Smear the Queer

When I was young, boys played a game. It was called "Smear the Queer," or alternately, "Kill The Man With the Ball." The objet de jeu was simple, compared to baseball or lacrosse: do violence to the "Queer" with the ball. If you are wondering if the Queer was just an odd fellow, within game play, ponder no further. The Queer was certainly the Fag. And he had a handicap, which was the ball. The Queer had to have two hands on the ball, unless he was throwing it away. The point of the game, from the vantage point of the ball clasping Queer, was to get rid of the ball and become not-Queer. Because the only person who could be struck, tackled, knocked down or done violence to was the Queer with the ball.

The Queer was not allowed to just get rid of the ball. There were rules, sort of like with dodgeball. The Queer had to throw the ball to a team mate. Who then became the Queer who tried to get rid of the ball while all the members of the opposing team either attempted to tackle, trip, punch and smear him, or block passes to the new Queer's team mates. Team mates who were not the current Queer could not be hit, struck or touched. Violence was reserved for the Queer. And only the Queer.

Smear the Queer was a rugged game. We all had to take a knee, once, when a Queer was driven to the ground so hard one of his lungs was collapsed. Sometimes players took the Smear part literally. By "sometimes," I mean "regularly." We should perhaps remember that the game was also called "Kill the Man with the Ball." During the course of play, I had a dislocated shoulder, and there were a few broken wrists, noses, fingers and what not.

Smear the Queer was a Boy's Game. Girls never played it. They weren't allowed. Well, publicly that is. We had a few tough chicks who played. They were often the most aggressive players. Something about compensation to male-consistent behaviors in a male dominated environment, and conditioning, I image.

Smear the Queer could be played impromptu, but in my youthful experience, it was nonetheless organized. The game had rules. If the rules weren't followed, it wasn't a game. And most often, it was not only organized, it was sanctioned. I learned to play Smear the Queer in the Cub Scouts. With the Cubmasters as referees. It was more popular than Capture the Flag. It was even more popular than Capture the Flag (with Prisons*). It was surely preferable to Flag Football, which game provides no opportunities for the smearing of Queers, and has the distinct disadvantage of being free of tackling, tripping, nose breaking, lung collapsing and other boyish delights.

We also played a version (sans collapsed lungs or leaping tackles) on school grounds. The nuns, as referees. Girls excluded, of course. They had their own side of the playground. Literally. There was a line painted in the middle. We boys had football, StQ, dodgeball, tag and smash the faggots through the chain link fence, on our side. We also had marbles, jacks, baseball card trading and kickball. The girls had hopscotch. Once, the girls, led by the firebrands M---- S. and one of the many Michelles, organized a soccer game. The nuns were not pleased with this collapse of decorum. For a week, the girls has to spend recesses walking around the perimeter of their side of the playground. Doing the rosary. We boys were not discouraged from watching them. Object lessons need objects of condemnation, and all.

I'm told that if there were no giant leviathan, or world full of competing giant leviathans, society, such as it exists, would devolve overnight into one massive free for all of Smear the Queer.

I imagine that the exemplars, shapers of boys into men, pillars of the community, gum-hating nuns and bastions of rectitude - who organized and sanctioned Smear the Queer, as well as boy and girl divided playgrounds - would agree.

That no anarchist ever taught us to play Smear the Queer is entirely besides the point. And the one boy who was (in hindsight, and who is now Out) obviously gay was, I imagine out of self-protection, one of the game's most brutal participants. But, it's not like we learned the game from adult homosexuals. Or from the long-hairs who occasionally passed into the area to pick apples and berries alongside the Mexican, Cape Verdean and Brazilian migrant workers. The potheads couldn't be bothered, and the deadheads wouldn't have tried, and nary a Red could be found to teach us to hunt down the Other and smash him into the ground. Perhaps they were too busy being Others themselves.

Huh.

We learned that game from the same sort of people who are now telling us that, without them, the game itself would spread all of the planet as if by moral infection, and would no longer worry mere Queers. It will even trouble hitherto comfortable white people.

I should note, in conclusion, that the present campaign against Bashar Assad looks like international Kill the Man with the Ball. In Libya, it was definitely more a version of Smear the Queer.

Of course, when exemplary, organized, decent people play it with guns and moral sanction, it's called government. When anarchists try to imagine a world where kids aren't taught to play the game at all, well, obviously the correct response to that What If is that everyone will learn it as if by magic, and also everyone will be a Smear-worthy Queer...


* - CtF(wP) inevitably led to the abuse of the prisoners. This came as a surprise to our elders. It was eventually banned. Prisoners were no longer allowed to be taken. Captured players were instead assigned to a neutral zone, where they could be liberated by a team mate, according to varying rules. Smear the Queer was never banned, at least not when I was a minor.