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The Wednesday
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EPISODE TWO- THE GANG'S SOME HERE
I wake with a start, hearing a sharp thud and imagine the building falling down around me. Upon realizing this is not the case, and my bed is in no danger of a sudden loss of altitude, I breathe, roll over and look over my sparse apartment. A thick wooden nightstand under a well molded window. A pale rectangle of light on the floor. The sound of Westbrook, opening his door across the hall. I’m still in bed. A poster of Derek Jeter hangs over my head. I’m home all right.
Three knocks at my door.
“Its time to meet the Mayor,” says Westbrook.
Five more minutes.
“Not today, sleepy body,” he projects through the door. “Official Wednesday business, very important. Things to do.”
I sit up, yawn and stretch in no particular single direction. What was that bonk I heard?
“I was, if possible, too serene while meditating, and drove my head into the ceiling.”
I casually suggest that he might want to put some ice on that.
“That’s more like it,” he says, striding down the hallway onto the unvarnished hardwood staircase. “I’ll see you at breakfast,”
I get dressed, wander down the stairs and sit at our kitchen table. Brian is wearing an apron over his linen tunic that reads, “Kiss Everybody” and whistling as he hands me two flaky biscuits and a banana.
“The Mayor will be returning from Bolton today, and he would like very much to discuss the team with you.”
I say that seems alright, and can I have some orange juice please?
Brian thinks for a moment, I’m hoping we haven’t run out of juice, and he says, “Today may have been a bit vague, concerning the Mayor. If I had to guess he’d be here-“
Three knocks at our door.
“-well, you get the picture. Best invite him in, this is technically his house, you know.”
I say I do, and quickly munch half a biscuit.
The Mayor steps in, top hat in hand, matted silver hair on the left of a highly spherical head.
“Hullo Brian, Hullo- oh you! Mr. Manager if I am not mistaken. And I almost never am!” The Mayor takes a step into the rowhouse and immediately two back over the threshold and onto our top step.
“Come now, come, we should be off! Musn’t waste time on such a, dare I say it?”
He motions fervently with his hands to come and join him, if I please. Every word of his billows and plumes. Everyone is still.
“Historic errand!”
Westbrook grins, “Yes, quite right,” and chuckles as he finishes, “Mr. Manager.”
The Mayor quickly puts his top hat back in, and removes a monacle from the breast pocket of a patterned vest. Darkened holly leaves on a field of golden brown.
“Goodness, the sun is out, my top hat’s on, the sun is shining, what the devil are we waiting for?!.”
Breakfast, I say, mouth three quarters full of banana.
Westbrook motions out the door. “It’s all right, you’ll be fine. The Mayor will see to you from here.” He waves and shuffles into the kitchen, to wash a cast iron pan.
“Well, you can walk and talk with me! And eat! Heavens, we all love Brian, but he can be such dreadfully stoic company! Come come!”
I do, slipping on canvas shoes and striding a step or two behind as the Mayor blusters down the sidewalk, waving and speaking gently to everyone we pass.
“You see, Mr. Manager, we’ve been in a bit of a bind. I’d been managing the team, you see, Hello there Mrs. Robinson, the buttercups look lovely! for about three or four years now, but the town council, those ankle biters, Yes, morning Father Clayton, suppose that my managerial career may be a sort of, abdication of my mayoral duties. And also a slight conflict of interest, since I have been a starting midfielder since well before my election! Ho ho, yes Marlon, heading to the Professor’s now, you see. Meet you at the Salty Ship for a victory pint you old coot! So, that’s where you come in, my charge.”
We take a left through an open wrought-iron gate with no adornments, into a lush garden of sunflowers, meadowgrass, and more than several bees. The Mayor strides up the steps, and tests the handle.
“Goodness me, it’s locked!” He bangs on the door three times. “Professor! Do open up! I would hate to discover you’ve abandoned your meticulous hospitality!”
I hear a soft breeze, and watch the Mayor grin and turn around. The wind grows. I turn and see a dark, human sized blur coming up the sidewalk. The blur stops at the bottom step, and gracefully bounds upward.
“Hello Mr. Mayor, am I late?” The former blur says, skinny legs poking out from cargo shorts, skinny arms from a grass stained rugby shirt.
“Hullo Jermaine. This is Jermaine Johnson,” the mayor addresses me, “our other wing midfielder and the fastest boy in town. Likely all of England, I keep saying, but-.”
Jermaine puts his thin hands in his pockets, looks to his left, and smiles with all the confidence of youth. “I don’t need to win to know I’m fast.”
“Quite right, quite right, oh look! It appears we have another.”
A caravan, headed by four large men carrying a similarly formidable fellow, rumbles up the street.
“That’s Marc,” Jermaine adds, with a sheepish kick of the stair. “He thinks he some kind of God or whatever, it’s dumb.”
The Mayor leans into my ear and whispers, “He actually has a thorough claim to the ancient Egyptian pharodom, of Ramses don’t you know. Thankfully he chooses not to exercise it and instead lords it over everyone else! He also happens to be a smashing goal scorer from the forward wing.” He chuckles as I see the men hastily drop Marc’s ornate, what appears now to be a gilded loveseat, and huff and puff as Marc strides prideful onto the garden walkway.
“Jim. Mayor. You.” His gaze meets mine, his thin eyes straining to find my mettle. Marc speaks richly and slowly. “All not present?”
The Mayor pats his hands against his cotton trousers. “No no, just a small postgame today, get a few introductions out of the way before next week. I believe we’re still waiting on one though-“
A stout boy runs, muscular but thick, huffing down the road. He’s wearing a grocery store apron.
“Hey, [pant] sorry [pant] couldn’t keep up with Jim [pant] more of the usual [pant] hey everybody [pant] Marc.”
The Mayor grins broadly. “This, my new companion, is Grant Madine, a local orphan, dreadfully sorry about that by the way Grant-“ Madine shrugs, “-and a compatriot of young master Johnson at our town’s greengrocery. More importantly to our cause, he is a fine striker of the ball, and of slightly diminished importance, a frequent truant of Professor Kirkland’s highly regarded School for Youngsters, the Aged and Those Generally Seeking Knowledge and Useful Information for their Personal Betterment and the Continued Improvement of our Fine Community.”
The Mayor takes the monacle from his left eye, dusts it on the satin inseam of his vest, and carefully places it in his vest pocket. Grant and Jermaine share an eye roll. Marc taps his foot impatiently.
The Mayor coughs, “Came up with the name myself, mind you.”
The door opens. A bespectacled man with wild red hair, stretching backward, and a ratty sweater over a white t-shirt steps to the side and stretches his arm inward, to take us in.
“Uh, hello everyone, or I guess some of us, let’s get this started shall we?”
BOLTON 4 – WEDNESDAY 5
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EPISODE ONE- THROUGH THE WIRE
After a fairly prodigious bit of quantum tunneling on the part of Westbrook, and some equally prodigious barfing on my end, we are standing at the edge of an old pine forest. The trees are swaying back and forth, or so my vertigo tells me as I clutch a trunk for support.
This is England, I ask?
“The nation has been named that, yes, but this place is older than England. Older than I, even. This is Sheffield Ground, the Bothroyd’s domain and, more than likely, where he emerged.”
Don’t you mean born?
“No.”
I stand up stiffly. Westbrook’s arms are crossed, he’s waiting for something. I motion, shall we go?
“Let us begin, with haste.”
He strides quickly into the thick forest, brown crunching needles on the ground, not hovering an inch. I step into the thick wood. We walk for about ten minutes over a flattened path of brown nettles. I say ‘about ten minutes’ because I don’t wear a watch. Anyway the makeshift road flattens out, the road not sufficiently depressed, and Brian slows down. We have come upon a wall of hedgerows, spanning the visible width of the forest.
Brian stops.
“We have come to the edge of the forest.”
I remark that we had previously been at one edge of the forest, and that we would’ve saved a great deal of time to just stay there.
Brian looks at me sternly. “Then we wouldn’t really be here, now would we Mr. Manager. Now, come along,” Westbrook grins as he steps into the massive thorny bush. And then he’s in it. I can’t see him at all. I cannot hear his progress, as a din rises and grows from beyond the brair. I take two steps forward, and see a small stone ornament, hung near a person sized impression in the thick fern. The din builds further, chanting, singing. The most discernable melody is a chorus of “THE BOTH-A-ROYD, THE BOTH-A-ROYD”, to the tune of Beethoven’s 5th. I take the smooth stone off the branch, there’s an impression in the rock on the other side. I turn it over. It reads:
What has two legs but does not walk?
Sings every day but does not talk?
Can write but only chicken scratch?
To write it, find your pen attached.
It’s a bird. There’s no pen, but an owl hoots behind me and flies over the thicket of branches. I assume this means it’s safe to proceed. The depression in the bush sinks inward: I prepare my trudging legs for a thicket of owies and boo-boos. Shorts at Disney seemed like a good idea at the time, I think, stepping into my impression softly. The bush moves with me. Step for step. The thicket of ferns bent around my legs, serpentine, the boughs arching softly over my head. I am in it now, for sure. It feels like jumping into a pool for the first time all summer. A branch at my knee gives a tap, no thorns, and I press on.
The volume of the crowd grows, I can make out a grassy amphitheater in the ground beyond the hedges, ringed by campfires. I see it first, blurred by the imposing vegetation. Then the vegetation kindly moves itself out of the way.
Westbrook is standing next to a thin man at a wooden tap, refilling a worn wooden mug with what can only be described as beer. I’m not standing very close, but I can tell it smells delicious.
“We make it ourselves.”
What, beer?
“Well, this one. The Professor cooked it up when he was still in undergrad.”
I look out at the crowd. Or, down at it. They’re watching soccer. At this height the players look to be swimming pleasantly, dolphins through the water, chasing one another down. It all looks so fluid. A few thousand people, looking down, at what to the casual observer would seem like attrition.
“What was the answer to your riddle?” Brian has produced a mug similar to the thin man’s, and sips a foamy sip.
A bird, I say.
“Ah, a bird.” Brian grinned widely, revealing fruit borne of silent hope. “What a pleasant coincidence.”
Why, I ask. He hands me the beer. I take a sip. Fuck it’s good.
“Mine was an egg!” He claps my back and I can see the age on his face as he succumbs to a breathful laugh. He motions toward the playing field, and I see the thin man walking on a thatched stair, back to his seat somewhere in the sea of blue.
I yell out, what’s the score?!
He clears his throat. “Three – zero,” he says morosely. “But it’s only the first game of the season! Can’t lose em all, can ye boyo,” he lauds, spilling his beer liberally on the steps.
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EPISODE ZERO- UNDERNEATH THE WORLD
Drew gets to be the guy who says, “I’m going to Disney World,” all proud and scripted for the cameras. Truth be told, he wouldn’t budge an inch without this team behind him, so we’re all going to Disney World. Gibbs leaves me a voicemail, at about 4am, two days before we’re leaving:
“Hey, you putz, just letting you know you and I, (burps) we’re gonna cut to the fucking front of the Splash Mountain line for one entire day, because I’m a Super Bowl fucking winning fucking coach and you are, well, you’ll be with me. You know you can drink at the Be Our Guest Restaurant now? You can drink there. You will drink there, you lumbering polecat. Then we can order some fucking porn or whatever and watch half of it (burps), and then you leave your room and I get some princess, get it, they call the hookers princesses at Disney world.”
That’s where it ends. The happiest copyright protected place on Earth. And even though he probably only spoke two dozen times, the flight Drew chartered from Reagan to Orlando International feels empty and soulless without Westbrook. You know, empty and soulless in that perfect Disney way.
The airport gives us the velvet rope treatment. We don’t walk to the gate, they put a bus on the tarmac to take us right to the Magic Kingdom. Like we deserve something. Like we’ve earned it. The truth is, the only guy worth cosmically anything went awol about a week and a half ago, and everybody has their headphones on, ignoring it.
Pacman spends the whole two days we’re there next to the funnel cake stand about a dozen feet from the entrance. Kampman doesn’t even use his Huntsman’s suite, he just takes the firewood from the grate in his massive hands down to the parking lot to keep the tent he’s pitched with Kaylee warm, and to work on his kung fu. I ask him how that’s going.
“We got us a splinty situation. I splinter the wood, it splinters me.”
I chuckle, and force out a few more so I can walk away on that one. Pacman gives me a WOP WOP as I pass him spending the average American family’s income on fried dough. Abraham, Gibbs, MS Dos, AJ and Witten walk out of Space Mountain, pupils dilated, mumbling something about the intransigence of non-collective experience. I don’t mind that they’re high- I mind that they don’t acknowledge me.
