A Sweaty Reconciling

Power Monkey/Power Patrick

To say I was elated is an understatement. Up to that point in the season, I’d mostly been a bench warmer. Even though it was elementary school athletics and the stakes were as low as humanly possible, I got little time on the court. Certainly not compared to Bobby or Sam who were our team superstars. In defense of the coaches, who were easily decades younger than I am now, I didn’t really want to be out on that basketball court. I was timid, kinda slow, and keenly aware of my coordination deficits. The ball scared me. The other team scared me. My own team scared me. Nevertheless, there I found myself, near the end of the game with the ball in my hands and the clock ticking its way toward zero.

Everything went into slow motion. Time bent for me, just enough, so that I could turn toward the hoop and throw that ball as hard as I could. I wasn’t thinking. I was just doing, just reacting. My heart pounded while the atmosphere around me got quiet. The ball floated through the air after leaving my hands as if being drawn by some otherworldly force, hit the backboard, traveled around the rim once, then sunk in. It took me a beat to realize what just happened. I had made my first basket of the season. I had made my only basket of the season. My heart burst with exhilaration. It felt like I might actually explode. I was a real player. I was just like all those other boys on the court. A giant smile took over my face.

My teammates’ excitement was dramatic. It felt like a movie, as though they might just hoist me up on their shoulders and parade me around the gym chanting my name. Voices were raised and arms were flailing about. They were so incredibly pumped about that shot. Honestly they seemed to be more pumped than I was. Like really, really, really pumped.

That’s when I looked into one teammate’s eyes. My big goofy smile slowly melted as I absorbed his expression. He seemed…angry? That’s weird, I thought. I looked hard at my other teammates and they too seemed…angry. Yes, they were definitely angry. Were they yelling at me? Not with me? I heard one of them shout some variation of “wrong side, stupid!” I was utterly confused.

As the ball got back into play and everyone headed toward the other side of the court, I turned to look at the scoreboard. That’s funny, I thought, they gave our points to the other team. A slow cloud of horror came rolling into my head. Did I…could I have just…did I shoot to the wrong basket and make it?! My stomach dropped. Fear shot through my veins. The lone basket I made all season was, in fact, for the other team. In my excitement of getting the ball, I hadn’t realized we switched sides. In that moment all I wanted was for the gym floor to crack open and swallow me whole. Hot shame wrapped itself around my chest and squeezed. Hard. I fought back tears the rest of the game and couldn’t look anyone in the eye. We lost by exactly 2 points.

Thus began my non-athletic life. From then on, I hid away from anything involving sport, gym class, or physical exertion. All physical activity was looked at as torture and a thing to be avoided. It could only lead to more shame and loneliness, of which my little queer heart was already at capacity. I developed a hatred for sweating and discomfort. I looked at all the athletic kids, especially the boys, with their apparent normalness, and stood with bafflement and jealousy. How could they so easily do something so hard? Why was I such an incapable loser? What was the secret that they knew?

It was in middle school when I developed a very specific persona which I’d describe as pretend-lazy-very-gay-Amy-Schumer-with-acne. The brutality of puberty, of inhabiting a body whose insides and outsides felt wildly out of control, only reinforced this persona. Sure I began to develop my sense of humor during this time. Sure I became uproariously hilarious. But it was almost always at my own expense. To my tweenage brain, if I could get the whole room to laugh at my belly or awkward body first, then no one could beat me to the punch. It was a reclamation of power for a powerless boy. I wore this version of myself like a shield for a very long time. And, by and large, it worked for a very long time.

Eventually I found theatre and music and writing. I found tribes of weirdos who saved my life. Art, and the making of it, forged me into the adult I would become. My vocation found me. My community found me. I fell in love with my reason for being here. Life got really good.

Yet I remained wholesale disconnected from my body. My inner life and social life blossomed while my body became a thing to overcome. The years accumulated and this body morphed into the calcified symbol of all my rejection. It was the reason men didn’t want me. It was the reason the entertainment industry didn’t want me. It was the reason I didn’t want me. If I could just turn this softness into hardness, then I’d be of value. If I could just sweat away all this unlovability that was so clearly woven into my flesh, then life would be perfect.

