As an adult this has meant I seldom if ever have participated in leisure time team sport activities either as a player or as an observer. I have been to only one major league sports game in my life and that was a hockey game a friend insisted I attend and paid for my admission to. As with feats like having never worn a tuxedo, not owning a business suit, not going to camp as a child, and avoiding circuses, ignoring professional sports has made me a definite individual. I am sure my failure to grasp the concept of acting as a team player has affected my ability to be successful in this life. Being a loner can be a very hard call. It isn't that I am a misanthrope, it is just that I find value in accomplishing things on my own instead of as part of any group. I have often found myself as an outsider even in those groups I should be a full fledged member of, such as being a gay man.
I've always preferred watching individual athletic endeavors like gymnastics, skating, power lifting, and skiing. My real idea of ideal athletic endeavor would be extreme sports like base jumping. If I were younger I would be involved in the most daring and thrilling exercises. Not because I want to defy death, but because, as with skydiving and snorkeling (hardly an extreme sport), those are what I find to be the most fun while also giving me the greatest spiritual reward.
As far as team sports go I would have to rate football as my least favorite game out of the whole group. You can imagine how that goes over with most guys. I might as well say my idol is Lenin and I eat roasted babies for breakfast. The last time I watched a football game was when the SF Forty-Niners participated in their first Super Bowl championship game decades ago. I did that because the team was my Dad's favorite and, though I had a frequently strained relationship with my father, sitting in his living room and supporting his team as it won the game was one of the rare moments in our relationship that I know he truly appreciated. Doing that one minor act forever changed how he viewed me. I had no idea that would happen, but it managed to bring us closer together if only for a brief period of time. I think my father had to recognize that, despite his son being gay, he was able to understand how the game was going down and predict the outcome. Whatever prejudices he had against my imagined lack of manliness were dispelled when he recognized that I was no longer helpless in mechanical situations like repairing my own car, but also in regard to supposedly macho activities like team sports. Ironically, I still see team sports as the most overtly homosexual endeavors of emotionally crippled male heterosexuals. Where else but in team sports do you see men embracing each other and slapping each other's butts so brazenly? That few if any gay men have ever come out in professional sports just drives home how hypocritical the whole enterprise is. If approximately 15% of all the men playing pro sports are closeted there are a heck of a lot of macho impostors afraid of revealing their real identities and having the integrity to truly be themselves. In other words, a great many game players playing another game to stay in the good graces of people who might indeed turn on them were their true selves ever revealed. That is one very unhealthy situation, but merely part and parcel of our sickly society. Just another reason I cannot readily respect pro sports.
This brings me to the point of this blog. The Heisman Trophy, the highest award in collegiate sports, was awarded today to a player who's father might be found guilty of illegal activities in regards to his son's amateur status. This is a scandal I was totally unaware of until I chanced upon a picture of the player, Cam Newton, smiling. The beauty of this big young man is inescapable. It is seldom one who is graced with such outstanding physical prowess is also quite so physically well endowed. Being who I am with my proclivity toward handsome men I had to find out a bit more about the fellow. It is rare for any Heisman Trophy winner to manage to succeed in professional sports to the degree someone like O. J. Simpson had done before his public fall from grace. Just because a young man succeeds in collegiate football does not mean he will also succeed in the professional arena. You might remember that Mr. Simpson in his youth was not just a terrific athlete but also the possessor of a winning smile and a highly charming manner. Cam Newton is cut from much of the same sort of physical ideal cloth. As the pictures in this blog entry attest he is a rare testament to brawn and beauty occurring in equal measure. He is the very definition of "black buck" and "stud". Expect that, if he manages to achieve anything when he is drafted into the big leagues, he will become a staple of advertisements and endorsement contracts galore. Agents across the nation must be wetting themselves over the right to handle his affairs.
What I find most interesting about this young man and his potential to become a great professional star is his troubled relationship with his father. His father has done things that could jeopardize Cam's ability to succeed. He could, in a worst case scenario, have to return his trophy. It seems these days that no matter how winningly sincere and obviously gifted the athlete there is something morally repugnant lurking close by. (Tiger Woods womanizes, Michael Phelps smokes dope, Michael Vick abuses animals and the list goes on and on.) I would have to say I could openly envy his love of his father and how accepted and loved he is in return. Those elements were missing from my relationship with my father. Still, it is distressing to realize that even in the case of a young man with so much going in his favor there is the specter of embarrassing failure looming close by.
But instead of focusing on that hopefully non-eventuality let us ponder the scope of genetics that has produced this outstanding specimen. Presenting a major league representation of extraordinary eye candy, Cam Newton, a possessor of some very winning attributes: big, black and beautiful. I am only too happy to reduce this fellow to a shining example of sexual objectification.
No comments:
Post a Comment