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`Secrets can kill. It would have killed me eventually'

A Provocative Question and Answer Session With Ken Baker

By Rob Schultz
For Outsports.com

Former collegiate hockey goalie Ken Baker's book "Man Made: A Memoir of My Body" details his battle with a brain tumor, and his ensuing hormonal and emotional chaos. The rare disorder plunged him into a surreal gender netherworld, in which his system was flooded with the female hormone prolactin--150 times that of a normal man and 8 times that of a nursing mother. Unable to experience arousal or maintain an erection, he lived in a state of confusion and profound questioning not only over his sexuality, but his very identity. Eventually the tumor, which had grown to the size of chestnut, was discovered and removed, allowing him to resume an active sex life, and marry the woman who endured much of the ordeal with him.

The book describes in candid detail his struggle with his sexual and gender identity, the shame and embarrassment the condition caused, and his ruminations on what it truly means to be a man. While Baker is straight, his expressions of confusion, shame and self-imposed secrecy will resonate powerfully with many gay men.

Baker sat down with Outsports to talk about his ordeal, the brain operation that restored his health, his insights into the tribulations and struggles gays face, as well as the climate professional gay athletes must face.

He also spoke about his hockey comeback, after 10 years away from the game. Baker, who spent the season with the Bakersfield Condors of the West Coast Hockey League, will chronicle that experience in his next book "Bakersfield of Dreams" due out in the Fall of 2003.

Q: Before your season with the Condors, you had been out of hockey for 10 years?

A: I had my surgery in '98--at the time I wasn't playing hockey, I wasn't watching hockey. I couldn't have cared about hockey. I wasn't watching much sports at all. Then in '99 I started watching hockey a little bit more. And then late in '99 I had a dream that I was playing hockey. And it was so powerful, that I told my Mom in Buffalo, New York, "Please send my old hockey equipment out." The hockey equipment I hadn't worn since 1992.

And then gradually I started playing. At first I didn't want to play competitively. I was turned off by the competition, I was turned off by the negative part of sports. I just wanted to compete and, win or lose, just get a good workout and have fun and enjoy celebrating my health.

But what I found out was that I was pretty good. And I really enjoyed it. Enjoyed it more than anything I had ever done in the last eight years, since I had left hockey. And over the course of the next year, started playing more and more. In 2000, I got on an adult hockey team in Oakland, and it sort of just grew from there. I wanted to take it as far as I could. So I had played complete games, but at a low, low level.

Q: After a season practicing with the Bakersfield, you were named to start the final game of the regular season. Describe your feelings especially as the game wound towards the overtime shoot-out.

A: I was nervous the first period. Then, in the second period, I was completely in my element, in a little bit of a zone, very focused. Before the game I asked one of our goaltenders for some advice. He said, "Look, you're playing the best team in the league, the number one offense. They score a lot of goals, so if they score on you, don't worry about it."

And that was real helpful cause at that point I had let in five goals, and I didn't feel I'd played poorly. I was focusing on the next thing.

And when the team came back, I didn't pay much attention to what was going on at the other end because its not my concern. I have no control over it. That's what I have really learned a lot about life through sports, you worry about the things that you can control, and let the things that you can't control just be. Life is a lot easier that way to live, and hockey is a lot easier that way to play.

Then when it came down to the shootout, that's probably the strongest part of my game. 'Cause as the third string goalie, I am just the guy left over at practice, scrapping to get whatever work I can. At the end of practice all guys want to do is breakaways, and shootouts, cause its fun for them. So all year long I was doing shootouts, and I became pretty good at it for that reason. And I told my wife that week, "You know, I love shootouts." I don't know why I said that.

Q: Considering all you have been through the last decade, was this overtime win cathartic for you? Was this the exclamation point, the redemption from your ordeal? Or were you just focused on having fun ?

A: I think if you would have asked that question before the game I would have said, "Anything after this is just icing on the cake." To have come back and just tried to play, to put myself in the situation where I am at the level where I am 'right there', and have had this experience--that's enough. I would have told you that. But now that it has happened, it really meant a lot to me, not only to play, but to excel.

At the beginning of the season, I remember telling people "I'm not sure why I am coming back. I just knew I had to. I had a dream and I knew I had to do it, but what's the whole point? I guess I really needed to have a positive experience, and to choose to end my career, instead of having some brain tumor decide to end my career for me.

And so it probably healed me in a way that years of therapy could never have.