Fast forward a few decades to last week where I found myself at Power Monkey Camp in Crossville, Tennessee. They describe themselves as an “all-inclusive fitness camp for athletes of all levels…[led by] some of the world’s top coaches, experts, and athletes in their respective sports along with a diverse set of participants.” For 6 days I got technique instruction from literal Olympians, attended seminars by NASA scientists, paddle boarded before the sun was up, did my first ever back flip, got my ass handed to me by a 75 year-old in pickleball (curse you Kathy!!!), danced into the night wearing a tutu, and trained alongside athletes from all over the world. We ate, slept, and learned in small groups on 150 acres of serene wooded lake. I barely looked at my phone and laughed more than I thought possible with folks I’d only just met but who felt like old friends.

If it sounds incredible, that’s because it was.

On Wednesday night of camp, I had a quiet yet profound moment. Our day had started before 5 a.m. We paddle boarded, then trained for two hours at what is arguably the most famous Crossfit gym in the world (which is inexplicably in the middle of nowhere Tennessee), then jumped rope for 2 hours, then worked on all manner of bar gymnastics for another 2 hours. My hands were blistered and raw. My body ached. Sleep deprivation left me foggy and delirious. My knee was howling with tendonitis. My group (Team 4, a.k.a. “Shelby-107,” a.k.a. “The Polycule”) was completely slap happy and absurd with exhaustion. I was doubled over laughing in between muscle-ups and glide kips.

And that’s when I saw him.

Standing right before my eyes was 10-year-old me. He was drenched in sweat, buckling under the yoke of shame, wearing a too-big jersey over an awkward body, having just made a basket for the wrong team. 35-year-old me could have cried right then and there if I weren’t having so much fun. Instead I just looked at him, my tender young self, and smiled. I told him to look around. Look at this experience we were having. Together we were flipping and lifting and swinging and squatting and running and pressing and biking with some of the best athletes in the world and we belonged there.

I told him to just hang tight and everything would be okay. I told him that for the next 15 years he would desperately distance himself from his body and that was okay. I told him that he would sever his mind and direct all his energy toward it and that was okay. I told him that he would never not feel awkward in his body, even into today, and that was okay. I told him that he would gain weight and hate himself for it and, yes, even that was okay. It was all okay.

I told him that when he was 23 he would find his dad dead on the couch one afternoon. I told him that in the aftermath of such chaos and grief, he’d get an email saying that he won a free month of boot camp. I told him that it was imperative to go to that boot camp even though he desperately didn’t want to. I told him that it would be one of the most important things he ever did. I told him to be brave and email that Crossfit gym when he then moved to Los Angeles. I told him to reach out to Michelle for gym recommendations when he moved back to Atlanta. I told him to keep going back to Terminus even though the coach with the tattoos scared the shit out of him (I even told him that guy would be one of the surprise heroes of his life). I told him that if he did all those things, if he followed one moment to the next as best he could, that he would land himself here. In this one perfect moment in Crossville, Tennessee.

The rest of my week at camp finished out like a bullet train of joy. On Saturday morning I held back tears as I hugged the members of Shelby-107 and we said our goodbyes. Then I wept, some might say sobbed, when I got into my car to drive home. Yes they were tears of sadness that the week was over. But mostly they were tears of deepest gratitude. Gratitude for the fitness journey of the last 12 years and all the many twists and turns that got me there. Gratitude for the coaches who changed my life and fundamentally redefined the way I see myself - as capable, strong, fit, and, dare I say, an athlete. They were tears of reconciliation with that little boy in the jersey who made a mistake. I needed his forgiveness. I’d spent so much time burying him in the past, ignoring him, poking fun of him, rationalizing him away when all he wanted, all he needed, was for me to gently take him by the hand, show him how stunningly beautiful his life was going to unfold and tell him, “hold tight, buddy. Everything is going to be okay.”