The Under Review - Issue 5 | Winter 2022
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ISSUE 5
ISSUE 5
Winter
WINTER 2022
2022
ISSUE 5, WINTER 2022
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Terry Horstman
MANAGING EDITOR
Meghan Maloney-Vinz
DESIGN EDITOR
JP Bertram
COVER DESIGN
Patrick Sexton
TABLE OF CONTENTS
POETRY
For Safety, Ice Arch at Finish Line Knocked Down Before Race DAVID KILPATRICK | 8
Prayer Time at the YMCA ARIA DOMINGUEZ | 9
Take Me Out With the Crowd MATTHEW SCHULTZ | 11
Chernobyl Baby MAREK KULIG | 19
Flashback to the Smoking Gun TY CHAPMAN | 27
Grateful Dead Tickets AVERY GREGURICH | 44
Dirty Work AVERY GREGURICH | 45
Pitching & Politics M.A.H. HINTON | 51
Icarus RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA | 59
Perfect Spiral MICHAEL METIVIER | 61
Erasure Fable Found in Defense of Consumer Rights ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO | 66
Photograph: Little League Practice KATHRYN KYSAR | 67
On Walking into a Basketball Gym DANA LOTITO-JONES | 83
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Fizzling to Fragments MATTHEW SCHULTZ | 10
Center DANIKA STEGEMAN LeMAY | 15
Semantic-pragmatic Deficits Among Neurodivergent Synesthetes:
Why is Mario Italian? THOMAS FRANK | 22
Goodfellas MORGAN CHRISTIE | 47
On the Privilege of Losing: Notes of a Detroit Lions Fan RILEY WINCHESTER | 62
Summer Swimmer JESSIE WALKER | 68
The End of Things CLAIRE KORTYNA | 79
FICTION
Shoes EDWARD M. COHEN | 12
Open Tryout WILLIAM MUSGROVE | 17
When Kobe Died SCOTT CHIUSANO | 41
A Non-Starter RUSSELL NICHOLS | 50
The Barbecue LYDIA KLISMITH HANSEN | 52
Beach Girls SARAH FAULKNER | 71
INTERVIEW
with Ross Gay TERRY HORSTMAN | 29
BOOK REVIEW
We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Berry TERRY HORSTMAN | 84
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES
6
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Dear readers,
I cannot describe to you the smile on my face the moment Make it Rain came on. I must add it was not a
moment when Make it Rain by Fat Joe featuring Lil’ Wayne typically comes on. I was not in a dance club
with friends or controlling the TouchTunes digital jukebox with a strict ‘bangerz only’ philosophy in a
neighborhood dive bar. I was totally alone, standing on a blacktop, a biting early winter wind rippling
through the mesh of my shirt, headphones in my ears with an unending playlist of early-to-mid aughts
hype songs all queued up, and the ball in my hands.
So, not totally alone.
I posted on social media earlier this year about an annual ritual of mine to always find a playground to
shoot around by myself on November 23rd. To make a long story short, as a kid I loved basketball and I
also couldn’t take a hint. The combination of these two things led to me getting cut from every damned
team I ever tried out for. Until November 23rd, 2005, my senior year of high school. I’ve found a hoop to
shoot around on every November 23rd ever since.
The lyrics of Make it Rain don’t quite hold up today, but its hypnotizing distortion does and it came through
the queue at the perfect time. My jumper, rusty from nearly 364 days of neglect, had finally awoken after
several rounds of clanging off every inch of the court’s double-rim and the ball started cutting through the
wind to find the bottom of the net.
My favorite part of this ritual is it always has a moment of transformation. It’s not always marked by one of
the finest club beats of 2006, but it always comes. The moment when everything besides the hoop and the
ball melts away. The memory of the previous shot is gone the second the ball touches my fingertips. Time
is gone. So is fear. The only two things remaining are the next shot to take, and the joy in my bones that’s
been there since the moment I first fell in love with this game.
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On this November 23rd, as Fat Joe and Weezy were turned up way too loud in my airpods, it hit me how
similar this ritual is to the writing practice. Sentences on a blank page are just like shots on an open court.
The majority of what we write doesn’t get published. So much of the practice goes completely unseen.
The work in the fifth issue of the Under Review is an absolute celebration of ritual. Of commitment to the
craft and practice. Each piece wowed me in a different way. Each piece is symbolic of a different writer
with their own rituals, their own stories, essays, and poems of transformation. Writing that is as
heartwarming and humorous as it is fearless and ferocious.
Writing I am proud to make a home for in the Under Review.
Terry Horstman
Executive Editor
the Under Review
ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022
8
For Safety, Ice Arch at Finish Line Knocked Down
Before Race
DAVID KILPATRICK
The headline doesn’t faze me, stretching
in my underwear and thinking of Rome:
the arch a hollow monument.
The local company that extracts blocks
for ice palaces in Saint Paul
built a small castle on our town beach.
Firemen sprayed its archway and turrets
with colors, like syrup on snow cones.
In a brief warm spell last week, however,
they swung the wrecking ball. There goes winter,
my wife lamented. The children shrugged.
A false finish. For it is fifty-six degrees
lower now. A false sense of line; I run the race
not to conform. I try to mold this idea
deep in the train of runners as I curse
how the winter trek dashes
out and back, while the summer course
loops twelve miles around the lake. Past,
present and future are one—my mantra
fails me as my feet press through sand
on the icy dirt road. We moved here
to escape the straight corridors, skyways,
pipelines of the city; escalators, towers,
the dense pre-sorted blocks. Here, four round
seasons individually known. But today,
in this line of folks, you’re either
a balaclava or stiff beard at seventeen below.
I curse how my children irreversibly grow.
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Prayer Time at the YMCA
ARIA DOMINGUEZ
Sneakers squeak on the wooden floor
as ten men, and boys becoming men,
huff and shout and surge toward one hoop
and then the other. On the flip side of the divider,
children create a cacophony of of ricocheting balls,
orange orbs bouncing off walls, backboards, rims.
Sometimes they sink one, and grin, but I can’t hear
their celebration over the din. The noise is a substance
I move through while looping the overhead track, as a wind.
Suddenly, it all stops. The absence is startling. I look down
on two rows of people kneeling in a corner, males in front,
hijab-draped forms behind, see the sun setting through
slits of reinforced windows: it’s time for evening prayers.
The huge gym is now almost silent. Each bounce of the ball used
by a Hispanic family echoes loudly, and the two kids tossing
a football in another corner sound like they’re being loud in a library.
The devout drop down and make wherever they are holy, heedless
of the unmoved unbelievers, or the footfalls of the faithless above.
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10
Fizzling into Fragments
MATTHEW SCHULTZ
Dad was a poet on the ice, carving commas with his skates and plotting long, arcing narratives from the
blue line to the net. I watched him play in an over-thirty league one year and he still had it. I could tell,
though, that his game had become an elegy for the past when he used to share the ice with his older
brother who waited at the bottom of the page for that frozen rubber end stop to punctuate a plotline
destined to fizzle into a fragment. Nothing could get by him––except opportunity. He joined the Marines
the day before a letter arrived in the mail inviting him to try out for the Cleveland Barons.
I was fourteen when I found their sweaters in the back of the closet. Dad’s was white and tied at the chest:
old school. Across the back, our last name was stitched in red lettering outlined with pale blue thread––
just like the pros. I wore it everywhere, even during the summer months, like some protagonist destined to
make it to the show. But you really can’t judge a book by its cover. That fall I tried out for my high school’s
varsity team and was put on the roster because there weren’t enough kids with grades good enough to
play. Our back-up goalie skated right-wing that season.
We lost every game by at least five goals. I never scored. We had one kid who could play, but it didn’t
matter. This wasn’t basketball where a single superstar could carry the team. It must have been agonizing
for my parents to watch, considering my pedigree. Then, when my arm was snapped like a pencil by a
cross-check into the boards (a plot twist that I never saw coming) the team folded. We all joked that the
team just couldn’t make it without me. Either way, I'm still not sure if what I heard in the stands that night
was a collective gasp or a communal sigh of relief.
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Take Me Out With the Crowd
MATTHEW SCHULTZ
The last time I walked anywhere
in a group was Halloween, 2019.
You were dressed as a baseball
player and I was a beat reporter:
three-piece suit and spectacled
with a panama hat and a flip pad
where I recorded your afternoon
quips punctuated by the popping
of double-bubble and Mom yelling
to remind us both to say thank you.
We walked along Huguenot Street,
stopping at each small stone house
as if we were toe-tagging the bases
on our way around the diamond. I
miss those crowded avenues, the
spontaneous smiles that could light
up the night like stadium fireworks.
From up here in the nosebleed section
of my apartment building, a 7-story
walk-up, I can see people beginning
to congregate on the city sidewalks
and in the park near the ball fields!
I can hear the roar of the crowds––
people shouting at one another out
car windows and through telephones,
across parking lots and intersections
like cross-town rivals hating each other
with the intensity of playoff hopefuls
as if nothing unifying had happened.
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12
Shoes
EDWARD M. COHEN
Leon Cameron, Vice President in charge of Artists and Repertoire for the American division of a German
music company, spent the evening at a dreary Carnegie Recital Hall debut of a mezzo who was being
promoted by the manager of the label's biggest star. So how could Leon have turned down the invite? But
the singer had programmed an evening of Hugo Wolf art songs, tough going under ordinary
circumstances, which she delivered with what Leon called a "Head in the Toilet" voice - listening to herself,
pleased with the echoes, wrapped in an aura of sainthood, eyes crossed so she looked slightly batty..
Nevertheless, he was in his usual seat on the aisle and all in the audience - the manager, the singer's
mother - were measuring his response. If he applauded too vehemently, her stock would go up for all the
concert bookers in attendance; if he failed to applaud the word would be out before the final encore. So he
had to remain seated during intermission to prevent anyone asking what he thought. Those in the know
would get the message. On the other hand, he could not leave before bouquets were handed across the
footlights, and even had to put in an appearance at the backstage reception.
Up and coming artists, fawning agents, famous teachers, even reviewers kow-towed before him. His
favorites got a kiss, or even a hug; he was known in some circles for his warmth and paternal nurturance of
talent. But there was a camp in the room who knew his other side. Cross him, it was gossiped, and phone
calls were not returned, recording dates were postponed, contracts were cancelled, even good tables at
restaurants grew harder to come by. Defy him on choice of repertoire, show up late for a session, get too
demanding in negotiations - and, still smiling at your recitals, he would mysteriously cause you to have to
return to Europe to jump-start your career.
Talk about him was always in whispers like those that followed as he finally was able to glide from the
room, stopping to kiss the head-in-the-toilet mezzo's hand. As he hit the cool air of Fifty-seventh Street,
his movements were no longer silken.
Twenty three years ago, when he had given up the piano and taken a job as production assistant in a
classical record company, he had purchased a pair of intricately laced, thickly heeled, heavy leather, oxblood
cordovans. As a concert pianist - and tennis player - back home in Ohio, he had always worn
sneakers, scooting across the court the way his fingers had raced across the keys; bending low for the ball,
scooping it up at unnerving angles, playing so fast sparks seemed to shoot from his hands. But, as far as the
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13
farm boy football players he had been desperate to impress, piano was for faggots. So was tennis. In those
days, so were tennis sneakers.
Now, in his patent-leather pumps, his legs had turned numb. At the reception, everything had been
blurred; faces, mouths, hands to be kissed. But as soon as he passed the first boy in a doorway, sensation
returned to his limbs. He was able to breathe, to think, to feel safe in the shadows. Arranging matters over
the phone would have deprived him of delicious aspects of the adventure.
He strolled back and forth, passing the same boys over and over, discarding some, swiveling back for
another look at others. If he saw a hustler he had already had, he nodded but made it clear he was not
interested in a repeat. If he saw another regular john, he would smile; most often they ignored it. But what
the hell, he was enjoying himself. Back and forth, from Bloomingdales' to Fiftieth Street, from a slide to a
slither, he could feel himself returning to that golden-boy-concert pianist-tennis sneakered-kid.
As he approached a decision, the one he allowed his glance to rest upon had long, long legs and Leon noted
the way his calf muscles strained against the back of his jeans - farm boy type, maybe from Ohio, probably
not, but the fantasy was inviting - slightly sullen, perhaps it was just that he was brainless beneath his halo
of golden hair. Was it bleached? Maybe from California.
"Nice night," Leon said.
"Kinda cold."
Silence. This was not a junkie, nor a psycho. Leon had been at this a long time and had learned to trust his
instincts. He had never been beaten or robbed. Many times he had walked away because he had not liked
the vibes. This kid might turn out to be boring, but that was the only threat.
"Very quiet," Leon said.
"Dead as a doornail."
"Well, it's a weeknight."
"Yeah."
The form was as rigid as a sonata and the players knew their parts; only the kid had given away too much
with "Dead as a doornail." The hint of a moan had been a concession. His price had already dropped.
A few more beats of silence. Leon and the farm boy pretended they did not know what came next but the
basic theme had been established. Now onto the variations.
ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022
14 COHEN
"What's your name?" Leon asked.
"Oscar."
"A strange name."
”Well, it's mine!" he replied. Mistake number two. He wasn't experienced enough to lie and and, more
surprising, was prickly about the accusation.
"What's yours?" Oscar asked, trying to cover his defensiveness. Leon liked the facade of disdain and the
fact that it could so easily be chipped away.
"Hugo Wolf," he replied.
"That's a strange one, also."
They both laughed. Leon liked him. He could already picture him in his high school locker room, slipping
into a jock strap. The thought burned into Leon’s cheeks. Oscar noticed. Balls whizzed over the net… and
Leon came home.
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15
Center
DANIKA STEGEMAN LeMAY
Karl-Anthony Towns, center for the Minnesota Timberwolves, experienced unfathomable loss
in a span of months. His mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, died from complications caused by
COVID-19 on April 13th, 2020. Subsequently that year, Towns’ family lost six more loved ones
to the disease.
In a December 2020 post-game interview, Towns is thoughtful and unguarded, as though his
insides are obsidian. Speaking of himself in the past tense, he says, that Karl died on April 13th.
He’s never coming back. I don’t remember that man. I don’t know that man.
I’m volcanic glass when I say, I’ll never be the same. None of us will be the same. We no longer exist.
Our mothers leave us obsidian we’ll need to lean into a microphone without her. I didn’t
understand mother-shaped chasms until July carved mine.
That woman meant the world to me. More than y’all will ever know and write...It’s such a different pain
than even y’all recognize, Towns says to unseen reporters.
My mom told a story about my birth. The doctor handed my dad scissors to cut the umbilical
cord. My dad hesitated, paled, shook his head and handed the scissors back. Later, my mom
asked my dad if he’d been squeamish about the blood. No. He couldn’t sever the line that tied her
life to mine. He couldn’t bear the weight of it.
A gold heart on a chain rests against Towns’ chest throughout The Toughest Year of My Life, the
documentary he created to honor his mother. The loss of her is something that’s not describable.
The weight disappears with her.
Though her body was unrecognizable in a coma, Towns says of his mother, I could feel her energy.
