My boyfriend, Max, left our apartment the other day in mesh shorts with a basketball tucked under his arm.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To the park to play some pick-up."
"Is someone meeting you there?"
"No," he said. "Why?"
"Just wondering," I said. "Have fun."
He left. The door shut, and in the still air of our apartment, I thought about how I have never in my life shown up to a park alone with a ball with complete confidence that I’d find people to play with said ball with me.
Max loves basketball, and he's good at it. He's 6'6" and plays in a men’s recreational league every Sunday. I go to these games because I enjoy them; the players get ferocious, there’s usually drama. Some of them are balding, some of them have belly pouches, and some of them are not even that good—but the level at which they compete—with total intensity—feels no different from an NBA game.
When I watch these games, it dawns on me how cathartic it must feel for these men to tap into this savagely competitive version of themselves. It also makes me nostalgic for the chapter of my life when I, too, got to do this every day as a collegiate rower. I think men continue to have access to spaces that permit this level of competition as they get older—even when the stakes are very low, even when it's just a rec league. Maybe I’m just not searching in the right places, but I don’t feel like women have access to nearly as many opportunities where they can temporarily shed societal expectations that require them to be nice, palatable, not too loud, agreeable, and friendly—and simply compete.
I signed up for an adult recreational track meet to race the mile in hopes of maybe finding one of these spaces. The above video is a reflection of that experience.
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