On the handball court, it's an admission to toxic masculinity, which guy can throw the fastest? Who can slap the hardest? Who can endure the pain, when the ball hits you?

Even amongst Orthodox Jewish boys, during shabbat, where men are meant to rest, learn Torah and daven in shul, Jewish guys aren’t viewed nor meant to be a symbol of roughness. Yet, in my LES neighborhood’s rundown court, violent behavior was permitted, to still create a litmus test, who is the toughest of them all.

A bloody game, that consumed much of my childhood, as the option for games on shabbat were permitted, although many Rabbis would truthfully argue, the clothes torned, and the bleeding sport, leaving some boys signaled out and crying, while other egos being filled with desire of attention, is considered a Melacha productive and creative labor that would be prohibited on the sabbath.

Being I was inducted into boyhood, and like many queer/trans, and soft type boys, who are forced a harsh socialization of boyhood through societal expectation of breaking down our genders into desensitized broken boys, prepared for a cruel manhood development. I was trapped, intrigued, and immersed in playing Handball, to unsolicited audition to determine my status in my neighborhood’s boy crowd, like a mini version of hunger games….

You can throw me left and right, and relish watching me fall and break. Y’all pleasure yourselves treating me as the monkey in the middle, waiting for me to wear out, until I crumble, sob, and disappear from your elimination game of sadistic antics.

With endurance, comes experience and resilience. Despite being outnumbered by boys and men, who were of larger size, bulkier, less empathetic in being cruel to play with torturing with other boys bodies, this soft, semi insecure, queer femme, might have been overlooked but wasn’t without wit. 

Y’all thought you got to me, but never won my core because I know now how the game is played.