It’s something a mother--a mother and a child connection that just can never be misplaced. We speak
telepathically. The doctors, they didn’t feel it, but I felt it.
After an ambling June day in 2018, I went into active labor when I lay down to nap. The on-call
doctor at my OBGYN’s office said, You’re fine. Wait an hour and call back. Immediately after I hung
ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022
16 STEGEMAN LeMAY
up, my mom called. She heard my voice. Go now, honey. This baby is coming. My husband drove us
the 10 minutes to the hospital. My water broke as I entered the triage room.
I don’t even recognize most of my other games and years I’ve played and how I felt those days.
I recall how it felt to be a person with a mother, but I no longer recognize that person as myself. I
lost her like we lose days, each moment as it passes.
To say it’s been day-by-day is probably an understatement. I think it’s been more moment by moment.
We move through moments. We begin to heal as we can and must, but we’ll never be the same.
For months after my mom died, friends tell me, you’re made of strong stuff. Obsidian is volcanic
glass formed when lava cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. Obsidian is brittle and can’t be
carved, but when chipped can be sharper than surgical steel. Obsidian is from my mom.
Sometimes because she gave it from what was best in her. Sometimes because I sourced a blade
to protect myself from what was worst in her.
At the press conference, when asked by a reporter how he got through the game, Towns takes a
long pause, holds space, shakes his head softly as he considers how best to state what no one can
understand exactly but himself. When you, um, being honest, when you go through what I’ve been
through, you just find a different source of strength. I don’t know how to explain it...
The Towns family celebrates what should’ve been Jacqueline’s 59th birthday, unfurling red and
gold and green confetti against an unapologetically blue sky.
The same July sky my mom died beneath a week later.
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17
Open Tryout
WILLIAM MUSGROVE
The catcher squatted over home plate. He was trying out, too. I’d driven three hundred miles for this
opportunity, but my head stayed in small-town Iowa. I was standing in my backyard near the fence. With
my feet stacked atop each other, I was walking forward and counting to sixty, drawing the distance I had to
conquer. I dug my cleat into the mound. I dangled my glove. I dug my cleat again. And I waited for my
superstition to come true. All the greats believe in superstitions.
I’d told myself if the radar-gun-holding scout inside the visiting dugout blew a bubble in the next few
seconds, I’d plunk the catcher right in the mitt. Randomness rules my life. I’m always saying if X happens
then Y will go my way.
A pink balloon grew from the scout’s lips. I planted my fingers across the red seams. I hiked my leg. I
twisted my hips. I unwound. I was stored energy. I was kinetic.
The ball landed in the dirt left of the catcher and kicked up a puff of dust. He flung off his mask, making a
big show of my wildness, and put his body in front of the ball. He understood the fundamentals of the
game. A passed ball meant possible runs scored. Me? I pitched like an actor acting.
Genetics blessed me with a five-foot-six-inch frame and stubby limbs, but our genes don’t dictate what we
love. And I love baseball even though the sport doesn’t love me back.
Like most of us, my dad introduced me to the game when I was crawling around in Huggies. When I was
five or six, I’d grip his hand and he’d say: “Looky there, honey, that’s a splitter or maybe a changeup.” This
led to me idolizing hurlers like Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Kevin Brown—basically anyone who
commanded a mound. Unlike players patrolling the premier infield and roaming the lush outfield grass, a
pitcher always touches the ball. As the positive end of the battery, a pitcher controls the pace of the game.
Whether he strikes out twenty-seven in a row or dishes up ten runs, he called his shot.
The catcher tossed the ball back to me. Before sliding his mask over his face, he flashed the scout a look
that said: “This is what happens when you let anyone come to these things.” He was right. I stunk. But what
real pitcher wants to exit the game? Instead of leaving the mound and letting the talented get on with
their tryout, I fiddled with the ball inside my glove and dreamt up my next sign.
ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022
18 MUSGROIVE
This time I told myself if one of the parents sitting in the bleachers bragged about their child’s
accomplishments, my curve would dip like the setting sun. Seconds ticked off silence. The catcher, back in
position, glanced at the scout. Then I heard the proud papa: “My kid hit .345 throughout college. He sure
takes after his dad.”
Baseball is full of sons taking after their dads.
I hiked my leg again. I folded my limbs. I concentrated on my stride, on my heel planting first. I
concentrated on making my dad proud. The ball sailed upward and crashed against the backstop. The
catcher popped up and retrieved my mistake. Frustrated and probably cursing me, he beamed it back. The
scout lowered his radar gun and ambled toward the dugout’s exit.
My dad never played high school or college ball. Like me, his size and abilities kept him off teams’ rosters
after little league. However, the way he speaks, you’d think he dressed for the Chicago Cubs.
Growing up, he’d ramble stats at me and have me guess the players they belong to. On summer vacations,
he’d take me to Wrigley and buy me nacho-stuffed helmets. And when I got a little older, we’d watch the
Baby Bears storm the field on cable and spend the day together screaming at umps, discussing our
bullpen, and knocking back a brew or two. Whenever the Cubs lost or failed to punch a ticket to the
postseason, we’d commiserate by saying “next year, next year is our year.” When they finally broke that
baaing curse, the universe felt tilted, because baseball, for us, wasn’t about winning.
That’s why I was floundering on that mound.
I’d convinced myself chucking a ball around in my backyard after working my nine-to-five would transform
me into a pro. I’d convinced myself my purpose in life was on the field. But really I was just searching for
that feeling before the pitcher starts his windup and you look at your dad with anticipation. I was
searching for those little gaps of time before things happened, before the batter struck out or smashed
the ball over the ivy. I was searching for those little gaps of time where we’re all kids.
After college, I moved upstate for a job. I see my family during the holidays. I phone my parents once a
month or so. But the distance, the punching in and punching out, the errands of every day, slowly morphed
baseball, the Cubbies, into just numbers, into Ws and Ls. Hell, life has become nothing but Ws and Ls.
Maybe that’s what happens when you reach adulthood. Those little gaps of time fade away. All the runners
have long touched home.
The scout shuffled out of the dugout. While trudging toward the mound, he gestured to the catcher to
stay put. He held out his palm like I owed him something. I refused to give him the ball. Instead, I
whispered my final superstition and threw.
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19
Chernobyl Baby
MAREK KULIG
How I got my Cold War epithet
all started before the ’06 season.
To give back, Coach signed us up
to donate blood. Later that week the team
was expected to exercise its sympathy.
“Abstain and hydrate, boys,” he advised,
a few days leading up to the drive.
We weren’t so much into this
abstinence — insofar as we understood
its carnal associations — but we loved hydrating.
In fact, we dubbed the fountain drink section
of the cafeteria: Hydration Station.
“Gotta hydrate,” we’d say every morning
at breakfast, “before that dehydration,”
regardless if it was to be induced later
by workouts or alcohol, or sweating out alcohol.
I recall a certain poster from the training room.
It was in the fluorescent wan bathroom, above
the toilet, charting six shades of urine
in the vein of threat alert advisory system.
If yours was see-through through ripe banana,
you were in the clear, but once the hue ascended
into cigarette filter, or leapfrogged
into barrel-aged apple juice,
the description in the box a column over
urged: Actively seek an IV.
Mine was looking glassy with a tinge
of lemon rind the morning I reclined
in one of a half-dozen gurneys
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20
arranged in the foyer of the gymnasium.
The phlebotomist handed me some paperwork
and began to prepare the instruments of largesse.
Name, date, address. Height and weight.
He tore open some plastic packaging.
Are you in generally good health?
He attached a needle to a tube
that ran into a kidney-sized pouch.
Travel History, Approximate Dates of Travel.
He held out his hand, “Let’s see.”
I was finishing Country and DOB—
“Born in Poland, huh? And date?”
“1987. Moved to the States in ’92.”
Eyebrows sloped outwards,
he recited some fine print.
Zones, radiation, iodine, thyroid
and a city named Chernobyl I had never heard of.
I took the stairs down to the athletics department,
the floor below the court like a sprawling doomsday bunker.
“Ahh, unlucky,” was Coach’s reaction, but I didn’t know
whether he meant me or prospective donees.
A few weeks later the season was underway.
The team had this 36-hour rule — if gametime
was up to and including 36 hours away,
we couldn’t party, so the night before
the first scrimmage we decided to
vicariously.
We put on the HBO series Entourage,
a show that follows a group of childhood buds
who ride all over LA on the coat-tails
of their movie-star friend. It’s replete with lines
contemplating pensively what happens when we die,
i.e., “I don’t know about the afterlife, but this life is sweet”
only the philosopher behind this insight
is not an existential absurdist but a chubby twenty-something
nicknamed Turtle who’s entering a radiant room
glowing with scantily clad broads.
The episode was titled “Vegas Baby, Vegas!”
And even then, sitting on the couch, cool water
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KULIG 21
running through my core, it hit me as odd
that there was no comma between Vegas and Baby,
as if Baby wasn’t the addressee and was, rather,
born in Vegas (a Vegas baby) the way I was born in Poland.
And if that’s as true as the cuckoo
nuclear testing the US government did
in the deserts of Nevada, is it also true
that some phleb-anthropic Vegas adults get turned away
when the Blood Drive comes to town?
And that, consequently, the Southwest
donates fewer quarts than the rest of the country?
I haven’t watched Entourage in years.
I couldn't even tell you the storyline
of that episode set in Sin City. But chances are
at some point a guy leans over to another guy and rasps,
“Listen, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Some places are better than others at keeping secrets.
But as someone who had it hidden from himself
in his very own blood for nineteen years
how far they’ll go not to tell, let me keep short
how I got my Cold War epithet:
Chernobyl, baby, Chernobyl!
ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022
22
Semantic-pragmatic Deficits Among Neurodivergent
Synesthetes: Why is Mario Italian?
THOMAS FRANK
The chair on the left if you’re sitting on the couch, in the living room, in the house my father shares with his
partner, and my father asking me how I am since I stopped electroconvulsive therapy—I’m in that chair. I
cast my eyes to the carpet; an inward turn isn’t always a retreat. Sitting on my left foot because that feels
best, and leaning forward, and sometimes I can anticipate, but less often with his partner, and I say my
mood swings have settled somewhat, and that the doubts I’d held about my spectrum diagnosis are
extinguished, at last. I make my speech fluent, this despite the fact that there are four of us in the room,
which might otherwise prove an impairingly large group. Inadequacy of that phrase, a weight has been
lifted, owing to the fact that most weights lack singleness, ontological coherence. A better phrase might be
many weights, whole onto themselves, fall from me like auburn leaves brushed from denim-clad shoulders, flutter
across the always already soiled earth, scritch down the highway that goes back to our former home, remnants of
holy, alone in their plenitudes. My doubt is gone, yes yes, but my father remains.
Doubt is a social phenomenon, residing within but also between people, like memory, like rumor, and
those doubts I held about my autism diagnosis came in no small part from ones arising in my father. There
is no good faith route to blame him for voicing his concerns, nor to fault my sister for the same; even
during the intervening decade, the expanded diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder that
allowed me to be placed under that label remain little known, to the point that some have interpreted the
increase in diagnoses as an “epidemic,” while others point to it as a “trendy diagnosis.” Well, no. Intensive
research led to broadened conceptions of the disorder, that’s the spectrum part, which led to increased
diagnoses, which, in theory, led and continues to lead to more people who need services getting them.
Knowing all this, I’m confident that discussing my spectrum diagnosis with my family shouldn’t be a
pedagogical task.
I’m making the case that I’m autistic to my dad and his partner in as intentional a manner as I can. I want to
tell my dad something he’s not prepared to hear, in a manner to which he’s not equipped to listen. The fact
of the matter is that, as I outline my points, I must step into his rhetorical arena. If I’m mellifluous, it’s
because I’ve practiced this speech for weeks. Endless strategy sessions played out in my head. I’ve
anticipated every objection I could think of, rehearsing my responses down to the catch breath, rehearsing
eye contact in the mirror, scrutinizing well-timed smiles to ensure a natural look while tilting my chin low
enough to leave my wonky tooth shadowed, and the crinkle, the crinkle around the eyes. I’m living an
ascetic act of refusal that could be doomed to fail by the tiniest misstep.
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During his high school years, my dad’s sport was debate; he made it to the national championships in both
singles and doubles, and his conversation retains a probing, fact driven impulse. He’s a close listener who
asks insightful questions. This tendency allows a space to talk about what you find most important, with
questions that make you feel good and let your guard down. He likes to make you feel good, yes, and
listened to, of course, but he also likes that he doesn’t have to talk about himself. The man is analytical in
the way I wish I was, but I can never quite follow the thrust of a truly complex argument—never construct
one for myself. Often, I’ve been told I lose the forest for the trees, though I’m not sure what that means.
Speaking in four dimensional terms, (for spectra arise from spaces exceeding latitude and longitude), my
father’s arguments emerge from some spectral corner at a right angle at a right angle at a right angle from
my own, soft at first, then build to a frantic pace. It’s always clear where he will go next, like he’s reading
from meticulous mental notecards, but you’re only ever one step ahead, and by his design. The whole
proceedings are like high-stakes Tetris; one sees the next shape in the corner, but after a certain point the
speed and intensity have ramped up to a level where that doesn’t help much.
My own rhetoric is accretive in a Tetris-y way, so that much can be adapted. The difference is I’m drawn to
narrative and language suffused with feeling. I could show my father the results of my ASD diagnostic test,
but instead I find myself tending toward confession. Or maybe not. I want to go saccharine, really truly
actually existing sappiness. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him, tell him I love him more than he
could ever know, but I just wish he could see me for an instant—this hysterical fact of me, insidious in his
periphery, fact he’s sure will clamp down if he allows himself to internalize what I’m saying. I reach
upwards at the love this son is capable of showing: these stories I’ve practiced. But I fall short, listing
symptoms instead, as much from fear of argument, of embarrassment, guilt, shame, as reflecting any
communicative deficit. I catch myself enacting a violent, flicking assault on the outside of my ear canal,
stop myself, press hard into nostril and septum and pinch down before switching which foot I’m sitting on.
Dad plays with a coaster, and I finally start to narrate.
&&&
Ad nauseum, a light brown leather seat on a dark folding chair, wedged between attending tub and a small
shelving unit with foldable cloth boxes we had to rebuy when the initial set was one size too small. Hands
unfold the chair, call the water from the spout, squeak temperature, water begins to open the tub. This
body, pale, not wan, slim from my limited diet, helps, I help, fill the tub, again.
MacBook on the seat, 17th browser tab opened to YouTube, and the top suggestion, the latest video by
Ryukahr, a Northern California streamer with straight-brimmed caps and a vivid beard; for his living, this
man is Mario on the internet. His viewers pay him a not insignificant amount to play Super Mario Maker, a
Nintendo game where players can design and upload their own levels, some bordering on impossible.
