A Lifetime in Skiing
Nat Brown

I have been gay all my life.

It took a while to figure it out, but now I can distinctly see that I had had at least three crushes on guys by the time I was in the third grade - a sailor, two Danish twins we hosted for a night during a tour of their choir, and Gary, a somewhat older neighborhood boy who was kind enough to let a number of us younger neighborhood kids play with him from time to time. I idolized Gary!

I had a wonderful childhood, aside from the usual anguishes of being young and dealing with growing up, and I can't think how my parents could have done a much better job raising me: I was always aware of their unconditional - if sometimes a little puzzled, I suspect - love for me and each other; we had a wall of good books that first they read to me and which later, when I was able to read for myself, gave me many hours of delight; we had music; we traveled from Eastern Oregon where we lived, back to Pennsylvania, where Mom and Dad came from, so I saw some of life at both ends of the country. When I was in the Third Grade, Dad bought a ranch in Eastern Oregon, at the edge of the Wallowa Mountains, and we spent five years there, where I learned to love and be at home in the outdoors, how to shoot a gun, how to ride a horse. I also had two boyfriends, though at that time we were just friends who had a good time having pretty unsophisticated sex together when there was a chance. It seemed very natural and enjoyable.

Later, as I entered the Seventh Grade, we moved to Seattle, so I could go to Lakeside, a very good private school in the area, and Dad bought a sailboat so that I learned to live on the water and began a life-long love of boats. In Seattle, Dad worked as a toolmaker, passing on to me a love of tools and making things, and taught me the value and dignity of work, and of doing a good job for its own sake, and for your own integrity: he was a gunsmith in his spare time, and guns that he built or modified made world records and took at least one World Championship medal.

While at school I had my first "serious" boyfriend, Hal, though neither of us was really out. At that time I didn't even know the word "gay," and it came as a huge surprise to me when I learned not only that other boys didn't feel attracted to each other - aside from Hal, I had at least two serious crushes - but that they actually felt attracted to girls! I think that's when I started to grow up and come out, at least to myself. At the time, it felt as if I was standing on the end of the dock, waving goodbye to my friends - all going off on some strange voyage I felt no urge at all to go on. It was also at about this time that I learned that what seemed obvious and natural, and beautiful and good to me, was something that others hated, or at least pretended to hate, and so at the age of about fifteen, after several crushes, three boyfriends, and some pretty good, if not very adept sex - I went into the closet for the only time in my life.

I got fairly good at hiding. I was big, strong, and if not very good at sports (and fond of music!), I was active: I sailed, learned to ski, could drink beer as fast as kids a grade or two above me, learned to drive and re-built my own car, and I had a pack of friends who all got along well and did things together. I didn't even know I was in the closet, though I had learned not to talk about the way I was attracted to guys. I thought it would pass, or that I was the Only One on the Planet, or even hoped the others were all going through a phase. But I had a good time, and in retrospect, I think it wasn't at all a bad thing to have a "normal" childhood and teen years. I wasn't beaten up, and I never did feel shut out, or not part of all the things that were going on. One friend from then is still very close, and I count myself lucky to have a friend who has been with me since I was in the Seventh Grade. As far as I know, I was the only gay boy in my group, and I've lost touch with two of the boyfriends and all of the crushes. The remaining boyfriend turned out to be bi, and although we are still friends and he named his son after me, we see each other seldom. Only later did I learn that one of the group I hung out with had killed himself because he was gay. I wish I could have helped.

Another crush I had in high school was a Norwegian exchange student (very cute, but straight, alas!) when I was a Junior. Claus had always invited me to visit him in Norway, so when I graduated from college at the end of the winter quarter, my graduation present to myself was a trip to Norway to see Claus, a trip I made with another friend from school, named Bart.

As it turned out, we arrived in Norway just before the Easter break, when everyone in Norway, seemingly, straps on skis and heads for the hills. I was told I had one day to go down into Oslo and find myself skis, boots, and poles (by coincidence, the skis I chose because I thought they were the best-looking, were made by the company which was to sponsor me for the rest of my career), and one day later we found ourselves stepping out of an early-morning train onto a cold, wind-swept station platform somewhere in Jotenheimen, Norway's central plateau. Happily, it got warmer fast, and the weather was beautiful. In spite of never having been on cross-country skis before, and in spite of doing fifty kilometers my first day out, with a pack on my back - I loved it.

We were in Norway for a week, skiing from hut to hut in glorious spring weather. Afterwards, Bart and I took a boat down to Germany, and it was while sleeping out on the deck of the ferry to Denmark - it was cheaper to spend the night on a bench on the deck, wrapped in a sleeping bag, than to rent a seat inside or to get a cabin - it was there and then that I realized that I really was gay, and that life just wasn't going to be worth much if I went on ignoring that side of myself, and hiding. So I came out to Bart. Actually, I was too nervous to do it verbally, so I did it by writing an entry in my journal, which I gave to Bart to read, and then I went for a walk.

