Celtic_Tiger's blog

**Disclaimer:  The following meandering text has a simple message, life is too short to allow shame from keeping you from what you love. Also I don't edit for spelling, grammar or other bs like that because this isn't getting published.  If that is you, don't tell me lol***                                                                                                                  

       Fairly certain I was born with the sport of boxing as a major, daily, all consuming desire pre-loaded in my head.  Just not in the "go professional and make money" side of it but more of someone who approaches it from various angles like probing something to be researched.  So by age 6 or 7 I find boxing gear, watch the eldest son who owned some of them (the rest is 3 brothers) boxing in a CYO bout and a bolt of lightning hits me. The dormant, pre-loaded software is initialized. So was the "Catholic Shame" as I was pretty aware of my homosexuality at this age as well. A double "abnormal" state of mind was created.  Boxing was a rugged, manly activity that surely no guy who is attracted to other guys would do.  

      My erroneous belief persisted until the ripe age of 19 when I had my first "not straight up sparring" experience in the garage ring of a co-worker who's older brothers used for their "Friday Night Fight Club"  Only rule was,  if you show up and get challenged then you must box. The youngest of the three a kid named Tim worked with me at a tree nursery and we had played around a bit with each other in the men's room. Both closeted at the time.  Long story short, he and I met to box at his brother's club and he was the only one home. So we did so nude. This story isn't a lead into the specifics of that event it is just to outline the very first time that I took boxing and the erotic out of my mind's fantasy center and they became something fully real. Back then I didn't know what an "Agonophiliac" was.  I didn't know that Tim was one, that I was one. I didn't know but it also didn't matter.  Again after that amazing experience occured,  deep shame set in. The rule lawyer of my mind telling me that being a homosexual wasn't conducive to being a boxer.  Like two things that would counteract each other. Matter meeting Anti-matter. So I pulled back, left that job to avoid seeing him and it wasn't until I discovered  AOL Chat rooms and Vangar a site similar to this one but not as polished that I was able to pursue boxing in other ways. Talk about it, do it nude, do it as "Scenes" where the outcome is faked. Experiment. From the safety of the private rented motel room, basement or deep outdoors off the trails. 

     Boxing was a dirt activity to a prevalent part of my mind. Like a drug I was buying off some dealer and not something to be displayed.  It felt amazing to glove up, take my shirt off and box other men. It just felt forbidden to improve at it. Attend a proper armature club. (Which I did in my late 30's finally)  During my early to mid 20's I met a lot of older guys online, ones in their late 30's and 40's who had outgrown their shame period as I called it.  Like it was some kind of "rite of passage" you had to go through. One told me that the only way guys like us can pursue boxing serious, amateur or pro etc. was to suppress the erotic, experimenting side.  They can't live in the same house together. Now at 54 years old, I see his point. Although we have in our world now professional boxers who are out of the closet. Is that progress for all the young boxers to come.  Only if those of us who came before them tell them that it is ok.  That the so called "book of boxing rules" is bullshit. You define how you approach boxing. 

 I respect all men who box.  Even if that's light but they take a good punch to the chin and don't quit out.  Don't offload shame as "well I can't get bruises for my job" which sure some jobs that is a bad look but really it is a good way to greenlight the shame side of the mind into getting its say, it's way.  I don't look down on anyone.  I don't care if people look down on me.  I do however want to say that if a "joe average body" looking chump like myself can show up, glove up and box than what's stopping you?   The opinion of other guys is just that, theirs.  You don't need to be the best jabber, quickest of footwork or tightest of abs to pursue boxing how you want to.  I have been in boxing shape, been in the ring, been on both ends of the knock out.  To me the journey is 1000x more interesting than the destination. 

 I have met a varied array of guys, of different skills and physiques from gym weight lifters to toothpicks and everything in between. Those who had legit bouts, amateur, pro, masters etc. down to those in government and military who were into boxing in more than the "traditional" sense.  What I learned from every single experience from the times I shined and dominated and laid the other man out to when I looked goofy, uncoordinated and got my clock cleaned and I don't see "win vs loss"  I see both as sweet experience that once had can never be taken back.   Just my 10 cents.    

Thanks for reading

Attached is an image of me that I look at now and always really loved,  unhindered