Ryukahr plays these fan levels like a Stradivarius—played well, is the modifier. Under his thumbs, Mario’s
deep musics unfold, unfaltering: the most tritonic of his leaps, intervallic devils surround the Italian
plumber with lava, spikes, ghosts and turtley automata; everyday, jumps ring as octaves, pixel-wide
landings shake the earth as mixolydian miracles reforming crumbled cathedral foundations; shell-jumps
and mid-airs reed and bellow, bespeaking a healing mode—justice, finally—a sigh of self-sloughed scabs
and dissolving suture.
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Lately, the shower’s stricture and solitude frighten me—that’s not figurative—but I’m able to watch
Ryukahr several times a week when I take a bath. Engrossed, I sometimes forget to wash and need to refill
the tub after it has half drained. Some diagnostic criteria the DSM-5 lists for Autism Spectrum Disorder
include: “Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of …behavior,”
“circumscribed or perseverative interests,” while another lists “Hyper or hyporeactivity to sensory input
or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment…e.g., apparent indifference to pain/
temperature.” And admission/admonition, the tub filled with too-hot water is the only place one can really
appreciate Ryukahr. I’ve chosen to watch hundreds of these videos, most lasting between 20 and 30
minutes.
Within the eSports landscape, Ryukahr is the rare player who has the capacity to game competitively but
chooses to play single player games. This choice presents an implicit argument: if I play, they will watch.
He’s keen in understanding what his viewers want. Regular videos are #1. In order to become a successful
streamer, you must release regular content. He also knows his viewers want to see him suffer—Ryukahr
plays the hardest game modes, and a good part of these videos is watching him fail: dozens of Mario’s
deaths, always followed by one tiny victory. The key is that Ryukahr never stops, never gives up. Each level
is a compulsion and any doubt that he might not finish has long since been eliminated from his emotional
vocabulary.
There’s little plot to a Mario level. I’ve come to think of the plumber as a giallo or Italian exploitation star.
Giallo, pl. gialli, the Italian literary and cinematic genre, combines elements of thriller, horror, and detective
stories, all set in a highly stylized world. Giallo is the Italian word for yellow, the color of the paper used for
their early pulps. Most are more familiar with it in its cinematic incarnations. Many Gialli and other Italian
exploitation pictures are short, violent, and often have only minorly intelligible plots, relying more on
dream logic than anything straightforward. Their casts were international affairs featuring actors who, in
their home countries were little more than B-stars—one-off James Bonds and German superstars
disgraced by drink and mental illness—this owing to the common practice of international film
coproduction during the height of the giallo craze (the sixties through the eighties—though still true to this
day), as well as that cinema’s technical oddities (sound wasn’t recorded on Italian film sets, [nor German,
nor Spanish], it was dubbed until the mid-eighties. 1) Mario is just the same: short, plotless, and with
violence taken to the extremes of aestheticization and abstraction. The main character, though still
nominally Italian, is played by an American. Also, gloves are worn, another integral part of gialli.
Ryukahr’s role in these virtual gialli is acting as the producer/distributor—a crucial role in Italian genre
cinema. In a way, the distributor is as important to an exploitation film as the director or screenwriter.
They put the film in front of audiences through acts of creative (re)contextualization. If a film was
successful, other, unrelated films—already produced, (some already released under different titles), or just
beginning production—would be released as “sequels.” When George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was an
international craze in 1978, Italian filmmaker Dario Argento bought the European distribution rights,
reëdited it, added a score by Italian prog rock gods Goblin, and released it as Zombi. The next year,
Argento worked with fellow filmmaker Lucio Fulci to put out his newest film, originally titled Nightmare
Island, as Zombi 2. Tonally and narratively it is more akin to something like The Island of Doctor Moreau or
1 There’s an ideological/political story there, but I don’t find the Italian side terribly compelling after the Mussolini era. On the other hand, Spanish
film dubbing, i.e. regionalized versions including Basque and Catalan dubs, remains more interesting to me at least through the death of the
Generalísimo in 1975 :)
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even voodoo films like I Walked with a Zombie, except with more eye-gouging and a scene with a zombie
fighting a shark, but that didn’t matter. The main thing was to get butts in seats—by any means necessary.
Before you ask, yes, there was a Zombi 3, two separate films released as Zombi 4, and a Zombi(e) 5, with the
evocative—and accurate—subtitle Killing Birds. The same fake-out worked with The Evil Dead, Jaws, The
Terminator, even The Exorcist. Ryukahr’s game, like the exploitation distribution game, is to take unrelated
levels and recontextualize them, give them continuity. All Argento needed to do was slap on a new title. A
streamer does the trick with the addition of a simpler element than even that: they add themselves, a tiny
face in the bottom right of the screen, devoid of subjectivity.
Ryukahr has learned that his viewers don’t want much personality from him; he makes few, if any, jokes,
repeats himself often, and reveals very little about his personal life. For a long while, he seemed wary to
admit that the woman who sometimes appeared in his videos was his girlfriend (they’ve since married)—
perhaps if those viewers who thought Ryukahr was cute thought he was single, they might click on yet
another video. Yet it might be less complicated than that. Most of Ryukahr’s time in his videos is spent
narrating what he’s doing. Because he plays several levels in each video (six to ten), his continuing
presence adds a story where there might otherwise be nothing at all 2. I’d like to take this opportunity to
repeat: I’ve watched hundreds of these videos. I buy the story he’s selling and he feels like a friend (he’s
not). This beardo’s wily tricks have enchanted me completely, or maybe I just like to do the same thing
again, and again, and again.
&&&
I’m at the edge of my seat, still in my father’s living room, close to crouching in front of it. This wasn’t the
story I wanted to tell about rubbing Legos on my lips and faking sick every day of public school so I
wouldn’t have to go be bullied by the boys I thought were my friends. I go off the rails, start ranting to my
father about things outside his realm: federal climate change policy, the distinction between antisemitism
and antizionism, and the idea that autistics lack a “Theory of Mind,” much ingrained in some circles.
(Abbreviated as ToM, lol, the absence of which is sometimes called mindblindness—a word too melodious
to find offensive.) Dad nods, is nodding. The story goes that we lack the ability to get into other peoples’
heads and understand that they, too, have thoughts, feelings, deep-seated inner lives. The offense I take is
as an essayist. I’ve spent huge fucking swaths of my life trying to understand and more effectively
communicate with my father. The idea that I wouldn’t even know he has an inner life, much less be able to
access something of it leaves me crestfallen—not at some deficit I perceive in myself, but at the flagrant
incuriousness, the complete rejection of self-doubt, flaunted by those trying to say something about
autistic people.
Why must neurodivergent rhetoric hew so closely to that of the neurotypical? Why couldn’t an autistic
rhetoric inhabit a lyricism, embrace contradiction, eschew coherence? I’m still talking about the essay.
(Dad raises an eyebrow.) The future of the essay is neurodivergent: obsessive, encyclopedic, shapely,
textural. Maybe even a little confused, by an outsider’s standards. And maybe this confusion is an illusion
masking a generative, beloved doubt, behind which lies strength. A doubt confronted, conquered, begets
strength. Autistic argumentation and aesthetics can inform a literature of IEPs, of Dewey decimals, of
2 There is one game mode with a nominal plot, and it is the same one that has existed in every Mario game: evil Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and
it’s up to Mario to save her. This is such a given that it can be dismissed in the same manner that we might dismiss “There is a problem, and
someone must fix it.”
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26 FRANK
course, but they will also create one of tenses, moods, and modes that most haven’t yet imagined. This will
occur in the interstices between narrative, image, argument, and fact—but don’t forget your Yvonne
Rainer: feeling are facts. Dad’s glazing over by this point, and I turn back inside.
It’s quiet for a long time. Bodies in extension, mirror-twinned ecologies of consciousness and experience
fill this room in dissonant keys. No ones’ fault. My difference lacked a name until I was diagnosed ten years
ago, and I nearly forgot that name in the meantime. Now I’m in a place where the label means something.
But there is nothing novel about the experiences, feelings, behaviors.
My dad continues to play with his coaster. There’s compassion, even understanding on his face. “I’m so
happy for you that you have this new understanding of yourself.”
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Flashback to the Smoking Gun
TY CHAPMAN
To the campus we could never afford, but crept through sometimes,
not on nothing nefarious, just hooping with a cousin
& his friends, & some boys who been spoon fed
since they were twinkles in an iris. I recall like yesterday’s
refuse, the way them White boys watched you climb so high
above their heads, just to shove you down at the peak.
I remember perfectly, the way you shot up in a flash, ready
to stand ground and then some. How I stopped you,
grabbed hold with each bit of conviction I could muster,
said, Homie, look around. These boys will sue us out our socks,
if luck is on our side. & There was too much fever in my vigilance
perhaps, but I refused to lose you. Refused to read an article ending with officer;
narrative expurgating your name. I remember, through just rage, you heard the somber
wisdom in my words. You relented & we continued the game, shoulders heavy
with assorted chips. White boys grinned, still silver-ladened-lips, as you limped
to get back on defense. Remember what happened next? I do a little—still recall the second shove,
the third, the moment you hit the ground. The moment I discovered what it was
to be wrothful, how I dove like a prey-bird, seeking the throats of penny-tongued poachers.
How I needed each cubic inch of smoke & it took a great deal of mediation
to keep me from evening the score—for a moment, logic & consequences were trifling things.
All I knew for certain were those posh perpetual pups, who never scuffed paws for nothing,
thought to put hands on the man who was perhaps my only friend.
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28 CHAPMAN
I didn’t think of how we shouldn’t be there—security lazing round the alcove,
nor how quick it goes from sound scuffle to an operator & body bags.
I remember you rose to your feet, muttering, my nigga.
& Proceeded to behemoth through the paint ‘til the sun got sick of spectating.
How we kept it hoops the remaining duration,
how they never, ever, put a hand on you again.
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Interview With Ross Gay
TERRY HORSTMAN
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against
Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of
Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book
Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry
Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the
University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His
collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by
Algonquin Books in 2019.
Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil,
of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two
Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard
Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding
editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online
sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an
editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of
the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also
works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships
from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at
Indiana University.
Terry Horstman grew up in Minneapolis and is the all-time lowest scoring basketball player in the history
of Minnesota high school hoops. His work has been published or forthcoming from HeadFake, Flagrant
Magazine, The McNeese Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, A Wolf Among Wolves, among others. He is a graduate of
the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Hamline University and the executive editor of the Under Review.
He is currently at work on his debut essay collection, which is shockingly about basketball. He lives and
writes in Northeast Minneapolis.
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30
This interview was conducted virtually and originally aired as a podcast episode of Under Review Radio. It
has been edited for publication. To listen to the entire interview check out the episode HERE.
Terry Horstman: Ross, thank you so much for doing this. We met briefly at your last reading at The Loft
Literary Center in Minneapolis, which feels like a million years ago at this point, but it's so good to talk
with you again.
Ross Gay: Of course. Thank you for having me.
TH: Obviously, this is an interview in an issue and a podcast of a sports-themed literary journal and I've
read much of your work that touches on sports and games and play and movement. So I just want to begin
by asking you what roles did writing and also sports play in your childhood? Was there a moment when it
dawned on you that these two passions were two passions that can be in conversation with each other?
RG: When I was little, I had nothing to do with writing. School was easy for me until I was probably 12 or
13 and then there was some moment in school where it was a click... I can't remember exactly when it was.
Probably many things were going on. Some of it was probably actually my body changing and hormonal. I
don't know, stuff happened at home. But there were moments in my relationship to school, and I still hold
onto these moments, that I realized if people were telling me to do shit but they weren't explaining why I
should want to learn a thing or do a thing, it did not convince me to do the thing or to have any interest in
the thing.
So I can remember right at a certain point around that seventh, eighth grade when I had to start thinking a
little bit in school in a different kind of way. It was easy for me, some of it, back in the day. But then I just
started to be like, "Ah, I don't care." So it was also probably like fifth, six, seventh grade, around that same
transition. That was maybe one of the heights of my reading life as a kid. I was reading Power Man and
Iron Fist comic books. I liked comics. I think they came out weekly, but they could have come out monthly. I
can't remember. But I collected them all.
When I turned around 12, 13, I got deep into skateboarding. So I was reading Thrasher Magazine and
TransWorld Magazine pretty religiously. It's so fun to answer these questions because they [memories]
always become fuller. The more you think of them, the fuller they become. But I wasn't reading what you
would think. I wasn't reading books and I had no sort of interest in the idea of being a writer.
I was a sports guy. I wanted to be a professional football player. So I played basketball and football through
high school. Then I played football in college and had designs on trying to figure out how to play pro
football. After I graduated from college, I had what felt like an unsatisfactory college football career which
is like 10,000 stories. Now that I'm twenty-five years past it, I'm like, "Ah, man, you're just working through
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HORSTMAN 31
stuff. Just working through stuff." But anyway, how did your question go? Did you say the sort of
intersection of the two?
TH: Yeah. I actually can skip ahead a little bit, because I was going to touch on your career as a collegiate
football player. I read in a previous interview that you did, that it was about sophomore year of college or
so that you started discovering poetry or considering poetry. So, was Ross the football player and Ross the
poet in conversation with each other right away, and what was the experience like of discovering that you
were going to walk away from football dreams and pursue writing?
RG: That's right. I mean, the way that I think of it, and again, it's always more complicated, but one of the
ways that I think of it is that in my second year of college, in a survey of 20th century American poetry
class maybe, the professor, David Johnson, must have been able to tell I wasn't engaged at all. He assigned
me a presentation on the poet Amiri Baraka. I mean, I was doing nothing in school. I mean, I was writing
papers for other people, but I was doing nothing. I was doing nothing on my own behalf for school. I was
just so blown away by this poet and there was a poem in particular, it's called An Agony. As Now.
There are many things that have meant so much to me about Baraka. Among them, his changes through
his life. That he's just a writer who just changes, a writer and thinker and person who lets us watch him
change. But he also is articulating a kind of relationship to [rage].
I went to college and it was like...a ton of money. It was free for me because I played football, but I'd never
been around a bunch of people who had money like that. I'd never been around a bunch of people who all
drove nice cars, that kind of thing. The football players at that place were, by and large, the poor kids on
campus and all the black males on campus were football players and there were a few basketball players.
So there were all of these things that I was encountering that we were just making me full of rage. A really
sort of not quite articulate rage, complicated rage that this poem to some extent sort of helped me with. It
was the kind of rage that was percolating my whole life. But it was a little bit boiling over.
An Agony is Now is a kind of amazing poem. It's a dense, complicated poem. It's still profoundly mysterious
to me. I feel like I'll read that poem for the rest of my life and it'll keep changing meanings to me. But then a
poem like that would be the thing to turn on the engine of a kid and be like, "Oh, I want to try to do what
he's doing it."
TH: I love that you're able to zero in on that moment. You mentioned the click earlier and maybe that
wasn't a night and day difference, but I love that you're able to select one piece that pinpoints the moment
where something changed in your mind and you were able to consider poetry.
I have to talk to you about another person who's had a lot of influence on you, one of the many subjects of
your latest book Be Holding. That is, Dr. Jay Julius Erving. There’s so much I love about that book, but I also
love that it starts with that quick note at the beginning, directed to readers of a particular age who may
not know who Dr. Jay is. What role did Dr. Jay's status as a hero of your childhood play in your approach to
this poem and is one of the intentions of the poem to preserve that superhero childhood-like awe that's
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really only possible to attach to sports figures or heroes
when we are of that certain impressionable age?