This was the fist time I had ever formally come out to anyone. The first few times were hard, but they did establish a pattern that never varied: I'd crank up my courage - I remember having to ask one friend to hold me in his arms while I cried and told him, and several other coming out evenings when it took rather a lot of drinking to get me to the point - and nothing happened. No one, not ever, not one friend ever had a rough time with it, or hated me, or said unpleasant things, or went screaming down the street. All the dread was always in my head alone, all the fears of losing friends, or respect, or jobs - nothing bad ever happened. Almost all the friends I came out to back then are still good friends, and I think part of the reason is because they trust me because I have been open and honest with them, and because I have trusted them.

When we got back from the Norwegian trip, I decided it was time to get a real job. I had always wanted to be a teacher, so I went to visit a very wonderful teacher I'd had back in grade school and with whom I'd stayed in touch all the time, and asked him where he thought I should look for a job. (When I asked him why he wanted to be a teacher, he gave me the response I've used ever since, in all my professionals roles: "I wanted to make my pile and get out quick." I've done neither.) Mr. Spock sent me to a start-up private school near Seattle, called Overlake.

I interviewed at Overlake on Wednesday, was asked to send in my transcript, and got a call on Friday to ask if I could start on Monday. I was to replace a teacher who was needed to do construction work on the campus that Overlake was going to move into in the fall. On Monday I reported for work, and Dean Palmer, the Headmaster, asked me if I'd ever been cross-country skiing. When I said I had just spent a week in Norway cross-country skiing, he told me that the All-City race, the big high school four-way meet that used to mark the end of the ski year, was to be that weekend, and that I was the coach. Three Olympics, seven World Championships and seven Junior World Championships, two medals, countless wonderful friends from the US, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Slovenia, Norway, Germany both East and West, and goodness knows how many World Cups, National Championships, Junior Nationals and Junior Olympics later - I'm still at it. I worked for Sweden at the last Olympics, and turned down a chance to work for Slovenia last year.

I own my own ski service shop and do business with racers all over the US. I coached local juniors until a year ago, and I may coach again, and I do plan, after a year off last year, to get back into it at some level. I needed the year off to get over losing my partner, Chris, who died in a traffic accident last spring. We were together for nine and a half years and we were very happy. But now I'm starting to feel like a flower with no water in the vase, and I need to grow back into my roots, which are so threaded into skiing that I don't think I can survive without at least some contact with it.

It all started at Overlake. We got better and better, the kids started making the Junior National Team (as the Junior Olympics were called then), then they started making up most of the Northwest team, then they started winning, and I was lucky enough to be able to follow them into National Teams, being made Regional Coach for the US Biathlon Team in '79. I went to my first international meet at the World University Championships in 1983, as ski technician. Josh Thompson made the '83 University Team, and the '84 Olympic Team. I didn't go to the latter, although I almost went to the '80 Games. In the winter of '87-'88, Josh finished college, got really serious about skiing, and was headed for some very good races at the up-coming World Championships in Lake Placid. He asked the Team to ask me to do the waxing, and the team offered me the job as Head Technician through the '88 Olympics. After about two seconds of thinking it over, I quit teaching in the middle of the year, and two months later we were at -21??q F at Lake Placid, and Josh became the first American ever to win a medal in Biathlon, with a Silver in the 20 kilometer race. He and I finished the '87-'88 season as the whole US team in Europe, traveling together for about two months to the final World Cup races, then the Norway Cup races and the Polar Cup races which used to stretch across northern Scandinavia as spring began to melt more southerly snow. All the way, we shared rooms, and often beds. Josh had known I was gay for years, and it was never an issue, though I used to wish I had a boyfriend to talk about as incessantly (and graphically, at times!) as he did about his girlfriend, who is now his wife (I was Josh's Best Man).

I was partly closeted in my first years of teaching. I wish I hadn't been, but I don't think the climate would have stood it in those early days, and as a starting teacher and coach I simply didn't have the security to be out to everyone, although I was out to my friends. By the late seventies, though, working year-round with the school team, and often being with them seven days a week, sharing vans and hotel rooms and training camps, it seemed stupid to be in the closet, and it was against the sort of openness and honesty that I was trying to teach: you can't be good at sports without a LOT of self-honesty. It seemed ridiculous to try to stay in the closet, so I began my "second-stage" of coming out. Again, there was never a problem. Only once did I learn, second hand, that a parent had had a problem with it, but his son was not withdrawn from the team, and another parent wrote a letter to me and the first parent, saying that it was totally irrelevant what my orientation was, and that it was not an issue. His son is still a good friend, and still skiing. Of course, as the team learned, so did the rest of the student body and faculty. Probably a few didn't know, but it was certainly knowledge that was there for anyone who wanted to know. I guess I could say that I was in a shallow closet with the door wide open.

I did have one student make a smart remark in class one day, something along the lines of "at least I'm a real man" - but the other students were embarrassed by such a comment, and the support was such that I didn't need to say a word.