Bently is leading a tour group, apparently the park layout is a perfect mirror image of Florence during the DiMedici era. And more than one ugly American is willing to follow a Super Bowl champion around and listen to a lecture they don’t care about and take pictures of a place they were prepared to think was plastic and machine washable.
Will Fork is predictably, I find out from Fabian, at Epcot center, walking back and forth through the countries of the world exhibit, eating his way back and forth. They didn’t let him on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Apparently, they were going to need a bigger boat.
Fabian looks well, the hairplugs have started to take hold. Apparently, they do make rainbow afro-style hair replacement therapy, for full-time clowns and fashion forward cornerbacks. “Tacky is the new chic,” he tells me, and I sigh. Merryman wanders by, handing out ice cream cones with Mickey Mouse outside of the Toy Story ride, a small brigade of ankle-biting kids in tow. They scream, Merryman screams, everybody fucking screams. I’m stewing now. Everyone else is having fun without me, while I’m here.
I find William Karlos Dansby sitting on a bench near the castle where everyone thinks Walt Disney is frozen. He’s not. He’s dead, and buried underground, like pretty much everyone else.
“You know, they built this to look taller than it actually is.”
I nod, and motion my turkey leg over to him, does he want a bite?
“No, I’m fine, thank you. Disney was supposed to live in an apartment near the top, but he died before it was finished. Before any of what he made was ever made real.”
I motion the turkey leg again. It’s good, I say, and might actually be as low fat as I think it is.
“There’s someone waving for you. He’s been waving for quite a while, you may not have noticed.”
It’s Westbrook, he’s standing in the greenery to the left of the castle. I leave the leg in Dansby’s lap, covered by a paper napkin, and walk. He keeps waving. I ask him how he got here.
“Tunnels, many tunnels.”
I say that doesn’t even begin to explain it.
“There are secret tunnels underneath every single inch of where you’re standing. Would you like to see them?”
I say of course.
“Wouldn’t you like to say goodbye?”
Who would miss me?
“Fair enough.”
He moves a hedge and reveals a ladder going down toward a bright light. We descend and reach a linoleum tile floor. Everything is an old hospital’s run down brown, a tribute to the sterile fun above. I ask where he’s been.
“Wednesday.”
I scoff. That doesn’t make any sense. Wednesday is a day. You know, of the week. You can only go to a place, so unless you’re going to start showing me a livable calendar, I’ll be going for another turkey leg.
“I apologize, I have been cryptic. Wednesday is a team, a football team. A real one. One that uses its feet. The head of my order founded the team in 1863, in Sheffield, in England, to assimilate with those who took benefit from his protection and vigilance. He is the Bothroyd, and his health fails. He may be physically strong enough to continue playing, but his spirit wanes, and I know not why.”
I nod, and pretend that I’m following all of this.
“I have come back to tell you he has requested you, and all of your virtues. He requires your presence most urgently, for something is rotten at the root of this world, and he and I and all others in our order lack the will, or more rightly, the time to pursue it. Will you take this responsibility, for a journey that will take you to unparalleled heights, to a realm foreign to your mind, one that may claim your sanity as well as your life?”
I wonder when we start.
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ISSUE 21- THE RADSKINS V BILLS- THE END OF SOME THINGS
I walk down to Gibbs office, through the locker room, our trademark sewn into the carpets. The Raddy Roger, as it were. I hear the soft sound of cake batter hitting a pan, and an educated voice say, “This looks, very nice.” Joe’s watching Alton Brown again.
I ask Joe if he’s seen Westbrook at all this week.
“Not a lick.”
I ask if Westbrook said anything about where he would be.
“Nope.”
I ask if there’s any way we can find out where he is, or where he might be, or where-
“Jaysus, you really know how to find a nerve, don’t you? He’s not here, he’s gone. We’re just gonna have to manage.”
I say this is not how I wanted to spend my Thursday.
“Well, you best think about it because this is exactly how,” he takes a belt of battery acid, “Guh- scuse, may have finally found my limit, but this is exactly where I planned on being today thank you very much.”
And he picks up the clicker and turns the volume all the way up. The small television rattles, the sound tinny and the picture distorted by the din.
Westbrook shows up on game-day. I don’t think anyone was really worried about him, not after last week. It was one of those moments, Brian walking through the locker room- that gives the hedonistic a call toward god. I watched Troy watch him glide through the changing room, Bugles fell and knives grew dull. Brees sits on a metal folding chair, Gaby in his lap, going through photos of disguised defenses. They pause and look up to a slight smile on Brian’s face, one that keeps more than it tells. He’s planning something.
After last week, we were all a bit shell shocked. Rad Field at Radskins Park was obliterated- the fires burned for two days, melted the seats, the goal posts, and the paint fumes kept the residents of Landover in their homes for a week- at least, those residents who didn’t want to really feel the air, man. I sent the grounds crew home- it was no use. We’d take care of it in the offseason. The practice facility was largely untouched, save a shadow of the Url-ach, the image burnt in soot on to the large plastic bubble in his final moment of fury and desolation- which houses our pristine, fake fields. Fabian even came to watch the team at its final walkthrough- he was wearing a neon-purple wig, with silver and gold sequins sewn into the false plastic hair. He looks better than he did, shrieking, terrified, without any strength.
The Super Bowl wasn’t that important to the team. Underneath Ford Field, in our locker room, commandeered from the Detroit Lie Downs, Abraham was still praying for the fires to cease, for their mighty embers to be quenched. Bently was on the phone with his accountant, snapping his fingers, demanding that the man find the largest loan possible against his sizable collateral, to rebuild the field out of his own pocket. Pacman closed his mouth, and listened to a blue ghost say its piece. Kampman and Kaylee were performing their duties as chat-room admins for a group of internet dwellers who were currently trying to set up their tents on the Appalachian trail. Dansby sat, sighing, marveling at the beauty of a community of individuals motivated to one single goal, and the tangibility of that goal. Something to hold onto, he sighs. And Troy, eating his chips, not a single blade on him. And Drew and Gaby, so in love, only one game keeping them from not leaving bed for at least a month.
Westbrook walks up to me.
“I will be departing soon.”
I hope not before the game, I joke half-heartedly.
“Of course not, I said I would see this team through until it’s end, this fellowship, for good or ill. For good, I think, this day.”
Who did you say it to, to whom did you promise stewardship, I say.
“Ah, now we are asking the right questions. After the game, we will have a talk, I think, and it will reveal much.”
He smiles, fully and without reserve. His face, beset by lines, shows age far beyond that of any moral. A knowledge, a force of will resides within. He has accounted for so much. But who accounts for him?
The team suits up in perfect silence- only the shuffle of pants shimmied on, thick with pads and athletic supporters, the rustle of plastic shoulder-guards, cleats on carpet, and the occasional glug-a-lug from a familiar silver flask. Gibbs walked to every player, and nodded, no drunken speech, no misdirection. Everyone knows their roles. As he walks up to Brees, Gaby leaves the locker room and blows a kiss to Drew. He catches it, hits himself in the cheeks, and throws his helmet on. The team follows suit, they look like a bunch of kids in full pads, still in the living room, about to play the Super Bowl in the front yard.
Gibbs speaks: “We’re done here, today boys. In about three hours, you all are gonna be the champions of football. You’ve fought one another, other teams, the embodiment of darkness and evil in the world. Nothing could stand in your way. Nothing ever could. You know what you want, you know who you are, you know what your goals are, and they’re right in front of your face. Now fucking take it.”
A cry of ‘TAKE IT’ wells up in the team. Purpose and direction are both found in the pyrotechnic tunnel, rigged out to the field. Westbrook waits behind his teammates, standing, swaying to the pop song of the moment, blared by the PA system to announce our entrance toward eternity.
I yell over the fracas, and the shower of sparks, saying by the way, I’ve gotta know, where were you all week?
He turns and puts his helmet on, leaning his head to the side and buckling his chinstrap. “Wednesday,” he says calmly, and runs with abandon through the smoke and sparks and din to the 50 yard line, for the coin toss. The notable members of the Buffalo Bills are there, such as they are, full of fear and tremors. They were devotees of the Url-ach, Brian tells me afterward, given grace and power at his protection. Now, they were exposed, lesser sons of a lesser god. Tom Brady, Rudi Johnson, Brian Dawkins- they declare they do not want a coin toss, as (false) tribute to our glorious victory over the poison of the NFL, we may choose what we may. Drew gives a sneer that would’ve sent a shiver down Troy’s spine. “We’ll kick it to you folks, sound okay?” And they tremble at our might, and walk back to their sideline, and deliver the foul news to their team.
Our victory is total- our force undeniable, and our execution swift. We give up ten points, seven of those in garbage time, after Gibbs is soaked through with a cooler of Gatorita (tequila and Gatorade), the only drink fitting his spirit and our victory. Drew threw four touchdowns- he only missed on five of his passes-two TD’s to Witten, one to AJ, and one to Michael Clayton, who left before the confetti dropped to make a court date in Lansing to defend an alleged car thief, who Clayton thoroughly believes was given the frame by a system that would assume a black man wearing a suit in a courthouse must be a defendant. I gotta say, I think he’s making the right call.
The dreams of our team, the life’s work of this group of men, realized, every backyard football thrown to oneself caught and dove into a pile of leaves for a touchdown realized. Drew’s coronation was swift after the game, the MVP crown put upon his brow barely glistening with sweat. Gaby waits patiently at his side, as he addresses the attendees and home-viewers.
“Good evening. I am moved to close, pardon the sophistication, because we have excised the world of a demon, and in the process have found that which would make us perfect,” I shift uncomfortably at this “whether it be serenity, a new processor,” MS Dos gives a hearty beep-boop, “a dependence, a friend, a companion. A realized life, one that is both within and without. Thank you all very much for coming on this short journey with us all, may you find yourself better for it. Winning was never the goal- improving was. The count of one’s vanquished enemies should not supplant the count of worthwhile friends, and I’ve got at least 51 of those, or 52 rather, right here, excuse me one momen-“
And Gaby leaps into his arms, and the confetti falls, and Abraham raises his hands toward the heavens, and Gibbs is crying, and Troy is dancing in a circle with AJ and Witten and Stallworth, and Pacman is putting whatever he can into his mouth, and Dansby puts his pen and paper down, and Kaylee and Kampman are showing one another their big muscles, and Dunta is for once, not scaring anyone, and Bently is throwing money to the poor outside the stadium, and FuMa is teaching the children of Detroit the dance of his people, and Schobel is holding his two children on each of his shoulders, and Merryman is dancing around a maypole, and MS Dos is printing colons and open parentheses in size 72 font on a dot matrix printer,, and Will Fork is sharing a hogie with a visibly stoned Longwell, and Tuba blaats and blaats and blaats and blaats and blaats and-
Westbrook is walking away, through the tunnel, past the locker room, into the parking structure.
“You can stop following me now.”
I ask where he’s going.
“Wednesday.”
I ask him, with a great deal of exasperation, how he plans to get to three days from now.
“It is a place. I must go.”
I ask a question all too familiar to this team: why?
“The head of my order resides there, and is beset by malady. He has requested my council after the defeat of Url-ach.”
I ask how he’s going to get there.
He smiles, and the age fades from his face. Light shines beyond his crown. This is a happiness from the beginning of time.
“Easy. You’re coming with me.”
The light gets stronger and stronger- I can’t hear the celebration anymore. I can’t even see down the tunnel. It’s just Westbrook, and wherever we’re going. I ask, well, how are we going to get there then.
“You are capable of much more than you have ever thought to do.”
RADSKINS 37 – 10 BILLS
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ISSUE 20- THE RADSKINS V SEAHAWKS- THE MARCH OF THE URL-ACH
Brian had a rough day. Not in the way you or I would have a rough day, where we would forget the dry cleaning, mix up the movie times, make something allergenic for someone. He spoke to the team before the game- with his voice, not projecting thought and emotion into our minds. That would be, as Westbrook put it- “a visceral reaction from the knowledge of one’s limited perspective.” And, as Troy put it- “too fucked up for real people.”
Anyway, here’s Brian to the team before the game:
“Good afternoon. Today we face a foe far greater than we have ever known. Pads and cleats will be no use against this monster of the ancient world. You know of whom I speak- The Url-ach, of Seattle. Dark have been my dreams of late, for he has haunted them, and in truth, projected the manner of our defeat into the very eye of my mind, and likely into all of yours.”
