Despite my "husk," I made a valiant attempt at sports. I thought I'd share them with you so you know I'm not just putting you on about "my fitness journey" blah blah blah.

Grade 2 — Little League.  I was seven, and all the boys in class were doing it, so of course I thought I should too. Mom took me to Gart Brothers sporting goods store (where years later, at age 13, I shoplifted a Speedo), and I picked out my bat—a Louisville Slugger. Truth be told, the uniform was really the only reason I wanted to play.  I never did—never went to a practice, never went to a game — I just liked having the catcher's mitt and Louisville Slugger.  Which led to...

Grade 3 — Soccer. This time, I actually went to practice. I had the cool uniform—those onionskin, slippery soccer shorts, the cleats—you know, the whole nine yards. My big complaint with this sport (and all sports) is the coaches never teach you how to actually play the game.  I need BASICS, like: "Okay everybody. You're wearing RED and they're wearing BLACK. Now, your job is to annihilate  anyone wearing black." THAT I understand.  But  instead they made us little third graders do drills. To confuse matters, they called the drills dribbling—(isn't that a basketball term?). Truth be told again: I never excelled at soccer and my participation was probably driven more by my stepdad's desire to see me do anything that would remotely make me like the average Utah boy and not so obviously queer.  Which leads me to...

Grade 5, 6, and 7 — Basketball.  Prompted again by my step dad, once again I attended practice, ran ladders, did "drills" and tried to dribble. But again, the coaches never taught us the basic rules of the game. I guess they figured that these little red blooded Utah boys had nothing better to do than watch basketball on TV, (which is true if you're straight and into your Boy Scout activities, but not so true if you're queer and more into the scouts).  

Grades 8, 9, 10, 11 — High School P.E.  The most dreadful four years of my sports career, during which our "coaches" did absolutely nothing identifiably helpful, except pick out the cutest, hottest boys to separate the rest of us onto two "teams."  The next 37 minutes were spent attempting to play a game without any rules, instructions, or basic guidelines. Invariably it had to be something complex, like lacrosse.

Then there was running that damn mile.  I absolutely dreaded it from the moment the semester started to the last day of finals. Twice a year, we were required to run one mile (five times around the football field). Imagine a fat, awkward little Sam trying to get around the field, lagging behind even the slowest girls in the class?  It was hell.

Then, an epiphany.

During the end of grade 11, while eating my "between-class chocolate chip cookie" and guzzling  Coke on a break in the newspaper room, I stumbled upon the Air Force Academy's Prospectus for Prospective Cadets. All of these big, hot, muscular cadets — like brothers, running in unity and masculine camaraderie. I was rapt. About the same time (and about six years too late) while channel surfing old movies on cable, stumbled upon "Top Gun."  Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer had me at "Playing with the Boys," (a.k.a., the Volleyball Scene).

In these small moments, in the quiet of my psyche, something shifted. Imperceptible at first, it grew to a dull roar inside me, and I had no choice but to take action. As my mother taught us:

"I must do the most productive thing
at every given moment."

So, like Forrest Gump, I started to run. Every day, during the hot Utah summer, I ran at least two miles, sometimes five.  I didn't take a day off—not one— for three months.  I lost about 30 pounds that summer, and returned to high school for registration day. None of my friends recognized me. I was a completely new young man. 

I was no longer a slack ass.

I began grade 12, my senior year, with a newfound confidence in my physical abilities to transform and affect a change.  I registered for Weightlifting 101 and took Tai Chi.  I set my sights on qualifying for the Air Force Academy and began to develop my upper body strength. I even joined the track team, and earned a 5:36 minute mile during a meet in the spring of my senior year.  Despite all this, I didn't make it into the Air Force Academy. A screw up at the Department of Defense Medical Examination Review Board (DODMERB) led me to take cover in Gonzaga University, my "safety school" where I ended up in the fall of 1996.

Bill Clinton had just been elected president, and I was a freshly shaved 'n' shorn member of the Gonzaga men's freshman crew team. We'd get up at the ungodly hour of 4AM to brave the bone chilling air of eastern Washington state, wait for 30 minutes outside the AD building for a rickety old school bus, which would shuttle us to our boathouse (below) next to the Spokane river. 

It was fucking cold. I could see my breath with every stroke of the oar.  I could barely feel my toes as the frost and ice cold water soaked into my socks. My hands were raw with bloody peeled-back blisters from handling the oar, stroke after stroke, hour upon hour, morning after morning. 

Then there was the payoff—simple, really: watching the mist rise up off the water at sunrise as it disappeared into the skyline. All the while, that haunting Gregorian remix of Enigma's Sade played faintly in the boathouse as we rowed back down the river. 

Catching a glimpse at myself that morning, in the mirrored surface of the water—triceps flexing, skin covered in sweat, I realized: I'd become an athlete.