Skate for Your Life by Leo Baker

Author:Leo Baker [Baker, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

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I had felt so much confidence as a child, looking in the mirror in all my brother’s clothes, standing in my truth. But by this point, when I looked in the mirror it all seemed so false. The clothes I wore were really getting to me. It was always a compromise. I’d get the clothes from Billabong and try to alter them to make them work for me. But they were always so bad. It was like solving a puzzle. “How can I make these ill-fitting ugly pants a little better?” The truth was that I hated those clothes. A pull here, a push there, a broken stitch, the crotch of my pants blowing out, constantly tugging my shirt down, buttons popping off, my underwear and butt crack hanging out because the pants were cut too low, and to top that off, I was always trying to get my hair out of my eyes. Was it really that marketable? Really?

Clothing is a huge mode of self-expression for me as a skater and as a queer person. The importance of feeling at home in one’s body is a universal truth. By compromising my presentation, I was compromising my identity. It was all so hollow. I didn’t even get a chance to find my identity before one was created for me. The whole thing was phony, so at seventeen I began shopping for clothes that I actually wanted, even though I’d get clothes for free. The compromise was over. Under contract I was required to wear a logo during competitions, so I’d do that. But any other time it was all about black jeans and a plain white shirt. I was rediscovering a part of myself that I forgot was there all along. I was slowly peeling back the layers, like papier-mâché in reverse. There was so much to discover. It’s a long process to remove the parts of ourselves we create to survive. It felt good to do what I wanted, but that liberation came with a price.

My self-expression cost me. The skate industry didn’t want a butchy, queer skater; they only had eyes for the “pretty” femmes, especially after the recession in 2008. Companies began cutting skaters, and budgets thinned out. Billabong discarded their skate program entirely, so that was the end of that, and Element let me go, too. “You haven’t been doing enough,” they told me. “We aren’t going to renew your contract.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I thought I was doing great, considering I was in Thrasher magazine just months before, doing well in contests, and filming in the streets consistently. I was caught off guard. I’d been so loyal to that brand, but things were changing fast. “You can still get free boards whenever you want, but you’ll have to earn your contract back.” I think it was just an excuse to get rid of me, because at the same time, they brought in new amateurs and kept all the pros. And when I reached

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