There was a murmur of agreement in the room. Bently saw a chandelier crashing- Troy, a Neil Young record in a Slayer sleeve- Kampman, a parking lot. I’ll spare you crushing boredom of listening to other people’s dreams, save to say that Drew didn’t have any.
“You didn’t?” Westbrook was concerned, but a hint of a smile could be found.
“Nope. Slept great since the win last week.”
Westbrook’s brow furrowed. “Hmmm, this may be the dark one’s fashion, the seeds of doubt planted within brothers in arms, to be sowed within one’s own. We must go with haste, and approach the field with cautions. We do not know yet what machinations the Url-ach has prepared for us.”
A note: Gibbs would usually stumble through the pre-game address, but he was too stifled by his dark vision to open his mouth. He blubbered to me on the sideline before the coin flip:
“Tarnations, I saw, well, I saw a whole mess o things, not a single one of them good, you hear me? I saw a margarita machine with no lever, just frozen cocktail spinning without dispensing. I saw cheerleaders sprout wings and become demons who plucked out Drew’s eyes. I saw shapeless footballs, only you know, I could tell they were footballs, I just knew it, and they were all stacking up around me, and I had to drink them, but every time I put a football between my lips, it burned and I jumped like a polecat.”
I asked what he did about it as I looked around. A dark specter had shown its malice. The Seahawks were leaving the tunnel.
“Stayed up all night and drank. Haven’t slept in three days, just been pacing around my office. You think we’ll sleep tonight?”
One way or another, I say.
The coin flip. A shrouded figure, a voice deep and melodious, as if it reached through time to an ancient NFL, one without media contracts.
“Tails.” Those in attendance began to imagine their deepest held fantasies realized, only if they were to go home and watch the game on T.V.
Westbrook boomed- “Fair citizens! Do not yield your wills so simply to this darkness! You are here! You are strong! You are-“
The Url-Ach spoke once more. “You are weak, Waltheim. And your struggle is hopeless.”
Seattle elects to receive. Westbrook walks toward our sideline. “A struggle is only rendered hopeless by those that give up arms!”
Gibbs takes a belt: “Remember when we just fucking played football?”
I say that I do.
The first quarter is one of attrition. Both sides seem awed by the potential of the two sages, or whatever they happen to be. I realize now that Westbrook has never filled out his age, or his attended college on any form. I realize now that there was a lot of paperwork I kind of glossed over.
Longwell misses a field goal. Lightning cracks and a voice cackles. Gibbs walks calmly over to Ryan.
“I saw, coach, I saw in my head, a big pile of green leaf on a trapdoor, and it fell into fire and smoke billowed, and then somehow Brooks wasn’t holding the ball anymore, it was just standing on its own on the ground, and I was scared so I kicked it like I do and it went not that good.”
“Are you high?”
Longwell shrugs, “Course I’m high. I’m scared of so much.”
Bollinger has left our sideline, and is whispering into the Url-ach’s ear. The elder smiles, and beckons for more secrets. Drew pleads with Brooks between series- Westbrook shrieks:
“NO! WE HAVE LOST BROOKS! He is truly gone. The enemy’s greatest weapon is treachery. He will use our friends against us, for he has none. Do not mourn Brooks though, for his fate will be our own if the Seahawks triumph.”
By the end of the first quarter, Drew has thrown two picks. One to the Url-ach, and one to a nameless minon, killed by his bannermen in a scrum for the glory of presenting the dark one with the ball. Url-ach laughed to see such sport.
Troy stood on the sideline and shook his head. “Fuck, man, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”
Westbrook walks up behind him. “Troy, there is no supposed way. There is only what is, and what is, for the moment, is desolation and shadow.”
Troy looked sternly out onto the field. Drew had just given up an interception, returned for a touchdown by Url-ach’s favored servant. The great voice shook the light stations-
“All Radskins, behold my might and despair. You need no master, yet you have one.”
He was looking right at me. Into me. The distance between us seemed to shrink. My body grew cold. My legs began to walk, I did not know how, but toward him. The dark one continued.
“I see him, and he is weak. His fleece zipped to his chin, food stains upon sleeves. A collection of failures, dreams and goals. This is who you adhere to. Think on this at halftime. A master who is proud to serve you, or a master you are proud to serve. Think upon this, at the hour of your greatest need, and think, Waltheim, about the fate you have chosen for these pawns of yours.”
The door closes. We are in the locker room. It is still, very still. The only noises heard are that of Westbrook’s muttering and theorizing to himself, and the slow rock of Gibbs chair. Drew gets up to speak.
“I see now, what you knew this entire season Brian. This is not a game for me, or Troy, or Bently, or Fabian, but for higher players. No, that isn’t right, but you know what I’m on about. You kept it from us, and that’s okay, otherwise, we would’ve been too scared or nervous to play the way we needed to. Because it’s play, even though there is darkness at our doorstep. I remember, my mom holding me during a hurricane, and asking what song I wanted to hear, and I fell out of the world, begging your pardon, because she sang, she sang so beautifully and it was for me and me alone. We have to keep playing, you see, to keep the darkness at bay. And even in the darkest most evil night, when I’m old and shriveled and on the floor with one of those life alert things, I’ll sit and whistle a tune, the one that I love most, because it’s all I could do, and that’s all right.”
There’s a silence, a thoughtful one. Gibbs has gotten out of his chair. Michael Clayton clicks his briefcase closed. Dansby scrawls out a line. Everyone waits for something to happen, but isn’t sure what would be right.
Troy takes a bag of Bugles, rips it open, and starts pouring it in his mouth. FuMa walks up next to him and rips it out of his hands. The Bugles move around the room in this manner, until dust and crumbs are all that’s left.
“BUGLES!” Troy shouts.
“BUGLES!” the team responds.
The second half begins. The rain pours. The Seahawks stand upon their sideline, daring us to receive the kick.
Troy bellows: “For the moment, mercy is a finite commodity. We play to keep the dawn in view.”
The storm thickens. The referees have long since abandoned this game. The teams play now under a set of rules determined by the men of old.
The kick goes to PACMAN. Brees takes the field, his Gaby huddled in a poncho, beneath an overhang, barely able to watch, listening to the yelps of those in the wake of the clash of Url-ach and Westbrook. The grass winds around Drew’s feet, shovel pass. The ball becomes a leaden block, handoff to West. Drew has begun to understand. The game may take his life. If it does not, it will shape his life and the world for those who still yern to live rad and free.
We face a fourth down within the opponents’ territory. Url-ach has martialed his forces at the vanguard. Brees forms an I, Westbrook at the back end. He speaks: “I am a master of the light of Tittle, a wielder of the sacred laces, the light that will shine in the dark is any light at all.”
Westbrook gleams, bright and beautiful, and is brought down after a gain of three. We’ve converted. The tide has begun to turn. Brees finds Witten in the flat and he takes it for 6. Longwell misses the field goal, his dream unrealized with a blunt rolled on the trainers’ table.
Gibbs addresses the team on the sidelines, sobered by the severity of the stakes.
“I have been, well, so much shit to you all these past few months. I’ve gotta be better. You all are just fine. Now get out there and send that son of a bitch back to Canada or whatever the hell he crawled out of.”
Message received. Before the kickoff, Dunta begins to yell. “YES! YES! YES!” The ball is in the air. “YES YES YES!” The sniveling servant of Url-ach takes it forward. “YESYESYESYESYES!” Dunta launches himself toward his opponent- the ballcarrier splits into a cloud of vapor, and Fabian picks up the ball underneath the dematerialized form. He moisturizes, and takes it to the house. Longwell converts. Fabian goes to the Seahawks sideline, a flaming gulch all that separates him from the darkness. “Ya’ll ain’t got nothing on this fab bit-“
Westbrook jolts his material over to the other side of the field. He screams, “FABIAN NO!” in vain, for the Dark one has already begun, rising through the flame, a menace, a firey whip extends from his hip and strikes Fabian’s crown. His helmet melts away, then his hair. Westbrook screams, “FOOL OF A CORNERBACK! Do not speak to such a monster! Your words are nothing but ammunition to such black intentions.”
The training staff just got back to me. They say Fabian suffered severe neurological trauma, like the victim of successive lightning strikes. He’ll never feel temperature or pain again. He’ll be out, they say, about 11 weeks. I want to ram the phone down their greedy little gullets.
It’s 13-13. “The hour of poor luck,” Abraham mutters. Brees comes over and pats him on the back. “It’s just us, we’re it. The cavalry ain’t coming, and if they are, they’re gonna be late, so act like you’re them, alright?”
The fire bulges, Url-ach’s might seems to have peaked. Westbrook gathers the defense before him. “He now makes a show of strength to conceal his true weakness. For all of the enemy’s wisdom, he could never see us truly competing with his might. We must act quickly to destroy what petty malice he has in store.”
And just like that, Merryman jumps a route, comes up with a pick. The crowd, those without fear, begin to beat their chests and raise their fists. The dark flame grows higher, and Daunte Bellpepper is thrown into the gulch, where the Url-ach has sent so many incapable servants to their untimely ends.
The next drive progresses slowly. The two great forces can see the end game now, and are the principle actors. Westbrook is ripping off 10 yard gains, and the Url-ach is tackling with the force of an unruly river, unbound by its banks, rushing down, down.
We are upon the doorstep. Westbrook has caught a pass from Brees in the flat and tiptoed quietly to the one. The Url-ach fumes. Gibbs stands on the sideline, smoking his pipe: “You know, never quite seen a fourth quarter like this,” as the field falls into crevasses and sinkholes. “It’ll be a long time before they stop showing this on Sportscenter.” I look around. The cameras are gone-the employees of the local CBS affiliate are not known for their bravery. Gibbs sees me looking.
“I guess this is really just for ourselves, isn’t it? Hell, if I had known that I wouldn’t have tried to-“
And then he stops. Our die is cast. Drew receives the snap, and goes headlong into the endzone. Url-ach screams with rage, his fires incinerate the rest of his team. He knows he is defeated, by the simplest of maneuvers, the one unforeseen. Url-ach slinks into the tunnel, and never troubles the Radskins again, for the rest of their days.
I ask Westbrook to take a walk with me, because I don’t know what the fuck to think anymore. Is this a game anymore, or were we always going to confront some harsh doom, stripping us of our idleness. I’m sure I put it a lot less pretty.
“The hour of the Radskins is at hand, for nigh but one can oppose us now. The Url-ach struck heavy and hard, but clumsily, for he did not expect our wills’ so stout and our hearts so true. We have defeated this darkness, yes, through trickery and through darkness’ own inevitable ineptitude. Darkness gathers, as it has always done, in unlooked for corners and quiet secrets. We have bested a foe, as great as any we have ever known. But we cannot expect our final opponent to succumb quite so easily.”
I ask him what he means by that.
“Fear not, noble leader. We may celebrate today for we do not know if we mourn tomorrow.”
RADSKINS 27 – SEAHAWKS 13
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ISSUE 19- RADSKINS V DETROIT LIE DOWNS
As a team of free men, they will live forever, or die by suicide. And maybe, even then, after plunging off the edge of the Key Bridge to the bottom of a brown, frosty Potomac river, the pit of Lazarus would open beneath their fall, sending them back to where they belong.
I’m sorry for the high-brow intro, Westbrook is hanging out in my office. I’ve never seen him in street clothes before. Though it might be a stretch to call an all-linen outfit “street-clothes”. It looks roomy and comfy, and possibly attractive to members of the opposite/same sex, but it’s the middle of January and he’s not feeling temperature, or much of anything. He ran for 227 yards, you’d think he’d been turned into 5’9” of lumps, but he seems fine, even declined ice at the trainers table. As he put it, “Ice is for Longwell’s bong, Gibbs drinks, and for the moons of what your people call Saturn.”
Anyway, the reason Westbrook is in my office is that we have a few things to go over, concerning his astral feelings about this game. Apparently, Michael Vick, Lions QB and reigning NFL MVP is a dark mage, whatever that means. Well, I’ll hand it over to Westbrook in a little while so he can actually tell you something of substance about what that might mean, but for now, let’s stick to the game.
We started out with a long drive, mostly runs, ended with a TD in the flat to Matt Schobel, stay at home dad. 7-0. Forced a lions three and out. Brees audibles to put Westbrook on the outside, running an inside short slant pattern- Brees is picked off when the middle linebacker covering sprouts giant branches from the ends of his hands. This is what originally alerted Westbrook to what he calls “the old devilry”. We got the ball back, a fumble from the oaky defender’s stiff boughs. But the same thing happened three plays later, and Westbrook’s prodigious ability finally came into play. We were backed up at our half yard line, and West takes command of the huddle.
“We’re going to run corner posts, Drew.”