RG: I love that question. Yeah. It's an interesting thing
because I think the poem at the beginning really, I think,
introduces us to this way of thinking, you know you're
with someone who's a basketball guy because my favorite
line in the poem might be, "Yo, remember Shawn Kemp?"
TH: Yes. I love that line so much.
RG: So it's sort of like a deep student and a door to the
game. It's funny, though, because that kind of familiarity
and that kind of parlance and that kind of ease with the
thing, with the subject, I think that feels to me like the
kind of, that, "Yo, remember Shawn Kemp," that's a little
bit superhero-y. You know?
But it's funny because Dr. Jay, though he was a kind of
super heroic figure in a certain way when I was a kid. I was
born in 1974 and was coming to consciousness about
things, say in like 1980, We moved to the Philadelphia
area in '79. Then in '80, '81 I think they (76ers) went to
the finals. I was aware. My dad was a basketball guy, so I
was aware of Doc, very aware. I probably had a Dr. J t-shirt. Any kid would. It was just like that. It is not too
much at all to say that he was very much like Michael Jordan would be later, though there was not the
machinery of proliferating images in the way that Michael Jordan came up with. But he would be in
commercials, those Converse commercials and Spalding commercials.
TH: Right.
RG: He was around and he was on. We watched basketball and so I got to see Dr. J and I have to say, if you
watched any game that Dr. J plays in, it's funny. You can go watch any game. He will do three or four things
that are like, "That's not right."
[Laughter]
TH: Yep.
RG: Yeah. It's just the way it is. Now you see Ja Morant, I've been looking at his highlights. It's a little bit
like, "Man, that's not regular." Or a lot of these folks, but he was, it was weird. So to come up as a little kid,
and to see this person as a magician on the court, there was a way that he holds, or held that kind of place
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HORSTMAN 33
in my brain. That being said, in the poem, I feel like he's not at all super-heroic. I feel like he's doing a move
that is an actual impossibility.
He's doing something that's an actual impossibility, but the way the poem approaches his particular
moment of impossible flight and impossible genius and visioning, it's something other than super-heroic.
There's some way that, and I don't know, it's funny, the question is such a great question because it makes
me think. Even when doing whatever you call it (promotion) for the book, people were like, it’s a “tribute to
Dr. J," and I'm like, "Er, it's not a tribute to Dr. J."
It's a study. It's a study of this one move that he did. It's a study of this. Then it goes into his background a
little bit, but really, to me, it's a study of this impossible move that Dr. J did. Like I said, people don't write
books where an image of a basketball player is floating around throughout as a central guide of
meditation. So, of course, I understand it, the feeling is like, wait a second, you're telling me this is not a
book about Dr. J?
TH: Right.
RG: But to me, I'm like, it's not actually a book about Dr. J, although I'm looking so closely because Dr. J in a
way is a guide through the book. We’re looking at this move as a guide.
TH: In this move, the “victim” of Dr. J’s impossible flight was/is Mark Landsberger, who you handle so well,
so gently. It’s almost an ode or a tribute. Because today the culture of basketball suggests that when
someone gets dunked on or embarrassed, we're not very gentle or expressing admiration to those people.
I mean, whenever I see someone get dunked on, I'm like, "At least he tried."
RG: Totally.
TH: "And didn't just get out of the way." I love how it keeps coming back to Landsberger and how he did all
of the correct things that a good defender would do and it still didn't matter.
RG: Totally. He did it all. He was totally admirable. There's also this thing that I keep doing, Because this is
a poem that's thinking hard about America and race and all this stuff. Don't reduce Landsberger. This is
about two dudes playing basketball. That's what this is. Landsburger is not an allegory, he is a dude, a six
foot nine inch dude, trying his best, you know.
TH: Speaking of this being a study of Dr. J's move and him serving as the guide, are there any other iconic
plays either from childhood or just elsewhere in sports that may inspire a book length poem slash study
out of you?
RG: Yeah. Great question. You can tell from the book, I'm a big Iverson guy. I love Allen Iverson. Not
everyone could tell from the book, but you probably can. I could easily see a book length study of him.
Actually, speaking of Shawn Kemp, if you ever are like me and want to watch Shawn Kemp's hundred best
dunks.
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TH: I always want to watch Shawn Kemp’s best dunks.
RG: There's one where it's so neat. This guy was such a beautiful ball player and he dunked so hard on this
dude and the dude falls and gets up immediately and they immediately dap each other up.
The dude's like, "Damn! Good move." And Kemp's like, "Man, thanks." And it's just this moment of such
tenderness actually. It's the elevated moment where, to me, it's basketball. The beautiful move is made
extra beautiful by the good contention, by the good defense. And this dude contended well but Shawn
Kemp was just a little higher and it worked out for Shawn Kemp and they both bounced up together and
almost embraced as a way of being like, "We just did that."
"We did that. I just made your thing more beautiful," and he's like, "Yo man, you just made my thing more
beautiful."
TH: Anyone who's read interviews or is familiar with their work knows you mention tenderness and write
about tenderness in moments that are either directly about sports or adjacent to sports. We’re talking
about this right now with Kemp, but what is it about just the act of sports and competition and playing
that make it such an effective storytelling medium for acts of tenderness?
RG: It's a great question. I feel like there's probably many reasons for that. I'm writing about this quite a bit
right now. I'm writing a little bit about playing college football and how so often the tenderness was born
of a training in against-ness. So often you had to make an enemy and the enemy (for me then) might be
Holy Cross or the enemy might be Bucknell or Army.
And from that against-ness was grown this togetherness that sometimes looks like tenderness. For me, I
want to raise the question of like, is it tenderness when it's born of against-ness? And so often also that
capacity for tenderness is this thing, this enemy in say football. Where I grew up or how I grew up learning
football, which is also to say learning a certain “masculinity,” there was this other thing, a persistent enemy
and that enemy would be something like the female or the queer. There's a beautiful Eileen Myles essay
that I'm trying to talk with and they say, the woman, the queer and the oddly behaving man…and that is a
figure I keep returning to in this essay as a way, as a persistent thing that in certain kinds of homosocial,
football locker rooms, for instance, as I experienced it, the togetherness could often be cultivated against
those things.
I want to suggest that it needn't be. I want to suggest of course that there's a more sort of tenderness that
is born of its own need, not of its need against anything. Born of its own need. All that being said, I suppose
there is a way that we relate to competition and we think about competition as a kind of battle. There's
probably something very seductive to us about the way that in the midst of battle, people do these soft
things for each other. But I'm really suspicious of that actually. I'm really suspicious of that. Nothing moves
me more than when I think of when I tore my MCL against Colgate. You know, mean Colgate.
I can picture, because I'm a tough guy, I jump up immediately and my leg's fucking flopping around. My
buddy Glenn is on the sideline running out to the punt return team, and he's screaming to get people out
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HORSTMAN 35
there to help me. That whole thing of like, ah... It is so tender, it melts my heart and when I picture it, I
picture in this, it's dusty and it's like, all the long history of battle is in my imagination, my historical
imagination of this stupid fucking event of a little football. Yeah, but I think those stories maybe cultivate
in us a certain kind of ability to be moved especially because it's so violent. And there are these glimmers,
but like I said, I want to wonder about that.
Actually, I want to wonder about it in a way like this too. Those games where there's refs and there's
coaches and there's a definitive winner and loser in a certain way, those aren't games that I'm actually
interested in at all anymore. Look, I watch, probably later today, I'll watch a little House of Highlights, want
to see what Ja did and what fucking Steph Curry did, I'm going to do that.
TH: Of course.
RG: Pickup basketball is a completely different phenomenon. And a game without refs and without
coaches, which is to say, a game without the structures, the hierarchical structures, the policing
structures, the legislative structures, but that are instead, if you were to talk about certain different kinds
of governance that are horizontal, where every time a new five gets on the court, the rules actually change
because not everyone calls a foul the same way.
TH: Right.
RG: For those of who don't know, in pickup basketball, there's five people on the side. You have to
assemble that five, in any number of ways, in different places and they're going to say it maybe a little
different. You know, you might say, “Who's next? Who's got next? Who's last next? My next.” And then that
team gets on and the winner stays on the court and then that team gets on and then you play, and then the
winner stays on the court, and it goes on forever. So among the things that you learn is that the process is
different every time; every new gathering of players, every new assemblage of players constitutes a new
game, a new set of rules.
It changes. The foul has changed. How hard you can hand check someone has changed. There are some
things that are static, like out of bounds is pretty much out of bounds. If you're playing with ones and twos,
that's pretty much static, but not always. But the real nuts and bolts of the game, which is the
interpersonal dynamic, the shifty stuff changes every single time because there's not a God and there are
no gods. You always have to practice being invited in, in pickup basketball because part of the way you get
on that five that's on the sideline is you say, "Hey, can I play?"
Can I get on? Can I get in? You got a spot? Then if you're the one who has the team, you have to be a host,
you have to learn how to invite people in. You know, there's all kinds of stuff that goes on, it's just human.
All of these lessons are being learned in pickup basketball. We are the ones determining the flow and
movement and organization of this game. In those moments, in that setting, I feel like I see the most
astonishing tenderness that I believe in wholeheartedly. I don't believe that it's like a moment of reprieve
from this other kind of brutality. I believe the whole thing is a kind of practice at tenderness.
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One time, there was a breakaway. I was like, 26. I was coming back on defense and I was flying down the
court and I went to block the shot, I flew, then BOOM right into this pole behind the basket and I hit
myself right between my legs. I did not hit my testicles, thank God, or else I would not have gotten up. But I
am who I am, and boom, I stood right up. And everyone on the court was like, "NO!"
And of course, they all thought I hit my nuts, but I didn't. Still, they wouldn't let the game go on until I had a
few minutes to sort of be like, "Hang on. Just see. Just wait." This is like a full game. It was a busy game. And
it was one of the best courts and all of that. There was a wait. And people were like, "No, hang on." And
then they could tell, "Okay, he's okay." It might have been three or four minutes of people being like, "Nah,
wait. Just wait. Just kind of shoot at the other end." They're like, "No, let's wait and check it. All right, he
looks okay." That is one instance that I just love. It's so beautiful to me. One of the things with those courts
is that they can be intergenerational. [Click here an anecdote from Ross’s younger days on the pick up
courts}
TH: I love that. I want to segue this into asking you about your essay in Lit Hub. Have I Even Told You
About the Courts I've loved? If I had to choose one piece of your work as my favorite, that would probably
take the cake. But it's just so interesting because pickup basketball is just a totally different ecosystem
from any other sort of structure of sports. You're talking about againstness and enemies, but in pickup,
you can play against a team, lose, and make an enemy of who you're playing with, someone who calls like a
bullshit foul or someone you argue with. But how the fives can shake out, it's not a consistent thing
because the total number of people ebbs and flows. So that person you're against and making an enemy of
could be your teammate two games from now.
RG: Boom. You nailed it. That's the thing that I wasn't even thinking about. That's it. It makes no sense. But
you're right. In pickup, it's like you're not always playing against the same people. And the people that you
think of as being like, "Oh, that's my nemesis." Your nemesis very well might be feeding you the ball next.
[Click here for a narrative peek into Ross’s one-on-one workouts, where he invents ways to play hard,
noncompetitively.]
TH: One of the courts you mention in the essay is the Old Gym at Carlow University. You describe it as like
a greenhouse in your memory. And anyone familiar with your work, knows you also write about your
gardening a lot. And basketball and gardening are two subjects that come up often. I just want to know
what are the similarities between basketball and gardening for you? The reference to “the fig tree (by
Palumbo) is growing back” also made me think of this. Are those two things that are often in conversation
with you and in your work?
RG: I love that question. It's funny, because it's almost like the way that the meditation on Dr. J's move in
that poem–it's a kind of patience. It's a kind of practice of patience and looking very slowly. Intensely and
slowly and steadily and with curiosity. That's a kind of mode of witness I think that I'm trying to wonder
about and practice in that poem. And in the garden, I think it is the case that gardening encourages a kind
of non-impositional witness.
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HORSTMAN 37
There's obviously modes of gardening where you just mow everything down and you blast the shit into the
soil and you monocrop. You just grow one thing. Part of the destruction of the land is certain modes of
relating to the land. But I think really good loving gardeners are really curious, are patient, are asking what
wants to grow where and trying to pay attention. They might be paying attention by seeing how much
light is in a place or if water gathers or what is growing there already. Like, "Oh, if there's a lot of this
growing there, maybe it's already heavily calcified or a calcium area. Maybe this might work or this might
not work." Or what things grow in tandem together, like all of these communities in a garden.
So that's one thing. I feel like that kind of very slow, patient witness is a way to be a gardener. That feels
like a constant practice of being a gardener. And I just want to say that it feels like that's a little bit what
I'm trying to do with that move, which is not about basketball. That's actually about looking and about
writing maybe. Like basketball, being patient and curious with the garden, I feel like that's a practice. It's
something that you have to cultivate by doing and doing again and doing again and doing again. And
ideally, having other people show you how they do it and doing it with them again and again and again. And
playing ball, for me anyway, is a thing that you practice. And you don't only practice your 15 footer, but you
practice how to make the game as meaningful to you as possible.
So part of the practice might be after you shoot all of your warmup with 150 15-footers, it might be that
part of the practice is thinking, "Well, how do we play this game and let this game help us cultivate what
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we really want to cultivate?" So maybe we should think differently about what we do with points. Maybe
that's one of the things that we got to do. And that might be kind of analogous. Both endeavors require
practice and repetition and study and all of that. But that kind of asking the court what it is that we're
actually supposed to learn, it's very much like asking the garden very much what it is we're supposed to
learn. And it's like you've got to listen to both things. You know?
TH: For sure. I love that. In this essay too, you write about Seger Court specifically, and that being sort of
the first place you saw “a court as a site of care and a ball as a practice of care”. Was there something
specific about that particular court that helped you realize this? Was it just maybe that was the right
moment in time, but was also, I'm wondering if there's something in the setting like the surface, the rims,
the backboard, the smell?
RG: That court was this little bastion. A lot of the courts where I'd grown up were a little bit tucked away. I
grew up kind of just north of Philadelphia, so the courts wouldn't be like right in the middle of a city block,
you'd drive to the court or something and there'd be a parking lot.
There was all of this profound tenderness going on that I wasn't yet quite aware of, or I didn't know to
articulate it as such. But I think being 23 and 24 and really starting to sort of think hard about what it
means, the very beginning of a lifelong endeavor to think hard about what it means to be a loving
individual or a loving sort of participant in something. I saw that this court, which was busy as hell,
smacked in the middle on Lombard and 10th, busy, always people walking by to the store, walking by to
work, whatever. It had a kind of a theatrical element to it because there is a fence along the sidewalk so
that people would stop and watch.
