FUCK LOSING!

SALVATION: AN INTOLERABLE GAME

— 1 .

DO U REMEMBER UR FIRST LOSS? —

. . . and obviously I don’t mean death: there’s no contingency in death, it’s the END to which we all tend; I mean loss, failure: U could’ve done the hoped-for thing, earned the right to strut around gloriously, but in the essential moment, U were not enough. —

In 7th Grade, my basketball team was in the final. We were down 33-30 with 5 seconds left in the 4th Quarter. We were playing Linsly: an excellent West Virginia prep school (NOT an oxymoron). They were at the free throw line: the plan was simple: if they missed, somebody would get the rebound, pass it up the floor to Murph, our best player, he would take the 3-pointer to tie the game. They missed; I got the rebound. Murph ran up the floor. I passed it to him on the wing. I slotted into the top of the key: I was wide open. Murph stunningly passed it to me.

— They say visualization is KEY: I spent so long, alone, on the court, visualizing my game-winning shots; of course, I often had to restart my fantasies over & over again because I kept missing my ONE CHANCE. But eventually, after hundreds of attempts, I would hit the shot, raise my hands in triumph: I was CHAMP. —

I had the ball in my hands: my moment. I shot it: fucking SWISH. I had done it. My teammates ran onto the court, lifted me up on their shoulders as I pumped my fist and heard the cries of HAROLD! HARO—

Of course that’s bullshit. Murph took the shot. He clanked it on the back of the rim. We lost. I was wide open, but I would’ve missed the shot 9 out 10 times. I wasn’t even good enough to give it a try. I remember sitting in the car afterwards, with my dad: slumped like a slashed hot-air balloon; weeping disconsolately.

My dad said, “that’s life. Sometimes U fucking lose. . .”

I couldn’t believe how disastrous it all felt: what else did I need to do? I had prayed, hadn’t I? Wasn’t God on my side? Why did he reward those fucking prep-school pricks? Maybe Catholicism was the problem; maybe I should convert to Islam,

“Not one of all the purple Host who took the Flag today can tell the definition so clear of victory, as he defeated – dying – on whose forbidden ear, the distant strains of triumph burst agonized and clear!”

Winning is simple: hope is whipped-up into the crackrock of victory: the high is cheap & fast: U chase it, frantically, for the rest of Ur life. But DEFEAT: hope becoming so puny it clanks pointlessly on the back of the rim; defeat is a shank in the kidneys, whose scar will never subside.

Like Sergio Rodrigues writes in The Juke (2013) about Pelé’s near-goal against Uruguay in 1970,

“Everything went exactly according to plan and the impression left on everyone — that he wanted to score the goal when the whole time his intention was to miss it by a little bit, to record on the collective body of the species the score of that “so close” knowing it would burn more than the joy of realization —, that was the definitive, inconceivable juke, the juke on top of the juke on the poor keeper Mazurkiewicz.”

The most GRIM, unbearable feeling in the world: so close. . .

— 2 .

MAYBE HOPE IS THE PROBLEM, —

. . . I pulled up to Local 42 an hour before Brasil vs Norway, expecting to get a booth, but the spot was already blown, the only available seating was the awful high-table in the back corner, with these discomforting stools which would be better put to use at the garbage dump; I guarded my seat tensely, as more Brasil fans poured in, eyeing the empty seats surrounding me, until finally my sister & Gaby showed up to ensure everyone I wasn’t a solitary chair-hoarder.

I properly followed all the superstitions: Local 42 is where I’d watched the comeback against Japan; I had on the same jersey: the same hat. It’s hard to accept that Ur spatio-temporal idiosyncrasies have NO INFLUENCE at all on the game, — but still, maybe, if I had been watching a different screen, maybe Bruno Guimarães wouldn’t have missed that penalty kick,

“I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — the Stillness in the Room was like the Stillness in the Air — Between the Heaves of Storm — with Blue — uncertain — stumbling Buzz — between the light — and me — and then the Windows failed - and then I could not see to see —”

— Brasil’s most tragic loss was in 1950, against Uruguay. They had built the greatest stadium in the world for the World Cup: the Maracanã: 200,000 packed in to watch the match in which Brasil needed ONLY a tie. They had been steam-rolling everybody.

Before the game, all the newspapers ran stories with headlines like CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD, as if they had never heard of Daedalus & his poor son, who paid the price for his father’s invention; Friaça scored first, the Vasco player put Brasil up 1-0, it looked settled; but the players tightened up, Uruguay equalized, the crowd got nervous and then Ghigghia put it right under Barbosa, right into the near post, Uruguay won 2-1 and became world champions,

“I saw the people with their heads down, with tears in their eyes, without speaking, abandon the Maracanã, as if they were headed home from the burial of a beloved father. I saw a defeated people, worse than defeated, I saw a people without hope. That broke my heart.