“Not to question your judgment, but shouldn’t we run the ball up the middle, maybe clear some space for a punt.”
And then Westbrook gets this grin, a grinchy one, almost too big for his face, and he points at Tim Dwight, astral projection, and says, as deliberately as he could- “No. Throw it to Tim.”
Tim runs his corner flag route, and begins to blur in and out of the visual spectrum, Drew throws a forty yard lob, Dwight’s right under it, fully corporeal with what appears to be an infinite number of knees and ankles shooting downward off of two thick legs. 14-0. We did not look back. The game ended 56-0. Pacman had two picks. Drew threw for six touchdowns. William Karlos Dansby, on his second sack of the day: “The approach of danger is a subtle thing- if you seek danger, you do not know where to look, for danger abounds. But if you are the danger, you may approach in any way of your choosing, provided that approach does not lessen your quality. Danger is both held and given.”
Pacman was a bit more succinct after his interceptions, providing the press pool with a quick, “WOP WOP WOP WOP,” before retiring to his locker to enjoy his postgame meal of four ghosts.
We’re through the divisional round now. Two more games left. Not much time now. I feel like a hangnail. I write this, and Westbrook nods, wraithlike, in the corner. Maybe I had something to do here once, but the groceries have been out of the bag for some time now.
We’re all proud of Drew, though. He played like a conquering hero today, not letting up, stepping on throats, wiping the sweat from underneath his raised helm. Gibbs wanted to give the game ball to West, but thought better of it at the bottom of his bottle, remembering the adversarial relationship Westbrook seems to have with any kind of material success. By the end of the game, Gibbs was passed out, his lit corncob pipe precariously close to his straw hat, blowing bubbles. Forever, blowing bubbles. Or burping bubbles. Blowing connotes agency. Bubbles were leaving Gibbs at some weird rate.
So Drew takes the game ball, and nods, and holds it near the roof and all crowd around and raise their hands to the sky and no one says anything, perfect and ego-less, and then Troy starts screaming and everyone starts screaming and jumping and I realize I am crouched in a corner. And I think about everyone who isn’t here, laptops on their stomachs, filling out personality quizzes to find out what character they would be on their show of the moment and how far that is from actually doing anything at all and how strange it is to be able to be or do anything at all and I think now is as good a time as any to hand it over to Westbrook.
Hello, friends. I am glad you can read this, in whatever form, wherever or whenever you may be. If it is upon the surface of the Earth, the Sun has yet to expand into the Kuiper belt as the eventual consequence of its solar life cycle. If you are reading this from Myplixcek-13, welcome home. The Dark Mage Michael Vick entered the Radskins dominion today- a potentially disastrous event that was averted by the actions of Drew, myself, Pacman and the great poet at outside linebacker. It behooves me to mention that I am not a mage, I am a force, or a will as you would conventionally understand it. Though we may both seem supernatural to untrained eyes, our ways could not be less similar. A mage is a crude manipulator of the natural world, to create the appearance of power, terror, and doubt. His tree-handed stunt was no doubt accomplished with a balm of elfas leaf, human blood, and an incantation. It is highly unnatural and betrays the fundamental order of the world as it is and, likely, as it should be. If he was not defeated upon the field today, his power would have grown, and undoubtedly would’ve gone unchecked by the NFL. For my part, I only used my prodigious will to syphon the force of his spells as soon as I knew they were happening. And if I took on some additional strength as a result of this syphon, well, it would be difficult to determine precisely how that happened, wouldn’t it?
He gave me the laptop back with a mischievous smile, one that showed many teeth. I asked him where he was going after this, he said Somewhere Else, and walked to the elevator. I did not hear him press a button, I did not hear the familiar ding of a floor being reached. He was gone.
RADSKINS 56 – 0 LIONS
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ISSUE 18- RADSKINS @ PHILADELPHIA TURKEYS
Even at our worst, we’re still better than the rest. Yes, I am talking to you. Despite my ennui, my lack of joy di vivre, the fire in my belly going from napalm to puppy dog eyes, we took the Philadelphia Turkeys to task. I think they had about 80 yards of offense. I really wouldn’t know, I wasn’t keeping track, I spent most of the game in a Jacuzzi in the back of a pickup truck that Kampman had rigged up. Apparently it took the exhaust of the running car, and after sealing the flatbed with some trashbags and duct taping the hose securely through a hole in the bag, we were golden. It got pretty giggly, what with the fumes and all, but Kampman was passing around the Milwaukee’s Best, Will Fork had the fettuccini alfredo and Troy kept exclaiming, “So, this isn’t real blood pudding,” whenever Gaby or Drew walked by, the two of them looking for snow drifts to sneak into.
Okay, this might be a little confusing. Let me back up: we sealed home-field advantage in the playoffs with the win last week. So Gibbs got a little sauced up, and in between coituses (he’s behind me right now, and would like me to note that Debbie “came like the mail.”) and trips to the mini-fridge, he reorganized the depth chart to accommodate a less-utilized segment of our team (Gibbs would like to note that the only difference between Debbie and the mail is that she comes much more frequently than once a day).
At QB, we played wanna-be villain Brooks Bollinger, who was barely able to feign teen angst over his excitement. He’s never taken a quality NFL snap before. The WR depth was turned over as well. Tim Dwight was at the 1- as a projection of a superior mind, Gibbs thought (and I agreed) that it was much less likely for him to be hurt, unless the Turkeys had some sort of dark sorcerer or ring of power in their employ. They did not, thankfully. The Three amigos (AJ, Stallworth and Witten) were able to spend most of their day on the sidelines. Michael Clayton spent his afternoon double billing- he was on the phone with one client and doing research for another on his Lenovo ThinkPad, a make and model he was adamant I record as it is “of the highest quality and soundest design” (Gibbs would like me to mention that this is precisely how he would describe Debbie’s luscious bosoms). Westbrook got the day off as well, and gave his starting spot to a 18 year old kid with debilitating autism, who is only able to say his own name, Mike Anderson. Clearly West is a good judge of talent, because that kid ripped off 80 yards on 20 carries. Every yard with a smile.
Pacman got the start at top corner, to which he replied “Wappa-Wappa-Wappa”, which did not mean much, as it is how he responds to any sort of stimulus. Abraham graciously ceded his spot to his backup, as did Kampman. The only defensive starter in her regular role was Kaylee, who wanted to “snap some motherfucking dick off”, as she put it in the locker room before the game’s start. And she did, she took down Jason Campbell’s soup in the endzone for a safety to make it 2-0. Which was all we would need. I’m serious. Our scrubs shut out a professional football team.
Which brings us right back to the hot tub. Or whatever you would call a warm pool of water set up in the back of a beet-red, broken down Toyota Tacoma.
“This is my Jacuzzi-mobile,” Kampman announces. He takes it on trips when he wants to relax more than survive.
Bently sees the car on the sideline, and after scoffing at its highly meddlesome presence, he sees bubbles welling up.
“I do say, this is most unorthodox.”
Gibbs rips off his headset, and the linen suit he wears to any game regardless of temperature (it’s snowing). He would be fined for indecent exposure if anyone was actually at the game.
“CANNONBALL” he yells, taking a belt of silver polish and slamming into the wheel well. Mistimed his jump, for sure. He’s naked, a bit woozy, and wandering onto the fifteen to make a snow angel- the refs sigh and chalk it all up to some kind of flawed coping mechanism. Who knows.
Gibbs tells Tuba to suit up at QB. Bollinger seethes. He’s thrown his first NFL touchdown, might be his last. I can’t sympathize. He at least made it into the game. If you’re gonna complain, your complaints shouldn’t make you sound like a piece of shit.
Tuba goes 2 of 7 with a pick, Gibbs cackles and glares at Brooks the whole time. He’s enjoying Brooks suffering. I’m scanning the sideline, craning my neck out of the steamed, vaporous Gerry-rig, looking for Westbrook. I can’t see him, he might not be there, but there’s some air vibrating very quickly around the ten yard line. It might be the fumes, or it might be the fact that I’m about six beers deep, but I swear he’s there, and he’s watching us, and I hope he’s so happy. Because we are, in all of our stupidity and pettiness. Watching Tuba try to throw is like watching a dog drive a car. You’re sure he’s sitting on someone’s lap, and there’s no way paws can turn the wheel, but you watch the brake-light go on and you think just maybe his feet touch the pedals.
Anyway, so I’m toweling off in Gibbs office now, and I think I’ve had enough pure oxygen to effectively cut the moderate carbon monoxide poisoning masquerading as a pretty stellar high, and he’s passed out on the couch like usual, with what can only be described as a billowing erection (he crushed up four Cialis and put it in his flask before the game, apparently he was expecting a call from Debbie). And I can’t stop thinking about how we can’t stop winning, and despite how good that feels- if everyone is replaceable, then who the fuck is important?
RADSKINS 9 – 0 PHILADELPHIA TURKEYS
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ISSUE 17- RADSKINS V NEW YORK HUGEMEN
I’m starting to think this whole thing was a mistake, I tell Gibbs after the win.
“What whole thing, what mistake? You ain’t going yellow on us before the playoffs, are ya?”
No, I’m not going yellow, not that it would matter at all. You know I just watch the games, I ask, right?
Gibbs takes a belt of shark-cartilage infused whiskey-beer and chuckles.
“Who gives a shit. People think you matter, then you matter. Better start acting like it though, otherwise people are going to start asking questions. Like if you’re pinko. Or one of those queer-mos.”
I say that there’s nothing wrong or different about being a queer-mo.
“No, I know, I know that, but if someone thinks of you that way, and thinks less of you because of it, you either gotta convince that sumbitch it ain’t true or that you’re better than every fucking queermo he ever thought he seen.”
I sigh, and ask what’s with the fancy cocktail.
“Oh this right here? Read in the back of a Field and Stream mag that shark cartilage can help, you know, a man’s downstairs get all vigorous, if you know what I mean.”
I ask what he needs a vigorous man-basement for.
“Hell, you think Drew’s the only one with needs.”
Who is the unlucky lady, I say in however the hell passes for wry these days.
Gibbs chuckles. “A lounge singer. Debbie. Met her two vermouth martinis deep, she gave me a dance five in, and let me neck her in between sets.”
I ask what the hell necking is.
“You know, you like a girl, you take her into the corner, and you rub your necks together. Don’t they teach you anything in school?”
I say they taught me how to put on a condom.
“THEY TEACH THAT?! Took me three tours in Korea and nine venereal diseases to finally put one together.”
I laugh and zip up my fleece to just under the chin and walk back up to my office, in the suite, in the owner’s level. The last website I have open: a New York Knicks blog. I ask myself this time- do I really want to be doing this? A glorified office manager of a football team that could win whether I’m alive or dead?
Westbrook ran for 161 yards. More than anything else, I think he decides to do that, to go off, to transcend. He was ripping off 8-10 yard carries, and then went off tackle for 74. Was touched once, by Sam Shields, an opposing corner back nursing a sprained knee. That sprain must’ve healed up quick because he picked off Drew twice. We’re at home, so Gaby was practically in tears. She doesn’t like seeing Drew down, and she certainly doesn’t like seeing him ignore a corner in a flat zone underneath a seven yard out cut. She walks up to him and hugs him. He goes for the kiss and she says, “No, not yet, not until you stop trying to act like a hero.”
Acting like a hero. Huh.
Fabian undercut a flat route for the first score of the game. He runs, his hair shimmers in the wind, and the dumpster fire that is the New York Hugemen quarterback. Taking a page out of Troy’s book, he yells during the return, “Don’t hate me cause I’m beautiful! Hate me because I’m really fucking beautiful.”
Longwell missed another field goal. To console himself, he brought a cinnamon Danish in his hand warmer. “Dude, it can be a Danish warmer too,” he says to no one in particular. Tuba blurts out an affirmative response. Speaking of Tuba: he finally got that fake he wanted, on fourth down. We run PACMAN on a slant, Tuba loads it into the bowels of his own machinations, and lets out a furious blaaaatttt right into PACMAN’S enormous gob. We convert, Drew throws to AJ for the second TD of the day for both of them, the game is sealed at 34-10.
So now we’re back at my computer. And clicking through links idly, checking emails that I can never remember to respond to anyway. Full of platitudes. I think about Troy, when he was still making death threats, and Gibbs that one week he actually tried to be sober and didn’t like it. It is very easy to try and be something, it is much more difficult to be something. I could throw myself into this work, and maybe we win the Super Bowl (if any corporate partners are reading this, pretend I said the BIG GAME) and maybe we don’t and if I spend the next four weeks getting high and jacking off and sleeping until three pm maybe we win and maybe we don’t. I want to go where the heroes are.
