Gay Bashing Rules in "PINS"

In his novel, "PINS", Jim Provenzano introduces Joey at the age of ten, watching the 1988 Summer Olympics and finding himself fascinated by the wrestling contests featuring tumbling, tensing, grappling male bodies “touching, wearing almost nothing.” By age fifteen, Joey is homoerotically reacting to hunky Tony Danza in a bathing suit on the TV sitcom, “Who’s the Boss?” His favorite posters are of Marky Mark and Van Damme in their underwear. His favorite CDs show cute thrash stars on the covers. Joey fulfills his dream of making the varsity squad wrestling team at age fifteen and simultaneously becomes a best friend to Dink, whose soul and breath is also wrestling. Somewhat tentative in acting out his sexual fantasies, Joey nevertheless feels powerful urges consuming him as he tries for “pins” in Dink’s bedroom. Joey recreates every touch of his idol before he falls asleep at night. It turns out that Dink is more aggressive in consummating the relationship and Joey could lamely rationalize their ultimate coupling as a seduction. Joey slowly realizes that what is happening is not just two straight dudes relieving themselves of excess hormonal tension. He has never French kissed a girl, and, with his increasing romantic infatuation with Dink, that is not likely to occur soon. No one suspects that Joey and Dink are more than teammates and “buddies”, least of all the jock clique of the varsity team which accepts them into their friendly circle. Unfortunately, part of this group’s idea of fun is to harass gays. The bigoted internal fury of Bennie and Hunter leads them to drive a teammate off the road. Anthony is “different”; he is effeminate, “asthmatic” and not a very good team player. For all these reasons, he cannot be forgiven and by the side of the road, in Anthony’s damaged car, the homophobic boys beat and brutally rape him.

Gay bashing at its worst leads to the death of the victim. Although Joey and Dink are passive, albeit, horrified and protesting witnesses to murder, Joey is propelled into a crisis of alienation with his family, the church, his school, the media and ultimately with Dink. For not participating in the assault, Bennie labels Joey and Dink as “faggots” and warns them not to narc. Joey ultimately cannot live with his conscience and tells the police the whole sordid story. The court, ironically, labels Joey as a PINS, a “person in need of supervision”.

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