I went to watch roller derby with my buddy Eric the other week. The Carolina Roller Girls were playing at Dorton Arena, and we decided to catch them and grab some beers afterward. My prior experience with roller derby: I haven’t seen Whip It yet, but I did watch the occasional episode of Rollergirls on A&E back in 2006. Also, I met a real life derby girl at a party last year. It was a semi-formal affair, and she wore a tiara and a bright pink boa.
I remember road trips to the beach or to visit grandparents when I was a kid. Me and my brother would sit in the middle seat of the Previa, playing with Micro Machines and Tiger Handheld racing games. My sister sat in the back seat, all by herself. She could lay down if she wanted to, and she had an affinity for poking me from behind. Up front, my parents played CDs of James Taylor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kenny Logins, The Mamas and The Papas, and Lowen and Navarro. Not all the time, but on certain songs, we’d break up the monotony and sing along. My sister always shouted along with my mother on Bette Midler’s anthemic “Chapel of Love.” But the most sung-along to artist by a long shot was Jim Croce.
Croce’s “Roller Derby Queen” (which I’ll post at the end of this) paints roller derby players as big, mean, and sexy. That’s the truth. I don’t know if it’s because of years of listening to the song on long road trips or what, but I’ve always been attracted to strong women. They know what they want, and they get it. And in the case of roller derby, they get it on skates. Lingerie football (yes, a real thing) sexualizes women in a kind of pervy way. Roller derby is about self-confidence, which is inherently sexy.
Anyways, I went to roller derby with Eric, and had a great time. It was this awesome subculture, and I got hooked. I started thinking about how great roller derby is. I started thinking about how fun it seemed. I started thinking about volunteering to help officiate matches, and I went on-line to explore the possibility of joining a men’s roller derby team. And then I remembered I haven’t skated in well over a decade and was never very good at it to begin with. Also, I’ve been meaning to focus on my schoolwork, and picking up another activity would not help with this endeavor.
It all made me realize, though, that I have this weird habit of getting way, way into a subculture without ever really taking the first step into it. In middle school, Dungeons and Dragons seemed like the coolest thing out there. I loved fantasy books and was obsessed with board games. D&D seemed like the logical endpoint. I picked up manuals and handbooks about how to play and read about all of the different possible races and classes over and over again. I got excited by all of the lore surrounding the D&D universe. I spent hours coming up with different characters and trying to figure out which one I would want to be for my first adventure. I purchased D&D books for my friends in order to get a group going. But nobody else really seemed all that interested, and nothing happened. I was rejected from the D&D subculture by default.
In high school, I was convinced for a few years that I would build a BattleBot. Robots on Comedy Central smashed into each other with flails and spikes and hammers. Pieces of metal flew into the air. In pre-fight demonstrations, robots blew bowling balls to dust. I spent time after school trolling robot websites, looking for designs and considering the pros and cons of different design types. I saved money to cover the cost of the machine and wondered which of my friends would be valuable in building it. But just as no dungeon master took me under his wing, no robot technician came forth to share with me the glories of battling robots.
In college: Dagorhir. Imagine taking a foam Nerf bat, calling it a sword, and beating like-minded people with it using a complex set of rules for fighting. Countless hours wasted exploring the community on-line and thinking of battle tactics as well as the usefulness of chain mail in a costume. I had grand plans, but I was too embarrassed to even bother explaining this to my friends. I thought my secret desires might finally be met when a friend once invited me to sword fight with him on the roof of a building late at night with wooden swords. But, he didn’t quite understand why someone would use foam swords when wooden swords were so readily available. I have gone to a couple of Renaissance Faires since my mild fixation, and while it’s not quite the same, I have discovered that mead is pretty tasty.
Going out on a limb to be a part of a subculture is tough work. People are going to judge you. That is why the people that do it—whether their niche is D&D or roller derby—are awesome. They are confident enough in themselves that they don’t care what other people think. Having a support network, like I had for marching band or pep band, can make the transition into a subculture easier, but a lot of the effort is still in an individual’s willingness to take that first step. Since graduating from college, I’ve tried my hand at a few different subcultures (including improv, radio, and contra dancing) with varying degrees of success. I still don’t feel like I’ve found a niche that fits me perfectly, but I hope to someday feel the sense of community I saw at roller derby.