I wake up in my office, hearing the sound of a couch rammed into a wall, and two people in an asthmatic screaming match. Gibbs must’ve done pretty well with that cartilage. I think about going down and telling them I’m busy, and that this is, despite all outward appearances, a working office, not a cabana. But I stop, and think how would I feel. And I walk to the elevator, the doors close, and I can’t hear them anymore, though I’m sure they haven’t stopped. And I walk out of the stadium and unlock my car with an actual, physical, honest to goodness key, and sit and just breathe. It’s okay, I think, to succeed and to be unsure of what should follow success.
Westbrook came up to my office after the game with a very wide smile. I don’t have to ask what’s on his mind- he projects the thought and the feeling into mine.
“A pool reporter told me I was selected for the Pro Bowl. My earth-mother has wanted to go to Hawaii since I can remember. I will charter a boat, and we will go together.”
And I think, what about the vapidity of recognition? What about striving for something greater? What about being unburdened by the constraints of men?
“You can strive, but if you pass up momentary happiness at the thought of a weakened resolve, your humanity will suffer greatly. I would like to see Drew in Hawaii though.”
Why, I actually say out loud. Westbrook laughs, and speaks.
“I have grown accustomed to his pace. It is yielding for friend, unyielding for foe.”
RADSKINS 34 – 10 NEW YORK HUGEMEN
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ISSUE 16- RADSKINS V COW'S BOYS
We clinched a playoff spot last week, and as soon as the collective hangover wore off (about twelve hours before gametime), we started acting like it. Troy started playing mumblypig during film sessions, Longwell and Tuba went off to the back corner of the facility and came back smelling like “cool” “8th” “graders”, Will Fork ate at the line of scrimmage during our walkthrough. Drew even showed up to the practice field at 7:15, fifteen minutes after the facility opened. He was limping on both legs, I asked him what was up.
“A lot of rugburn,” he said, not meeting my gaze, blushing, and generally smug.
All of this was pretty disconcerting. We’re playing the Cowboys this week. You know, the only team we’ve ever lost to. Captained by Rex “Gross”Man. Terrible nickname, decent quarterback. I corner Gibbs in the locker room, and ask about the waning discipline. He’s pretty wasted.
“Nobody’s whining in here, you got it all mixed-mash.”
I say, a little louder, that maybe we should start instituting some punitive measures.
“Sure thing, age before beauty, Elephant Man.”
I ask him what the hell he thinks that means.
“I get to go twice.”
Sunday hits. No one gets to the stadium for the walkthrough. I mean, Brees is there working on ten yard outs with Gaby, but he’s pretty unconcerned. I ask him what his last semester of college was like.
“You know, I was a bit bad. I, well, I don’t think I should be saying this in front of Gaby…”
Gaby, who has just been executing perfect toe drags at the thirty-five, flips the ball back to Drew.
“No honey, please, I want to hear about your tough guy stuff.”
Drew blushes some more. “I started masturbating twice a day.”
Gaby’s jaw drops. “It’s the most I’ve ever done it,” he says.
The cheerleader rips the collar of her Radskins warmup fleece to her shoulder, revealing a hot pink bra-strap. “We’ve gotta get those numbers up, kid.”
And then they both run into the locker room. I do not follow them.
The game starts. Longwell’s uniform is on backward as he jogs to the coin flip. Gibbs is in a beach chair, asleep, a straw hat over his eyes and a boombox blaring a bootleg Dizzy Gillespe show. We win the toss and Longwell yells “KICK!” We deferred. We never fucking defer.
The Cowboys take us all the way down the field. Troy gets flagged for pass interference in the endzone, beat for a touchdown. Probably because there’s no flag for showing Dennis Northcut pictures of his mother’s grave being robbed in the night.
I run down to the field, and ask Troy what that was about. I thought he changed, I say, for the better, and for good.
“Yeah, it happened after the first loss. I took the pictures down to a 60 minute photo place on L’Enfant, and honestly, I forgot about them until I got about a dozen messages from the manager on my answering machine, you know, about how his employees were having nervous breakdowns and vomiting on their shifts, so I felt like I had to pick them up, and once I did, how was I going to not show them?”
He’s got a point in a roundabout way. At least he’s not necromancing.
Next drive, we pick up three quarterback sacks, one by Kampman (greeted with a hearty ass slap from Kaylee), and two by Will Fork (greeted with a hearty helping of beef stroganoff, from a bejeweled crockpot Bently keeps on the sideline for just such an occasion).
We drive, Westbrook runs in for six, but Longwell forgets the snap count. Or forgets what a snap count is. He yells at Bently, “Just, like, throw it already!”
He makes the kick but runs to the wrong sideline. Things are not going well. I call down to Gibbs, who is still lying in the chair and looks awake, but he doesn’t pick up. I walk down from the box, and find that he has painted his eyelids to appear open. I ask who’s been calling the plays. William Karlos Dansby comes forward.
“Myself on the defensive end. And our captain, our captain Drew on offense.”
What about special teams, I ask.
“Tuba and Longwell, I am loathe to report.”
Why are you loathe, why would you be loathe?
“Because they are currently getting high in the trainer’s whirlpool with Brooks Bollinger.”
I can’t fucking stand this. I rip the headset from underneath Gibbs’ straw hat- he doesn’t even roll over. There are frozen margarita stains in his week of untrimmed stubble, blue on top of red on top of green on top of white.
We’re gonna make it through this game, and then I don’t know what is going to happen, I say to the entire sideline. I can’t stand this anymore. Does anyone think this is the way a team should function, with everyone acting a part, apart from everyone else? They’re all silent. We get a delay of game call for not running the kicking unit out there. I stamp my feet and wag my fingers and say all the right things, and we get the ball back.
Westbrook, in some misguided effort to appear human, fumbles. Bently recovers and comments on the unseemly nature of the bottom of a pile. Then Brees throws a pick, the corner undercuts the route of a sleepy Andre Johnson (who had been up until 5am with Witten and Stallworth, watching Mary Kate and Ashley mysteries), but Johnson forces a fumble, picked up by Tim Dwight, astral projection. I thank Westbrook, and then send the kicking unit out there. Longwell misses a 52 yarder, wide right. I ask him what happened.
“I’m either too high, or not high enough.”
I ask him to figure it out quick. The Cowboys make a field goal and take the lead, 10-7. Brees calls a flag pattern to Stallworth, who takes a 74 yard touchdown pass and immediately takes a nap in the back of the endzone. He is flagged for excessive celebration, and delay of game. Longwell kicks it out of bounds on the kickoff, putting us at the 40.
“I think I’m too not high enough,” he says. I almost believe him, until we have to burn our first time out 20 seconds into the first half, when Tuba starts yelling, “We’re gonna fake it! We’re gonna fake it!” on a real, not fake punt. I am now regretting my decision to hand Longwell the lighter I keep in my office for just such an occasion.
Westbrook runs in for a 74 yard score. It was a designed slam-right, through the two gap, but it was busted. It looked like a cutback left, but I couldn’t help notice Fu’Ma floating swiftly off tackle. Maybe Westbrook hates hijinks too.
Longwell kicks it out of bounds again, this time with a bag of Cheetos in his left hand. At this point, he’s so stoned he can’t communicate, only to sit down on the bench, stare at the back of my head until I look around, and then shove Cheetos down his throat and subtly lick the orange dust off his guilty fingers.
The game ends when William Karlos Dansby picks off a “Gross”Man pass into the flat with two minutes left. I thank Dansby for his contribution. He says:
“I fly from place to place, but am never really moving, for ceaseless flying is stillness, and a lack of motion is pristine.”
I say I know the feeling.
RADSKINS 24 – 10 COWBOYS
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ISSUE 15 - RADSKINS AT ARIZONA SHARTINALS
Drew threw an interception on his first pass of the game. It was a post route to Stallworth, who was too busy giggling at a joke Witten made in the huddle about a boomerang that doesn’t work. It’s a stick. Stallworth doesn’t break off the line fast enough, and the free safety in under-robber coverage jumps in front of it and brings it back 30 yards. Then we were cooking soup. Barnett has two sacks. They punt. Play action pass- fake to Westbrook, who then projects the image of the ball in his hands into the mind of every defender, they jump, Andre Johnson is in single coverage, Brees throws it 80 over the top for a TD.
It’s harder to celebrate properly than one would initially think. The whole team is milling about in the locker room, everybody talks about wanting to do something, but no one has any ideas. Kampman suggests a night under the stars on the field, Kaylee’s the only one polite enough to respond with a “Honey, it gets very cold in Pheonix at night, we’re in the desert. And your sleeping bag is only rated to 32 degrees farenheit.” Brooks sneers: “How do you know what his sleeping bag is rated to?”
Kaylee glares. “Because we were inside it while he was inside me. You got a problem?”
I would think her rude if it didn’t seem like the only way a woman could make herself bulletproof. Also: Kampman had four sacks in the game, so I’m pretty sure he’s getting a vicious, sloppy blowie as I write this. But we’ll get to that.
Gaby wanders into the locker room, Drew nearly does a backflip. They hug, “tight as a mole’s eyelids” according to Gibbs, and begin making out with a fervor usually only reserved for advancing soldiers. Gaby’s thrusting her hips into him, and he’s reaching for her ample bosoms. Bently is the only one with enough decorum to cough gently while Gaby climbs Drew’s pad shelf.
“Oh, uh, hey everyone,” she smiles meekly, blushing, patting Drew’s midsection tentatively. I’ve never seen Drew so happy to be wearing a cup. “I finished my exams and found a few extra bucks at the bottom of my bank account so I figured I’d come by, and, uh-“
“You don’t have to say a word to them, just say anything to me.” Drew starts kissing her again. Hard.
“DEREW!” She pushes him away, Drew stumbles back into a laundry cart.
She’s the center of attention now. “I uh, well, Drew, and I guess everyone, I was going to take Drew down to his favorite place-“ a collective gasp, everyone knows where this is headed, “Senor Frogs in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and I guess I was wondering if you all wanted to come.”
Chaos. Screams. Multiple sets of three hundred pound men hugging each other and pointing to the heavens. Brooks Bollinger even smirks a little bit before he sulks into the training room. Apparently there’s a whirlpool and a bottle of Belvedere with his name on it. Everybody else runs onto the team bus.
To the airport, the driver asks. Troy is first on: “Cabo. And step on it.”
Everyone’s cheering and laughing, Gibbs is passing around the nuclear-waste-of-the-week, a Gatorade bottle filled with brown-green liquid. He says its leprechaun vomit, and that it was left in his bathtub after the “bastard wouldn’t cop to the gold”, but more than likely it’s Long Island Iced Tea, with a great deal of emphasis on whatever hooch Gibbs can make in his hotel bathroom the night before.
Everyone’s singing: ‘THE PLAYERS ON THE BUS GET DRUNK, DRUNK DRUNK. DRUNK DRUNK DRUNK. DRUNK DRUNK DRUNK.’
And then we’re there. Gaby and Drew step off, Gaby in her sun dress, Drew in a blazer and the Shins t-shirt he wore to the stadium. They take a step, look into each other’s eyes, and sigh. Troy is right behind them.
“If you wouldn’t mind moving, I would really appreciate that.” Drew hears Troy and does a double take.
“Troy, I wasn’t sure if that was you there, sorry.” Gaby lets him through and the rest of the team cascades out of the bus, angling over each other, running over fake-worn brick work to get well-earned frozen margaritas in well-earned plastic tubes.
Troy turns around and apologizes over the din, walking backward. “It’s okay, I’ve got you covered,” he says and shoots double finger-guns. And he’s right. After Drew’s pick, he walked up to Drew, grabbed his helmet and let loose a primal scream right into Drew’s open mouth. Then he was penalized for a facemask on his first tackle attempt. Then he jumped a route in the flat and ran out of bounds. Gibbs asked him why he didn’t pull a knife and run for six. He said: “I want to do good, for as long as I am able.” He jumped another route in the 4th quarter and took it in for six. Somebody threw him a bag of Bugles and he caught them in his mouth.
Bently is at the center of the dancefloor, giggling and doing a can-opener, unrestrained by his top hat, white feather and tails. AJ, Stallworth and Witten are the celebrity DJ’s, they’re arguing about which Aaron Carter song to play before they settle on Aaron’s party for the fifth time in a row. Fumatu Ma’ah Fa’la is trying to teach some dismayed co-eds the finer points of traditional Samoan dance. They look like they could eat their strapless dresses.
