POLO, THE SPORT OF QUEENS

Dan Woog April 02, 2008
Polo, the Sport of Queens
Maine Native Finds Home With Gay Polo League

Polo has been called “the sport of kings.” It’s now also the sport of queens.In Southern California, the Gay Polo League (GPL) is thriving. It doesn’t matter if you can’t tell a mallet’s head from its shaft, or even if you’ve never mounted a horse. All comers are welcome.At first glance, polo seems poles apart from gay life. One of the oldest horse sports in the world, it originated in China. It moved to India, where the British discovered it. Today it is primarily played by two types of people: professionals and their “patrons” (pronounced “patrones”), wealthy benefactors who sponsor pros in return for playing alongside them. In places like Argentina, where polo is particularly popular, it is considered a very macho sport.Polo is expensive. Games consist of six “chukkers” (periods), each seven and a half minutes long. Ponies run full tilt throughout each chukker, requiring a new one for each period. It costs $50,000 a year to care for, groom, and play six ponies. Multiply that by four players, add the care and maintenance of a grass field, and you’re talking at least $200,000 per team.But gay men find a way to get their hands on everything. Two years ago Chip McKenney, a lawyer working as chief operating officer of a broadcast design studio, wanted a way to meet other gay men outside of bars and gyms. He’d never played polo, but had been around horses ever since his childhood in Maine.“I realized polo could be a great activity for gay guys,” McKenney, 50, recalls. “There’s the camaraderie and social element of a team sport. Polo is played all over the world, so it involves travel. And it appeals to all ages and skill levels.”McKenney — who had never been on an organized sports team — contacted John Westley, resident coach at the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, who was enthusiastic. Soon, largely through word of mouth, nearly 40 players were learning the game, and loving it.The youngest is 26; the oldest, 54. Most had never ridden a horse before, though marketing guru and author (“Never Eat Alone”) Keith Ferruzzi played polo at Yale University.All are successful professionals. Many are in entertainment — hey, this “is” L.A. — while others are bankers and business executives. The common denominator is that they are “adventurous people interested in experiencing new and different things,” says McKenney.Despite polo’s elitist, manly image, coaches and members of three organizations — Santa Barbara; the California Polo Club in Los Angeles; and Indio’s El Dorado Polo Club, east of Palm Springs — have been extremely helpful. The California Polo Club has helped promote Wednesday “Gay Polo Nights.” Santa Barbara allows the gay players into its clubhouse, even though they are not members. All three groups help the GPL arrange games, and they welcome players’ partners.“If you’re an athlete, opponents respect you,” McKenney says. For example, “the California Polo Club has a Christian team. They think ‘the Christians versus the gays’ is hysterical.” However, he observes, “We haven’t competed at the highest level yet. That may be a problem. If it is, we’ll just have to outride and outplay whoever it is.”So how gay is gay polo? “Well, we have designer shirts!” laughs McKenney.Turning serious, he says, “As gay people, our lives are different, so we bring a different sensibility to everything we do. Some of our players are in polo for the social aspect, some for competition, but both groups mix easily. That’s different from straight polo, which is more about skill level and what you bring to the team.” //For more information, connect to www.gaypolo.org, or contact Chip McKenney: chip1957@aol.com.

CONVERSATION WITH QUEER ARAB ARTISTS FEED ME - by NADYALEC

A web of dreams.

I just got off the phone with a friend and after talking about her poetry I feel like I am in love; excited, smiling, flushed, ready. Hearing about her work and telling her about my work is one of the best medicines I know for grief and exhaustion, for stress, loneliness and isolation. In those moments of eager talk, as in the moments of reading, writing, and making love, I am my best self, more than the sum of my anxieties, larger than my usual self. It is one of the most beautiful things in the world; it is one of the reasons to keep on living.

I was thrilled to be asked to work on this magazine because I need it to exist. Like many queer Arabs I love stories. I find it difficult to sleep when more than one of us is in the same room; it is difficult to get off the phone once we get started. I've had nights of sleep deprivation, my body's exhaustion battling the need to express the thought triggered by her thought, a feedback loop of mutual inspiration. I have hungered for our stories; I have needed to hear about our lives. I love seeing us in the flesh, but being a creature of words I also need to see us in print. This magazine is about our stories; collecting our stories and celebrating our lives in all our complicated glory. I'm tired of reading through other people's books, searching for a stray glimpse or reference that reflects us; we deserve volumes. May this magazine be a book in an immense library, one contribution to a passionate conversation.

