I heard the Gay Games were coming to Cleveland this summer, which is going to be great for the city’s enduringly unstable economy, especially for everyone working in the service industry. I just didn’t know that this was an actual thing. I mean, it makes sense in the form of generating pride and social awareness for the gay community; however, it’s confusing to me on an athletic level. I always thought that specialized games, outside of the traditional Olympics, were established because the competitors had certain natural handicaps that prevented them from being able to compete at the highest level. The Special Olympics require competitors to have a documented medical condition. The Senior Games’ participants are handicapped simply by the havoc that age wreaks on the human body. Accordingly, I didn’t know there was need for a Gay Games, since I never considered homosexuality to be a handicap. Now, I find out there’s a whole different talent pool consisting solely of  gay athletes?  And to think, this whole time I’ve just been calling them ‘athletes.’

Anyway, I was going through the event list for the games, and I came across wrestling. My first reaction was, “just when I thought they couldn’t make this sport gayer, somebody goes and makes it official,” but as I continued to think about it, I changed my mind. I think that having wrestling as a sanctioned Gay Games event might actually make it less gay, in the non-literal sense of the word. The thing that makes wrestlers such douche bags is that the gay stigma against the sport makes them highly sensitive to their perceived masculinity, which creates an inherent sense of homophobia in their fruitless efforts to seem straight.

Those of you who know who I am, may be thinking “but Andy, weren’t you a badass wrestler in high school?”  Yes. I was. I don’t know if I would have considered myself a “badass,” but then again, those are your words, not mine.  Nevertheless, any time I would tell someone I was a wrestler, they would always say something along the lines of  “Oh, so you like wearing tights and rolling around with other guys?” Now, you would think, after hearing the same rhetorical question a hundred different times, I’d be able to come up with at least one clever comeback. Not so much. Wrestling is two muscular dudes, in spandex onesies, trying to pin each other to the mat by way of a number of compromising positions….all of the facts are stacked against us. That’s why wrestlers always respond by acting like aggressive, alpha-male meatheads. It’s the only option that they have left.

The gay stigma is a wrestler’s biggest vulnerability. However, in restricting the event to only allow gay athletes, the Gay Games has completely filled that gaping hole, because an openly gay wrestler is fundamentally immune to insult.

Heckler: “Oh, so you like wearing spandex and rolling around with other guys?”

Gay Wrestler: “Uh, yeah…I do. You got a fuckin’ problem with that?”