Travelling past stereotypes
Triathelete finds his niche in the community
BY
ANNDEE
H OC H MA N
«
/
n Alabama, in the late 1940s and '50s, if
you were a boy in a Southern Baptist fam ily
o f athletes and sports fans, a boy who ju st hap
pened to like boys, you had better like a few
other things, too — running, swimming, cheering
at college football games.
Fortunately, Jim Gam brell did.
For years, a passion fo r athletics helped
seal shut G am brell's closet door. But when he
finally came out in Portland in 1979, he
discovered that gay liberation hadn't quite set
free some o f the stereotypes about gay men and
sports.
Gambrell, recently returned from Gay
Games 111 in Vancouver, British Columbia, is
happy to report that the news has changed.
"Gay" and "athlete" can now co-exist in the
same sentence, the same human being, without
provoking brows wrinkled in disbelief. Seventy -
two hundred athletes proved that in August.
Gambrell was among them.
With his compact fram e, rusty-gray beard
and impish expressions, Gambrell looks more
like a thoughtful leprechaun than a man who
recently participated in both a marathon and a
triathlon during the same week.
This morning, his voice is raspy from
working all weekend on a catering jo b in a
refrigerated truck, but a soft Alabama drawl
weaves through the gravelly sound. A t 49,
athletics still beat a vigorous pulse through
Gam brell’s life; he runs, bicycles across town
to work as catering supervisor at Jake’s, and
swims at PCC, where he pursues courses in
Hispanic art and literature.
This, after all, is Portland in the 1990s, not
Alabama h a lf a century ago. Walking softly,
with his gentle grin, Jim Gambrell has traveled
past stereotypes to a more spacious arena.
“Eight years ago, for Gay Games I, I went
as a participant. I’ve always been a runner, a
swimmer. But I was really afraid. I was
intimidated by the idea that it was going to be
very competitive.
“The most exciting thing was to get there
and find out that the point was participation.
I’ve noticed that there’s larger applause for the
last person than for the first person—or at least,
equal. Which makes you feel good.
“So four years later I went back and I
entered every event I could possibly get in. This
time my goal was to get as many friends
involved as I could.
“This was the most exciting one. There were
a lot of people from Portland there. About 140
officially, and 10 or 20 more who didn’t know
about [Team Portland]. I did swimming, •
triathlon and marathon.
“I grew up in Alabama. My family, my
uncles and my mother, were always participants
in athletics. The family has always been sports
fans. You had to be. It was just automatic.
When you’re really young, and you know
you’re gay, being a sports fan is something you
have to do to satisfy family and friends. It kept
me in the closet for a long, long time.
“Then I discovered the gay community and
became a part of it, and I put all that [athletics]
aside. I thought, ‘I don’t have to do that
anymore. Now I can be whatever everybody
else is.’
“Later I fell back on— what did I do best
and know best? Sports. I started discovering
people in the community like myself. I found a
Jim Gambrell
BfcgftiSi $ '•'it'’*'
Mm ns
PHOTO BY RENEE LACHANCE
...
“When you go to the gam es
you*re
running that marathon with another 200
people, it’s like running with a family.
IPs like everybody in that race is related
to you.**
— Jim Gambrell
niche within a niche.
“When you go to the Games, all the time
you’re running that marathon with another 200
people, it’s like running with a family. It’s like
everybody in that race is related to you. You’re
so proud of the person who broke the record
and finished. And you’re so proud of that
grandmother who came in last.
“I run with two friends of mine. We have
this kind of secret competitiveness that we
don’t want each other to know about— it’s sort
of who can beat whom. But it’s all in fun.
“A few years ago, these friends decided I
hadn’t really run until I ’d run a marathon. I
used to say, ‘Marathons are dangerous. They’re
bad for the body.’ Then one day I decided—
they gave me such a hard time— that I was
going to do it. I had a better time than they had
ever had.
