Entries from November 2003 ↓

This is a story I am almost embarrassed to tell. Especially since it involves a secret passion I’ve held for years. That I was finally able to satisfy my long-held desires this late in life is somewhat amazing, considering how many other people do it when they are much younger. But I’m not sorry I about anything. It finally happened, and while it was over all too soon, I enjoyed it and plan to do it again.

Monday night, I went to my first professional hockey game. My favorite team, the New York Rangers played the Edmonton Oilers.

What did you think I was talking about?

I’ve been a Ranger fan since I was about 9 years old. I remember when hockey players didn’t wear helmets, some goaltenders still didn’t wear masks, there were only about ten teams in the league and you could fit all the non-Canadian players in the NHL in a small sedan. Pro hockey had a niche audience, in this country mostly made up of people who lived in the northern cold weather states.

Even though I grew up in upstate New York, to be a little Black kid hooked on a sport that was played entirely by White men, was seen as quite an oddity. But I knew early on I was different from other kids. And I also knew guys whizzing around on skates, firing a hard rubber puck at over 100 mph and slamming each other into the boards was just cool, regardless of who was playing.

Proximity is everything in choosing a favorite sports team, so I naturally picked the Rangers. At that time, they hadn’t won a Stanley Cup Championship in close to 30 years. Little did I know it would be another 24 before they got one. I followed the “Broadway Blues” and learned all about this fascinating sport.

But I never had a chance to see a game in person. I have watched on tv for decades. In the days before cable (yes, I’m dating myself dammit), when home games were blacked out from broadcast television, I even religiously listened to games on the radio, with Marv Albert and Sal “Red Light” Messina calling the action.

Growing up outside the city though and not knowing anyone else who followed hockey like I did, I never gave much thought to actually seeing a game in person.

Things are different now. I live in New York City, I make good money, and my office is just blocks from Madison Square Garden. Opportunity and convenience intersected.

I chose the Rangers vs Edmonton for a specific reason. Last season, ESPN did a feature on Georges Laraque, a forward on the Oilers. Laraque is a Haitian-Canadian who grew up outside Montreal, and had a tough road to the NHL, facing no shortage of racism and questioning of his ability all along the way. He nevertheless overcame, which was the focus of the piece. I wrote him an email last year, and surprise, he answered. He even sent me an autographed photo.

Meanwhile, the Rangers last year acquired a player I have been following for many years now, Anson Carter. He’s the handsome brotha on the tease page. Anson is from Toronto and quite a goal scorer. He’s also quite personable and one of the league’s up and coming stars. The Rangers in fact feature him quite prominently in their marketing. He was on the cover of the program Monday night. (He is not, incidentally, the first Black player the Rangers have had. Tony McKegney has that distinction, playing for them in the 80’s. The NHL has a great many Black players now, as well as Latino, Asian and Native American.)

So, the game I hoped to see would have pitted two Black stars, Carter and Laraque. Alas, it was not to be, as Laraque was scratched from the lineup that evening. No explanation was given, but teams usually don’t suit up two or three players each night, carrying more than they use per game. Maybe it was just his night.

Nevertheless, I got to the Garden well before the game started, and got to see warmups and game preparation you never see on tv. I had a great seat, one section up from ice level. I brought my new digital camera along, and those are the pictures you see here. I still don’t know too many other Black people into hockey, so I went alone. My experience in the stands was similar to Anson’s on the ice, I was about the only Black face there other than Garden employees. The fans are the usual collection of sports blowhards who think they know more than the coach and boo at the slightest transgression. They were amusing.

The game itself was fairly forgettable. New York lost, 5-4, behind some sloppy defense in the second period, giving up some incredibly easy goals when players were out of position and not covering wide open Oiler scorers. You notice right away how much faster the game is in person. Somehow television makes it look spacious out there, but there are ten skaters, two goalies and four officials flying about at top speed and the ice gets crowded.

Not surprisingly it’s also quite cold in there too. I’ve been to basketball games, tennis matches and the circus at MSG, but haven’t been that cold since I went to a taping of The Late Show with David Lettermen.

So, I’m no longer a virgin. It was a fun, only moderately expensive diversion, I think I’ll treat myself to again.

