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April 18, 2005
this is how we do it
I spent most of the weekend running around like a chicken, with head cut off. Back and forth from Titan/17th St. to my house to rugby pitch and back again. Friday night we greeted the combined mostly-gay team from Raleigh/Durham, who were a fun bunch. On Saturday we played against them and got our first win of the season. They had some mighty tacklers on their team, and in addition to running into the pliant part of a chain-link fence, I also got the wind knocked out of me by one of their players. It has been a long time since that happened.
I played winger (zzzzz...) for almost the whole match, but that was OK because I had stuff going on that evening and woulda been dead tired had I played any other position.
Our team has been having a good period lately, at long last. It's due to a combination of the age of our team, good coaching, good governing body, and I hate to say it but the gay drama is mostly neutralized by the fact that our team is now about half straight. It just seems that every time you get a bunch of heavily ghettoized urban queens together they will often get nasty to each other. I'll have to agree with what one blogger said last week about some high drama on another gay rugby team: "...such behavior is often tolerated or even encouraged and rewarded." I'm starting to see that the bigger the ghetto, the more drama you get. In this case I'm suggesting some integration is in order for some balance and perspective.
Although that wasn't the case when I was on the Washington Wetskins Water Polo Team. There, if you weren't in shape enough to float and play, you really didn't have any business being there to cause drama, so the nasty queen quotient was relatively low. Literally it was sink or swim. In rugby, there is sometimes wiggle-room for poseurs, drama-mongers and sex addicts.
We had three such individuals on the rugby team not long after the Renegades were formed. I called them the Drama Furies, or the Triumvirate of Evil. One considered the team his personal sex pool, and would hit on every new player literally the moment they walked on the pitch. Another was Mr. Contrary, and loudly vocalized his contrasting opinions in very undiplomatic ways on the listserv whenever possible. And the third was simply a yahoo whose behavior also got him kicked off the next organization he joined, and the one after that. Simply a mess. Luckily, we had a team constitution and procedures on our side, and the board decided the shitheads were more trouble than they were worth. They never played many actual matches anyway. I was the deliverer of bad news in the form of a refunded check in the amount of their original membership dues. To this day none of them will speak to me, even though it was a board that made the decision to boot 'em out. Whatever...don't launder your issues on my team, people...your membership dues are better spent at the office of a mental health professional.
Getting rid of shitheads on any team or organization kinda reminds me of my aquarium. This weekend I noticed a wound on one of my guppies, most likely caused by an increasingly aggressive algae eater named Hoover. Granted, Hoover was very good at his job, and cleaned out the carpet of algae in the aquarium completely in under 2 weeks. It's been sparkly clear ever since. But Hoover got bigger and very territorial, and constantly bullies the other more peaceful livebearing fish. They were starting to show signs of stress. After seeing the guppy's wound I had had enough. Hoover got a peaceful death in the freezer, then flushed down the toilet for good. Other communities could definitely benefit from similar procedures - except in this case it would be human waste, rather than fish, that could be flushed away.
Posted by jimbo at April 18, 2005 10:38 AM
Comments
NOOOO you frooze the fish. Damm if we were friends I would have taken the fish off your hands since I have a tank of Angels that needs to be severly de-algaed. I also have a tank of African Cicliads, but I doubt Hoover would last long with them, there wild frontier fish. Is it too late to join the Rugby team?
Posted by: John in Arlington at April 18, 2005 2:05 PM
Maybe you should have sent Hoover up to that other rugby team and let him clean their stanky mess up.
Posted by: homer at April 18, 2005 3:05 PM
Or you could have released the fish in the East River....
Posted by: ZZ at April 18, 2005 3:48 PM
A close friend of mine once told me that if you have more than 5 gay men or women in the room, the drama factor raises tenfold or more.
My cure for getting rid of drama folk involves using a squirt gun and ice cold water. Hey if it works on my cat, it can work on anything :-)
Posted by: Dax at April 18, 2005 3:51 PM
Sashimi, I'd say. Sashimi. Or Sushi.
Posted by: Schorsch at April 18, 2005 4:59 PM