“Then it was—who can make it to the
Boston Marathon first? Then— who can
participate in the most marathons? Then one
day I said, ‘Wait a minute. Where does this
end?’ So you stop. We talk about that a lot, the
competition. It’s always in there. Our whole
capitalist system builds that in us. You can fight
it all you want to, but you still compete. You
just do.
“I try to run about three days a week. I
bicycle to work as much as possible. I try to
swim two or three times a week. I take classes
at PCC when I can, just for fun. My interests go
in a thousand different directions. I ’m always
finding something new.
“I take Spanish, Hispanic literature,
Hispanic art. That’s just my interest for now;
it’ll change. But the athletics are something I’ll
always do. Some of it is for health. Just
knowing that I feel better and I can eat more. It
________________________________________ L
keeps me in with this group o f friends that do
that.
“I’ve been here 11 years. I go home at least
every other year at Christmas. I don’t miss it. I
sometimes miss some of the people. I moved
back there once, b u t! know I could never live
there again.
‘T h ere’s a certain stratification of society
[in Alabama]. It’s not just black and white.
It’s— are you a member of the right country
club? Do you go to the right church? It’s really
stratified. You have to fit in.
“I go back there, and all they talk about is
who got into which club, and who knows
whom. Several friends of mine back there, I
used to think were the most open-minded
people in the world. One of them joined the
Peace Corps. He marched with Martin Luther
King. I go back now, and see that he’s not as
open-minded as I thought he was. I’m the one
who’s grown.
“I came out in 1979, when I moved back
here. It was almost immediate, like okay, now
I’m home. I can do what I want to do. I’m not
as much a part of the community as I used to
be. I was active in the Portland Town Council,
on the Gay Pride committee one year. But my
interests went other places.
“My goal is to [continue athletics] until I
pass away. If I get too old to run or swim, I ’ll
officiate. The triathlon’s my favorite. It’s three
different sports; it seems to draw a really
diverse group.
“When we marched into the closing event,
the triathlctes got together and all dressed alike.
We all wore our swimsuits, our running shoes
and bicycle helmets. When the music started,
the group of about 100 of us all danced to the
music. By the time I got ready to go, I really
felt like a part of this group.
“I was one of the oldest people in the group.
I’m 4 9 .1 tend to feel like an outsider because of
age sometimes. But we had a 65-year-old
swimmer on our team who won every event he
was in. He was the one people rallied around.
“Another thing I notice with the Gay
Games— men and women are closer together.
Outside our community, the stereotype is that
we don’t get along at all. It’s not true. One of
the first things I noticed when they started the
PAL program was the number of women who
came. They didn’t have to. It wasn’t their
problem. I wonder how many of our organiza
tions would have survived without women?
They wouldn’t have.
“Our Frontrunners Club had to struggle at
one time to have 10 or 15 members. Now there
are 30 or 40. Maybe some of them are into their
bodies for cosmetic reasons. But some of them
are not. People are concerned about what they
eat; there seems to be a much more healthy
consciousness.
“A lot of people I know who go to bars say
things aren’t as much fun as they used to be. I
keep hearing that. Well, it depends on what you
call fun. I guess I have a moralistic background
that goes back to the old Southern Baptist thing,
but I found a certain amount of disgust in
certain things I saw when I came out. At the
same time, I was glad to see all this energy in
the community, if they could band together in
some way.
“At the Games, with 7200 athletes, that
energy was there. They all were focussed. They
all were proud. I think we changed the attitude
of the average person in Vancouver.
“One day we were on our way to the
stadium and found this man walking down the
middle of a busy six-lane highway. He was
disoriented. We got him to the hospital. All the
people at the hospital were stunned that six gay
people from Portland were helping this man
when nobody from Vancouver would give him
the time of day.
“I kept hearing things like that. A few more
minds were opened; a few more people
thought, ‘Oh, they’re not so bad.’ If we can
have the Games in other cities like that, we can
change the stereotypes.”
-L
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