I look out toward the fake boardwalk, on the real water. Troy is bringing two frozen margaritas out to Kampman and Kaylee, with a third balanced at his chest on top of the two in his hands. Drew and Gaby are on the boardwalk, making bets just how far Westbrook is going to walk on the surface of the water, and something about wandering through the center of the moon. Westbrook ran for 150 yards on 27 carries, I’d say he’s earned the right to take a walk once in a while. Troy sees Westbrook walking out, and in concern he lunges a bit, the top drink slides and sputters and falls on the ground right in front of Kampman and Kaylee, who are shocked and mute in apology.
Troy hands their drinks, goes to his knees and mimes licking the frozen alcohol between the cracks. He’s laughing at himself, and waves the two outdoor-lovers off. He’s going back in to get one more. I turn out and watch Westbrook get smaller in silhouette. Troy’s back with a drink, and telling a joke about something brown and sticky. It’s a stick. Nice guys only finish last if you step on them to get to where you think you deserve to be.
The barkeep hears we’re at the Frogs. Cabo sends its Bugles to the awesome and undeniable singularity that is us, our alloy wills.
RADSKINS 56- ARIZONA SHARTINALS 7
#the radskins#nfl#fiction#kanye#kanye west#graduation#cabo san lucas#senor frogs#junior frogs#moneybags
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ISSUE 14- RADSKINS AT ST LOUIS HAMS
I catch Troy at his locker after the game. He’s eating Bugles. They seem tame for him. I watched my mother eat Bugles. I ask him what’s up with the Bugles.
“I like Bugles.”
No, that’s apparent, I say, as he throws a handful into his mouth, his hands careful not to touch his lips.
“They don’t put broken glass and razor wire in a bag.”
Another good reason, I say turning away.
“Hey, wait.”
I turn back, and Troy says, smiling, not sneering, “They look like talons, I guess.” No wonder. Something that kills.
Normally you can’t point to one pure ending of anything at all. Things fizzle, they stop and stutter, and then there’s whatever happened to Gibbs’ sobriety. We went for it on a fourth and one inside of our own 25. In the first half. I storm down to the halftime talk, and Gibbs takes a belt. His flask has EGGNOG written in all caps in beginning-to-run sharpie on the outside of brushed steel.
“Kinda looks like an asshole playing a video game, huh?”
I ask, as politely as I can, what he means by this.
“You think you own this?! You think you own any of this?! You’re barely a fly on the wall.”
I tell him you put the team together.
“Well, thanks God, you think you could bring my dead friends back to life? I’ve only got two mates left, and one just went through chemo this morning. Speaking of, you wanna undo Nagisaki for me? Hiroshima, sure, but let’s not go overboard.”
Gibbs takes one more belt, and vomits onto Brooks Bollinger’s pristine uniform.
“Looks like you’re not gonna make it into this one ehy Brooksy.” Gibbs burps, and wipes his arm against his cracking lips, and on Brooks’ shoulderpad. And Bollinger just stands there, looking like his dog just ran away again. The dog knows it’s going to be fed from the table if it comes back.
Fabian left the game for a while. He got some hair ripped out on a kickoff return, and came screaming back to the sidelines. I got a frantic call from the trainer. No one in our booth has hair extensions either, so please Fabian, get back on the field.
“YOU BITCH!”
I ask him politely to never use that word again when he’s talking to me, a woman, or if possible, anyone at all.
“This simply WILL NOT do.”
But then I watch him put down the phone from my box, and see Troy wander over, and make some sort of hand-motion compliment, like maybe it’s got a nicer shape, or more bounce, or Fabian simply stands out more with a slight imperfection.
Anyway, the ending. We call a two deep zone while Peyton is revving up for their first TD of the day. Guy calls an audible, we adjust, another audible, hot route, we adjust. We wasted all our timeouts dragging MS Dos off the field and letting his fans run for a while.
Peyton’s on our doorstep. He’s not knocking, he’s beating the door off the hinges. Then, somehow, he misses a read. And who’s there but our demonic Troy, coming out of the ground like a spectre from a pentagram, fangs bared, daemon’s blaring, four yards deep in the endzone. And then he runs. And keeps running. No knives brandished, no hexes muttered. Just 104 yards of a full bore sprint.
And it’s over. 24-6 with three minutes left. Not a lot left to do. We left them on the field, four downs in a row, Brees throws a TD to Westbrook to make it 31-6, because why not. Gibbs picks out the cooler he’d like to take a bath in. Surprise, it’s filled with eggnog.
So Troy is eating Bugles, calm, crouched, smiling. I saw him make Drew laugh, Gaby didn’t make the trip to St. Louis, Drew hadn’t even taken off his headphones until ten minutes before the game. I checked the Ipod. Linda Rondstat, The Smiths, and that one Shins song from Garden State. I asked Drew what Troy said.
“Some joke about fish that don’t know what water is, I dunno, do you have a phone on you?”
I say that I do, and it’s got a ton of battery, I got one of those self-charging cases for Christmas, do you want to see-
“Thanks,” as he deftly nicks it from my palm, “Gaby’s gonna want to know how we did.”
Don’t you think she watched, I ask.
“Yeah, but she’s gonna take me through the all-22 tape over the phone.”
And I sigh, and he smiles and dials like he’s punching in a fail-safe.
“Ain’t that what love is, huh? Remembering somebody’s phone number these days.” Gibbs says softly into my left ear. He’s getting so soaked I can smell him coming.
I say maybe it is.
“You love anything?” I note he doesn’t say anyone, and nod.
“You gonna tell me about it?”
What’s to tell, I shrug. And he totters off, and I look around and Troy’s talking with Abraham and Kampman, looking at a picture of Kampy and Kaylee outside of Mt. Rushmore.
“They said we couldn’t climb the thing, so we waited until after dark. Kaylee called me Jefferson’s Booger.”
And Troy throws his head back and laughs and smiles and walks back to his locker and puts one hand on his boombox, and for the first time since I’ve met him doesn’t put on death metal. He just whistles. Some old tune I’ve had in my head since I was a kid. I walk up and uncomfortably ask if anything is wrong, he laughs and says no, we talk about the bugles. What I didn’t mention earlier, he offered me some. I said no, holding my belly’s recent addition: a cookie pouch.
“Come on, have one, how many times do you live.”
I say thanks, and why not.
“That’s the spirit.”
And I ask, as uncomfortably as before, what in the hell is going on with him.
“I dunno, it just feels better than being a menace, being with people, rather than against them.”
I say I know the feeling and then get in my cab to the airport. I’ve got some calls to make, to some people I’d like to hear from.
RADSKINS 31- ST. LOUIS HAMS 6
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ISSUE 13- RADSKINS V SAN DIEGO FARTERS
Our team isn’t big on pranks. You see a lot of hazing on other sidelines: rookies carry veterans’ bags, Gatorade pecking order, taking a Cleveland steamer in someone’s helmet. It’s all awful. It reeks of superiority, misogyny, deliberate ‘other’-ing, the patriarchy, and is just plain mean. When I took the reins, I made it very clear it was a new no-no.
“If somebody hazes, you should be able to light their garage on fire.”
I told Gibbs that wasn’t really the point. And was definitely arson.
“Hey buddy, you like asserting your superior masculinity so much? How about I assert some kerosene where you keep your rakes.”
You can just drop it now, I said, giggling.
“Won’t be whacking any weeds any time soon, that’s for sure.”
Which made it all the weirder when Longwell (our kicker) wandered into my office yesterday. He sat down and asked if anyone had broken curfew before the game. I said no, and asked why he looked so unsettled. We have a game today, I said. What follows is a partial transcription of our conversation, such as it was:
“So I’m in my bed, and I keep hearing these weird clanking sounds, it’s a rental place, so whatever, but the sounds keep getting louder and louder, and then my wife gets up to get some water, and I ask her if she could get me a cup of tea, because this noise is giving me the willies and she says what noise and I give a groan and she leaves. These two old dudes, who looked kind of like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets, say that I will be visited by three spirits over the course of the night. I ask why and they shrug and clank on out of there.”
I ask him if everything is fine at home.
“Everything is NOT FINE, lemme tell you. Are ghosts fine?”
I say I do not think so.
“I start calling for Sarah, and I can’t hear her moving around downstairs, so I throw off the covers and jump into my slippers, taking extra care with the booter, and throw open the door, and then I’m in my high school locker room, and some kid in a stripy shirt who’s calling me mister is tugging on my robe and telling me I should come outside to see something, something cool’s about to happen. So, okay, I think I’m dreaming, I go outside, but I feel the wind on my face, and it’s cold, and it’s clearly fall, and I’m watching, I guess me, line up a 49 yarder that won our high school championship. And I know it’s not a dream because the holder doesn’t have tits and I’m not naked and the kid pulls my arm down, and the brim of his hat hits my head and I say ow and he laughs and says ‘Tomorrow you’re gonna kick a whole bunch of field goals.”
I say please keep going, with an eye on the clock.
“So then he takes me back into the school, into the locker room, or at least I guess he opened the door, because when I get there it’s our locker room, with the football jolly roger and my locker is there right next to Tuba’s, who is sitting there, curled up, just moaning. Does he have a house? I don’t think he has a house.”
I nod, because Tuba is in fact a homeless musical instrument.
“So he’s giving me the creeps, and I go to take a piss, and then some old janitor with a bushy stache asks me if I could go out onto the field, there’s some runoff piping he needs another set of eyes on. I almost tell him to ask Tuba because this is too fucking weird but, well, of course I don’t. So we go out, the lights are turning on, all of them brightening at once, and he tells me to go to the left hash mark on the 27, and I do, and he follows me all the way there, and he takes out a wrench and throws it, and it hits the crossbar and I start to say what the hell and he slaps my back and yells ‘YOU’RE GONNA KICK A FUCKTON OF FIELD GOALS TOMORROW MOTHERFUCKER!’, and then he just starts laughing and laughing and I’m kind of freaked out so I go to leave, and I lose a slipper on the field-“
I ask if he’s familiar with the work of Charles Dickens.
“No, what, lemme finish. So I go back to get the slipper and I see him waving out of the corner of my eye and then I kind of trip and fall for a while, and then I’m sitting on some kind of metal bench, and it’s daytime again, and there’s sun in my eyes, and I do that weird salute-sunshield thing and there’s a kid running toward me, not the same kid from before, he’s in a soccer jersey, and he’s smiling with an orange slice in his lips and he’s saying something I can’t really make out, so I ask him what, and an old guy next to me says, “Son, he’s telling you about the goal he just scored.” And he’s wearing number 8, so I ask him about the game, and he calls me dad and starts rambling about how I always said I could’ve been a center forward and how cool I would’ve looked with my hair pulled back in one of those weird bands. And I’m flipping out because I’ve only ever told that to Sarah and then I realize, it’s a dream, it’s a fucking dream, and the old man throws his hood up and it says Radskins 2013 NFL Champs on it and he says, “Boy, you’re gonna kick a lot of field goals tomorrow.”
I ask him what his point is here.
“I’m getting there. So the guy points over to the goal, and my kid or whoever runs that way so I keep looking and looking and then I’m falling again and I’m in my bed, and Sarah’s walking up in the blue pajamas with white polka dots I got her last Christmas, holding a cup of sleepytime tea and asking me if I really want sleepy time right now, or if I might like some other time and I just hold her and I start crying and she starts crying because she doesn’t know why I’m crying and so, I’m asking, the point here is I want you to ask Westbrook if he did it because I know he does it with Dwight and I think it might be him, okay? I’ll see you after the game.”
I call down to the locker room and ask for Westbrook: he’s in my office. I ask him if he’s been sending any astral projections to Longwell’s house.
“No.”
I ask if he’s sure about this.
“I am not the only force at work in this world, you know. Excuse me.”
I sit in my office, and stew. I think about calling Gibbs, but no drunk wants to hear a ghost story without telling a few of his own. So I sit back, and try not to think about it while I watch the game.
Longwell was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. Some people laughed to see the four field goals, but Longwell let them laugh, knowing that nothing ever happened in this world for good that some did not laugh upon the outset. His own heart laughed, and that was enough for him.
RADSKINS 26 – 0 SAN DIEGO SUPER FARTERS
#the radskins#nfl#fiction#farters#dickens#christmas carol#ghosts#funny#lol#rofl#jokes#laughing#smiles#teeth#lots of teeth#tittering#guffaw#chuckle#chortle#that weird snort thing people do#mouth jokes
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ISSUE 12- RADSKINS V BROKELAND TRAITORS
The game is over. Well, it was over a few times. It was put to bed, and tossed and turned, but somehow found peace. Maybe not calm, but at least finality. When I see Gibbs after the game, he’s cleaning his office, meticulously shuffling and ordering, making sure to close his flask between sips. He sees me in the door, and clutches his breast.
