The Rumpus’s Self-Made Man, Thomas Page McBee has an eloquent personal essay on BuzzFeed about Orlando Cruz, the first active boxer to come out as gay.
In the macho world of boxing, Cruz is a pioneer for the LGBT community and was an inspiration to McBee as he himself got into the sport.
Being a writer, I know boxing is the most literary of all sports. The simplicity of it in the sparkly, crazy MMA age has led many to declare it dead. But it can never really die: As everyone from Mailer to Hemingway to Joyce Carol Oates knows, pro boxing is one of the most poetic physicgal expressions of masculine vulnerability.
