About seven years ago, Peter Griggs briefly took up boxing to help his research for a screenplay he was working on about a gay boxer. He set both the screenplay and his boxing aside when a succession of boxing movies – Beautiful Boxer (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Cinderella Man (2005) – convinced him the market was already saturated, but his brief fling in the ring planted a seed. Now the former Polk Street homeless kid and his friends have launched a gay boxing club in San Francisco.
"I do it because it's fun for one thing, and I get to test my limits and to push those limits of what I think I can do," Griggs, vice president of the San Francisco Gay Boxing Club, told the Bay Area Reporter . "It's something I didn't ever think I'd be able to do or excel at.
"Also I keep on doing it because it's empowering and I'd like to help other people be empowered – not just in their physical beings but their mental beings."
Jockdom hardly seemed like Griggs's ultimate destination when he was an adopted kid growing up on Bainbridge Island, just west of Seattle on Puget Sound.
"I was involved in soccer and Little League baseball, but I was pretty effeminate when I was a young kid," Griggs, 42, said. "It was pretty evident that I was gay. I could do badminton and swimming and stuff like that, but I didn't ever feel like I was good enough for football or any other team sports. It seemed like I didn't fit in with other sports, and it seemed like the feeling was pretty mutual. I just got it in my mind that I wasn't any good. I guess that made me feel like less of a man. I think it was a mixture of not being supported and giving up.
"If you grew up effeminate you were probably the last one to be picked in team sports. We went into theater or arts or fashion or whatever because we felt we could be appreciated that way. I think a lot of us put the more extreme sports on the shelf and said we couldn't do that."
Griggs, who said he is a mixture of Native American, African American, and Caucasian, came out when he was 14 years old.
"I was very obnoxious when I came out," he said "I ran away from home at about 14 and a half. I was just like, 'I'll take care of myself!'"
What followed was an uprooted, undirected life on the streets up and down the West Coast. "I got into substance abuse and all of the other things young kids get into at that age," he said. "Coming out for me was sort of a shocker. I had dreamt a long time that coming out meant you get to get a boyfriend and hold his hand. What I found was there weren't really any mentors in the gay community. It was a rude awakening. The same insecurities and the same fears were there from growing up."
He got help in San Francisco from organizations such as the Larkin Street Drop-in Center and fought to get off the streets. "It was easier to survive here in San Francisco because of the youth centers here," he said. "It was the 1980s and I was on Polk Street and I did what those kids did there. I think getting off the street is so difficult partly because it's like an addiction: you're up against your whole belief system."
There is stability in Griggs's life now. He works in accounting for an oil company. And he trains for boxing.
"Almost two years ago, I was looking around for gyms to work out at," he said. "I had this idea that I needed to pick a sport that had not been emasculated yet, so I thought about hockey and boxing. I already knew some gay hockey players but I didn't know any gay boxers. So I thought, 'OK, I'll take on boxing.'"
He started training under the direction of Michael Onello, who runs a combined barbershop and boxing gym out of a storefront near Howard Street. It's a funky, barebones hole-in-the-wall custom fit for battle training. Inspirational slogans, including the program's motto "Get Fit Not Hit" are scrawled in Magic Marker on the walls. Ceiling fans and punching bags dangle over a boxing ring of red, white, and blue ropes and a blue floor of worn plywood.
Onello is straight. His boxers say he takes an individually tailored approach to their training, meeting with them one-on-one at first to review what their goals are: to look good, to feel better, to box in competition, whatever.
"I feel an extreme amount of gratitude for Michael, because it is rare in this sport to have someone come along and just be very, very supportive regardless of what my sexual orientation is," Griggs said. "I know a few out there, myself included, who didn't necessarily have that support from someone who identifies as a straight man."
Griggs told Onello he wasn't there to look pretty: he was there to box.
"You start off learning the basics," Griggs said. "You learn the stretches, the actual physical training of the core muscles, the stance, then the punches, and then the defenses. There's much to grow on and learn all the time."
Griggs worked up to drills in which one boxer punches while the other defends, then a few weeks ago had his first live sparring session.
"I feel like there's been some reclamation, a discovery of parts of myself I didn't realize I had," he said. "It's had an incredible effect. I feel like I've reclaimed some of my manhood. I'm definitely a queen at times, but I feel I can protect myself and I feel healthy. I just feel really good and self-confident."
And he found like-minded souls in training.
"They're good friends of mine and everyone's at different levels," he said. "They see my form and give me tips on what I could try."
Deciding they wanted to get more people involved in the sport as well as to work to get boxing added to future Gay Games, they formed the San Francisco Gay Boxing Club. Currently the club has 10 members, including one woman and one transgender man. Last weekend they formalized plans to hold an open house and began discussions of next steps, such as filing for nonprofit status.
The open house will be Saturday, September 11, from 5 to 7 p.m. at 96 Lafayette Street in San Francisco. For more information on the organization, visit http://www.sanfranciscogayboxingclub.com.