At Janny 's

Thursday 16 June: First Day of the EuroGames in Utrecht

Eleven years ago in 1994 I participated in the GayGames in New York City. This week I am a volunteer, no sport this year. I was a contestant in the martial arts section. This year I will be a volunteer in the PR & Marketing group. I will also be in hosted housing and host four women who come from Hungary. My house is on walking distance from the Jaarbeurs accreditation center and close to the city center. It is a very suitable place for two contestants in the ballroom dancing and two in the badminton event. The women and I only had some emailcontact. I have no idea what to expect of the women. I love it that they are from Middle Europe. I had great experience with women from Budapest, Romania, Slovenia, Poland etc. I worked with them in a previous job in the women's studies department at Utrecht University. So expectations are high...

I became a member in the hosted housing programme through my own experiences with hosted housing in 1994. I was then put in a nice loft in the Lower East Side near Williamsburg Bridge. With me were two women from San Diego, who played tennis. The male owner of the loft lived two floors up. He did not show his face all week. On the last day of the weeklong event, when it was Gay Pride March in NYC - 25 years after Stonewall - after the GayGames closed, the host and I shared a cab to the UN-building near the riverbanks. He walked with the people with HIV. I chose the martial arts section. Almost a million people walked the streets of New York at that hot Sunday in June 1994.

With the EuroGames in Utrecht my hometown - a little bit smaller scale event - I wanted to be involved. I have taken two days off to be a reporter and photographer. I was disappointed at first when I noticed that karate was not on the list of sports. I remember my sparring buddies going to the EuroGames in Zurich a few years ago doing martial arts competition there.
After that I lost touch with the sports. I stopped active sporting after eleven years of martial arts practice. I never got any further than the first stage after absolute beginners in the years of on and off karate. My women's karate Shuri Ryu is still active in Utrecht. My sensei Wendi Dragonfire, who led the martial arts event in NYC, is still going strong.

In 1994 I was participating in the over 35 section for the "elders". We did sparring and kata. It turned out, that only four out of the eight women who performed the kata were also competing in the sparring. I was so amazed. For us it was always self-evident that we would do both kata and sparring. I fought my match and thought I was out. But I had to come on again in the second round to fight for the third place (out of four). I just about missed a medal then. It was very funny and very amusing and exciting too. Without GayGames I would never have competed in an official contest. The accessibility policy was very appealing to me. I was 42 at that time. Planning to go to the GayGames was my way of setting goals about having a big life. I had a baby son in 1990 and that had limited my life. When he turned almost four years old, I still had the opportunity to get parental leave from my job. I did not do what other parents usually do. In stead of taking care of my young son on more days a week, I put him in daycare full time. In the free time I took extra practice for the GayGames. I had the opinion that parental leave meant that I could have a break from full time parenting and do things for myself. My partner took care of my son for a week. I went away to my first trip to the USA and outside of Europe. He really missed me a lot, but I had a great time. I did hundreds of things in those eight days, making up for missed opportunity in the years when he was a baby and toddler. Lou Manders of the EuroGames committe talked about flash backs to the volunteers. I have them too. Every time when it is very warm in summer and I am outside in a city by myself, I get flash backs. It is about walking the streets of New York City in the deep night after the Closing Party. The party was in an old factory somewhere near the docks just north of Greenwich Village. It was a shit party.., all the women were at a women only party. I had prebooked tickets for the mixed party. Only the next day I discovered that I also could have gone to the women only party with that ticket.
A great idea that Utrecht makes a pass partout for all parties on Saturday night. I think I will not go, not to the women only party and not to the Final Fantasy... No, I think I will stick to the daytime programme and maybe go to the Midzomergracht on Fridaynight to see Ellen ten Damme. Ellen ten Damme is a rock singer and actress and a heterosexual woman who has become a new gay icon. She is not the first heterosexual woman to perform at gay parties. Didn't you know that heterosexual women are sometimes more attractive to lesbians than other lesbians? Ellen is great. I love her too.

After finishing this I will go 'play' reporter at the sports that already started: the tennis tournament. Then I will go to the Art Exhibition FeMale in the Janskerk. I will visit the press conference at 2 o'clock and visit the Village at the Jacobskerkhof.. Tonight I will go to the Jaarbeurs big hall 12 for the opening ceremony.
Looking forward to a great EuroGames in Utrecht.

Janny Nieboer