All the festivities of the early moments of the match reduced to the poor ash of a snuffed out fire. And, suddenly, I was hit with a greater disappointment, the idea that we were a people without luck, a people without the great joy of victories, always trailed by bad luck, by the pettiness of fate.

The vile sadness of Camões, the vile sadness of those with nothing to wait for, that would be the rotten sustenance of our hearts. I didn’t sleep, I felt as if I was floating deep in the night, as if I had dived into a nightmare. But it wasn’t a nightmare, it was the awful reality of defeat.”

Worse, the story Mario Filho had popularized in The Black Man in Brasilian Soccer, — Mario Filho who was responsible for getting the Maracanã built, — about the racial progress of Brasilian society due to soccer, was suddenly proved wrong overnight.

The brilliant goalkeeper Barbosa, who played without gloves (though, maybe gloves would’ve helped. . .), became a public villain; Bigode, the left back who was supposedly slapped by Obdulio Varela and didn’t retaliate, became a symbol of the lack of courage of all Brasilians: this was a people not brave enough to win. . .

Or maybe it was simpler than that: maybe it had NOTHING to do with the people in the crowd, national character, maybe it had to do with NOTHING but the fact that life gives U chances, and on that awful day in July in Rio de Janeiro: Uruguay made the most of their chances, — Brasil didn’t. . .

— 3 .

DO U BELIEVE IN SALVATION? —

. . . I did, standing in Local 42, craning my neck to watch the TV, while the 30 young women surrounding me shrieked like they were being tortured in hell every time Norway touched the ball; while a demon, piss-drunk & dressed in a Colombia jersey stood right in front of the bathroom door leering & hitting on every woman that walked by, honestly I should’ve told him to get the fuck outta the bar, we lost because he was there, it was his fault we lost, it was my fault —

Maybe hope is too pungent in Brasil; it’s a country built on cycles of hope & heartbreak, I mean, especially in Rio de Janeiro, isn’t it deleterious to a city’s psyche to have a gigantic statue of Jesus Christ on the highest mountain with his arms out-wide in the promise of salvation?

“No Man can understand but He that hath endured the Dissolution — in Himself — that Man — be qualified to qualify Despair to Those who failing new — mistake Defeat for Death — Each time — till acclimated—to—”

The Juke, — which I went home & reread after the game yesterday, because I was too deflated to watch the Mexico game, I didn’t wanna see anyone playing soccer, I wanted to read about a mythical failure, — is about a player who should’ve been better than Pelé: Peralvo.

He should’ve been on the 1966 World Cup team, if he had been on the team Brasil would’ve won; but he had a tragic own goal, — as if he was possessed, — playing for Vasco against Santos in Maracanã; the fans caught him going home afterwards, and they broke his legs beyond repair,

“I never doubted that if life had followed its normal course, Peralvo would’ve been greater than Pelé. I still don’t doubt it. And that means that he was, and is, as potential, greater than Pelé. Which means that the premature end of his career doesn’t represent just another unfulfilled promise like so many that fertilize the Brasilian soil, one more aborted fetus you can toss on the culture’s ledger as a negative value and forget. It won’t be that simple. An event of that magnitude impacts worlds, like a star that dies.”

— The worst loss I ever suffered was in the 2019 NCBA Finals: I was boxing for the national championship. Against a dude I had beaten two weeks before. I hadn’t lost all year. After the first round, the thought creeped into my head: I could lose today. . . I gave it my absolute best; plenty of people told me afterwards they thought I had won; but I was crying before the judges even finished reading out their scorecards: I could feel it: that day, I was a LOSER. Who would I be if I had won? —

I moped with Gaby back to her house, walking shamefully thru Times Square in our jerseys, among droves of humiliated, sullen Brasilians; I dropped her off, went back to my neighborhood, got a beer at the bodega.

The clerk, who has no rooting interest said, “I can’t believe Brasil’s out already! Oh man, U got the jersey on and everything. . . hey man, remember, it’s just a game.”

It is all just a game: that’s what is so intolerable about it,

“Our job had always been exactly that: to fill with metaphorical significance lacunas left by a game that, by the letter of the law, wasn’t capable of creating anything except for a skeleton on which could hang paltry attempts at meaning.”

Salvation is an impossibly long game; even when it comes, it don’t come. But hope is an endlessly renewable resource because it doesn’t need to have a referent, it never needs to be fulfilled. Maybe another Pelé will emerge from the sea like the lost King Sebastian & bring us our long-awaited HEXA. . . . Irrational HOPE is its own reward & sustenance. . .

Salvation: a stupid GAME about believing in salvation: and, unfortunately for me, I still BELIEVE. . .

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