The Lavender Locker Room: 3000 Years of Great Athletes Whose Sexual Orientation Was Different [Paperback]

Best known as the author of THE FRONT RUNNER, Patricia Nell Warren's work as a novelist has a distinctly muscular quality; THE LAVENDER LOCKER ROOM, however, shows her at her informal best and is more akin to sitting across the table from the lady as she ruminates on what it means to be both athlete and homosexual, contemplating past and present, shifting easily between mythology, rumor, and hard fact.

The result is as entertaining as it is informative--and, like most of Warren's writings, will no doubt light a fire under the backside of those who have never examined gender stereotypes. Warren opens with reflections on The Iliad's ancient tale of Achilles and Patroclus, indicating the nature of male sexuality in the ancient world (and taking a few swipes at such films as TROY, which go into over-drive to avoid the homo-eroticism involved.) More particularly, however, Warren offers the story to make a very interesting point: sports as we now think of them arose from the military.

Warren elaborates the thought in a series of reflections on such figures as the mysterious Joan of Arc, Roman gladiators, the legendary Amazons, and the equally legendary Sir Lancelot--and then introduces the first person in the text that we know beyond doubt was both real and really gay: Richard Coeur de Leon, who was not only a great swordsman but also rather notorious in his choice of bedmates. Having set the stage, she then runs the gamut from George Villers, lover of King James I and the man who helped lay the foundations of modern equestrian sport, to David Kopay, NFL running back, whose admission of homosexuality created a tremendous scandal in the mid-1970s.

Some of Warren's subjects remain widely celebrated to this day: "Big Bill" Tilden is still generally regarded as the single finest male tennis player to grace the game. Some are extremely obscure: Ana Maria Martinex Sagi was famous in pre-Franco Spain but is scarcely recalled today. Some, like boxer Norbert Grupe, largely concealed their sexuality; others, like tennis star Martina Navratilova, have been relatively frank. And then there is the inevitable "hot spot:" figures such as Amelia Earhart, who so successfully concealed their private lives that it is difficult to know their disposition in any hard-fact sense. But whether open, closeted, or simply rumored, the subjects share a common theme: each of them displaced the gender stereotypes of the sporting world and all of them emerge as fascinating figures in Warren's hands.

Throughout the text Warren frequently references the Olympics, and as the book progresses she takes a very hard look at the IOC's folly of genetic gender-typing, a process that would seem simple enough but which under IOC policies evolved into a comedy of errors that was far from funny to those involved. She also gives considerable thought to the perception of certain sports--most specifically figure skating--as "sissy" and, in the wake of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, reflects on cowboys and rodeo. To my mind, however, the single most memorable portion of THE LAVENDER LOCKER ROOM occurs when Warren discusses legendary athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, whose memorable career fell within the scope of Warren's early memory: her descriptions of seeing Zaharias in news reels and on television broadcasts is both touching and powerful and no doubt reflects the hidden thoughts, dreams, and hungers of an entire generation of lesbians.

THE LAVENDER LOCKER ROOM makes no pretense of being a comprehensive survey of gay athletes and the additional challenges they face in the arena; it is instead a collage of insights on the figures and issues that swirl around sexuality, gender identity, gender stereotyping, and public perception as they pertain to sports, most particularly in the United States of America but also rising on occasion to a global level. Often provocative, never less than entertaining, and as much a window on the author herself as it is upon the complex subject she addresses. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Though I've been a fan of Patricia Nell Warren ever since I read _The Front Runner_ back in 1974, this book was even better than I expected. It consists of a dozen and a half chapters, each on a particular sport and the gay men and lesbians who excelled in it. The subject of athletics is dear to the heart of Warren, who grew up in a family of jocks, on a large ranch in Montana. She herself became a long-distance runner, who helped open up the longer races to women.

When I first opened _The Lavender Locker Room_, I was tempted to read only the ones on sports I was interested in. But when I got into it, I found every single chapter so interesting -- and each of the chapters so different from the others -- that I didn't skip anything, and was sorry there weren't more when I came to the end of the book.

The _Iliad_, written about 22 centuries ago, is one of the supreme masterpieces of world literature. Warren demonstrates that the love between Achilles and Patroclus, both formidable warriors, is at the very heart of the _Iliad_. The _Iliad_ also has the first literary depiction of an athletic competition, the funeral games for Patroclus. To her chagrin (and mine) the recent movie, Troy (with Achilles played by a 40-year old Brad Pitt), blanked out male love and omitted the athletic games.

Her other "pre-modern times" chapters -- jousting, fencing, and horse racing -- have much new information. I never imagined, from either my _Boy's King Arthur_ or from Malory, that there were female jousters -- though, come to think of it, there are female warriors in Ariosto's 16th century epic poem, _Orlando Furioso_. Some of the sports are upper class, even aristocratic, and with reason; it takes wealth and status to have horse and armor, or a stable of race horses, or your own airplane. The long chapter on George Villiers tells the fascinating story of the love between King James I of England and a beautiful man, who through royal patronage became rich, powerful, and a pioneer breeder of race horses. The horses of Villiers were the ancestors of the top race horses of today. In Warren's words: "In their blood, they carry the enduring love between a young man and his King."

The "late 19th to early 20th century" section covers Alberto Santos-Dumont, an aerial sportsman and pioneering baloonist; Bill Tilden, the greatest tennis player of all; and Amelia Earhart, the pilot. Bill Tilden was twice sentenced to prison -- once for having sex with a teenaged hustler, and once for merely approaching a sixteen-year-old hitchhiker. Tilden's reputation fell, and he died in poverty, but he was forgiven by posterity. In 1959 he was placed in the Sports Hall of Fame. Tilden was so good, that if he were back in his prime, he could probably beat the best single tennis players of today.

Stories of the female athletes are just as fascinating. There was Babe Didrickson Zaharias, generally regarded as the greatest woman athlete of all time. Ana Maria Martinez Sagi, an outstanding athlete and close friend of the gay poet, Garcia Lorca. In the late 20th century, the great tennis player, Martina Navratilova, was completely open about her lesbianism -- it didn't hurt her popularity one bit, and she made a fortune.

Patricia Nell Warren writes very well, and with enthusiasm -- an easy, casual style, with no words wasted. This is a wonderful book.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  5.0 out of 5 stars