The first queer Arab woman I ever met was in a book. I was reading a book by an American feminist about women and terrorism; it was called something like the Demon Lover, I'm honestly not sure. The writer had been a member of a terrorist organization and wanted to write about the appeal of terrorist rhetoric for women. I picked up the book because it looked interesting it and was on sale, but I didn't find it terribly gripping. Then suddenly, in a chapter where the author described traveling around the Occupied Territories in Palestine with a translator, she met a woman who brought up a topic she had been told never to mention—lesbianism. I read eagerly as the woman spoke calmly about her life and its pleasures and difficulties. I still remember the low-key way that she compared her experiences as a lesbian in occupied Palestine to those of living as a lesbian in the U.S. when she was a student. She also had a beautifully simple way of dismissing the people who said that there was no such thing as an Arab lesbian. "I do not imagine me," she told the interviewer, and I read it years later and shivered. Yes. She does not imagine herself. And I do not imagine us either.

Three years ago, sitting in a room full of the first queer Arab women I ever met in the flesh, one of us brought up that phrase and told that story. Again I shivered, shocked by the sound of the words in the air; but this time I looked around me and saw that half of the people in the room were nodding. Many of us had read that book and we all remembered that phrase. I have a fantasy that that Palestinian lesbian will get ahold of this magazine, she will get access to the web through a job and find it on a web search during a break, or somebody will print it out and give it to her. I would love to see her write for a future issue. Whether or not she ever does, though, I am deeply thankful for the gift of her words, and these words are a gift back, to her and to the rest of us. Thank you for telling me that you are in the world, and I hope that you love these stories as much as I love them.

Participating in this community is a new thing for me. For most of my life I have lived in the US, and for the most part I grew up isolated not only from queer people, but also from Arabs. This has to do with the choices that my parents made when I was young and the choices that I made when I was older. It is not true of all of the contributors to this magazine; we are a diverse lot and I am glad of it. But that is my experience; the first true community of Arabs that I have known has been this community of queer Arab-world women and transexual men.

I've noticed a new thing with these friendships and this community, something that I have never experienced before, and that is the importance of dreams. It might have to do with the fact that some of my best beloveds, now, do not live on the same continent with me.
There are people who I love who I may never live to meet. In that context dreams are crucial.

Sometimes dreams are the only way for me to see these beloved faces in movement, to keep these friends in my daily life.

There is someone very dear to me, an Arab transexual man, who I met online while I was living in the U.S. and he was living in Bahrain. We've never been on the same continent and I don't know that we ever will be. At one point, around a year after I had begun a series of passionate phone conversations with him, I didn't hear from him for longer than usual and had the feeling that something was wrong. When he contacted me, he told me that he had just returned home from three days in the hospital. During that time he had vividly dreamed of me.

This broke my heart and filled me with awe. Broke my heart because I could not be with him when he was sick and in trouble; filled me with awe because I had been. Despite the geographical distance, despite the impossibility of doing something as basic and necessary as sitting next to his hospital bed and holding his hand, he had brought me with him into that room. It's difficult for me to even try to describe what this meant and continues to mean to me; all the hair on my body stands up still when I think of it. I couldn't be there with him, but through his dreams I was.

I was thinking of him when I decided that the first theme of this magazine would be a web of dreams; I was thinking about literal dreams, about their importance in crossing these literal distances, these oceans.

I was also thinking about another sort of dream. Dream meaning passionate desire, fought for with mind, body, soul and all other available resources; the political dreams, the deep hungers, the needs that unite us.