This was a court three or four blocks from the projects, and so folks would be coming up to play, it would
be automatic that people were coming. And because the kids lived right nearby, I'll never forget Gerald
telling me, he's the one who's banging on the doors and being like, “Come on! Time to go play,” with these
kids who were like 14 or something, and it's 7:30 in the morning when we started. And it's hard for a 14-
year old to wake up at 7:30 but Gerald, who's one of the elders, would be like, “Come on, let's go play, it's
time to play.” And which is not like, “It's time to play,” it's like “I'm taking care of you now, I'm taking care of
you, I'm showing you how to do this thing.”
And maybe I was at a certain age where I was able to witness these modes of care that I had also been
because I always had that too. I always had some older dude being like, come on, this is how you do it. My
eyes were sort of open to this method of pedagogy, I call it and it's kind of like come along pedagogy, come
on, come on, I got this thing to show you, you might love it or maybe more to the point sometimes it might change
your life, it might change your life. This might get you an education. Also this is like this really beautiful mode of
being in a community that I want you to witness, I want you to participate in, and I want you to learn how to do so
that you can do the same thing when you're my age.
And there's a 13-year old in your neighborhood to be like, “Come on, come on, I got to show you this
beautiful thing,” whether it's a basketball court or whether it's a garden or whether it's like learning how
to fix bikes or whatever. It became very evident to me that one of the sites of this kind of intergenerational
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HORSTMAN 39
teaching and care, basketball courts are really beautiful places to study it. And I had been brought up in
them too, but I didn't know what was happening often. And looking back then, I'm like, oh, yeah, there's all
those beloved teachers that I have.
TH: It kind of mirrors the writing community in that way. I feel like so many people I talked to there was,
and it's a little bit different because writing is in itself an act a solitude, but it seems like I haven't thought
of it in those terms before, but the come along pedagogy is sort of the best way to cure imposter syndrome
which so many of us struggle with.
RG: That's right.TH: Yeah. I had so many people point out to me that you don't have to get an MFA or any
certain degree or certificate to be able to do this, to get access and permission to do this. You just get to do
it.
RG: That's right. And it's kind of the way that in our solitude, we're always kind of in the presence of those
people who are with us. We're in our solitude, we're actually right in our minds or they're right in our
mouths and they're ready to come out.
TH: I love that. Well, thank you so much for that. And thank you so much for your time, Ross, this was so
fun. I could talk basketball and writing all day so this was a privilege. Thank you again for taking the time to
be here.
RG: Thank you. Thank you, let's do it again.
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When Kobe Died
SCOTT CHIUSANO
Slim had his back to the basket and Beans was on him tight like a thermal. One fake to the right with his
bony elbows and then Slim lifted off with his wiry frame, turned in the air, shot over Beans.
“Kobe!” he shouted. The ball caught back rim, hit the hardwood, rolled. The game stopped. Beans just
stared at him and Loafer at the top of the key put his foot on the ball to stop it from rolling to the other
side of the court. Ched studied his laces like he studied most things, Diego leaned against the basket to
stretch out his back, which was always hurting. K-Pop used the toe of his shoe to rub out a sweat spot that
had fallen from his forehead. All this was normal, and yet nothing was the same.
“What, too soon?” Slim said.
“Yeah motherfucker, too soon.” Beans gave him a light shove and Slim stumbled backwards, mimed
blowing a whistle for the foul call.
“Specially if you’re gonna shoot it like that,” said K-Pop. “Man’s rolling over in his grave right now.”
“Bro even six feet under Kobe got a better shot than Slim,” Loafer kicked the ball up to himself and flipped
it at the basket.
“Yo they should put him eight feet under, you feel me,” Diego said, pointing one finger up at the sky.
“I don’t think they even buried him yet, honestly. Might not be a body.” Ched was their white boy, white like
cheddar, always cheesin’. He was smart, not because he was white, just because he was.
“Ah Ched c’mon man, ain’t nobody wanna think about that,” Slim said.
“I feel you.”
“Somebody wanna check ball?” Loafer was still standing at the top of the key. Diego picked the ball up and
spun it once high in the air, let it bounce a couple times as if making sure gravity still applied. How could
they be sure, when someone who had always resided in the clouds could come crashing down like that?
Ched and Slim joined Loafer behind the three-point line. Diego and K-Pop matched up but Beans
hesitated, slow to return to the top of the key. They couldn’t go on without him, needed their sixth, and like
with most things they waited to see what Beans would do, if only to follow his lead. They watched him
reach down to touch his toes, watched him bounce on his heels, stretch back his quads before Beans
finally signaled for the ball and checked it to Slim, low to the ground so Slim had to bend to pick it up.
“Try that shit again and see what happens,” Beans said, and the game continued.
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When Kobe died they all met at the Y like usual. It was Sunday, and this was their church, even though K-
Pop’s grandma made him really go to church and Ched’s family said Grace before dinner. But that wasn’t
religion. Not really. Man-to-man defense was religion and perspiration was two fingers-worth of Holy
Water to the forehead and admitting you were getting burned down low by Loafer in the post was
confession and you were always praying, of course, every time the ball left your fingertips the only thing
you had left was prayer.
Nobody brought a ball that night, just an unspoken thing, this wasn’t about playing. It was about
something else that nobody, not even Ched, was going to mention. They figured Beans would have it the
worst of them. He was the last one to get there, and Diego wondered aloud if he would even show up at
all, but when he did they were whole again, and each of them dapped up Beans because LA was where he
grew up, because Kobe’s game-winner against the Nugs was the first and last game he saw live with his
pop. Kobe’s Lakers were Beans’ first love, and sometimes they thought he might never love again.
Beans was the best of them, and it wasn’t really close, the only way any of them could ever hope to guard
him was when his restructured knee was aching mad and he was two or three or four steps slower than
normal, and even then he could shoot over Loafer, who had a good six inches and 60 pounds on him, and he
could snake his way through Slim’s unnatural wingspan and Ched, well Ched was Ched and didn’t do much
in the way of defense. When Beans moved to Brooklyn in middle school to live with his grandma, after his
pop got locked up for good, he already had his nickname and nobody ever questioned it, he was that
talented, so talented they had to pluralize Kobe’s middle name, just Bean wouldn’t have been enough. His
junior year at Lincoln when the scouts from Kentucky and Duke and Mich State started showing up he
shredded the ACL in his right knee and that was it, the scouts forgot about him, he was consigned to a
future of crossing up clowns at the Y and nobody believed it when they said Beans was supposed to be
going places, like the NBA kind of places, not that he ever told anybody that, they had to do it for him,
Loafer and K-Pop and Slim and all of them, like cheerleaders. Nah, the clowns at the Y said. There’s a
reason he working at Modell’s. He nice, but he ain’t Kobe nice.
When Kobe died they just sat around the hoop, lounging. Beans was quiet, but he was always quiet. Slim
asked how he was feeling.
“What you mean? I look sick to you.”
“I’m just asking,” Slim said. “Like if you good.”
“Man it’s not like I knew him. I sell his jersey for a cool 75, that’s the closest I’ll ever be to Kobe.”
Nobody was sure what to say, because Beans was right, like usual.
“I saw on Twitter people bringing up the rape stuff,” Ched said.
“Why they gotta bring that up now?” Diego said. “Let the man’s family grieve in peace.”
Loafer looked at Beans, as if gauging the distance between them before he spoke. “It’s all part of his legacy.
The good shit and the bad.”
“Ain’t nobody perfect,” Beans said. “Y’all find somebody who is y’all let me know.”
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“Man Ched, look what you done started. You be following too many white people,” Slim said. They laughed,
even Ched.
“His daughter man, that’s what gets me,” K-Pop leaned back on his elbows. “You seen her clips? She was
nice. Like biting the neck of her jersey, tongue wagging and shit just like dad. You seen that? That shit hit
me.”
“It hit everybody, you ain’t different,” Diego said.
“Smush Parker probably the only one who ain’t mourning. Homie dancing around like it’s pay day right
now,” Slim said.
“Bruh. Chill,” Beans said.
“Yo it’s just a joke.”
“It’s disrespectful.”
“My bad Beans, you right.”
They went on like this for a while, swapping stories about watching Kobe’s 81, where they were for it, how
Loafer had once saved up enough to buy Kobe 9s by skipping lunch every day for three weeks and
pocketing the 2.50 his mom gave him for it, and none of them believed him because it didn’t look like
Loafer ever missed a meal in his life; how Diego’s girlfriend finally dumped him on the day Kobe dropped
61 at MSG, he only remembered because he was excitedly explaining to her the significance and with this
excruciatingly bored look on her face she said I can give you 61 reasons why I want to break up with you;
how Slim lost his virginity in a No. 8 jersey he refused to take off; how Ched still thought Bron was better
(he took whacks upside the head for that one); how K-Pop helped his dad learn English by watching Lakers
games, Mr. Kim’s grasp of the language to this day still very much married to the language of basketball,
which they all spoke, like gospel.
But Beans said nothing, he just listened to their bull shit, even though he was the only one they really
wanted to hear from. Finally he got up, went to the water fountain and they watched him lean over and
purse his lips as the stream hit them. He stood there for a while, hunched over, so long they weren’t sure
he was really drinking at all, like maybe the water was bouncing off his lips, a bank shot from the block.
When he came back he started talking like they’d been in the middle of a conversation.
“You know what fucks me up?” They saw his face but no they would not ask, no they would never ask if
those were tears or just the remnants of drinking water splashed into his eyes. “This shit people say about
him being larger than life. Fuck does that mean? He God?”
“Nah man, you know what it mean. He’s larger than life, like, you know…” Slim trailed off.
“I don’t. No I don’t fucking know and neither do you,” Beans said. “If he larger than life how come that
copter crashed out the air and burned quick like a match? How come he dead? Someone wanna tell me
how come?”
Beans grabbed one of the tattered YMCA balls that was lying around and punted it. It arced high in the air,
and six pairs of eyes watched its ascent until it reached the ceiling, where it got stuck between the beams.
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CHIUSANO 43
“I think there’s something wrong with us that we looked up to him, that we look up to anyone,” he said.
“But I know damn sure there’s something wrong with me. That motherfucker was my hero, I didn’t have
nobody else to call that.”
“Come on bro,” Ched said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“There ain’t? Then how come when my pop went to jail I didn’t shed one single fucking tear, and today I
can’t stop crying.”
Loafer stood up, his knees creaking, and put one giant hand on Beans’ shoulder.
None of them said anything, although they all wanted to, they really did this time, but there were certain
things that could not be said, not today. Maybe down the road, maybe in a couple weeks, maybe when it
became OK for Slim to start yelling “Kobe” again, maybe when they were older and slower and their post
moves were weaker and the jump hook was their go-to move and they couldn’t touch backboard anymore
and they lived outside the paint, maybe they’d talk about it then. But not today.
When Kobe died, Loafer and Diego and Ched and K-Pop and Slim walked out of the Y together into the
night. Loafer who would graduate college and teach biology over at Midwood; Diego who would open a
donut truck called Double D’s that he would take on the road, across the country, settle down in LA; Ched
who would be dead from lung cancer before he saw his daughter graduate high school; K-Pop who would
work on Wall Street and marry his high school sweetheart and have four beautiful kids; Slim who would do
time and then bounce around and then do time again before finally turning his life around and coaching
AAU, where he taught only the most talented kids to play like his homie Beans.
When Kobe died, the five of them left Beans behind. Nobody knew what was next for him, what lay
waiting at the other end of the court, what tomorrow might bring. Beans sat there in the Y for a while,
alone, his back against the basket, looking up, waiting for that ball to drop from the heavens.
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Grateful Dead Tickets
AVERY GREGURICH
after Ed Skoog
“...because they are kind and almost meaningless.”
i tell him that i like the one with the skeletons playing
baseball: one skeleton batter, one skelton catcher, and
one skeleton umpire, calling a strike. he’s brought in his grateful
dead ticket stubs to show me, spread them out on a table in
the breakroom of the grocery store. there’s thirty-seven years of
service in nametag time between us, but before he started out,
he got five wandering months in ‘92 to follow the dead
across the country in a nissan sentra , selling broke up
six-packs of beer to minors, grilled cheese sandwiches when
they had the dough, hemp bracelets, and sometimes whippits
when they wanted to make gas money. i only got to see the last of
the living ones on a school night when i was 17 and convinced
my boss to park the produce van outside the fabulous fox theatre
for four hours. that’s the thing about dead shows, about the
birth of children, and most baseball statistics, you have to
be there or they don’t mean anything. so he gives me the baseball
one representing may 19, 1992 at the cal expo amphitheatre and,
at shift’s end, i try to dive deep into the archive to hear the sound this
ticket holds, but the site says it is down for maintenance. the next day,
he brings me a panoramic shot of bob, bill, and jerry from one of
the shows, despite the tickets clearly requesting no flash cameras or
video equipment of any kind. i say, are you sure, i mean your kid might
want these some day, and he says don’t worry, i’ve got more, and so we go
back to the work and wait until it happens again: touch of grey will
play above the aisles and he will walk to find me, point up and stare
out past me to where he thinks the song is coming from.
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45
Dirty Work
AVERY GREGURICH
for Dennis Rodman
there’s never been another living in
the anthropocene like him. try it —
afraid to pay the fee of playing him
twice a year, jackson lit the candle
and locked the door. then the rest
got scared, the referees, david stern,
and a growing television audience all
tuned in for m.j., so they had to call
him “the worm.” there’s not many
highlight reels of Rodman that survive
because his game was really an act of
anti-matter. lock-down doesn’t start to
defend it. we talk about his rebounding
because we can count it. but Rodman
played the game ad infinitum, caused such
terrible trouble all around, mostly eliciting
poor offensive outings from the league’s
marquee scorers so that they started booking
the bulls to play sunday afternoon games. (no
wonder he later tried veils, nuclear diplomacy,
and leg-drops from the top rope.) the referees
had to kick him out of games just to generate
more scoring opportunities. they had to ship
shaq to l.a. to avoid playing him. now there’s no
endorsements for dennis, and i have to wonder
how everything might have been different if
dennis had been given the ‘96 Finals MVP
he deserved? and i mean everything, too. maybe
no ‘98 NBA lockout leaving no gaps in ABC’s
t.v. programming, meaning no celebrity mole,
no survivor, and maybe if we would have
gotten lucky, no apprentice. instead they
hollywood ten’d him all the way into being
commissioner of the lingerie football league.
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46 GREGURICH
see we were taught to hate him just because
rodman had shown us what freedom could
be like here, in this the best of all possible
worlds.
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Goodfellas
MORGAN CHRISTIE
It was during a film class in my teens that I first watched Goodfellas. It was like nothing else I’d seen. Having
studied the fundamentals of cinematography throughout the year, watching it was like a snapshot of what
an exquisitely captured piece of art was supposed to be. Particular frames used to elevate the narrative
arc, like Henry running out of the fire but the image illustrating a run towards it; optics and lighting that
blur the audience's perception along with our protagonists; and needless to say, the infamous long shot
that recrafted our understanding of film, tracking, and the possibilities that could be established in the
visual telling of a story.
