A Queer Dad’s Fear of Fumbling
“Grab it between the laces and roll it off your fingertips as you throw,” our son, Lucas, 10, called out. “Give it a try.”
I’m always telling him to make an effort with new things—a Roald Dahl book or a John Hughes movie or cacio e pepe. How could I not attempt to fling a football?
As a dad who’s disliked athletics his whole life, launching a spiral was just the latest challenge of the last few years. Lucas’s other father, Jack, follows various sports and increasingly engages with Lucas about them. Where does that leave me?
Trying to toss ’round the old pigskin with our kid. By the 16th time, I got the hang of it—sorta.
This Father’s Day, I’ll be reflecting on a shift in our family, as Lucas has played a different sport—soccer—for years. I’d already made my peace with that. But football has taken my unlikely-sports-dad thing to much more difficult levels.
My father watched football every Sunday. He must have sensed that I didn’t like it or aspire to be part of it, so he didn’t push it on me, but nor was it something we could share. This was a comfortable stalemate, but it was a different story at school. As an overweight overachiever with a preference for pastels, I made an easy target for the loud, beefy football players, who’d trip me when no one was looking, kick me under the desk in class, and diss me for befriending girls (“Just get laid, dude”).
I eventually found my community with the informed crusaders on the school newspaper staff and the arts lovers in the school musicals—and I stuck with those types for decades. I thought I had left all touchdown talk deep in the past.
And yet, a generation later, I found myself walking self-consciously into Paragon Sports to buy a football for Lucas’s afternoons on the playground. The things you do for love.
I find myself making arguments, to myself at least, I thought I’d left behind: Where soccer can be gentlemanly and gymnastic, football is aggressive. Lithe soccer players rock headbands and top knots, while NFL members average 245 pounds and require brain-injury preventing helmets, burying their faces and feelings under steel. Soccer is appreciated globally; football is largely American. None of this matters to Lucas.
In February, Lucas invited friends over to watch the Super Bowl. Through the years as an entertainment journalist, I’ve watched the event—kind of—and written plenty about the ads. Once, I tapedthe whole darned thing so I could fast-forward to each commercial break. And of course, I never miss the half-time show, which often features flamboyant icons in the most sparkly of ensembles, from Madonna to Gaga to J.Lo to Janet to Mary J. Blige. When it came to the actual game, I’d always happily mocked myself for my indifference.
But this Super Bowl was startlingly different. Lucas, Jack, and Lucas’s buddies and one of their moms—a lifelong fan who’d watched the Giants with her dad growing up—were front and center the entire three and a half hours. And I sat there, feeling left out, passively watching the game but not connecting with it or my family. Until then, I’d always gotten away with not having any interest in sports. There was so much I was fascinated with—news, politics, theater, pop culture—that if a friend took in a Giants game, they’d chat with some other pal about it. But during this year’s Super Bowl, I could feel the joke was beginning not to be funny. I could feel my athletic ineptitude and lack of interest starting to put a little distance between me and our son.
At the same time, Lucas is starting to keep things from me. Take his sports injuries, for instance. When I lie on Lucas’s bed reading with him at night, I’ll gasp at the bruises and cuts I discover on his arms and legs. He’ll suffer a sprained elbow here, a sore hip there, eczema from too much running outside in the cold—whereas I went my whole Oreo-eating, Brian De Palma–flick-watching youth with nary a scratch. Or we’ll have this conversation:
“My thigh still hurts.”
“I didn’t know. When did it start?”
“Last Thursday.”
For years he’d tell me about every minor ache. Why did he stop? A dad friend says this is Lucas “manning up” and learning to deal with pains and injuries on his own.
Indeed, I see our preteen starting to close himself off, to hold emotions inside—typical male traits that are familiar but also frustrating. Over the years, he’s shown us that he’s attuned to his feelings and those of others, but I’m bracing myself for a period where he’s more internal. The hard truth is, I fear football represents Lucas pulling away from me and entering a different stage of boyhood.
In some ways, though, football protects and supports him. When I sit on a bench and watch him play, I’m astounded by the level of comfort the boys have with each other: the pats on the chest, the use of “bro” and “dude,” the grabbing and tackling each other. It’s a language that I don’t speak. They fight—getting in each other’s faces, giving each other little slaps—and then in two minutes, they’re buds again.
And that’s what really floors me: that brotherhood. It’s a particular kind of camaraderie I’d never experienced as a queer boy afraid of sports. I sometimes notice a loner sitting on the sidelines playing a Switch. That was me. But Lucas is always right in the middle, so active, so engaged. I’m envious of our son in this way—even a little intimidated. Lucas seems so at ease in his world: he plays sports, kids around with his friends…and doesn’t seem to need much more. His type of camaraderie comes easily to boys who are physically able and curious about athletics. I was mystified watching those boys back when I was Lucas’s age. And clearly, I still am today.
Ironically, I have found guidance from a new community in recent years: dads. On the school playground, on the sidelines at soccer and football games, and especially over drinks, I express my wonder to them at watching a boyhood that is so different from my own. I laugh with these fathers—there’s even a few jocks among them—about my resistance to sports, and their answer is always “Just be yourself.”
That’s true. But sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to grow. Even as a parent. I want to continue to connect with Lucas as best as we can, even as he heads into trickier middle school years with dizzying speed.
So it’s back to the park this Father’s Day to work on my spiral. But that’s just the beginning. I think I’ll learn to follow football once and for all.
Bradley Jacobs Sigesmund recently penned a TV pilot, One of the Guys, about a sports-averse queer dad with a soccer-obsessed son. The NYC-based journalist has written for Bloomberg, USA Today, Newsweek, and Us Weekly. Reach him via Twitter at @BradleyJacobs.
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