Gay Games VII is drawing to an end, and Chicago must soon bid adieu to the thousands of athletes who came from across the country and around the world to compete, win medals, meet friends and party. I was out at the Games all week, and while the official farewell is still to come at the Closing Ceremony on Saturday at Wrigley Field, here some highlights from the Games so far.
So very hot
Never before have I wanted to be a gay man so badly as when I arrived at the Midway Plaisance in Hyde Park on Monday to watch flag football. Rugged, gorgeous men with bulging, tattooed biceps took to the field on the hottest day of the week, when athletes were dropping with leg cramps. It’s so unfair. I mean the leg cramps, of course.
Nekkid
As long as it was (going on four hours), spectators who left the Opening Ceremony early missed the streaker who ran the length of Soldier Field during the marching band’s performance, prancing and leaping past the drums and trombones.
Army of one
Country by country, state by state, the athletes competing in the Gay Games marched onto Soldier Field during July 15’s Opening Ceremony with banners and flags waving, the crowd in the stands roaring. But the loudest cheers came when the single athlete from Uganda walked alone across the field, holding a simple sign bearing his country’s name above his head. “I was a mess! I was a mess!” said Yosvany Reyes, 31, from New York. “I don’t think I really understood what the Games meant until that moment.”
Crystal clear
Fears that anti-gay sentiment in Crystal Lake might make Gay Games rowers feel unwelcome were put to rest Sunday, when the rowing event went off without a hitch. Only a handful of protesters showed. “We felt very welcome,” said Tijs Mol, 41, of Amsterdam, whose team won three gold medals in the rowing events. “It was a pity that police [deployment] was necessary.”
Fred and … Fred
Gliding across the dance floor at the Chicago Hilton, pairs of men wrapped in each other’s arms showed that the only difference between same-sex ballroom dancing and traditional ballroom dancing is that at the Gay Games, both partners wear tuxedos. I spoke with Robert Szelei, a winner at the World Federation of Same-Sex Dancing competition last year, on Wednesday. Reflecting on his time at the Gay Games to that point, Szelei said the best moment was when Megan Mullally, from “Will and Grace,” took the stage at the Opening Ceremony. “She’s one of my role models,” said Szelei, 26, of Budapest.
