Rob the Jock

As a kid, I was a typical non-athletic nerd.

This probably doesn't come as a surprise to you who know me. I had two jocky brothers who played softball, basketball, and generally roughhoused their way through their teens, while I quietly read the World Book Encyclopedia. I have to give my parents a great deal of credit in that they never, never pushed me to be something that I just wasn't like a jock. But I do think that they secretly hoped I would become more "normal" so that, God forbid, I wouldn't some day announce that I was a big fag. Which, eventually, I did anyway.

So it comes as a surprise to me to discover my inner jock into my middle ages. This discovery was brought to a head a few weeks ago when I was swimming at the Y, which I try to do three times a week. I was taught to swim when I was an adult by frequent reader of and responder to this blog Marcy Bauman, who is a swimming guru, and I've loved it ever since. Some guy was watching a bunch of us swim up and down the lanes when he singled me out and said, "Have you thought about joining the master's swim team?"

I was shocked because the master's swimmers are serious swimmers. Seriously serious. I've seen them shoot up and down the lanes, preparing for competitions and triathlons and whatnot. So I said, honestly, "Uh, no, not really." As we talked, though, he confirmed some things I already knew and some that I didn't: that one doesn't have to compete, that one gets a structured workout, and that one gets coaching at one's own level. Then I found out that if one is a member of the Y, which I am, there's no charge. So heck, sure, sign me up! Next Monday is my first meeting with coach Rob, whom I now know a bit.

To me, the shock is that someone would have recognized inner jockness in me that I didn't recognize myself. I am an avid and regular swimmer, so the people at the Y recognize me, but I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily a good swimmer. (Though I do have stamina; I'm nearly up to a solid mile swimming each time I go.) The same week, one of the lifeguards asked me if I were training for a mini-triathlon coming up in Portland. Who, me? Apparently, I look as if I could actually do one. And a mini-tri . . . maybe I could.

My second getting-in-touch-with-my-inner-jock story involves my new yoga class. My new colleague Chelsea is our new French professor (more on her later), and she had the good sense to arrive in Maine with her adorable twin daughters Elena and Chloe and her husband Greg, who happens to teach yoga. When he said that the Y asked him to teach a course, I said I would happily take it. Part of my reasoning was that I wanted to make new arrivals feel welcome in central Maine, and part of my reasoning was that I would like to learn yoga.

After two classes of Greg's power yoga class, I am rapidly becoming a convert. Yoga is great because it's so non-competitive; you're not trying to outdo what anybody else in doing in the class, contorting your body into shapes it just won't go into. Instead, you're finding out what you specifically can do and doing it -- and no more than that. As Greg says, "Wherever you are in the pose, there you are." I realize that that sounds a bit New Age-y, but it makes sense in context. You do what your body can do, and though you will take it farther than you thought you could, you don't try to stretch as someone else is stretching. If you have held the pose as best and as far as you can, then you have done exactly what you should. Nothing I've ever physically done has made me so aware of my body. I've certainly felt muscles I haven't used before, but I think that the slowness of yoga--that is, the way you move slowly into and out of a stretch or pose--makes you acutely aware of what muscles you're using. When I feel the muscles worked over the next day, I know exactly which ones they are and why they feel the way they do.

It's coming as a surprise to me that I am now a jock--a yoga class taker and a member of a master's swim club. Middle age was part of the incentive for getting involved in physical activity, to be sure, but also the fact that I want to reclaim what was in many ways denied to me as a gay kid. My story is pretty typical of that of many gay guys that I know; while we all avoided sports as kids because of the fear that we'd be found out, now we're all embracing sports as adults while the football jocks who tormented us in high school are settling into obesity and lethargy (or so I imagine). Down the road, who knows? There's always that triathlon in Portland.

Comments

[marcy]

Hey, I did a triathlon!

I love the image of the football jocks who tormented you now descending into lethargy and obesity (and then suffering heart attacks and diabetes and gout . . . Oops! Did I say that??)