s talking on national television, being interviewed by global journalists, facing the tough questions about the queer community’s queer relationship with the sporting world that ought to be left to the men – and women – who have been in said communities for decades, not just a couple of years.
My thoughts here are not a slap on the wrist to Brendan, but more a pat on the back for him and a chin hung low for the sporting world as a whole. For a queer writer like me, who grew up playing basketball, soccer and tennis, and follows the world of sport as somewhat of an outsider, I still can’t believe we’re stuck in this place. I can’t believe we’ve only come this far.
Forget Prop 8. Forget Maine or Massachusetts or the politics of gay marriage. This is about people treating other people humanely and decently. This is about respect and love and freedom, not about choices or chastising. Why a 20-year-old kid has burdened his unpadded shoulders with such a load is beyond me. Perhaps the gay – and straight – professional athletes and their benefactors have something to learn from Brendan Burke. Perhaps that very thing is courage.
(photo by siep via flickr.)
