It was easier coming out as gay in the sports community for me than it was coming out as a jock in the gay community.
A few months after I came out, I heard about an event being held in San Francisco called the Gay Olympics or some such thing, and that it would offer wrestling. I flew to California with my singlet and shoes and went to Kezar to try to get in the tournament. The wrestlers there, including an odd feisty little duck in my weight class named Gene Dermody, were very encouraging and wanted me to be able to get on the at, but the Gay Games officials on Castro Street said it was too late to register and they wouldn’t let me in. Hell, I would have written very positive front page stories that would have been picked up by other newspapers, but they wouldn’t bend the rules. That was my rocky intro to the Gay Games. I was so ticked off I didn’t even return to Kezar — I couldn’t stand the thought of watching and not being able to wrestle. So I watched Glenn Burke play for San Francisco in the basketball and softball games, flirted with the players from Boston, and I went to the bodybuilding competition where I heard Tom Waddell give an inspiring speech. That’s when it sank in that I’d missed a chance to be part of something historic. That stuck with me years later when Gene and I met for real for the first time and I got a chance to get involved.
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To the young gay people of Anchorage: Know that you have the strength to survive and endure and are blessed to be doing it in the most beautiful of all places. The beauty of Alaska is not just the beauty of rugged mountains surrounded by the Northern Lights: it is also the beauty of the rugged heart inside you.
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