Outside of the literal art of the film, the characterizations and plotline were encapsulating and often
hypnotic. Henry Hill’s early innocence and blind ambition, Tommy Devito’s fiery wit and headstrong
sensibilities, and Jimmy Conway’s cunning, brilliance, and utter ruthlessness. Not to mention the ingrained
distrust and displeasure with law enforcement that parallel my own culture; I felt connected to the story,
not realizing that that feeling was a mild reality. This glamourization shifted over time as the misogyny,
racism, homophobia, violence, and slew of other ‘isms’ embedded in the film and culture became clear to
me, but what Scorsese captured was still one of the most resonating sequences to behold. It wasn’t until
nearly a decade later that I learned of my strange, but irrefutable, connection to these men and this
lifestyle I’d fallen in enamoration with.
I was catching up with my father while he was at an annual basketball tournament his team had
frequented since my childhood. He was playing in the fifty and fifty-five division that year, quite a few of
his teammates were, unnecessarily wearing themselves thin. While listening to his recent updates and
strained inability to properly stretch his hamstring without my help, I heard a teammate jest with him, “No
frowning, you have to smile for the cameras.” My father laughed and I inquired as to what camera was
being referred to. He told me there was a documentary film crew following Jim, one of his teammates and
buddies I’d come to know over the course of life, for a 30 for 30 they were producing.
I sat up so fast I almost fumbled my phone, “30 for 30?”
In what was one of my favorite series, it still is. Curiosity spiked regarding Jim and the eventual
documentary I would watch. I asked my father what, if anything, he knew about the episode. He told me
ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022
48
there was only one thing he knew about Jim’s past that seemed like a point of interest for such a big
feature. He wasn’t wrong.
Playing for the Mob aired in 2014 and chronicled the illustrious ‘79 season point shaving scheme at Boston
College. The case ultimately tied Jimmy Burke to a conviction, a task the Federal Bureau of Investigations
had a time with for some years following his prior arrest. With the involvement of Henry Hill and various
others, Jim had become intertwined in a scandal it wouldn’t be fair to call abnormal. Point shaving,
specifically at the college level, is no unheard of phenomena, the ‘51 CCNY and ‘94 Arizona State
documentaries sticking out in my mind. There are others, and likely countless more that simply haven’t
been exposed. When you really think of it, it’s not a difficult sell, wads of cash fanned around the faces of
neck deep in sweat teenagers, or close to teens, being told they could make money for winning at the
sport they loved, within a couple of points.
Then, that pigeonholed dialogue begins that anyone who’s played a sport has heard too many times; fair
play and sportsmanship and camaraderie and trust and every other blanketed expectation of athletes,
regardless of the level or point in their career. These aren’t bad principles to instill in anyone, of course,
but can easily be doused when that dialogue widens its reach. Players are often vilified and disgraced by
the organizations and fans that held them so high on their pillars, they almost didn’t seem human
anymore. Almost. I watched the documentary in awe of the light I was seeing a baller I’d known for years
in, not the spitty guard whose court awareness equated to ease and control on the floor, but a guard’s
dangerous, irresponsible, and underthought fall from grace.
One of the few consistencies I’ve gathered from college basketball players and their careers is the
lackluster experience a large majority share in. While their educations are being paid for, a momentous
benefit, a lot of these athletes live far from cozy college lives. I remember my father telling me about his
college career; the poverty, hunger, and inaccessibility to essential resources like shoes and other
basketball gear outside of uniform specifics. My mother used to send him a few dollars every month after
she graduated and he had one more year, just for the basics, I’m talking toothpaste and deodorant basics.
These stories were mirrored in uncles, teammates, and others I knew that played at the same level, they
had virtually the same stories. I can’t speak to the top tier division I schools or even the league shoe-ins,
but the everyday college athlete wasn’t living in luxury, some of them were barely getting by. Watching a
multi-million dollar industry you and a few handfuls of others were at the center of, literally profit off of
your back, make bank and shell out hundreds of thousands to the staff and administration around you,
when you couldn’t even afford a pizza some nights; it might be enough to consider the inconsiderable.
While we can’t excuse these poor decisions that not all athletes choose to make, taking a closer look at the
institutions and their output shed some light on a few realities. Division I NCAA men’s basketball was
recently quoted at a rough billion dollar revenue point including regular season, playoff, and March
Madness televised events. Those numbers have grown since my father’s and Jim’s day, but it’s enough to
say, none of these players should have been begging for the essentials. When we begin preaching a
rhetoric surrounding the responsibilities of these players, to their teams and the sport they play, we can’t
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CHRISTIE 49
forget to highlight the responsibilities of institutions to uphold the same candor and fair treatment to kids
they demand it from.
I don’t speak for every athlete, but know that the conditions and way of life many of these players lived by
would have made a lot of them easy marks. My father for instance, and his affinity for horse races and pick
3s, I don’t imagine would have required that much tooth pulling to pocket a few extra bucks when he was
going to bed hungry after away games because cheeseburgers hurt his stomach and that’s all they were
offered. Or Jim, and whatever reality he faced when Henry approached him; the way the proposition was
framed, like Jim having to dribble the ball out instead of taking another shot at the end of the game; the
optics around the morality of clothing yourself when no one else would; or the longshot, tracking the years
of sweat and exasperation you’d given to a organization that you might be beginning to understand cared
more about profit margins than you.
Still, I couldn’t believe the connection. Had my father known a bit more about my taste in movies, I imagine
I would have known about Jim, Boston College, Henry Hill, and Jimmy Burke around the same time I
watched the film on repeat. Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted me to know though, maybe the same
tarnished undertone plagued my father that did so many others and he wouldn’t have wanted to expose
me to such an ugly reality, the opposite of sportsmanship and authenticity in the game he taught me to
love. Or maybe he would’ve told me because he knew how it felt to fight for something your entire life,
without enough pay off, without enough support, without enough food.
We got off the phone and I pictured his rickety body making its way to the court, most of his teammates,
still wearing their college numbers. I picture him and Jim touching hands before the game like they all
always would, and not saying much to each other about the cameras and crew, because they understood,
because they wondered. And I don’t think that makes any of them bad guys, not at all, they were
goodfellas, and once some thirty years before, they also weren't too far off, from just being kids.
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A Non-Starter
RUSSELL NICHOLS
Joseph was the first brother to get punked for his jacket. But with respect to spiritual experiences, even
the great interpreter of dreams couldn’t see legendary wide receiver Jerry Rice. So when Putty and his
boys rolled up on me in my fresh-off-the-rack 49ers Starter Jacket, I braced myself for a fate worse than
the pit.
“I like that coat,” Putty said, already reaching to check the tag. It was a gift from moms for my tenth
birthday—maybe I should’ve wished to see eleven. “Too bad it ain’t real.”
His boys laughed. And if I was using my double-digit brain instead of the buggy old model, I would’ve
shrugged and moved on. But I was proud to say my 49ers Starter was 100% official.
“Word?” Putty said, rubbing his peach fuzz. “Let me try it on.”
Time froze. Nobody moved an inch, the line of scrimmage being a crack in the sidewalk. Putty had a solid
twenty pounds plus puberty on me with a savage line ready to snap. My skinny ass was in illegal formation,
one play away from a turnover-on-getting-beat-down. WWJD? Jerry was skinny. Jerry was fast. Jerry had
hands. All I had to do was fake a pullover, catch Putty off guard with a hook, then scramble like I never
scrambled. I saw the draw play in my head. Seven x’s like chalky white spiders chasing down little o me.
And I could …
Go …
All …
The …
Nope.
Didn’t even reach the next block before I got tackled, the subsequent roughness very unnecessary. No
Hail Mary could save me. And in those half-conscious seconds, I had a dream I was in the NFL, but the
offensive coordinator said I had to play dead because my freedom (femur?) was too injured. Whatever
that means.
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Pitching & Politics
M.A.H. HINTON
in baseball a pitch
thrown too far inside
is an invitation
to a fight
thrown just right
it is a merely a reminder
to quit crowding the plate
inches matter
as does intent
it is the same in Truth
a lie thrown out to deceive the masses
is an invitation
to a fight
thrown in ignorance
it is merely another reminder
to start paying attention
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The Barbecue
LYDIA KLISMITH HANSEN
The barbecue was just getting started, and Dad was already grilling. Cass had decided she was a
vegetarian last week. She had been holding her baby brother when she realized that he was made out of
meat.
“Can you help with my pinkie toes?” Betsy asked. She had forgotten her allergy medication, so her voice
was thick and phlegmy, her eyes red like she’d been crying.
“Just make sure that there’s only a little bit of paint on the brush.” Cass fanned at her own toes—acid
green.
“School starts in three weeks,” Betsy said, blobbing red polish on her pinkie toes.
“I know.”
“We’re going to be high schoolers.”
“Shut up,” Cass said.
“It’s gonna be awesome.”
“It’s going to suck.” Cass wished for the millionth time Jacquelyn wasn’t visiting her stupid grandma. Then
Cass could’ve invited Jacquelyn instead of Betsy. Betsy might have been fat and boring but the alternative
was fat, boring adults.
“Can we get some food?” Betsy asked.
They went downstairs.
“Cassidy Ann Clements,” Mom said. She had put on her makeup and dress, but her shoes were in her right
hand. She gestured with the red pumps. “You go upstairs and put on that yellow dress. I didn’t pay sixty
dollars for it to sit in your closet.” Her face was pinkening under her liquid foundation.
Cass turned around and went back upstairs and folded herself into the linen dress that made her feel like
an Easter duckling. Betsy followed her. Cass felt like there was an invisible leash connecting them
together.
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Cass stopped and spun in a slow circle in front of Mom. “Good,” Mom said, and she smiled, the foundation
sinking into the creases she was trying to cover. “You too Betsy. Spin,” she said. She was obeyed. “Your
leggings don’t match but that’s okay. Before you go, Cassidy, get your brother into his outfit and take him
out with you.”
They went to the nursery. The thick curtains were closed but there were three nightlights. Cass peered
into the narrow gap between the crib and the wall. She’d hid her baseball bat there, in case there was an
intruder. Someone had broken the neighbor’s windows.
The baby was asleep. His head was lumpy like a lemon. She imagined his brains were little seeds under a
thick rind of squishy bone. He was almost one-and-a-half. His name was Chevalier, but Cass usually called
him the baby.
“Where’s my little boy?” Dad popped his head into the room and flicked on the light, the baldness of his
skull gleaming under his comb over. The baby squeaked.
“You’re just in time,” Cass said, and she handed him the outfit Mom had laid out.
“Thanks, sweetie. Hi Betsy, how are your parents?”
“They’re good. They’re sorry they couldn’t come.”
“Aw, it’s okay.” Dad spoke slow and ponderous. If he’d been an animal, Cass thought, he would be an
elephant. Mom would be a flamingo. “I just made some dates wrapped in bacon. You two should go try
them.”
Cass and Betsy went outside. Dozens of people were corralled in a ring of folding tables. The grill in the
corner produced piles of meat, manned by one of Dad’s accountant friends in a checkered button-down
shirt.
“I’m going to get some food,” Betsy said.
“Okay.”
Betsy didn’t move. “Are you coming?”
“I’m not hungry. Go get your food. I’ll be right here.”
Betsy slowly stretched the invisible leash between them. Cass imagined it snapping like the thick wire of a
bridge, whipping through the crowd.
“Hey there, Cassidy.” She looked up to see Mitch, the guy who lived two doors down. He was holding a
beer. He didn’t have any kids; he had a boat. He was the neighbor who had his windows smashed. Nothing
had been stolen. Cass smirked.
“Hello.”
“Gone swimming yet this summer?”
“A couple times.”
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“Have I taken your family out on my boat yet?” he asked. He was wearing sunglasses like he was a
racecar driver.
Cass shook her head.
“I’ll have to take you and your mom out sometime. It’s a lotta fun.” His sunglasses barely hid the tan line he
had from always wearing sunglasses. His green polo was a little too small for him, tight around the muscle
of his arms and his round little potbelly.
“So what are you thinking about?” he asked, his big smile reaching up to his glasses.
“Meat,” Cass said, deciding to not lie.
“And why’s that?”
“Everyone is made of meat.”
He frowned but said, “Yup. We’re all animals.”
“Not me.”
He cleared his throat. “Uh,” he took a sip of his beer. “What are you, then?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, looking at her own reflection in his sunglasses. She’d braided her hair that
morning, but a halo of frizz escaped in the humidity. She made a face at her reflection and didn’t answer
him.
Betsy came back with a paper plate covered in saucy ribs. Cass tried not to look at it. The white edge of the
bones made her aware of the texture of her teeth.
“Well,” Mitch said, “you two girls have fun.” He smiled at Cass and then walked away.
“He smells weird,” Betsy said.
“You’re weird to notice.”
Betsy made a sour face at Cass, biting into the ribs and staring at her until Cass looked away, holing her
arms away from her body so she couldn’t feel her own ribs.
Someone had moved the tables to break the corral of seating. A man with a tacky looking spray-tan
started a game of bocce ball. Most of the ladies had clustered themselves around the baby or were
clumped together like wrapped bouquets. It was the last of the summer parties, and most of the women
were wearing dresses that made Cass’s pleated yellow dress seem dull. Mitch was in the clump, a halfhead
taller than the women.
Cass watched as Mom handed the baby to one of the other women. She started talking with Mitch and she
did her party laugh: her head tipped back while her jaw stayed frozen. Mitch put a hand at her back as he
laughed with her. Dad’s grill was in the sun and he was sweating so much that his comb over was beginning
to melt into his forehead. His brown moustache was damp.
“Let’s get some popsicles,” Cass said.
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HANSEN 55
Betsy followed her to the kitchen, her plate folding like a taco around the ribs. They ate in the kitchen and
then went into the living room to play a videogame. Betsy played Cass’s old baseball game on easy.
“Hey there, ladies,” Mitch said. He was holding a beer. He sat down next to Cass with a thump. “So,
who’s winning?”
“I am,” Cass said. She had the top three high scores. Dad had the fourth and fifth.
“You get to play any time you want to,” Betsy said. “This is only the second time I’ve ever played this
game.”
“Complaints are just excuses for losers,” Cass said, quoting their baseball coach.
Mitch laughed.
Betsy, instead of hunching her shoulders and ignoring the comment like Cass had expected her to, set
down the controller and stood, looking over at Cass. Betsy was trying to glare, but her face was just too
round, her eyes too brown, her hair too curly. She’d always be a cherub. Still—she was at least trying, and
Cass respected that.
“I’m going to get a freezie,” Betsy said, and she left, accidentally-on-purpose kicking the controller
across the floor as she went. Not bad, Cass thought.
“So,” Mitch said, “Do you still play softball?”
“Baseball.”
“Are they different?”
“Softball uses a softball,” Cass said, talking like she would to the baby: slow and clear. The baby
wasn’t stupid but he had a lot to learn. “Baseball uses a baseball.”
Mitch nodded, and his sunglasses slipped down. He took another drink of his beer. His eyes were green
and his lashes were lighter than the brown hair on his head. Some of the wrinkles in his face were tannedin.
