The College Hill Independent

From the Editors

A certain friend of mine was released from class early with an equally stressed classmate. Feeling the pressures of mounting workloads, they decided to spend their hour not in study, but at the bar.

They shared their beer and my certain friend decided they should have another, and a shot to boot. These were good times, the one friend might say, as they slowly got drunker and drunker.

“Grey Goose, that’s French, right? Shouldn’t be drinking that,” a man says with a stutter and a lisp.

“Eh, eh. That’s good stuff. Good stuff.”

“No, no. The French are bastards,” pronounced the lisp, metonymy here being of the utmost importance.

“Indeed, indeed,” agreed a certain friend of mine. Hating on the French led to hating on women, and signs of masculinity and femininity, nationality and sexuality, got as confused as the bartender trying to make sense of boys in tight pants talking firearms with a misogynistic fellow who had a lisp and a stutter. It was manlier to drink a “Captain and Coke” than to do a shot in this bar.

My certain friends went into the bar the advocates of a progressive queer politics and a decidedly anti-war stance. By the time they left, they had run the gauntlet of such a slew of libidinous identification and concomitant self-hatred, such a signifying battlefield, as it were, of imported booze and armchair soldiering, that they now knew not what to make of themselves.

This friend of mine returned to the bar days later to blow off some steam, riding solo this time. He proceeded to order a shot of Grey Goose, but he got the evil eye from the man with the lisp and a new guy—a big guy, 250-plus and bearded like a woodsman.

Distinguishing himself from the Green Peace canvassers who were drinking pitchers of domestic beer, he ordered like a man, having learned to be one, and asked politely for a cocktail.

—JS

The season’s over—I’m not practicing with the women’s hoops team anymore (see page 16). I’m back in the OMAC playing pickup with men—manly men—with two-day stubble and swaggering gaits. Back where there is no gender ambiguity when I yell out, “pick up your man” or “I got next-next, man.”

It’s an oddly equalizing experience to play on a sports team of the opposite gender. The girls seemed cagey, polite, and they smelled good. It was just like how I read they would be in Sports Illustrated. And of course, I, the man, was all athleticism, no fundamentals—all physicality, no gentility.

But the play on the floor eventually yielded a play between the differences. When I told a player on the women’s team that I felt reluctant to play hard, she responded, “No, dude, you’ve got to go all out. You’ve got to toughen us up.” So, I brought it. I manned-up on defense. I took it to straight to the hole, regardless of the man guarding me. I played hard.

And so the women were supposed to play tougher. Stronger. Harder. Manlier. And I could not help but become feminized. I may not have played on the same team with the women, but I was listed as a player on the women’s team. I was a man, but a woman.

When the men’s basketball team later walked on the floor, I couldn’t help but feel marginalized. Here were these men playing against men, their masculinity exuded across the gym. It was everywhere. It was in the smell, in the grunts, the banter. Even the echo of their sneakers squeaking and balls dribbling were full of testosterone.
And who was I in light of these men? A man? By the physiognomy, perhaps. A woman? Well, I was on the women’s team. Both?

It’s kind of nice to be back playing on (and within) the safely familiar gendered ground of the OMAC. Even if I have to wait for next. Or next-next. Man.

—BZY

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