Look Dad, No Shame!

Growing up in New Orleans, my dad dragged me red afro-first into every organized sport that Terrytown Playground offered. Between the ages of five and thirteen, I alternated seasons between baseball, soccer, basketball, and football. Once high school began, I used my conditioning skills and knowledge of sportsman-like conduct to take up wrestling. I wasn’t any good, but I was a part of a state-winning team two years in a row and earned my varsity letterman jacket after three years. In college I swam, ran, and practiced yoga. This discipline to always be engaged in some sort of physical activity is attributed one hundred percent to my father.

My dad coached me in every sport. Even when I was wrestling, he could coach me from our living room on my form and technique, even though he’d never set foot on a mat. My dad is the absolute definition of athleticism. Even today at 56, he can outrun, outswim, and outperform me or my little brother without even taking off his Brass Boot loafers. He is what most men would call “a badass.”

Dad taught me many things about the relationship between becoming a man and athletics, but the most important (and probably misguided) lesson that I live by is this:

You either win or you don’t win.

Let me clarify: Not winning doesn’t equal losing. It just means that you didn’t win. Which is worse.

I was at a party the other night and around the part when everyone was gathering their escalating hammered-ness and heading downtown, the drunkest girl in the room got a text from her exboyfriend. She began screaming and fist-pumping her phone in exaltation, while all of us looked on with confusion and annoyance. She twirled in a circle and yelled “I won! I won!” until finally someone asked her what was going on. Apparently she and her boyfriend had broken up several months before, and he’d just texted her to see how things were going. She said that they hadn’t spoken since Christmas and that this was the first contact that either one of them had attempted. This, she equated with “winning.”

Drunk Girl’s exhibition may have appeared bananas to some of the party guests, but I knew where she was coming from. You see, Drunk Girl and I both come from a background in athletics where you either win or you don’t win. After a nearly four-month Mexican stand-off, her exboyfriend contacted her, and in accordance with the laws of dating, she won the break-up. After watching Drunk Girl gleefully bounce around the room and chug her White Zinfandel from a plastic cup, I gave her a hug and congratulated her on the victory. I’d been in her shoes many times before, and I wanted her to know that her patience had paid off and she deserved to celebrate.

I’ve won more break-ups than I’ve not won, and I feel like a few are still in play. But winning doesn’t just mean that you hold out until they text you. After a certain point, if neither party contacts the other, other factors need to be considered in determining a winner. For me, I consider the following: changes in appearances since break-up, current relationship status, quality of new relationship versus old relationship, progression of self, and finally, happiness. If they outscore me on their evaluation, then I concede defeat and congratulate them quietly on a good game. Not really. I jog around the block until I dry heave, and then I feel too skinny to cry about it.

I’m sure my father would feel less than excited to see how his first born son has unraveled the wisdom he’s tried so desperately to instill in him. Other lessons that I’ve completely misinterpreted:

Date around a little before you decide to settle down. Cut to me with three boyfriends in the same city.

Grey Goose is the standard of vodka. Drink it on ice with two olives. Cut to me waking up in my car on a weekday with a puddle of urine at my feet.

Fuck what people think when you’re on vacation. You’ll never have to see them again. Cut to me on a bar in Playa del Carmen without pants.

I love my dad and I love our system of win/no win. It works for us, and most importantly, it helps cut out the gray area that that tends to bog most people down. And in the cloudy, hemorrhoid-inducing world of boy-on-boy dating, it helps to have a system that works.