Q: Have you received a lot of mail from gay readers or gay athletes saying, "I can really relate to your experience"?

A: I have actually. I have gotten letters from people all across the board. Most fervently from people who have suffered through a similar condition. I have received letters from gays. While I was writing it I wasn't thinking about the gay and lesbian community. What I was thinking about was how destructive secret keeping can be. That more than anything--I wanted to make a statement about how destructive secret keeping is. I was keeping a secret from myself, from my friends, from my family. And look what it did to me. I went through a lot of soul-searching and self-doubt when I was writing the book. I didn't know who would care about the book. Who cares about Ken Baker? Who cares about his stupid story? Big deal! Its so bizarre! I really feel gratified that in the end, a lot of people have cared.

I am not gay. I can't really identify with a gay man the way a gay writer could. But I can say this: I know that a lot of people live with secrets they think they can't tell anyone. And they end up hurting themselves a lot more by not being themselves or being honest and revealing that secret. My story is just one example of that.

There are people today who are living with a secret--maybe its the secret of their sexual orientation, maybe its the secret of something they have done in the past that they are ashamed of, and its probably hurting them a lot more than it will for them to say it and be at peace with it.

I got as sick as I did because I just could not come to grips with the feeling I wasn't 'right'--I wasn't right sexually, I wasn't the sexual person that nature meant me to be. I think that's why people who are struggling with coming out can identify with me.

In the book I talk about, at the peak of my illness, I am not comfortable hanging around macho guys, going after chicks, trying to get laid, going out to bars, trying to impress girls. I felt so inadequate in that department because I am disabled. I can't get an erection, I feel ashamed, I don't feel like a man. So I try to stay away from that. And I find that I become friends with a guy. He's really cool, we hang out and play golf together. Everything is hunky-dory. And then he starts hitting on me--he's gay. So it does occur to me at a certain point, "Am I gay? Is that the answer? Is that why I can't get aroused?" So I have to go and really examine that and really consider that.

It turns out at the end that my chemistry is messed up. My orientation is that of a heterosexual man. But I don't know that there is something short-circuiting that sex drive. So I am forced to consider that maybe I am having all these problems with women, and all these failed relationships, and I don't want to sleep with them because I am gay. That occurs to me, and I examine that in the book. And its really interesting because some of the gay readers say "What you were grappling with is what a lot of us grapple with." If someone identifies with that, great! Because its just another way I was able to help somebody.

Q: Once you started practicing with the team, were you concerned how people in Bakersfield would respond? The candid discussion of sex and gender issues in your book would seem to clash with the conservative fabric of the town.

A: If there was any concern, it was more in the locker room, from guys not really understanding what I went through. As far as the team goes, I was treated with such respect. To be honest, I think most guys didn't know exactly what I had gone through, and by the time they found out they gotten to know me, and they respected what I was doing. When they found out, when all the parts of the story got out there, they just accepted me and were very good to me. I feel really wonderful I didn't have any of those problems you asked about.

Q: One of your Bakersfield teammates, Jamie Cooke, was also on your college team at Colgate. Did he know then what you were going through, and how did he react when you were teammates again?

A: He didn't know what was wrong with me at the time. And then he later found out. He had seen me on television last year, so he sort of knew the story. a lot of people said, "I would never have guessed that was happening to you." I think I did a great job of acting. I was really good at being tough. That's what you do when you play hockey. If you're nervous, you pretend that you're not, if you're hurt you pretend you're not hurt. So that resiliency and that sacrificing your health and sanity for the sake of winning and competing, that unfortunately bled into my personal life and contributed to my getting sicker and sicker over the years. It may have made me a good goalie, but it didn't make me a good person, or a healthy person.

So guys like Jamie and my other friends from that era, when they found out they were shocked. They couldn't believe I had gone through all that.

Q: Do you think its possible now to have a gay out athlete on a major league team without it causing dissension? Or do you think that's more likely to happen sometime in the future?

A: Not that its impossible for that to happen. But I think--unfortunately--it would take a lot of evolution on the part of coaches and players and management to accept that within their teams. I am trying to picture someone who was openly gay on our hockey team this year, and it would have been a nightmare.

It would be very difficult to be the only one, to stand out. When you're in a team environment, the more that everyone is the same, the more uniformity there is, the more the team runs smoothly. And I can just see so many conflicts. And I think our society hasn't evolved that much. The hockey culture certainly hasn't evolved to that point. There are so many issues.