A friend of mine once said long time ago that gay men don’t have friends that they haven’t slept with. While this is not true in my own case, I do know brothas who do a quick sort–lover or sex partner. They meet people for the sole purpose of finding one or the other. And if you aren’t their lover or their sex partner, they have no use for you.

Are we too narrowly defining the scope of our relationships? Do we know how to make “friends” of the purely platonic variety? Do we know how to relate to one another just for the purpose of companionship and intellectual or spiritual support?

And not unrelated, why do some of us thrive on throwing shade in even the most casual settings?

The New York Fucking Giants never do anything according to plan. On paper, this was supposed to be easy. Atlanta had a seven game losing streak and came in at 1-7. The Giants had put two wins back to back, over the Vikings and Jets. Kerry Collins was the NFL’s leading passer coming in. Atlanta had the lowest ranked defense in the league.

But the G-men always play down to their competition. So when Atlanta drove 69 yards on their opening series, and little (cute) Warrick Dunn rambled 45 yards for a touchdown just three and a half minutes in, you knew this was gonna be one of those days. The Giants got nothing going on their first three series and even had their first of four turnovers when Tiki Barber fumbled, the first of two on the day, before the first quarter ended.

Running back Dorsey Levens, who quite frankly shows me more durability than Tiki, got the Giants on the board at the start of the second quarter. His two yard scamper capped off a 72 yard, 10 play drive that included key passes to Amani Toomer and Jeremy Shockey. But if you missed that touchdown, you missed all of the Giants’ scoring for the day.

Too many damn penalties and turnovers. On about three different drives in the first half, New York was close enough to at least get a field goal, but holding penalties kept backing them up and out of range. At least 9 points may have been lost this way.

The second half was just painful to watch. The Giants offense was totally inept. Kerry Collins threw two interceptions killing drives. The Falcons defense, which was giving up an average of 418 yards, had three takeaways inside their own 22-yard line.

Atlanta head coach Dan Reeves earned his 200th career victory, against the team he coached up until 1997, to become the 7th NFL coach to reach that mark. For at least a week, he can hold off the calls for his head. Atlanta has struggled this year without their injured star Michael Vick and Reeves has taken the heat. (Even though Vick didn’t play, I wanted to use this hot picture of him.)

Meanwhile, the chronically underachieving Giants are now in danger of missing the playoffs, falling to 4-5 and a tie with the Redskins, heading into next week’s divisional matchup against the Eagles. Fans were calling for Jim Fassel to be fired, and if he doesn’t pull off another late season miracle (as he has the past two years), I can’t see a reason not to.

Thebrotherlove started a conversation a few days back on his blog, on the subject of relationships–how they start, grow or dissolve, and sometimes end–and how we cope at every stage. There was a lot of response and an encouragement that we all dialogue a little more as a way of helping and healing each other.

Thoughts are racing through my head right now at about 1000 miles per hour, smashing into one another as they intersect, so much so I fear this will come out as an incoherent ramble. It is however the culmination of several different streams of thoughts that have been percolating inside for some time now, all coming to a boil at once.

I don’t fit in to most places. I never have. I have always been the odd ball in many different respects. One of just a handful of Black honors students in a sea of White kids. The kid who read or played inside while everyone else was outside. The kid who was interested in sports and could analyze the game better than the kids who could play them far better than me. More at home with my parent’s friends and their adult conversations than people my own age.

Even now, I’m the small town boy with small town sensibilities lost in the biggest of big cities where politeness and manners seem foreign to most people. Uninterested and unfazed by most pop culture or fashion trends, I am adrift in a world where looks, style, “fabulousness” seem to be everything to some people. I am far too unpretentious, simple and basic for all of that. To me, that’s keeping it real.

Whatever troubles young Black gay men think they have in finding relationships is nothing compared to life past that magic threshold of 30. I’m 13 years past it and counting, and it doesn’t get any easier. I am constantly asking, where are my peers? Where are men around my age, interested in the kinds of things I like?

Compounding this is the daily physical and psychological toll of just living in this city. I end every business day mentally drained, a zombie on the subway ride home, with little energy left for much more than tv and emails. I’ve become reclusive from the shear weight of the world. I gave at the office.