“Holy shit boss, you could’ve broken my clockwork. Hoooo, lordy, was you creeping long?”
I say I just walked down from the box. Most everyone in the stadium’s tinnitus hasn’t fully recovered.
“What’s that?”
Don’t worry about it I say, it’s not like you need to hear me anyway.
“Hell, if we had drawn it up, or maybe I’m sober, we don’t win this game, do you figure?”
I ask if he thinks I would have had a problem with the fourth and one call if I had been on the sideline.
“You think I give a shit what you think?”
I nod politely, to say I really hope you do from time to time.
Brees is in the huddle, there’s about a minute, minute ten left in the game. It’s tied, 21-21. He just took a sack on a play action bootleg to his right, the roll-pocket chock full of Al Davis’ finest murder machines. Takes a hit, comes down on a very tender right elbow, Brooks Bollinger cackles from the sideline. A look from Troy, a deliberate, feigned indifference, and then a look from Abraham shames him properly. The two sentinels share a look. They don’t agree a lot.
Brees is on one knee, looking up at everyone. “We ready for this?”
A grunty chorus, and a breathy of course from Bently.
“If you haven’t noticed, we’re usually the ones getting bailed out by the defense. Bent, is that polite?”
A shudder. “Heavens no! We must return the favor.”
“How about it?”
Brees takes a four step drop. First read Andre, in the right flat, zone blanket: second, Clayton, files spilling out of his briefcase in a flag route to the left. The safety cheated under Clayton’s route. Stallworth, on the post, with a step. He was never touched. Perfect ball. 83 yards to jubilation. Westbrook ignores all of this.
“If we are to celebrate our end, we must see it first.” He says to no one in particular. Andre and Witten are tiptoing the Gatorade behind Gibbs. William Karlos Dansby is the decoy, he’s reading one of his new works:
So much depends upon
A white laced ball
Soaring through eyes
Into waiting hands.
Brett Farve, human genitalia, hucks a 79 yard pass to their cleric/Option A. Muhsin Muhammed. Fabian saw Erin Andrews with a compact mirror on the sideline and couldn’t resist, I suppose. Or maybe it was the virus MS Dos had after Witten and Stallworth and AJ stayed up late downloading Kidz Bop albums.
Westbrook is the only one who doesn’t look like somebody just shot his dog. 74,000 fans went to a birthday party and got jumped by a wake. Save the Raiders fans, the silver and black pirates who seem to take pride in children running scared away from their row.
Abraham speaks slowly, pacing up and down the bench.
“We must not forget that upon this day, we, individually, could not achieve our goals. We must go to overtime, and wrest our fate from a flipped coin or a kicker’s boot.”
The assistants are listening. Troy has stopped polishing his shurikens. Drew and Kampman and AJ have gone out for the second half coin flip.
“Upon this day, we shall shape our own path through an untouched wood. Upon this day, all in our party will share in our glory, for none are blameless in defeat.”
It’s tails. We’ll receive, thank you very much.
“Every part of you prepares in its own way for the moment, a leg twitched, a hand wrung. But when you find the moment of clarity, that long sought divination, you must know what to do with it. You must know-“
He’s cut off by Gibbs, “Okay, offense, I form, three wide. Brees with the call.”
Gaby walks over to the white stripe.
“You’re not supposed to be over here.” Drew loves protocol.
“I know, I’m probably not supposed to do this either.”
I would’ve missed it had the stadium production not ran the Kiss Cam again. They did not cut away, nor did they have to. 74,000 people all yelling get a room.
“One more, for luck…” She trails off, pouting, shadows and the setting sun in her hair.
Drew needs to get moving into the huddle. He high fives her.
“Take all the time you need.” She says, waifish and unkempt. There are only 22 important people in the world. The rest are just cheerleaders.
“We didn’t sign up for this,” Drew is standing in the huddle now, “but it’s where we are, and where we are is all we’ve got.” Drew looks to Westbrook, who nods. “We’re gonna stay on this field til we score a motherfucking point, and not a second longer. Let’s go home boys, flats on one.”
Out right to witten for three. No huddle, Drew motions at the line, drawing the route tree with his hands. Fu’Ma beckons with his hands. Westbrook stands, hands on knees, moving blades of grass. One. Two. Flag route to Dwight not there, outside to Andre for six. One fucking yard short. Rush to the line. Gibbs, from way downtown: “FUCKING, IF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS CAN’T FUCKING MAKE ONE YARD IN TWO FUCKING PLAYS-“
Drew looks at FuMa. FuMa returns the gaze with a head cocked to the side, Drew nods. Westbrook sighs. Handoff to our little tank. No push. Maybe half a yard. Fourth and one. Drew hurries up to the line, walks to either side of the line. All go, routes on the outside. He takes a step toward Wesbrook, opens his mouth, and Westbrook nods. The defense revs, showing blitz in the two center gaps. One count. Handoff to Westbrook.
Bob Costas, with the call: “Unorthodox from the Radz, Brees still on the field, motioning to his receivers. Behind center, with a turn toward Westbrook and Chris Fu’a Ma- the fullback. The snap, Westbrook, with a seam! He’s busted through the center of the line, the defense overcommitted, he’ll go in untouched! Sixty Seven Yards! All of them outside of the life of the mind! Brian Westbrook, in for six, and the Radskins find paydirt once more!”
Westbrook hands the ball to the winded back judge, a stunned black and white, and walks into the tunnel to his right. The celebration is less restrained. Troy flips a bench and starts firing crossbow bolts into the lights. AJ, Witten and Stallworth start a massive game of ring around the rosy in the upper bowl, 10,000 people, “Ashes, Ashes.” Michael Clayton, ripping off his wingtips, on his phone, telling his assistant to cancel all of his meetings. Abraham, weeping, Bollinger, sulking out a service door, Tuba blaring. And Drew and Gaby, seated on the crossbar of the uprights, feet dangling and swaying together, watching the sun begin to set and the win go on and on and on and on and on.
RADSKINS 34- BROKELAND TRAITORS 28
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ISSUE 11- RADSKINS AT TAMPA BAY FUCKINEERS
Is it still an escape if you rip down the walls that held you like they were tissue paper? Is it an escape if the guards know you’re coming? Is it an escape if you set the fire? Is it an escape if the inmates are already running the asylum, and all it takes is Kampman throwing a space heater through the window to completely upend any semblance of order or sanctity?
I guess the real question is: does anything that ends well ever slow down? Should it?
Our first points came on a safety. Brees came through an early three and out to drive us to the one, we ran it three times and left it there. Fumatu Ma’a Fa’la was stuffed on third down. He ran into the locker room to pray to the earth spirits. Not sure what that did, but David Carr took a hit from Merryman, and another from Abraham two yards deep. Carr’s ribcage lost a lot of structural integrity there. We got the points, Abraham is watching birds nest at the top of the goal post and Merryman is frolicking gaily across the field. He yells: “This is just like the summers in Cambridgeshire with cousin Louise and uncle Jack! All around the maypoooolle!” Gibbs takes a belt and smiles.
“With friends like Shawn, who needs friends?” To no one in particular. With a sharp laugh that doesn’t invite a chorus. Gibbs is a lot more jovial when he drinks, in a vinegar-honey kind of way. I used to think drinking kept him happy, but now I think it’s just the act of not-currently-being-in-withdrawal.
Kaylee had a sack and an interception. She put Carr through the turf, his three bar helmet sandwiched between her massive gazongas. This was the moment I realized she doesn’t wear chest padding: she already has a great deal. Kampman sprinted to her side, arms raised. They ripped eachother’s helmets off and played some tonsil hockey. The ref gave a fifteen yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Gibbs from the sideline. “I’ll show you unsportsmanlike-“, as he rips off his tearaway khakis. I didn’t even know they made those. Thankfully, he had a pair of long johns underneath. Don’t know why he wore long johns in Tampa Bay. I would ask, but he’s passed out in a stupor in the row across the aisle in the 737 we chartered back to D.C. He has war dreams. No one’s clear if it’s Korea, WW2, or the Spanish-American, but whenever he’s snoring, it’s a breathy whisper of “If you want this hill, you’ll need to go through me and Chestnut.”
Brees went over the top to Tim Dwight for a 97 yard touchdown, on a flag route. Brees saw the mismatch, linebacker on slot receiver, and threw a rainbow of a touch pass to Tim, who scampered until the field says he couldn’t scamper anymore. He went to the bench, and the team mailman (Gibbs idea, to improve morale) came by with a post card in Gaby’s unkempt script: Greetings from Washington DC, it read, in block photo-script, our Nation’s Capitol underneath. On the back, there was a note from Gaby: Today in DC it is raining, and I love you. Drew’s grin edged into the next county.
About Tim Dwight: I don’t talk about him much, mostly because I never see him. No one ever sees him. He’s never in the locker room, he doesn’t get interviewed, I talked to accounting, there’s no evidence that he has a social security number, or has ever signed a contract. The en vogue theory is: Tim is a willed, corporeal projection of Brian Westbrook’s prodigious intellect. We don’t question Westbrook that much, but this gives a whole new meaning to ‘ghost man on third’.
After the half, Deuce “the Shit” Staley took the first handoff from Carr, who couldn’t have been more excited to give the ball away, for 77 yards. Next drive, Brees telegraphs a pass to Andre Johnson on the curl route, some opportunistic defender jumps in front, defense holds, it’s a field goal. 10-9. So far, a terrible game. Like watching your dog in a costume. Everything looks okay, but there is a sense of blinding rage below the surface. Pacman muffed a punt and powered down. Gibbs sent an assistant to go look for quarters.
Drew in the huddle, at the beginning of the 4th:
“Hey boys, this is why we show up. This is why the fans stop using their couches and get on their feet. There’s a lot of excited Bucs fans out there. Let’s give ‘em a terrible ride home.”
Andre Johnson chimes in, “Let’s make ‘em eat poop!”, and Witten and Clayton giggle in fits.
Fu’a’matu Ma’a Fa’la corrects: “I think you say it wrong: they go eat shit now, yes?”
WR Slants, TE outs on 1. Witten for eight. Westbrook counter for 11. Curl to Michael Clayton, who catches the pass in his new briefcase. Stretch off tackle. They’re humming.
Gibbs isn’t watching. The offensive coordinator is, well, I’m not even sure if we have one anymore. It used to be a friend of Gibbs, but I haven’t seen him on the sidelines in a few weeks. It’s not like we fired him, Drew has just slowly amassed every single one of his responsibilities and exceeded those responsibilities unselfishly and with new conviction. I just hope the old fogey isn’t dead. Gibbs would be devastated until the liquor stores reopen.
They keep rolling. Ten yard in, right on the money to Clayton. Even Westbrook is smiling. Brees is glaring across the line, I’ve never seen him like this before. He wants to step on some throats. Stallworth in the flat. He’s playing with house money. Witten in the flat. Poison in his veins. We’re inside the fifteen. Gibbs is gnawing, alternating between a mint leaf, “for the shakes”, and willow bark, “for the quiet.” A part of me wants to ask if he’s ever caught scurvy.
The last play of the game that mattered was a pass to Matt Schobel, stay at home dad, on a quick outside slant in the endzone. He caught it, cradled it, told the crowd to shush, and brought the ball back into the locker room, and put it to bed. Drew was high fiving, whooping, thrashing his fist. He even did one of those jump thingies with Bently, who said, “I do declare, the occasional loss of decorousness does inspire an effervescence of the spirit, does it not, Andrew?”
Brees stands tall, “Sure as shit does Bent. Never call me Andrew again, if you can help it.”
“I can and I will. Lead on, new champion.”
RADSKINS 15 – TAMPA BAY FUCKINEERS 10
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ISSUE 10- RADSKINS V. PHILADELPHIA TURKEYS
After we finish up against the Philadelphia Turkeys, Drew gets the locker room together, around him. For such a magnetic guy, he doesn’t do this as much as he could. “I owe you all a lot, you bailed me out more than once, twice, three times, hell.”
He’s referring to the five consecutive passes that found their way into the waiting wings of the Turkeys’ defensive backfield. Drew was nine of ten with a TD before that. After, the stadium felt like a crypt. There was a lot of held breath, and a lot of vows for swift revenge. Troy picked off a pass and ran it back for a td to make it 17-14, every linebacker had a sack. Gibbs said he would’ve been proud if he saw; he spent most of the second and third quarter chain smoking in the parking lot, the coordinators blowing up his phone. They seemed happy to do it, only miffed that the old man hasn’t yet figured out how to send or receive a text message. I’ve had the same problem. I tell him, you don’t have to put STOP at the end of every line-
“WELL YOU GROW UP USING WESTERN UNION AND WE’LL SEE HOW YOU SEND CABLES!”