Not that someday we won't be able to deal with that reality. But its such a complication that today, in 2002, that is something that would be so difficult for players to deal with. And that is just being honest.

It would take an extraordinary person to do that, and an extraordinary player who is so good, that they just can't keep him out. And I think it may take someone like that to break the barrier.

Q: Looking at a popular ratio of gays to straights--1 in 10--makes it fairly certain there are more than a few gay men in each of the pro leagues. Knowing this--they are there--what makes it easier about them not being open? Is it like "don't ask, don't tell"?

A: That whole don't ask, don't tell thing--I guarantee you that policy, unofficially, is being practiced right now in professional hockey. I guarantee you it is. I also guarantee you there are guys who are playing pro sports, pro hockey, who haven't come to grips enough with their own sexuality to even fully realize what they are about. And yet they are within the hockey culture, and living that lie, and living in repression. I guarantee you it is happening. I am not in the business of running around suspecting someone's gay, so I can't really tell you that I have ever had that. But its just my impression.

Q: You speak about the destructiveness of keeping secrets. Yet you also say pro sports isn't ready for an out gay athlete. Is it appropriate in certain situations to keep secrets, and how do you make that judgment? Where do you draw the line between the secret that damages you by keeping it and the secret that may protect you by keeping it?

A: That is indeed a huge question, and I am not sure if I am qualified to answer it, especially when it comes to the unique experience of coming out as a gay man in the hockey world. Obviously, for a player who is a closeted gay, to keep it a secret, the personal toll on him would be so great. I loathe to think about how he could survive with such a big part of himself under lock and key from his teammates, guys who share almost everything over the course of a season. I think that whether or not he keeps his "secret" is a personal decision, coming down to how he answers this: Is the pain of the secret-keeping greater than the stress of coming out? Since I am not gay and have never known an openly gay hockey player, I am afraid I can't make that judgment.

So while I am tempted to give the pat "honesty is the best policy," I would have to waffle on this one, for it involves great complexity and varies from situation to situation. All I know for sure is that a gay pro hockey player would have to be prepared for the worst--probably being waived or traded--if he was to come out, because I don't think a tolerance level for homosexuality in the pro hockey world exists. Though my theory is untested, since there are no openly gay players that I know of.

Q: Knowing you come from a conservative background, what allowed you to deal with your own issue in such an open way--writing a book about it--rather than burying it?

A: I looked at my condition, and the biggest albatross was I was ashamed of myself. I was embarrassed. I didn't know the source of it. And then I got diagnosed. I got better. And once I found out that it wasn't my fault - it was something that went wrong naturally. Lets not even say 'wrong'. Something happened biochemically that made me a certain way. Now this is where the 'button' comes in for people of other sexual orientations: There was something that was making me who I was. And I felt so much shame about it I didn't want to tell anyone. But when I realized that it was the brain tumor, that it was just nature, I was so relieved. And I realized I didn't have to keep secrets anymore. That it felt so good to be so open.

And then I realized that I had learned so much going through that gender netherworld that I needed to tell people about it. Because I was frustrated that people weren't considering all these different ways of looking at gender, and identity. I had gone through a really unique experience.

In my book, there's a part right at the beginning, I'm in the hospital having my surgery. And I am feeling that I always felt somehow that I am not the man I should be. But really all along I wasn't the male I was meant to be. Because male is a biochemical condition. That's what makes you male. But a man is a whole other thing. Its about much deeper, more important characteristics than just the chemistry that's in your body. And I had confused those two. There is a difference between being a man and being a male. And sometimes in our society we get mixed messages about that, and we think there is only one way to be a man.

I am able to be so open because I realized I beat myself up so much for something so stupid. And I realized a lot of people who think they're not the person they think they should be, they're not the man they think they should be, should just accept themselves. And that's the road to healing.

Q: If you had a message for younger gay guys, or gay men starting to sort out their sexual identity, what would that be?

A: Be who you are, and accept yourself. And if other people don't accept you, that's their problem. Because the most important person is you. And you have to be strong enough to accept yourself. And if you are, other people will. And the people that don't accept you don't really matter.

The other thing is--keeping secrets can kill you. It would have killed me eventually if the tumor would have grown larger. a lot of people kill themselves. I almost killed myself a couple times. I contemplated suicide. It all comes back to that issue of self-denial.

Related: Two Men, Two Secrets, One Bond

May 9, 2001