With the Biathlon Team, and later with the US Ski Team (I made the cross-over in 1989) my being gay remained a non-issue. As a service technician I never felt it was appropriate for me to make an issue of anything personal, but all my friends, and I assume most of the athletes, knew. It was obvious. I did good work. No one cared. I may have been on the edge of not getting the US Ski Team job, because I heard a rumor was going around that I was sleeping with Josh (well, I was: in European hotels two people are usually put in one roughly queen-sized bed, and we had fought over who got the blankets and who snored across most of Scandinavia...) and the Director, a deeply religious man, put the brakes on about hiring me until I told Josh what was going on, and he called the Director...

While I was with the Ski Team, I also published a newsletter on technical matters relating to cross-country skiing, which went out to seven countries (once an article that I had written in my newsletter was translated into German without my knowing it, and used by one of the Swedes to refute something I said in another article!). When I was fired by the US Team at the start of the '93-'94 season (so were the Development Coach, the Head Coach, the Women's Coach, and the Doctor, all within a short period. The USST believes in nothing, if not in staff development and continuity...), I decided I'd also had enough of writing to deadlines, so I killed the newsletter and took great delight in thoroughly outing myself and talking about my partner in the farewell issue.

Again - no result. Or rather, one very moving one. I got a letter from a ski area operator in Michigan which began, "I read your article in Nordic Update and I couldn't believe it. Then I read it again and I believed it. Then I read it again and burst into tears." Dave, the writer, has since come out with a very loud bang, and is an activist on several gay-related fronts and has accomplished far more than anything I have ever done. I've outed myself again in the e-newsletter I put out to for my business (see www.ultratune.net); I don't know if it has hurt my business, and I don't care. The few customers who might be offended need me more than I need them.

Now I run my own shop and have finally stopped coaching for now, but I am still working in the sport that has brought me so much experience and joy, and so many friends (I met Ryan and Jordan, who run this website, through working on Ryan's skis).

I have had a very good life. I've written, traveled, eaten at some of the great restaurants, heard some amazing music, spent glorious summers working at our family ranch and running training camps, been somewhere near the top of my sport and profession, and had so many doors opened to me. I miss my Chris deeply, but I am seeing someone again, an old friend I'd never thought of as partner material until he started to court me after Chris died.

I have very few regrets, and a lot to look forward to. My few regrets deal more with things I wish I'd done than otherwise. I wish I'd been a lot more out a lot sooner, but I don't believe the times I grew up in would have allowed it, and I certainly never, after high school, took any trouble to hide that I was gay. Still, I wish it had been possible to be out when I was young. I wish I had been able to help more gay people - kids and adults - come out by my example. I wish I could feel that I had contributed more, more directly.

But I think you can do all that now. My experience in sports has been that it doesn't matter in the least. I've worn gay T-shirts at training camps and recently even told a fellow coach, an old friend I respect and have worked with for years, that his kid - nineteen or so - has a nice ass (the remark got a laugh). I know there are obstacles and some real dangers, depending on where you are, and how you are perceived. But if you are in a decently safe place, not in some high school where gay bashing happens - if you carry yourself with integrity and dignity, if you are honest - people will respect you.

No one cares any more - at least in skiing. At the 2002 Olympics I was working for Sweden. The Swedes and the other American working for them used my car several times a day, a rainbow sticker proudly displayed on the back window. The American - straight, alas! - even told me he enjoyed driving around Utah with a rainbow sticker on his car. Customers see the rainbow on my car and my pickup when they drop skis off. No one has ever said a word, though lately I've worked on a few pairs of skis with mini-rainbows on them!

It takes far too much energy to stay in the closet. If you come out, you reclaim enormous amounts of energy that were formerly spent holding a lie together. If you come out you gain huge self-respect, and there is nothing more important than respecting yourself and who you are.

You can be gay and have a great career in sports, and a great and complete life.

Come out. I wish I'd done it more, sooner. But if you come out, you will grow, and you will make it easier for the next person. I thought I was the only gay kid in the world. I knew I was the only gay person in sports. That is changing, and it will change more as the unstoppable momentum gathers of honest, open gay athletes coming out in all their integrity and intelligence and yes, beauty - because there is nothing more beautiful than integrity and honesty. You will change the world of sports. Coming out will set us free, and it will set sports free. We will make the world a better place.

Nat Brown taught and coached cross-country skiing at the Overlake School in Redmond, Washington from 1971 to 1987, where he also served as Middle School Director and Dean of Students. He provided ski service for the US Biathlon Team from 1983, and was Head Ski Technician from 1987 to 1988 and then for the US Ski Team until 1993. From 1993, he worked as a free-lance ski technician for Slovenia and Belgium. In 2002 he did ski service for Sweden and Germany at the Salt Lake City Olympics. He has coached at three Olympics, seven World Championships, seven Junior World Championships, and numerous World Cups. He was the editor of Nordic Update for nine years and is the author of three technical books on skiing and training, including The Complete Guide to Cross-Country Ski Preparation (The Mountaineers Books), now in its third printing. He is the owner/operator of Nordic UltraTune Systems in Edmonds, Washington. He lived with his partner, Christopher Futch, until Chris?f death in a traffic accident in 2003. Nat?fs other interests include reading, writing, music, and his beloved ranch in British Columbia. He is managed by a gray cat named Linux.

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