Life is out of balance. The daily grind of work to home to sleep to wake to go to work again has nothing to counter it. Isolation is the only thing awaiting me when I get home and he doesn’t have dinner ready when I get there.

I’m currently reading Think Again, the new book of essays by Black gay men relating to HIV/AIDS prevention and alternative approaches. I am seeing myself in each story. All of the circumstances that cause men to do strange, sometimes risky things in a desperate attempt to satisfy the basic need to connect to one another, on any level, are an inescapable part of my life. Yet that drive for self preservation and avoidance of infection by a life altering and life threatening disease, makes guilt and fear my constant companion. Working in the field, I have daily reminders and I don’t want to be a client of my own or any other agency. But in the process, I have denied myself simple pleasures for the sake of longevity.

I am now a shadow of who I used to be, so full of drive and ambition and infinite possibilities, both personally and professionally. I go through the motions as if on autopilot. Bad relationships, rejection, and infidelity can sap you of the ability to trust, so I don’t unless I get clear and unambiguous signals of your true intentions. A poor self-image and lack of affirmation about my looks exacerbates a sense of futility when it comes to attracting someone, so I’m less inclined to make the first move. Been there, done that, hasn’t born fruit.

The actor in me keeps up the public appearance, but the mask is slipping. It has been on too long. And I’m just plain tired.

Voter turnout was only light to moderate, but that in no way diminished the size of the message sent to Mayor Bloomberg. Question 3, the ballot initiative that called for nonpartisan elections as a way of doing away with party primaries in New York City, went down in flames by a 70-30 percent margin.

Bloomberg spent $2 million of his own money on a direct mail campaign that included heavy saturation of Black neighborhoods including mine. He attempted to characterize the revision as a way to increase the number of grassroots and minority candidates.

But in a city where politics is a contact sport and of the 4 million registered voters, 2.7 million are Democrats, 518,000 are registered Republicans, and 670,000 are not registered in any political party, voters smelled a rat. Democrats, joined with organized labor, good government groups, and most major newspapers in correctly characterizing Question 3 as a smokescreen attempt to level the field for Republican candidates. Many also saw it as a referendum on Bloomberg himself, who’s popularity ratings are low. He’s up for re-election in 2005.

All 51 City Council members easily won re-election with most running unopposed. The most watched race was in Brooklyn’s District 35, where an open seat was up for grabs as a result of the murder of Council member James Davis. His brother Geoffrey Davis ran on the Democratic line, but with minimal party support. Past erratic behavior including criminal offenses, made him a liability. His chief opponent was longtime party operative Letitita “Tish” James who ran on the Working Families Party line.

James won 76 percent of the vote to become the first third party candidate to win a city office in more than a quarter century. She did it with considerable support from the LGBT community, and quite prominently the Out People of Color Political Action Club, a citywide political organization of LGBT people of color. District 35 includes the Fort Greene section, which has a sizable black gay population.

OutPOCPAC was successful on other fronts as well. They endorsed candidates across the five boroughs and all of them won. Among those returning are out lesbian and gay Council members Margarita Lopez and Phil Reed, respectively.

The list of OutPOCPAC endorsed winners:

Dist. 1: Alan Gerson (Dem/WFP)
(Lower Manhattan)

Dist. 2: Margarita Lopez (Dem)
(Lower East Side)

Dist. 3: Robert Jackson (Dem/WFP)
(West Harlem)

Dist. 8: Phil Reed (Dem/WFP)
(East Harlem/Mott Haven)

Dist. 9: Bill Perkins (Dem/WFP)
(Central Harlem, Morningside Heights)

Dist. 20: John C. Liu (Dem/Ind/WFP)
(Flushing)

Dist. 21: Hiram Monserrate (Dem/Ind/WFP)
(Corona, Elmhurst)

Dist. 25: Helen Sears (Dem)
(Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst)

Dist. 35: Letitia James (WFP)
(Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights)

Dist. 49: Michael E. McMahon
(Dem/WFP/Con)
(North Shore Staten Island)

Within days of the election, two prominent Democrats announced plans to test the waters for higher office, most probably the mayor’s race. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, who lost a hotly contested primary race in 2001, and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller have formed exploratory committees. Other council members who will be term-limited out of office by the next mayoral election, are also expected to make announcements soon.