Skating Geek

by adminwp in Gay Geeks | 0 comments

A well-known fact is that my last name is difficult to pronounce — difficult enough to send even the most hardened receptionist or telemarketer into a full-blown panic attack whenever they attempt it.

A lesser-known fact is that my family name is not German but Dutch. This is a very important distinction for several reasons, even before we even get into my family’s World War II history or the hours my Dutch grandpa would spend screaming at people who mistook his family for our cousins to the east. But for the purposes of this issue’s column, you need only concern yourselves with how my Dutchness applies to Olympic speed skating. And the fact, of course, that when it comes to this particular event, my loyalties switch back to the land that gave me my multisyllabic last name.

Yes, geeky ones. I am a fan of Dutch speed skating. No, it is not a boring event. And yes, this column is going to be about sports, meaning that all of you with those lingering unfavorable memories of high school gym classes might want to turn to “Lambda Lore” about now for another installment of Ben’s always awesome column.

Still with me? OK. So what, you may ask, is the deal with the Dutch and this sport? Those of you who take Time probably read the magazine’s excellent explanation, but for those who didn’t, I’ll summarize: Skating has been a part of Dutch culture for millennia as a form of transportation and recreation, thanks to how damn icy the country can get in winter. Combine a hallmark of cultural pride with the nationalistic spirit the Olympics fuel like, well, the ginormous torch that represents the games and you get a fierce love for the sport that make the Dutch speed skating fans some of the geekiest in the stands.

How geeky? Well, have you seen any other fans at the Olympics who don the following to root for their team: orange bathrobes, orange fright wigs, orange lion ears and orange chapeaus that would make the Mad Hatter spit out his Earl Gray? (Note: Orange is the color of the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau, and the lion is a prominent symbol on the house’s coat of arms). And for that matter, have you seen fans of any other sport describe their love for speed skating in a manner that better resembles a biblical exegesis?

If you answered, “Of course, Ms. Vanderwanderhuffenadingadong! U.S. football fans. Duh!” then I think you’ve cottoned on to the point of this column at the halfway mark. Despite the fact that popular culture has invested the equivalent of the U.S. deficit into the notion that jocks and geeks (or more appropriately, sports fans and geeks) are somehow natural enemies, the two are actually as close as, well, German and Dutch people. Who are actually kind of enemies when it comes to sports, so maybe that’s not exactly the best simile. But! The point remains: Sports fans and geeks routinely dress up in weird clothes, slather on grease paint and do kooky things; in the first’s case, it usually involves the Super Bowl or a hockey game, in the latter’s, cosplaying at a convention or waiting in line for the next _Star Trek_ movie. They both can get obsessive about trivia — player stats and the finer points of Elvin language. They both devote a large amount of their free time to their interests, often to the point of boring those in their lives who just don’t get it. I mean, how much difference is there between a football widow and a World of Warcraft widow — of any sexual orientation — other than the difference of what’s on screen?

And really, when you get down to it, doesn’t “normal” or “mundane” society find both geeks and sports fans a little … well, to put it bluntly, out there? Face it, geeky ones. Whether we’re talking about a New Orleans Saints fan searching for “the Unknown Who Dat?,” a costumer putting the finishing touches on her Final Fantasy X-2 Riku outfit, a Harry Potter fan typing away at his alternate universe where Snape lives fan fiction, or Dutch speed skating fans who all wanted to cry when Sven Kramer lost his second gold to a blatantly stupid coaching error, sports fans and geeks share the same playfulness, the same creativity, the same ludic sense of whimsy. Since that’s the case, why the perceived hostilities between sports geeks and geeks of interests that are traditionally considered more geeky? Why hostilities between geeks of any subject or of any difference in race, sex, creed, sexual orientation or gender identity?

Along with reconnecting me to the culture and people from which war and racial hatred severed my father’s family in 1945, Dutch speed skating fans have taught me something important: that sports, like any form of geekery, is really all about identity and community, about spreading joy and wonder instead of the discord that our world often suffers. And in the end, isn’t this joy and community building what the Olympics is about on an international scale — the bribery scandals, whining and Evgeni Plushenko’s temper tantrums aside? 

With this all in mind as the Olympics drew to a close in Vancouver, I thus found myself a little more at ease with the world, with my ethnic identity and with the inevitable mangling to which my last name is pray. For the record, it’s pronounced Vahn-DER-Huft.

Just be glad I don’t insist on the actual Dutch pronunciation. Otherwise, my phone calls and conversations might never move beyond repetitions of “Van-Der-Ha-Fa-Doo-Dah?” and “No! Fvan-Dehr-HOAFT!”