We are so different. I come up against that, we come up against that, over and over. We have different lives and different experiences; we have different languages and different ideals. Sometimes it seems that the main thing that unites us is the same thing that divides us, an intensity of emotion, frequent unwillingness to compromise, passion. Last summer I attended a gathering of queer Arab-world women and our loves, and I sometimes felt that I was drowning in intensity; it was almost too much, I was drowning in the eyes. None of us ever seem to blink when we are together, have you noticed that? We are carnivorous in our desire. For each other's company; beyond that for each other's recognition, approval, love. So many of us have deep loneliness from years of not being fully seen by the families we were born to and the families we have found. We need each other now; we need to see our reflections in each other's passionate eyes.

So this is a dream, this magazine. A dream, a hope, that wants to be a promise. A dream to draw in those who have never yet seen the words "I do not imagine me," who have never met another queer Arab woman, who struggle with the weight of so many words saying that we are impossible, mythological, a contradiction in terms, that we cannot exist. A dream to make those of us who grow tired and sad laugh suddenly, in surprise and delight, relief and recognition. A dream to continue the community that brave and hopeful women have already created through hard work, compassion, argument, love. A dream of more late-night conversations to leave us bleary-eyed but sated in the morning; a dream of more love affairs to unite physical and soul-felt passion; a dream of more deep-felt arguments; a dream of more. A web cast across oceans and distance and the synaptic gaps of different languages, ideas, cultures. Fragile as spider-silk and strong as anything in the world.

What We've Learned: What Makes Same-Sex Relationships Succeed or Fail?

Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues conducted a twelve-year study of same-sex couples to learn what makes same-sex relationships succeed or fail. The research demonstrates that all couple types—straight or gay—have many of the same problems and the same paths to staying happy together. But research has shown there are also some qualities of strength that are especially key to same-sex couples.

Unique emotional qualities of same-sex couples: strengths partners can capitalize on
Gay and lesbian couples are more upbeat in the face of conflict. Compared to straight couples, gay and lesbian couples use more affection and humor when they bring up a disagreement, and partners are more positive in how they receive it. Gay and lesbian couples are also more likely to remain positive after a disagreement. “When it comes to emotions, we think these couples may operate with very different principles than straight couples. Straight couples may have a lot to learn from gay and lesbian relationships,” explains Gottman.
Gay/lesbian couples use fewer controlling, hostile emotional tactics. Gottman and his colleague, University of California at Berkeley Professor Robert Levenson, also discovered that gay and lesbian partners display less belligerence, domination and fear with each other than straight couples do. “The difference on these ‘control’ related emotions suggests that fairness and power-sharing between the partners is more important and more common in gay and lesbian relationships than in straight ones,” Gottman explained.

In a fight, gay and lesbian couples take it less personally. In straight couples, it is easier to hurt a partner with a negative comment than to make one’s partner feel good with a positive comment. This appears to be reversed in gay and lesbian couples. Gay and lesbian partners’ positive comments have more impact on feeling good, while their negative comments are less likely to produce hurt feelings. “This trend suggests that gay and lesbian partners have a tendency to accept some degree of negativity without taking it personally,” observes Gottman.

Unhappy gay and lesbian couples tend to show low levels of “physiological arousal.” This is just the reverse for straight couples. For straights, physiological arousal signifies ongoing aggravation. The ongoing aroused state—including elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, and jitteriness—means partners have trouble calming down in the face of conflict. Over time, this upset state erodes emotional connection as well as individual health. For gay and lesbian couples this lower level of arousal shows that they are able to soothe one another in the midst of conflict. Gay and lesbian differences—mostly gender differences—on emotional expressiveness.

In a fight, lesbians show more anger, humor, excitement and interest than conflicting gay men. This suggests that lesbians are more emotionally expressive—positively and negatively—than gay men. This result may be the effect of having two women in a relationship. Both have been raised in a society where expressiveness is more acceptable for women than for men, and it shows up in their relationships.

Gay men need to be especially careful to avoid negativity in conflict. When couples fight they use strategies to de-escalate or “repair” their relationship. Repair attempts reduce negative emotions by connecting over something more positive. When it comes to repair, however, gay couples differ from straight and lesbian couples. If the initiator of conflict in a gay relationship becomes too negative, his partner is not able to repair as effectively as lesbian or straight partners. “This suggests that gay men may need extra help to offset the impact of negative emotions that inevitably come along when couples fight,” explains Gottman..