Fridae

Many of my fondest memories from high school are of the boys' locker room. No surprise there, as locker rooms have a certain smell of pubescent boys mixed with the aroma of mud from the playing field, the reek of urine and dirty wet towels. And of course, there were the boys that played for the football team. Long-legged young bucks who thought nothing of parading around in the buff. The sound of their raucous laughter and the sight of their proud springing cocks overloaded my youthful senses as they indulged in completely un-self-conscious horseplay.

My first forays into sports during Junior High were actually a great success, although looking back it was quite cruel to give a young boy a certificate for winning a skipping race, even if it was for two years in a row. I can remember my father's mortification when I came home proudly with the award and announced the details of my sporting feat with great gusto to him and his workmates who were sharing a crate of beer in the backyard. From their callous laughter, I learned that some sports events were for real jocks, and running very fast while jumping rope wasn't one of them.

But although I didn't realize it then, I was actually a lot luckier than many of my gay friends during their own high school years. "I was a bit short-sighted and always last to be picked for anything," sighs Simon, 36, from Taiwan. "I used to have play in the outfield, along with all the asthmatics, and sometimes we wouldn't even know when the game was over. I hated the jocks."

Similarly for Seamus, 32, from Northern Ireland, who had this to say: "They'd put me in goal as I was too fat to run very far. To add insult to injury they said my being so wide would probably help me save a few goals just by accident. In fact, the only time I ever dived to save a shot was when some jock tripped me up."

As for myself, I was able to exist on the damp and slightly musky periphery of jock-dom since I could run very fast and throw a discus for a considerable distance. Not aggressive enough to play football or tall enough for basketball, my track-and-field prowess brought grudging admiration from the football jocks I left behind during the 400 meter run.

As for the discus, well, rather than employ the grunting squat and twist techniques favored by jocks, I span like a ballerina and flung my arm out in a move I'd rehearsed in my bedroom, sending the discus spinning into the distance and the startled coach reaching for a second tape measure.

In this way I gained the confidence of many of the jocks I admired from afar, and huddled dizzily closer to seniors who, in wafts of adolescent sweat, conspiratorially informed me that since I was on the track and field team I could get in with girls really easily. Oh joy, I thought, sitting on my hands to prevent me clapping them with glee, would they let me try on their gym skirts?

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For many of us, jocks were the first boys we fantasized about, and why we still worship sporting prowess today has, I believe, even deeper gay tribal connotations. So we like jocks because they epitomize a certain type of masculinity - a fit, strong ideal of manhood that has its roots in the admiration our cave-queen ancestors felt for the quickest and bravest hunters. As we evolve, sports replaced the hunt as the main method by which men could compete with each other as a means of impressing the girls and earning personal glory.

Somewhere along the line, however, sports became less about impressing women and more about machismo and role-play. In short, it became an outlet for internalized homosexual and SM desires, a fantasy enactment where straight men could roll around in the mud with twenty or so other men and then take a shower with them.

As the only gay rugby player I knew at university once said: "Getting my face in some other guy's sweaty arse in the scrum was the second best thing about playing rugby. The best thing was what we used to do with beer bottles in the bath afterwards." (For our American-oriented readers, rugby is the same as American football, except without the girly padding and protective helmets.)

On my part, it was the high school jocks who gave me my first taste of the all-male world of communal showers. From there, it was only natural that my fascination with jocks extended to include the gym and the sauna later in life, and even to being bound and gagged with sweaty jockstraps in Tokyo hotel rooms. But I digress. For now, I'm quite content to idolize sports stars and jerk off over jocks.

Of course, I also believe that the admiration of sporting prowess, with its roots in Olympus, works on some fundamental level of the gay psyche and is manifested today in the Gay Games held this year in Sydney. With more participants than the "regular" Olympics (the organizers of which sued the Gay Games over the "Olympics" name), the Gay Games is testament to our love of jocks, our aspirations to sporting excellence and an interest in healthy competition that pushes the body to its physical limits and beyond. More importantly, it also symbolizes a coming together in culture and spirit for the gay community - and men that sweat a lot in shorts two sizes too small.

And for those of us who don't actually worship jocks, let's not forget jocks-in-frocks. In the words of a local drag queen interviewed after the handbag-throwing event in Sydney this year, the girls "demonstrated gender-illusionism, athleticism, as well as great hair and make-up skills too." Now that's something we can all aspire to.