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How I was slam-dunked by the Women's Pro Basketball League

NELSON

MARIA H

BURTON

THE STORY of how I got fired from the Women's Pro Basketball League for being a lesbianwhich is akin to being fired from the National Basketball Association for being black-is the most lucrative and least-known story of my athletic career. Lucrative because an earlier version of it was purchased by what was then called Women's Sports magazine, and later by Ms. magazine. Least-known because both magazines killed it, citing fears that advertisers would jump ship if the publications dared mention lesbians.

I'll begin the story near the end of my brief stint as a pro basketball player. It was in the summer of 1979, and I was standing in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, when I felt the binocular burn of two eyes staring at me and turned to see who it might be.

There were a lot of possibilities. I was among 200,000 other people. The Gay Pride parade had just marched peacefully through San Francisco, and now we were gathered to listen to music, hear speeches, and express sorrow and outrage at the recent murder of supervisor Harvey Milk. Swaying happily to Linda Tillery's music, I saw who

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was staring at me: a reporter I recognized. My career as a professional athlete flashed before my eyes.

Just a week before, the reporter had interviewed me for a television spot. He had posed antagonistic questionstypical of that era (and, unfortunately, still typical), such as, "Does playing basketball threaten your femininity?"

"No, basketball doesn't threaten my femininity," I told him, "but it does seem to threaten some men." I was young (23), angry, and emboldened by the lesbian and feminist environment in which I had come of age.

I didn't come out to the reporter because I hadn't come out to my coach on the San Francisco Pioneers, and didn't intend to. The coach had told me our uniforms were made by "a bunch of faggots." He also insisted on calling us girls, though we asked to be called women. "This is a business, not a women's lib thing," he said bluntly. All of the owners and coaches in the Women's Pro Basketball League were men. Evidently it was not a women's lib thing.

But Gay Day had become a four-year tradition I was not willing to forgo. When, at 19, I came out of the closet, I came roaring out. Within months of beginning a relationship with a Stanford teammate, I was speaking to high school classes about the joys of being a lesbian. On my embroidered jeans jacket one button proclaimed, A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE, another said, TEENAGE LESBIAN, and a third, a small red one, announced: I'M MENSTRUATING. In my bedroom I hung a poster that showed women swimming, running, and cycling. WOMEN IN SPORTS, it said: WE CAN.

Yet even before that fateful Gay Pride Day I had been rudely awakened to the fact that women's sports were not always the lesbian/feminist mecca I wanted them to be. At a summer basketball camp during college, a group of 14year-old campers accused dozens of counselors of lesbian atrocities, primarily public kissing and fondling. My alleged crime was showering with another counselor. It sounded fun, but inappropriate, and I didn't do it. To their credit, the directors themselves closeted lesbians-ultimately gathered all the campers and lectured them sternly: "If you're going to be in sports, you're going to have to learn to get along with lesbians."

After Stanford I was drafted by the New Jersey Gems

Mariah Burton Nelson is a writer, a high school basketball coach, and competitive swimmer from Arlington, Virginia. She won two gold and two silver medals in the 1982 Gay Games and will compete again this summer. A version of this piece appears in Sportsdykes (St. Martin's).

of the fledgling (and short-lived) Women's Pro Basketball League, and also by Le CUC (pronounced "Le Kook"), a French pro team. France or New Jersey? The decision was not difficult.

But in France I discovered, much to my horror, that I was not the best basketball player in the world. The fall from Stanford star to foreign sub was a steep, miserable descent. To make matters worse, the woman I fell in love with the starting center-informed me that she was in love with me, too, but Jesus would not approve. She then refused to speak to me.

Eight months later, when I arrived back in the States, the New Jersey Gems still "owned the rights" to memeaning I could not play for any other pro team until they sold those rights. I agreed to play the last third of the season with them on the condition that I be traded to San Francisco the following year.

In New Jersey I began to recover my athletic self-esteem. Yet my last paycheck-for $1,000-bounced. And when two gay players specifically denied their relationship, I felt slightly crazy, as well as angry and isolated.

It had dawned on me that the "real world" was not going to embrace me as lovingly as idyllic Stanford had. Still, I was shocked when, three weeks into the season, I was fired. "Why?" I asked the coach. "You're not tall enough," he said after a moment's thought.

I stared at him incredulously. "I'm the tallest person on the team!" "Oh. Then you're not quick enough," he responded. I learned from a teammate that the reporter had indeed told the Pioneers' owner about my appearance at Gay Pride Day. That player then made a mad dash for the closet herself, immediately introducing a "fiance" to the team.

For three days I lay on my bed in shock. Teammates kindly came by to visit, and for them I lugubriously hauled myself into the living room, where I thudded into a beanbag chair. They treated me as if somebody had died. Finally my agent called: The California Dreams, of Los Angeles, had invited me to try out. Still depressed, I did not want to move to smoggy L.A. Nevertheless, this opportunity was knocking, and no one else was at the door."

Almost immediately the Dreams sent us to John Robert Powers Modeling & Acting charm school. Their intention was to teach us to portray a feminine (that is, heterosexual) image. I quietly boycotted. Just when I was getting used to the idea of living in L.A., the coach asked to speak to me alone. "I'm sorry to tell you this," he said gently, "but we've traded you to the Dallas Diamonds."

"Why?" I asked.

He explained that they needed to let go of one center, and the others had no-cut, no-trade contracts. "I'm sorry," he said again.

I stared at him dumbly. I did not want to go to Dallas. With no warning, all the tears I'd held back in France, and New Jersey, and San Francisco, came pouring out. Great, heaving sobs shook my body, and when I tried to speak, the words were muffled through uncontrollable gasps. The coach stayed with me, not touching me or trying to comfort me, which would have only heightened my embarrassment, but simply listening. Thankful for his kindness, I tried to explain that my tears weren't really about these particular California Dreams-they were about a larger dream, and larger losses, and a simple desire to be home. I wanted to tell him more-about the woman I'd loved in

REBOUND: Nelson then (No. 12, opposite) and now (above).

France, the Gay Pride Day, the "faggot" remark. This desire to talk, even to a man I'd only known for a few weeks, made me realize that I was terribly lonely.

Once I regained my composure, I agreed to go to Dallas. Homesickness and loneliness aside, I still wanted to play basketball.

In Dallas I shared a two-bedroom apartment with two women who carried Bibles in their gym bags. One of them generously offered me what had been her bedroom. "Valerie and I will sleep together until you find your own place," Michelle told me.

I believed that ruse until I woke up in the middle of the first night, freezing. It was November in Dallas-cold-and the bed was made with just one thin blanket. Clearly no one had slept in it for months.

The Diamonds wanted me to stay but didn't want to pay my moving expenses from San Francisco. Rather than turn the matter over to my agent, I reminded the owner that, under the terms of the contract, the Diamonds were obligated to pay the expenses. He then fired me, explaining that I was "too aggressive off the court."

So it was that my life as a professional athlete ignominiously came to an end. This time there were no tears. I felt as if I had been released from bondage. As I began to imagine a life without men who called us girls, ignorant reporters, gay teammates who hid behind Bibles, my spirits lifted.

I turned to writing, a lifelong dream predating basketball. In my most recent book-The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football (out in June, from Harcourt Brace) I contend that sport, with its physical empowerment and lesbian potential, is an inherently feminist act. Another feminist act is telling the truth. I'm doing my best to combine the two.♥

GAY GAMES IV

PHOTOGRAPH BY CLAUDIO VAZQUEZ