The creases were pale like he’d spent hours smiling at the sun—probably driving his boat around. He
pushed up the lenses.
“How’s it going in here, Cassidy?” Mom asked, leaning against the doorway that led to the kitchen.
One of her bra straps had slipped down, and draped over her arm. She fixed it with a snap. “Oh, hi there
Mitch.”
“Hi, Sara. How’s it going?”
“Positively wonderful. Have I given you a tour of the house yet?”
“Not lately.”
“Come on, let me show you upstairs.” Mom and Mitch held eye contact as he stood up and moved to her. As
they walked upstairs, Mitch touched Mom’s calf, squeezing the muscle below the back of her knee like it
was a stress ball. Mom giggled.
…
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The barbecue went into the evening. People trickled in while others trickled out. Cass didn’t understand
how her parents had so many friends. They were all so boring. When it was dark, there was a bonfire. Cass
and Betsy were looking for marshmallows in the kitchen when Mitch and Mom walked in, stumbling and
laughing. Mom had spilled some wine on her dress but didn’t seem to care.
“Hey girls, it’s eight o’ clock. Time for bed.” She put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder as she tried to take off her
red pumps. When the girls didn’t move right away she looked at them with her Mom Stare. Her hair
seemed to prickle up. Her makeup was smudged, which altered the outline of her face and broke up her
features, so there was no expression to read outside of her wide-set blue eyes. The girls went upstairs and
got ready for bed.
“It’s been a really fun day,” Betsy said. Cass was certain that was a lie, and she wasn’t sure if she should like
or dislike Betsy for it. Dislike for lying. Like because she knew that lying took practice to get any good at,
which was admirable.
“Yeah,” Cass said, lying right back at her.
“Tomorrow morning, before my parents come to pick me up,” Betsy said tentatively, looking at her
toes as she worked them into the thick white carpet. “Do you think we could play catch in the field? I
brought my mitt.
“That sounds awesome,” Cass said, and meant it. She missed playing baseball, and she could tell
that Betsy missed it too. They said goodnight.
Cass went to her bedroom but did not go to bed. She waited for a half hour and then went downstairs.
Adults with drinks in their hands were clogging up the kitchen, but she weaved through them and took
Dad’s keys off the hook by the microwave. She put them in her pocket and then went to the nursery. The
baby was asleep.
She slid her hand into the gap between the crib and the wall, doing her best to lift the bat without touching
the sides, like she was playing Operation. She tickled Chevalier’s toes. He chortled in his sleep. Cass had
been there when he was born; it had been gross, but he was turning out okay so far.
She walked out the front door. Nobody stopped her.
Cass went to one of the cars parked in the cul-de-sack. She picked a red one that was next to the driveway
and tried to make a giant heart on the hood using the keys. It was more difficult to control than she had
expected, so it was a little lopsided. She wrote SC & M in the heart. She couldn’t remember Mitch’s last
name. She wasn’t sure what else to do. After a moment of consideration, she dropped the keys down the
storm drain. She picked up the baseball bat from where she had set it against the wheel of the car.
“Hey there, kiddo.”
Her shoulders jumped up. Mitch was walking down the driveway with a cigarette hanging off of his lips
and a beer in his hand. She felt adrenaline pinching at her veins. Mitch was smiling all the way up to his
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HANSEN 57
sunglasses again. The lamp post at the end of the driveway cast a yellowish light, like they were in silty
water; the glass orb was a quarter of the way filled with dead bugs.
“What are you up to?” He saw the keyed car. His smile pulled outwards like invisible hands pinched
his cheeks. There was no wind, and the cigarette smoke hovered around him. “Do you know whose car
that is?”
Cass shook her head. She set the baseball bat on her shoulder.
“Me either,” he said, and he took a breath through his cigarette. “Were you the kid who broke my
windows?”
Cass didn’t respond.
“Just like your mother. Crazy little lady.” The cigarette still in the corner of his mouth, he took a sip
of his beer. Dad had smoked once. Mom made him stop.
It started in her right foot as a buildup of pressure between her toes and the pavement. In one easy
motion, that pressure travelled from her foot, to her knee, to her hips, to her spine, to her shoulders, and
to her arms, growing exponentially at each new twist. The baseball bat jumped off of her shoulder and into
Mitch’s ribs. Through the bat, she was surprised by how much she felt his ribs flex, and the feeling of air
being forced out of him. The bat naturally bounced back, and she rested it on her shoulder. She felt as light
and beautiful as her aluminum bat.
She hadn’t felt so beautiful since the last game of the season, last year. The ball seemed to come at her in
slow motion, her bat already moving while her mind stayed in one place, the bat connecting explosively,
the ping of the aluminum singing its strike, the ball jerking away like an invisible string yanked it up and
out, out of the field and over the trees. Mom, in the bleachers, was screaming “That’s my girl!” stomping
her feet, her hands punching the air with the same uncontrolled energy of Chevalier getting a handful of
someone’s hair. “That’s my girl!” she shouted, Dad’s arms around her shoulders, embarrassed by her
outburst, but smiling like the first time he held Chevalier, his eyebrows contracting in a frown while his
mouth smiled, a tense contradiction of joy and fear, disbelief that he should be so lucky. Cass took her
victory lap, breathing thanks for her muscles and bones and blood. It was the only thing that was truly
hers, her only unarguable power.
She breathed deeply and tossed her hair of out her eyes. Mitch was doubled over, his mouth making one
large O of shock. His glasses had fallen off of his face but he still held on to his beer and cigarette. He fell
back into a sitting position. His breathing was shallow and his face had turned white. She had never seen
anyone so pale before. In the harsh yellow light, all the little bumps and divots of his face stood out, like
craters on the moon.
Cass pointed the bat at his nose. “You only have friends because you have a boat,” she said. He gaped at
her.
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She walked back into the house and replaced the bat in the nursery. Chevalier whined and she had to
comfort him before she could leave. She picked him up. He was heavier every day even though he only ate
pureed veggies. Dad startled her by walking into the nursery.
“How is he? I came to check,” he said. Cass shrugged and set him back in the crib. “Is Mitch okay?”
She froze. His tone was soft but that could have been to avoid waking up the baby.
“I saw you were talking to him,” Dad said, “and then he walked home just a few minutes ago, so I was
wondering. Mom wanted to play a videogame with him.” He stood beside her and checked to make sure
Chevalier’s clothing snaps were all secured.
“Chevy Chevy,” he murmured while he checked. “Chevy Chevy fresh spaghetti.”
“He said he was tired.”
“What were you doing outside anyways?”
“I couldn’t sleep. You guys are too loud.”
“Aw, I’m sorry sweetie. People will be leaving pretty soon, and it’ll quiet down. Good thing you
don’t have school tomorrow.” He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her out. “Go back to bed, honey.”
Cass went to bed and only relaxed after she heard the pitch of the party dwindle away. She heard Mom
and Dad go to bed and heard Betsy floundering around in the guest bed, trying to get comfortable on the
old mattress. Cass could feel her bones lengthening, her muscle and tendons stretching across their
connections, her body struggling to contain her.
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59
Icarus
RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA
When I was 9,
I remember playing soccer
With a plastic black and white ball.
In a dirt field we called playground
Where nothing seem to grow except dreams
Where only love was spoken in coordinated footwork.
Which glued the world to our feet
We directed the comet where to go
To gracefully follow the phases of the moon, stars,
Stitching constellations of our dreams into the seams of the world glued to our feet.
We jumped over broken glass left at parks
Where people sang out their heart breaks into colored glass megaphones
With hopes that the world would hear them.
We couldn’t imagine hopes being imprisoned in bottles
So we broke them to let them breathe
Used the shards to make outlines of the battlefield.
Because we battled our limits and nightmares.
Every game was an odyssey and each player
Their own Icarus, trying each time to surpass the inconceivable.
We dribbled
Ran and felt at peace with the wind at our backs
Displacing every fear we have had up to that point.
Nothing mattered more than to drive the ball to the back of an invisible net.
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To raise your hands towards the sun
Bellowing the most celestial of songs
As tribute to a child's game.
The world forgets for one second
The things that bring us pain
To feel this immensely wave of joy.
Nothing mattered at that moment.
Nothing mattered,
Nothing.
That is futbol to me.
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61
Perfect Spiral
MICHAEL METIVIER
Always, at whoever’s house, teeth marks:
a chunk chewed from the stitches
or the side, the smooth N or F
we would worry with our fingers
before testing our strength against
fall’s yawning acreage, a Hail Mary
every down. Sometimes waterlogged
from a rain barrel or above-ground pool,
often scrawled with permanent marker
across the seam (nickname, lightning).
Never did we learn what it stood for:
NON-EXPANDING RECREATIONAL FOAM,
though it had our love and was on our tongues
when the company expanded to bows
and dart guns. Enlist, engage, enforce
went one ad, and those of us who didn’t
make the team knew the assignment,
learned we could still launch missiles
with our arms, could even take bites
out of the bullets with no harm done.
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On the Privilege of Losing: Notes of a Detroit Lions
Fan
RILEY WINCHESTER
Consider the synonyms of loser, that two-syllable acidic stain on the tongue that we’re told is a label to
avoid: also-ran, underdog, deadbeat, defeated, dud, failure, flop, has-been, disadvantaged, down-andouter,
flunked, underprivileged.
#
I won’t bore you with anecdotes on the myriad little losses I’ve experienced in my life—spelling bees,
baseball tournaments, hands of blackjack, games of darts, etc.—but rather I’ll cut to the heart of the matter
and the impetus of this essay. I am a Detroit Lions fan. I’m talking more than just a flip-on-the-game-rightquick-oh-they’re-losing-guess-I’ll-turn-it-off-and-try-again-next-Sunday
fan. I am, admittedly, too
emotionally and temporally invested in a professional football team that continues to find new ways to
lose.
Fortunately, I was born into the habit of losing. Never in my time as a Lions fan have I ever been deceived
by the illusion of consistent winning. In my first year on this earth, and my first season as a de facto Lions
fan—1997—the Lions went 9-7 and made the playoffs. Not bad. But then they of course lost in the Wild
Card round. After that 1997 playoff run, the losses came and they’ve yet to show any sign of leaving.
5-11. 8-8. 9-7. 2-14. 3-13. 5-11. 6-10. 5-11. 3-13. 7-9. And then the infamous 0-16 2008 season. I’ll stop
listing season records here. I think you get the point.
It was losing that brought the Lions to Detroit, but it wasn’t football games they lost.
Founded in 1928, the Portsmouth Spartans were a successful football team. In their short professional
tenure, they held a record of 28-16-7. The Spartans’ problem, however, was off the field. Timing. The
Spartans were founded shortly before Black Tuesday and the start of the Great Depression that left
America mired in a ten-year economic abyss. Undoubtedly an inauspicious time to start a professional
football team in southern Ohio.
#
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Portsmouth, Ohio, was a small town. Like most of America, Portsmouth residents were harshly affected by
the Depression, and the town’s football team felt the effects. Fans loved and supported the Spartans,
there was no doubt about that, but they couldn’t afford tickets to the games. Star running back Dutch
Clark said about the fans, “Hell, we’d get 4,000 or 5,000 people out to watch practice and at game time
we’d be lucky if we had 2,000.”
As a result, the team went deeper into debt as the Depression worsened in the early 1930s. The Spartans’
financial situation became so bleak that players were forced to take shares of stock in the team in lieu of
their usual salary. There was no money, not for the players, coaches, or front office. A change needed to be
made. Enter George A. Richards.
Richards, owner of the Detroit radio station WJR, bought the Portsmouth Spartans for a price reported to
have been between $15,000 and $16,500. The new owner wasted no time in his revamping of the team.
He moved the Spartans to Detroit, Michigan, and renamed them the Lions, with the goal of building the
“king of the NFL.” The Lions played their first game in 1934, and they’ve remained in Detroit ever since.
Let’s take history’s most humiliating losses and examine them.
Crassus led 43,000 legionnaires in an attack on the Parthian Empire. The marauding legionnaires were
heavily fatigued and famished, but Crassus ordered them to continue their campaign in an attempt to
catch the Parthians off-guard in Mesopotamia. Crassus and his crew of 43,000 were subsequently met
with a bulwark of Parthian horse archers and armed horsemen. Drowning in arrows, the Roman army
scattered and fled for their lives. Many were captured and killed in the fracas, including Crassus who was
beheaded by his captors.
#
But how does this loss compare to leading 20-17 in the fourth quarter of a playoff game against the Dallas
Cowboys only for Cowboys linebacker Anthony Hitchens to get away with an egregious pass interference
on Brandon Pettigrew—the flag was thrown, then picked up!—and don’t forget Dez Bryant running onto
the field without a helmet on—also not penalized—and the culmination of it all being a late-game Tony
Romo touchdown pass to Terrance Williams and a 24-20 loss for the Lions, ultimately ending their season
in appropriate hapless fashion.
In 1939, Stalin thought he could bully his smaller neighbor Finland. He sent the Red Army into an
unforgiving Finnish winter with a surplus of manpower and firepower. But it didn’t matter what the
Soviets brought with them. The Finnish Army was ready. Russian troops were systematically sniped as
they trudged through the snow on their way to meet their Finnish foes. These casualties, however, only
emboldened Stalin. He ordered more troops to Finland, and they were promptly shot and killed. By the
end, the Red Army suffered three times as many casualties as Finland.
But how does this loss compare to K.J. Wright’s blatant and unpenalized breaking of NFL rule 12.1.8—A
player may not bat or punch: (a) a loose ball (in field of play) toward opponent's goal line; (b) a loose ball (that has
touched the ground) in any direction, if it is in either end zone; (c) a backward pass in flight may not be batted
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forward by an offensive player—as he swatted the football out of the back of the end zone to stultify a late
fourth quarter drive by the Lions, ultimately putting a bow on a 13-10 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on
Monday Night Football.
And how could any of these losses compare to the most emblematic loss in recent Detroit Lions history:
the Miracle in Motown. The Lions were up 23-21 on the Packers when Aaron Rodgers was stuffed into the
Ford Field turf as time expired, therefore solidifying a Lions victory. But then the flag came. A phantom
facemask call on Devon Taylor gave Aaron Rodgers and the Packers fifteen yards and a free play. Starting
on the Packers’ thirty-nine-yard line, Rodgers took the snap, stepped back, let his receivers air out,
scrambled from defenders, and heaved the ball to the end zone. The ball floated in the air, high enough to
almost hit the rafters, and it landed in the hands of Packers tight end Richard Rodgers II for a Green Bay
touchdown, ultimately sealing a 27-23 Lions loss. Announcer Jim Nantz called it “Miracle in Motown.” It
won the award for Best Play at the 2016 ESPY Awards. It is still the longest game-winning Hail Mary play
in NFL history.
Coincidentally, all three of these aforementioned Lions’ losses happened in the calendar year 2015. Just
another year for the Detroit Lions and their fans. Just another year of desensitized and blasé losing.
#
Sports fans especially don’t take well to losing. Go to YouTube and search “sports fan meltdown” and you’ll
get pages and pages of major meltdowns filmed in portrait mode in living rooms across the world. The top
search result is a video titled “NFL Angry Fans Compilation,” uploaded by user Kilo Goodwin. It has over
1.6 million views. In the video, fans of six different NFL teams are seen having meltdowns after big losses.