Anyway, the defense stood up, and now everyone is standing around Drew, closing in, hands up and together above his head. “It’s okay,” they say, “We wouldn’t have made it back without you Drew.” “You’re the only QB we would ever play with.” Brooks Bollinger hears all this, and sulks back to the training room. I hear the whirr of the whirlpool, a spark, and held breath.
Drew goes on. “I want to take you all out to dinner, does that sound okay?”
LeCharles Bently, our center, is the first to say anything. “While this is most unbecoming of a man of my society and stature, I do feel the sentiment is both touching and needed. Where did you have in mind?”
Troy is less restrained. “Where the fuck we going cap?”
“Uuuh, you guys ever been to Buca Di Beppo, up by Dupont?”
And the crowd goes wild.
We pile in the team bus, Gaby too, sitting on Drew’s lap in the back of the bus. I’m sitting up front, sharing a row with Gibbs. The guys are singing songs, sharing gum, even Kaylee seems a bit less guarded. She and Kampman are giving each other indian burns. Someone yells something about pitching a tent, and they both blush.
You know, I say to Gibbs, it feels like somehow, we all never left that idyllic high school type of life
He takes a belt of what smells-to-be wood varnish, and looks out the window. “You think anyone ever really wants to leave high school? All the pretty girls, knowing where you stand, being told where to go, what to do, it’s a heckuva lot less scary than whatever else there is out there, you know, lonely nights and not knowing how to turn off your iPod record machine.”
I say there’s a button on the top left.
“Yeah, but where’s the top! And where’s the left! This is what the fuck I’m talking about kid, you know, you’re just a fucking kid, how the fuck did you wind up here anyway?”
I say I couldn’t think of much else to do that mattered.
“THIS MATTERS?! Holy fuck, kid-“
I’m spared a lecture when the bus stops, the air brakes hiss, everyone files into the aisle and jolts into the street. Once I get inside with Gibbs, we’re being shown to our table, in the back. Thank god Drew had the decency to call ahead.
Drew hits his glass with his fork a few times, and stands up. “I want to thank you all, my teammates, for picking me up. We all need it from time to time, support, and it should be given as liberally as possible, without expectation or the thought of such right action ever coming back around. And I want you all to understand that, after today’s turd sandwich-“ Gaby gives a spit take into Westbrook’s face, who vibrates the water off and into a large drop, which hangs and falls onto the floor, “-I probably won’t have a contract that buys much more than Easy Mac.” There’s a smattering of laughter, he was trying too hard. He feels guilty, I get that. Everyone else has either already let him off the hook, or wants to. Gaby leans in and whispers in his ear, and Drew blushes. Westbrook dabs the corners of his mouth and excuses himself with a quick hover. No one is sure if he eats. Merryman is running down one side of the table, pouring wine into upturned, open mouths. Kaylee spits hers into Kampman’s face. Pacman takes a whole bottle to himself, Merryman says, “Verily, you must be in the highest of spirits! Goodness me!”
Pacman gives a hearty wappa-wappa. MS Doss waves Merryman off with a blinking warning light and an LED message about already diminished processor speed.
Food is ordered, drinks drunk, stories told, drinks spilled, and the food shows up. Gibbs is trying to snare a waitress, asking any who walks by if they’ve seen Grace Kelly lately.
“No, sorry-“
“Well I see her right now and she looks like a ten dollar bill.” Most walk away in disgust. I don’t have the heart to tell Gibbs that he’s comparing these women to our least appreciated currency in circulation.
Abraham stands up. He’s a little drunk. It’s clear he wants to give a toast, but his floating eyes suggest he’s not really sure what it’s about.
“Today we won. Again. We’re getting good at winning. Real good. I guess that’s why they call us :hic: a winning team, because that’s what we do, win. Anyway, I wanted to say that we’ve got Drew’s back, and Gibbs’ back, and everyone’s back, because everyone has our back, and there’s no other team I’d rather be on than the Radskins!” There’s a hearty cheer, the kind that makes people want to stand up and then sit down immediately, but Abraham keeps going.
“We’re all in this together, you know, it’s weird. And if you forget that, god, there’s nothing worse than thinking you’re alone, than making yourself alone, because then that’s how you’ll be treated, like someone who is alone. Let us give thanks for one another, and thanks for each other, and thanks for all the fish.”
A heartier cheer, and then plate after plate of pasta, meatballs, fish, cheese, vegetables comes streaming out from the kitchen. So many Gibbs can’t pick a waitress to ogle. And they’re set, and someone serves and everyone shares and asks if anyone else wants some, and the last bites of all dishes are left sitting, waiting, for ends that will never come.
RADSKINS 21- PHILADELPHIA TURKEYS 20
Happy thanksgiving everybody.
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ISSUE 9- RADSKINS VS NEW YORK BIG GUYS
Before the game against the New York HugeMen, I ask Troy what was up with his screenplay.
“Didja like it?”
I say it was charming in places. That I particularly liked Dr. Rules insistence that no sex was to be had unless it involved him and at least two skullfucked California Condors. And that maybe the character of Tony was a bit underwritten.
“Did I not press hard enough on the page? I don’t understand, I just really hoped you liked it.”
I say I did, and tell him to go warm up. He runs into the goalpost with his helmet off. Sunday mornings.
Drew is with Gaby, she’s taking him through yoga positions. Westbrook hovers cross-legged at eye level. Some sportswriters were talking about Westbrook for MVP. They asked him during the media availability:
“Brian, Brian, do you think you have a shot at the most valuable player award?”
“What is the value of a man?”
“You’ve averaged over four and a half yards per carry and are the most explosive backfield receiving threat in the league.”
“So?”
“So, people are talking.”
“What do you mean when you say people? Which people? Do they matter to me? Or do they exist only in the mind of a small man who cannot conceive of a world in which he is not the center of all right thought and action?”
“…”
“What is the value of a friend, I ask.”
The press pool doesn’t like Brian very much.
Gaby’s taking Drew through the stretches, and Gibbs walks by with a bloody mary, gnawing on celery.
“Eeeh, what’s up Doc.”
Drew chuckles, Gaby is a bit starstruck.
“What’s all this, pushing your body against itself, business? Can’t a guy just go on the vibratron anymore?”
Drew looks up at him and grins. No wonder Colgate keeps calling.
“What’s a vibratron Coach?”
Gibbs starts grabbing his belly, and shaking it violently.
“You know, you stand up, strap yourself in, let yourself get shook up, just like Jack LaLaine used to do. Greta Garbo swore by it! You use a vibratron, don’t ya sister?”
Gaby’s face flushes.
“Uh, all the time when I’m alone.”
Drew chortles. So do I.
“Damn right ya do.” Gibbs is back to shaking his gelatinous midsection. “You got the look about you, the look that says ‘I know how to shake myself up, without all this new fangled yogalaties. I can take care of myself’.”
“Do you use the vibratron when I’m around?” Drew is really having fun with this.
Gaby’s over the embarrassment, Gibbs might as well be in another solar system. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t dare.”
“You should try it sometime, I think I could use a few pointers.”
“It’s always nice to share.”
“That’s right Gaby! Show your man how you shake up your giblets!” Gibbs has been shaking so fervently, he hasn’t noticed the bloody mary spilled onto his linen suit jacket and white starched shirt. Until Drew and Gaby fix their gaze on it.
“Aaaaw hell, now I’ve gone and done it. Two days hung out on a line for this? Goodness me, excuse…” Gibbs walks away, and is only just out of earshot before muttering drats and dagums under his breath into the tunnel.
Abraham leads a prayer at midfield before we start. Not everyone’s religious, but not every prayer is about God.
“We ask for strength in the coming moments, so that we may face all we come upon as equals, not as betters, not as lesser. We ask for wisdom to know ourselves and our companions, and vision to see how we might best go forward. We ask for kindness and compassion in the hearts of our friends and enemies. We ask for many things, for there are many things we do not have. But we know that all things are possible. We ask for the courage to make those things possible, and the fortitude to see them through.”
Troy chimes in.
“Kill ‘em all on three.”
Abraham chuckles.
“Oh, what the hell.”
RADSKINS 20- NEW YORK BIG GUYS 10
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RADSKINS ISSUE 8- RADSKINS V 69RS
Gibbs stands at the center of the locker room, in the crush of players over the carpeted skateboard/football jolly roger (our trademark), pads still on, jumping, whooping, yelling. We won. 17-14. The game was toxic at points. It was picture perfect. Brees had two picks, but so did the defense. Troy had one, so did Fabian. Fabian knelt as soon as he caught it, as to not be ungentlemanly, and profit off another man’s misfortune. Troy was a bit less restrained, scampering for 16 yards and making death threats against would-be tacklers.
Drew saved us, again, though you might not have noticed. After Jackson stepped in front of Witten in the flat, he turned on the jets (not the New York Jets, which is another football team. What I’m saying here is that he did not sexually arouse the New York Jets. That is all.) and ran DJ down. After the tackle, Gaby ran over to the sideline. Drew tried to wave her off, but she kept running and asked how he was:
“You know, just feeling accomplished for cleaning up after myself.”
Gaby laughed and hugged him, and stroked his hair a bit, and then went on to say that you should’ve read the trap coverage, sweetie. The defense forced a FG miss, with sacks from Abraham, Polamolu. Though Joe swears he saw a glint on the kicker’s facemask, and later Polamolu casually toying with a knife on the sideline.
Gibbs speaks from center: “You fellas sure know how to scare a coach, I’ll tell you that much. We played against one of the absolute greats today, Chad Pennington, and we sent him packing. You gave ‘em the olde Charleston spindle legs, you know? You don’t? Well, you stuck it to em, both sides of the pork rind. This ball goes to Troy, for his fucking balls, and his complete fucking disregard for human life, including his own. Troy, take it.”
Troy reaches up, snatches the ball from Gibbs and bites directly into the laces. I don’t have the heart to take it out of his paycheck.
He comes into Gibbs’ office, where I’m having a whiskey and Gibbs is basically drinking pipe cleaner.
“Troy, what can I do you for?” Gibbs loves it when people walk into his office.
“You gave me something, now I want to give you something.”
He reaches back into his pocket. Gibbs and I cower. We hear a gentle rustling. It’s paper.
“Check this shit out. I’m a writer.”
“Fuck Troy, in blood mostly.”
“Yeah, well, I tried. And you guys seem, you know, brain good, so just check it out, okay?”
I say we’re sure to read it and give him some notes if we can.
“It’s not music dude, it’s words.”
Joe pats him on the back, and tells him to go home for the night. I start reading immediately.
Below is an excerpt from Troy’s screenplay, titled Napalm Death Fist. I edited for spelling.
TONY:
Well well well what do we have here?
DR. RULES has DONNA tied up, by her hands and her SUPER HUGE JUGS are all over the place. DONNA is super down for TONY.
DONNA
Tony!
TONY
Donna!
DONNA
If we make it out of this alive, I'm going to fuck you til your dick bleeds.
DR. RULES
But you won't make it out of here, you rad dude and bodacious babe. You’re trapped!
TONY
Yeah we will Dr. Rules. You can't tell me what to do.
DR. RULES
Yes I can because you are stupid and I am smart and everyone knows it.
DONNA
Don't listen to him Tony!
DR. RULES slaps DONNA with the butt of a gun. DONNA kicks him in the balls, and DONNA spits out blood super sexy on to her KNOCKERS.
TONY
Check it out Donna, I've got a huge boner.
DONNA
Of course your boner's huge! Save me so we can do it!
TONY
Just one more thing.
TONY walks over to stupid DR. RULES, who's totally a pussy and still curled up rubbing his TINY BALLS.
TONY
Say hi to Satan for me, gotcha?
TONY stabs the fuck out of DR. RULES, with his DRAGON BLADES like 100 or 500 times. DONNA's nipples get super hard.
DONNA
Oh Tony, get me out of here so we can bone.
TONY
Just one more thing.
TONY stabs DR. RULES a bunch more times, and cleans off his DRAGON BLADES with the part of DONNA’S shirt that’s between her MASSIVE CANS.
DONNA
You gonna cut me outta here Tony?
TONY
Just one more thing.
DONNA
You mean sex, right?
TONY
I always do.
RADSKINS 17- 14 SAN FRANCISCO 69’RS
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