This story is presented as part of this week’s New to Town issue.
Every Sunday, dozens of casual athletes meet behind the fogged windows of the Yesler Community Center to melt the notorious Seattle Freeze into a puddle of sweat.
Social worker Wayne Smith moved to Seattle from Portland eight months ago, and after struggling to form a new group of friends, he started searching for a queer sports league to join. He was willing to join any that had the word “gay” in it, he said one recent Sunday morning, before grasping at a ball, using it to give a quick sign of the cross, and flinging it at the other team.
A game was just starting, and various players stomped, swished, and swaggered into place. Even though this is gay dodgeball and many of the players are gay, not all of them are, and you don’t have to be gay to join. Organizers don’t know how many straight people are involved because they don’t ask—and they don’t want anyone to feel like they have to express an identity. But the group who showed up on the day I stopped by included theater queens chatting about The Book of Mormon, jocks shouting joyfully about whatever it is that the Seahawks do, a large contingent of social workers like Wayne (“We don’t get paid a lot, so we do cheap things,” he explains), and radical faeries and tech nerds and hipsters with startling facial hair.
