Amid all the stress and difficult emotions of the past weeks, there have been some good moments, too, moments in which I’ve been able to relax a bit, counting on the shelter of friends, on their support, love, and practical help. And despite all the stress, I have also had a couple of moments of glee — pure, teenager-like glee — this week: it’s those two moments I want to record and share here now.
Due to my various injuries over the summer I was often forced to train on the stationary bike at the climbing gym because that was all I could do. It was extremely boring — the death of the soul! — but I did get a chance to see lots of good (& good-looking) climbers working out. Usually they have just an athletic, and sometimes platonically aesthetic, appeal to me. But one of them sparked something different in me: I felt drawn to him in an irresistible, almost obsessive, way. Honestly, I think it was due to the fact that he reminds me of a mix of my European (gender)queer ex-lover and the Californian boulderer. Anyhow, I found myself looking at him more than I usually look at people at the gym and a couple times our gazes seem to meet for “longer than is usual for guys at the gym” (whatever that is or means). For a few weeks I was almost obsessed by the desire of getting to know him but I was also completely at a loss on how to do so, mainly feeling terrified about how I might come across to him — as a gay (cis)guy making a move on him and maybe sparking some homophobic reaction in him? as a weirdo with a strange body?
For weeks I didn’t see him again so I eventually forgot about it. Until Tuesday. There I was, twenty minutes into my one-hour cross-training on the stationary bike, and he showed up for one of his strength/kilter-board workouts. I hadn’t expected it so I didn’t know what to do, but I did know that if I didn’t try and speak to him I would regret it a lot. So I kept going on my stationary bike, trying to focus on the workout and music in my ears, and texted two of my old friends who knew about this whole “teenager drama” and their replies helped give me the courage to find a way to approach him. The words of some of my local cis-het-male friends also helped, as they told me that, even if they wouldn’t reciprocate, they would feel flattered if a gay guy made a (respectful, non-aggressive) move on them. Plus, I remembered my closest climbing buddy’s words: “All you really have to do is ask him to climb — climbers are almost always happy to have a belayer — and you know he’s there to climb because you’ve seen him do it”. So, during the next forty minutes of my stationary-bike workout, I made two attempts to go and approach him at the kilter-board, but aborted them both as there were always too many other guys around: I just felt too shy, too self-conscious, even scared, to approach one specific guy amid a whole group of strangers and ask him to climb with me out of the blue. Honestly, I was also afraid that his response might be (negatively) influenced by the other guys present because of possible internalized homophobia. At last, though, he was done with his kilter-board session just as my stationary-bike workout was ending and he was walking in my general direction (going to the weights room nearby). So I stumbled off the stationary bike, still bare-chested and sweaty, fumbled with the cords of my headphones and cell-phone to turn off my music and sent my phone flying onto the floor as I did so — which, of course, caught his attention. I felt terribly embarrassed and self-conscious but determined to go through with it, so I walked straight up to him and blurted out, all in one breath: “Hey, I’ve seen you do the kilter-board a few times and was wondering if you’d like to climb with me some time”. There was a fraction of a second pause — I had already prepared myself for a polite “Thanks but no thanks” — but then he said, “Sure”. So I finally introduced myself by name and he gave me his phone number and told me to text him if I wanted to climb at the gym together. And fist-bumped me as a Good-bye — which is very typical especially among guy-climbers and has a very buddy/bro-y (male) vibe.
The other moment of glee — smaller and more transitory but still valuable to me — came yesterday afternoon. Towards the end of my run along the creek I crossed paths with another runner/athlete: he seemed to be cooling down from his workout and was jogging bare-chested. His torso looked beautiful to me (in a platonic, aesthetic sense) and I found myself letting my gaze linger on it for a moment instead of having the usual forced/learned reaction of looking away “because that’s what you should do, especially as a guy”. And then I felt a smile forming on my lips, spontaneously, uncontrolled. I wasn’t looking at him and had no idea whether he noticed all that — I was in my own little world, in the flow of running on a trail and enjoying what to me looked like artistic beauty. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I was back at my car, sitting on the open trunk changing my shoes, bare-chested myself now to cool down. And the other runner walked by, wearing his T-shirt now, saw me, smiled at me and acknowledged me with a small wave of the hand that felt a little friendlier than the usual nod guys give each other as a form of general acknowledgment.
What feels so good — and so important — to me about both of these interactions is that I was able to “just be myself” and not let the worries due to my internalized homophobia (& internalized transphobia) paralyze me or fill my head leaving space for nothing else. I was able to just be a person, a human, with other persons: I wasn’t being creepy, neither of them were being creepy, we were just athletes doing similar things and acknowledging each other’s presence beyond or despite the fear of being perceived as “a creepy guy”. I also find it interesting that on both of these brief interactions I lost a definite sense of my gender, and not in a bad way: to me, the importance of my gender fell away and it felt somewhat liberating while also bewildering. I’m pretty sure I was perceived as a guy, as a “male”, by both of those guys. But I didn’t feel like a guy, at least not wholly: some feminine part of me, the girl in me, was also present, although I cannot explain in what way; and there was definitely a teenager in me present in both interactions (especially in the fumbling and stumbling with the climber at the gym). But also, and maybe more than anything else, there was a gender-neutral, nonbinary, agender/gender-less me present in those interactions: I was just being me, not letting the worries of social conditioning block me.
The beauty and power and importance of these two little moments for me stem from the contrast with the difficulties and confusion I often feel as I’m re-learning to behave with people around me in my “new appearance” or male presentation: this is what makes these “little steps” effectively “big steps” for me.
The Little Prince and the Fox 