Romance, Sports and Valentine's Day

A.      Random Sex v Romantic Sex – which is better?

    Admittedly, I cannot adequately represent this debate.  Like everyone, I have a deep appreciation for random sex – especially and disturbingly on Thursdays (a night on which I have learned to stay in, safe, warm, and single – and away from Lil’ Jims (deadly on a random night) and Jackhammar (only slightly less so)).  But is random what I truly want? 

    Perhaps it is time I finally come out – I am a romantic.  I have always been a romantic.  Even when I dated straight girls, they loved me because I am a romantic.  Random v. Romantic – I have to choose romance.  It is just the way that I am.  I was born this way.  I know all the words to The Sound of Music (always have) and can quote from all of Streisand’s romantic films.  My earliest TV memory is staying up all night to watch Britain’s prince marry the new princess.  I LOVE romance.

    Even when cruising random sex, I still tend towards the romantic – a small kindness, a shared taste in favorite shots, woolen tweeds, a love of books, seminary gossip, the mature heady smell of fresh roses, the less mature, still heady smell of cheap college-aged colognes… I am a romantic.  The boy might be random, but something, somewhere has triggered a memory of romance and nostalgia.

    Chicago remains a city of romantics – relationships, even hook-ups, are still face-to-face and negotiated in person.  People hang together and there is a comfort in the on-going sense of community which extends even to long-time visitors from the Twin Cities, Grand Rapids and that grey area west of the Red Line.

    Learning to again navigate the gay scene in the Twin Cities has been disappointing though.  Only Chicago can match Twin Cities’ classic bars such as the Saloon, the Eagle-Bolt, the Town House or Camp.  But the Twin Cities, America’s highest per capita gay community, has in my absence, gone digital, which is great for randomness but not so hot for romance.

    Hooking up on-line is so one-dimensional.  It can be done, but what can one really say – “I like the shape of your neck where you cut it off to avoid a headshot,”  “er nice bulge,” or “the way that you spell versatile really turns me on?”

    One just cannot aspire to any depth or discover a sense of romance from a photo and 280 characters or less.

    Of course, random is great for marrieds, the closeted and suburban gays, but as for me… I’d rather date someone I know and might actually see again, if only for the romance.  I’ll stick to the bars, turn off the phone and wait for my prince, “Did you say Jaeger?  Sambuca?  Jameson?  Is that Stetson?  Eternity? Aqua Gio?  Harris Tweed?”

B.               Frank Deford’s morning sports commentary on public radio (WBEZ, KNOW) focused for Valentine’s Day on the romance of pro- on pro- relationships in sports.  Deford deftly defended Brent Musberger’s recently gauche commentary on the beauty of Miss Alabama during his coverage of the BSC Championship Game, noting the romantic tradition of Miss Alabamans dating the hot athlete (disclosure:  though many would call my own athleticism into question, I did date a Miss Georgia Peach for an entire weekend). 

    Having family established in the South, I, unlike many Midwesterners, understand that being Miss Alabama (or Miss Georgia, or Miss Mississip) is a true athletic calling (as is cheerleading in a Texas-sort-of-way), but my interest in Deford’s defense of Musberger quietly turned from gay indignation to gay despair.  You see, of all the professional athletic hook-ups mentioned by Deford as romantic Valentine’s Day sports role models, none of them were gay.  What about Sheryl Swoops?  Matthew Mitcham?  Martina Navratilova?  Wade Davis?  Gay!  Gay!  Gay!  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.

    Problematically, Deford was not excluding the hot gay on gay professional sports power couples.  Of the above, only Mitcham is a “current” athlete.  Everyone else is retired – even Swoops.  Most of the gay professional athletes that one might name, Google or find in OUT! Magazine, are all retired.  There are not a lot of current “gay” “out” professional athletes.

    Of the gay athletic couples, arguably the unrecognized partnership of Mitcham and Lachlan Fletcher is the hottest and best known… Mitcham kissed him on TV after setting a new Olympic record and winning the gold for diving in Beijing.  But… while both boys are handsome, cute, and quite well known, the athletic gene in that family comes solely from Mitcham’s side.

    Seimone Augustus, of the Minnesota Lynx, is hot, gay and marrying (this May!), LaTaya Varner, but like Mitcham, Augustus apparently finds that opposites attract.

    For Valentine’s Day, I am confronted by the awful, naked truth – we are still waiting for our perfect professional, gay athletic power couple.  We don’t even have enough actively playing out professional gay athletes to form a couple.  A fan of Chicago sports, I have long known that there are gay athletes, but it is still the case that one daren’t, doesn’t, can’t or won’t come out as gay until after one has safely retired.  For this I really have to thank Swoops for daring to be different – only recently retired, she might now be, um along with Ms. Augustus and Mr. Mitcham, my favorite gay athletes.

    Come on folks, random or romantic, by next Valentine’s Day, let’s have at least one gay, out, professional athletic power couple – we know you’re out there.  Just come out.  We’re already here for you.  I’m holding out for a Hockey – Soccer match,myself.

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