I wanted to experience World Cup magic. Hearing Mexico’s ‘puto’ chant in person shattered it.

It is a measure of my lack of soccer bona fides that my favorite goal of all time is Socrates scoring a last minute header against the German philosophers in a Monty Python sketch.

So with the World Cup electrifying the entire continent, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to immerse myself in the phenomenon and find a way to experience the apotheosis of soccer culture firsthand.

My fellow baseball writer and Cubs bestie Sara Sanchez is a Mexico superfan. When she invited me to join her at a Team Mexico bar in Chicago to watch El Tri take on Ecuador last week, I didn’t have to think twice before saying yes.

Still, it was an immediate yes with trepidation, if such a thing is possible.

I knew this was a home game in Mexico City and that meant there was a pretty good chance I’d be hearing the execrable puto chant blaring its homophobia loud and clear from the TV broadcast.

Get off the sidelines and into the game

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Sara and I talked about it beforehand and in the end, I decided to chance it for the opportunity to absorb the World Cup experience in full.

The vibe in the room was everything soccer fans would’ve wanted me to witness.

This cramped and packed neighborhood bar somehow condensed Azteca Stadium into a few hundred square feet, and the energy from the fans repeatedly crashed over me in what felt like actual waves.

When Mexico scored, it was like being at the center of a particle accelerator of euphoria.

This was the kind of atmosphere that made me want to look around and absorb every sensory experience so that I could tell others what it felt like to behold human happiness in its most potent form.

Now the thing about being a soccer interloper is that I only know the rudimentary basics of the game. If FIFA wanted me to learn more about the sport, it should’ve created an infield fly rule.

This also meant that I had no idea what would lead to Ecuador taking a goal kick.

Because of that, I was completely unprepared for almost every Mexico fan in the bar to chant “ooooooooOOOOOH PUTO.”

The impact of the Mexico ‘puto’ chant was real for this gay fan

That was the first time I heard the chant in person. I had no idea it crescendoed like that. And it hit. Immediate, hard, and painful.

All of a sudden, the rest of the room fell away. It was only a couple seconds but the wonderment of the night immediately vanished and I became what I feared most when I was a closeted gay kid.

Different. Shameful. A freak. And a target.

Hoping to god that nobody saw me for who I was.

Of course, no one who chanted the word in the bar intended for me to feel like that. But it didn’t change the fact that those were the exact feelings that word called up.

Sara could see that I was freaking out in a mental tempest and tried to help me through it as best she could. “It’s a f*cking slur!” I spat back. I couldn’t stop seeing red.

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A short time ago, I was trying to memorize everything I saw. Now I was fighting real tears that were welling up behind the anger.

I took a few minutes to compose myself and tried to be as present as I could for the rest of the match. 

What had been a transcendent sports experience became an inner battle between “Do you want one bad moment to overwhelm an absolute blast of a night?” and “That one bad moment was an antigay slur. You don’t need to apologize for being gutted about it.”

Why was it that everyone else chanted the slur and I was the one feeling distraught about ruining everything?

In the end, Mexico won the match handily and the entire bar sang out in joy. They would lose to England in the Round of 16 a few days later.

As I reflected on everything I saw, heard and felt, I decided that the evening was an incredible way to bear witness to the wonder that is the World Cup and soccer fandcom. Marred by a slur that made me feel lower at a sporting event than I have in years.

Both of these things can be true. I wish the latter one didn’t have to be.

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