Competition: A Personal Essay

            You win. You have the bigger dick. And I mean both genders here – I’m talking about everyone. If you want to compete with me in any sport or game, then you always already possess the phallus and, congratulations, it's huge. I do not care.
            You wanna’ play a sport together? I sure don’t. Volleyball or golf or bocci ball together? Sounds like a time-waster. And all during the 2-to-4 hours that it takes you to kick my ass, I will be bored. Not frustrated, indifferent. I’ll think about movies or books. And I’ll think about how this boring sport we're doing reminds me of a movie or a book. And then I’ll try to resist my ever-present urge to steer the conversation towards those movies and those books, and use them to relate to you rather than through anything actually having to do with this stupid sporting ritual that we’re engaged in for no reason. Hey, everybody! I'm Maverick and he's Iceman!, I'll say. Bump, set, danger zone! Or: I'm Bill Murray, I'm gonna’ get that gopher. But maybe you haven’t seen those movies in a while. So you’ll shrug, or you’ll space out, and then you’ll egg me on to play the game better. But I do not give a shit. I like jogging. By myself.
            This is to say nothing of watching sports, either in person or on t.v., which is so, so boring to me. Equivalent-to-staring-at-a-blank-wall boring. I may as well try to parse Cantonese. I may as well blur my fucking vision and stare at the dead space between me and the sport in front of me. Talk to me about Peyton Manning, or Tony Romo, talk about Derek Jeter, or that white guy who’s doing well for the Arizona Suns (I think). Please talk to me about all of these people – I will tune the fuck out. Talk about Tiger Woods and I’ll ask if you saw that South Park episode. These are the point at which conversation stops between me and the average American male. Your dude-fiancée or your dude-cousin – this is where we give up on our acquaintance. And that's a good thing too: I could give two shits that you remember so-and-so’s stats, or that you traded that guy in your fantasy league, or (worse yet) that you can check all of this real quick on your smart phone. And he could give two shits that I remember so-and-so's IMDB page, or that that actor got his start at that playhouse, or that I have Shakespeare's plays on my iphone. Venn diagram: Circle “Briggs,” Circle “normative masculinity,” and nary the two quite touch. They say men get their aggression out by sublimating it into the sports they watch. Apparently I carry around a pile of rage.
           What about beer, Briggs? What if we play a drinking game? Will that get you to man up, Mr. Wussy-Arts? Probably not. I mean, for a little while, yes, and once in the bluest moon, but ultimately: no. Plus I’m getting too old for flip cup and beer pong. I’ve had exactly four perfect evenings as a result of games like those, but they are now long ago and encased in nostalgia and I’d prefer not to mess with that four-for-four record, thank you. Last summer, someone convinced me to play flip cup again and I joined in for one half-hearted round, and then I bowed out, and then I hated everyone in the room and hated myself for getting sucked into a less-than-perfect drinking game evening. If you are out of college, competitive drinking typically produces one end result: Several pallid faces after a round, all asking: “Why did we think this was a good idea?”
           Briggs, we could just have a quiet evening playing a board game. Come on over. After dinner, we’ll have some wine and … and sit around for four hours rolling dice and moving little plastic figurines. Plus, maybe cards are involved too. You like math, right? Numbers, odds, and logic – those are all things you’ve excelled in, right, Briggs? This’ll be a great way to pass four or maybe five hours of our lives! We need four players for our Bored Game! You could be our fourth, Briggs, come over! ...  And then when I do come over, I half-listen to all the game’s rules, and then I fuck up those rules for three hours, and then once I’ve lost, once a whole evening of bored concentration has dragged on by, then I'm of course super primed and eager to remember all those boring rules! And super excited to try to win that Bored Game the next time I’m bored enough to play it! About a decade ago, I played one game of Monopoly. And I won. And I haven’t played it since. So let’s leave it at that.
           The competitive gene skipped over me. I’ve witnessed each of my brothers at moments when they’ve turned into Game dicks, and started gloating or yelling in the face of successes or losses. But I yell when my medical insurance screws me over. And I gloat when a girl slips me her number at a bar. I don’t get worked up over an imaginary ritual involving cardboard and player spaces. I don’t rile myself up or shit a few bricks if "my" "team” isn’t in the lead this year in their league. What's the point? What. is. the. point? I can find those emotional extremes elsewhere in life. Throughout my childhood, my parents tried to foist various sports on me and none of them took. Instead, they mostly served up opportunities for me to embarrass myself. Swimming, soccer, karate – none of it lasted more than a year or two. I was the one always just waiting for the adults to dole out the Sunkist and orange slices. Full-back, half-back, whatever, I was the kid who, if an airplane flew overhead trailing a white jet stream, then I had to – had to – stop running and hold up a mimed camera and take a mimed picture of that airplane. No matter what kind of game was being played around me. My summers of doing swim team also sucked. Chlorine burned my eyes daily because my parents never got me goggles. During warm-ups, I was perpetually laps and laps behind the other kids because my parents always dropped me off late. One time a bald swim meet judge (who in my memory is Mr. Strickland, the principal from Back to the Future) told me that I have a perfect scissor kick. I smiled for a moment, thinking it was a compliment. But, no, definitely not. I do poor athleticism perfectly.

            So don’t be surprised when I don’t know anything about your home team. Don’t tell me who traded who for who. And don’t invite me over to play Wii golf. I'm fine without it. I promise you we will get through this. We will find another way to pass the time. Maybe we’ll have a conversation together. That could work. I'm like the best at conversation. I'll kick your ass at conversation any day.