And with the exception of the Cleveland Browns, all the teams featured have had relative success
recently. Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, San Francisco 49ers, Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Carolina
Panthers.
It’s as if success—winning—heightens the fall and increases the pain. The fall doesn’t hurt so bad when it’s
only a couple of inches, as any experienced loser would know. The invisible culprit behind all these
meltdowns, it seems, is the misguided belief in the certitude of victory—something that can only occur
after a habit of winning more than losing has been established.
Perhaps the most notorious instance of a fan meltdown is Harvey Updyke. Updyke was a lifelong Alabama
Crimson Tide Fan who, after an Alabama loss to Auburn in the 2010 Iron Bowl, took matters into his own
destructive hands. He drove thirty miles to Toomer’s Corner, a historic landmark on Auburn’s campus, and
poisoned the two iconic oak trees with Spike 80DF herbicide. Updyke felt no remorse, and he even went
as far as calling into a sports radio talk show to gloat about the act. When asked by host Paul Finebaum if it
was a crime to poison a tree, Updyke said, “Do you think I care?” He ended his call with, “Roll damn Tide!”
and shortly after the trees died.
Rivalries can play a role in these behaviors, sure, but the Lions are (allegedly) rivals with the Green Bay
Packers, and one would be hard-pressed to see anything remotely close to this behavior after the Lions
receive their two losses from the Packers each year.
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WINCHESTER 65
Take the previously mentioned Miracle in Motown. There’s plenty of YouTube videos showing the live
reaction from the stands in Ford Field. Packers fans raucously cheer and make a scene. Lions fans silently
march out of the stadium, stoically distant from a meltdown, desensitized to it all. Nobody wearing
Honolulu blue felt deceived or shorted. They got what they paid for when they were born into the
inculcated cycle of losing that is being a Detroit Lions fan.
It happens almost every sports season, but it remains hilarious to watch from an unempathetic
perspective. Good teams go bad. Winners lose. As I write this, two perennial winners are experiencing
“failing” seasons in the NFL. The New England Patriots are 3-4 and the Pittsburgh Steelers are 3-3. Both
teams have six Super Bowl titles, their fans have become accustomed to winning, and now the sky is
falling.
To be .500 would be a hallucination. To even have a win would be surreal (Lions are 0-7 as I write this). Yet
I don’t need a winning record or a win, I’ve realized. A win is as futile as the penny I get back in change at
the gas station. It will do nothing; I’ll eventually forget about it. And the Lions have developed a habit of
forcing their fans to give that win-penny back with late-game blunders, blown calls, and all the other
vagaries of being a Lions fan.
Consider the synonyms of Lions fan, that three-syllable acidic stain on the tongue that we’re told is a label
to avoid: also-ran, underdog, deadbeat, defeated, dud, failure, flop, has-been, disadvantaged, down-andouter,
flunked, loser.
#
We are losers, and we are better people for it. We have no illusions of supremacy or entitlement. We take
what is thrown at us and we handle it with the grace and solemnity of a Stoic. We don’t whine or whimper.
We don’t smash televisions or poison nature. We don’t even raise our voices. We simply move on having
accepted defeat, as we’ve had the privilege of experiencing it so often, and we go on with our lives.
Beck says in his 1994 single “Loser,” “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?” But I don’t think us losers
can be killed. Like Achilles, we’ve been dipped in a river of immortality. Our river flows of shortcomings
and failures, and our immortality is expectational. Our heel, and the only way we can succumb to
expectational death, is the deception of winning. So we keep losing, and we remain impervious.
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An Erasure Fable Found in Defense of Consumer
Rights
ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO
(From Mets General Manager Sandy Alderman’s press release addressing his team’s players celebrating by
pointing their thumbs down as a response to fan jeering)
In a post-game press conference today, Javy Báez stated that his “thumbs down” gesture during the game
was a message to fans who recently have booed him and other players for poor performance. These
comments, and any gestures by him or other players with a similar intent, are totally unacceptable and will
not be tolerated.
Mets fans are understandably frustrated over the team’s recent performance. The players and the
organization are equally frustrated, but fans at Citi Field have every right to express their own
disappointment. Booing is every fan’s right.
The Mets will not tolerate any player gesture that is unprofessional in its meaning or is directed in a
negative way toward our fans. I will be meeting with our players and staff to convey this message directly.
MORAL: Mets fans are loyal, passionate, knowledgeable and more than willing to express themselves. We
love them for every one of these qualities.
THE UNDER REVIEW
67
Photograph: Little League Practice
KATHRYN KYSAR
We stand in the gloom of April:
pearls of ice, strands of snow,
entire necklaces dipped in heaven’s
scorn. It singes when you swing
the bat, our feet soaked by the yellow
straw-like spongy grass. You’re ahead
of me, not behind. The moist spring
air smells of dirt, the dust-colored
sky edged with darkening blue.
It’s chilling, but not winter, the ground
solid but wet, the forest distant, your
breath, close by. You have no words.
I memorize your body’s position,
the placement of your hands, your
thoughts swept away like rainwater.
There is no one else in this picture.
You’re alone, waiting for the ball.
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Summer Swimmer
JESSIE WALKER
July 31, 2005, was the first day I believed I could become an Olympic swimmer. I was competing for the
Meadowbrook Tomatoes in the 11-12 age group at the Central Maryland Swim League (CMSL)
Championships, the big season finale for summer swim teams. And for the 100 I.M., I had to race against
my former teammate, the evil Amy Halligan, a bulldog of a girl whose mouth was fixed in a permanent
grimace. She was a professional at spinning her words to make me feel awful in my already awkward skin.
But today, enough was enough. I had never wanted to beat someone this badly.
When we stepped up to the starting blocks, I stared at Amy and thought about all the nasty things she’d
said. My nose was too big for my face. My ears were oversized and full of wax. My thick black eyebrows
didn’t match my dirty blonde hair. When the starter pressed the buzzer and we dove in, I tore through the
water. I flew through a lap of butterfly, on to a lap of backstroke, then to breaststroke, and finished with
freestyle. On the final lap, I put my head down and didn’t take a breath while I cruised towards the finish.
When I slammed my hand onto the wall, I looked over to Amy’s lane. No one was there. Several seconds
later, she touched the wall and snarled in my direction. I extended my hand to offer a handshake, knowing
she’d hate every moment. When I hopped out of the water and asked for my time, the timer flashed me a
stopwatch that read 1:08.84. My coach met me beside the pool, beaming with the news—I’d broken a
longstanding league record. Craziest of all, the record had belonged to an Olympian.
After that race, a flip switched. If I could break an Olympian’s record, then why couldn’t I be an Olympian
myself? I wanted to bottle up the mixture of power and pride that I’d felt beating Amy and breaking that
record. It was intoxicating and I wanted more. I wanted to be an Olympian.
***
A year earlier in the summer of 2004, my mom and brother attended a parade celebrating Baltimore’s
hometown hero Michael Phelps and his Olympic victories. I refused to attend because I would have
missed my own practice. They brought me back a poster that showed Phelps immersed underwater,
floating just above the bottom of the pool. He was making what swimmers call bubble rings: perfect
bubble spheres that float towards the water’s surface when you blow air out of your mouth in small
spurts. On the poster, sleek bold lettering stated Some kids worship superheroes. Some kids become one. It
remains in my childhood bedroom today.
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69
Phelps’ team was North Baltimore Aquatic Club (NBAC), and I was recruited to join NBAC not long after
my mom and brother brought home the poster. The coaches thought I could help the girls in my age group
break a National Age Group relay record, which was terrifying and flattering at the same time. While my
parents were afraid the team would be too intense, they we were also relieved the team trained at our
summer club, Meadowbrook. This meant less time shuttling me around town.
I did help my new teammates break National Age Group relay records, and the coaches eventually placed
a few of us into an elite group of swimmers with some former Olympians and Olympic hopefuls. Phelps
was training with the University of Michigan at the time, but he’d saunter down the pool deck on his visits
home to Baltimore and join us for a practice or two. I’d choose a lane far away because his presence
intimidated me, but I would stare over in awe while we kicked up and down the pool. My poster had come
to life.
***
In the swimming world, there’s a category of swim parent very similar to the ones you see on shows like
Dance Moms. There were a lot of them at NBAC, but my parents fell so far outside this group it was
laughable. Mom hated these intense parents so much that she’d purposely arrive to meets late with her
trademark insulated coffee tumbler. I’d later learn this tumbler housed her contraband cocktail of vodka,
orange juice, and Sprite. The cocktail calmed Mom’s nerves, not because she was nervous for my swims
but because I was. That same summer, I managed to get so worked up before my 200-butterfly that I had
an asthma attack on the second lap. The whole crowd watched as my hyperventilating body was pulled
out of the water so I could suck on my inhaler like a pacifier.
Even with all the anxiety I felt during meets and Mom’s constant encouragement to quit, I couldn’t step
away. Nervous as I’d get, I still swam fast in meets and continued climbing the ranks. I figured this was part
of my Olympic journey.
***
During high school, I committed to swim at the University of Richmond in exchange for a generous
scholarship. My freshman year, I made the cut to swim the 800-freestyle in USA Swimming’s Summer
National meet. This was the most competitive meet I’d ever qualified for, and my goal for the summer was
to make the cut to swim in Olympic Trials. When I returned home from college in the spring and went back
to NBAC, Phelps and his coach had returned to train for the 2012 summer Olympics. Since I was attending
Nationals, I got to join the elite group and even travel with them to the Olympic Training Center in
Colorado Springs for several weeks of intensive altitude training.
While I started off feeling like a guppy again in this group, I gradually gained confidence as I worked my tail
off in practices. There was even a female Olympian I kept pace with during several practices. I was realistic
enough to know the chances of qualifying for the Olympic team were slim, but these were the moments
where I’d believe there was a shot. What if I made the Trials cut this summer and had a fast year ahead?
What if I had a race like my 100 I.M. against Amy Halligan?
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70 WALKER
I felt ready to achieve this before stepping onto the blocks to swim the 800-freestlye at Nationals. I’d been
training harder than ever and was uncharacteristically confident. The 800-freestyle is a long race, but I felt
strong and in control as I cruised up and down the pool for 16 laps. I kept repeating the trials cuts in my
head—8:50.49. When I slammed my hand into the touch pad, the clock read 8:54.35. It was my best time,
but I hadn’t reached my goal.
This marked the beginning of the end for me and the sport. Instead of having the fast year I dreamed of, I
hit what the swimming community calls a plateau; I was unable to better any of my times after my summer
training with Phelps and company. By my senior year, I felt like I was fighting with the water daily and then
managed to slip on ice and bruise my tailbone before the championship meet. I swam okay at the
championship all things considered, but I was ready to retire. When we returned to campus, it was over.
***
It’s taken me several years to want to swim again. When I talk about my swimming career since retiring,
many people ask me, “did you even like swimming?” After they hear about the early mornings, intense
pressure, and ongoing disappointments, they wonder why I kept showing up. I haven’t had a good answer
until now.
Elite swimmers tend to look down on summer swimming, the arena where most of us got our start racing
in neighborhood pools and fueling up on Pixy Stix behind starting blocks. While most of my peers stopped
competing for summer teams when they reached their teens, that was out of the question for me. This is
where I fell in love with the water.
This summer, I purchased a membership to Meadowbrook, the pool where I swam with NBAC year-round
and in the summer as a Tomato. I use a lane far away from the other lap swimmers and fall into a rhythm as
I move from one side to the other. Lap after lap, I rediscover a kinship with the cool water. The memories
slip through my hands with each stroke, and I eventually fall into a meditation to the tempo of my
breathing. I fish out the good feelings from these meditative swims—strength, confidence, hope—and
carry them away with me and into the car. One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe.
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71
Beach Girls
SARAH FAULKNER
for Kate
Ask Slater to drive you to the meet at Stone Steps. Your mom has the truck today. Big surprise, Slater
never shows. Walk past the Dairy Queen and the LiquorMart as you hike west to the beach. Rafe’s already
there when you arrive. His lips turn up in a smile that eats up his face. He’s got his skateboard with him. Do
you wanna see a new trick? You do. Sit on a parking block and watch him practice his pop shuvit. Watch his
hair slick back as he pushes the board and gains speed. Watch the small kick turns he makes with his feet,
the pop as he ollies, the grim look of determination on his face as he kicks the board 180 degrees and then
lands. You clap for him. You motherfucking clap, ok? He’s the first boy you’ve ever loved. Somehow he found
you in all that cosmic dark and now you race alongside each other, comets burning across the black.
He can’t stay long. He’s going to play rehearsal soon. He’s the lead.
Walk down to the shore alone and look south towards the jutting cove of La Jolla and past that, Mexico
blurring at the horizon. Wade into the ocean ankle deep. Don’t look north. You never look north. Walk
home sandals in your hand, calloused feet on the pavement, and sand between your toes. Billy sings in
your ears the whole time: behind me, the grace of falling snow; cover up everything you know; come save me
from the awful sound of nothing.
Mom’s at work when you get home. Watch The Simpsons while you eat the food she left you in the
microwave before her shift started. Shake & Bake chicken with watery yellow squash. Undress in the
bathroom and look at the tan lines on your body. All those shapes and lines curving around your skin like a
highway. It’s June and in three months, you’ll be leaving for the city and it’ll be asphalt, fog, and municipal
transportation.
Slater throws rocks at your patio door. You unslide the door from its lock and find him standing in your
mom’s hydrangea bushes. Take his outstretched hand. He walks you over to his car, a beat-up old Toyota
Camry with a surf rack and a Santa Cruz sticker on the bumper. His dark blonde hair falls to his chin and
he’s forever shaking it out of his face. It falls forward onto your cheeks when he presses you against the
car and kisses your lips. Listen to him bite back a moan as he presses his fingers inside you. Like he’s been
waiting all day to feel you. Call him Peter under your breath. Tell him you’re Wendy. Tell him to make you
fly.
Be good in the water. Be a better swimmer than most girls and most boys. Girls don’t care, but when boys
find out you were on a competitive swim team for 10 years, they immediately want to race you. They smile
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when they ask but the farce is clear. So you oblige them, and you’ve never, not one fucking time, lost. One
boy even stopped midway in the pool and reversed direction to try and beat you to the wall and you still
lapped him. And each win is exactly the same: the moment the absurdity sinks in, the way they push their
hair out of their eyes, chests heaving, trying to figure out how to save face.
You’re from a beach town. You live in a small condo with your mom 2 miles away from the Pacific Ocean.
Your mom’s job barely covers the essentials, so you never, and I mean never, have money. But the beach is
free, so that’s where you are. First as a child eating KFC from a greasy paper bin and making drip castles,
then as a breakout swim team star learning how to surf at Junior Guards, and now, one girl out there in a
pack of boys, gunning for waves and taking your wipeouts.
You’re not going to go pro or anything. You’re not out there doing aerials or 360s. You drive past the local
surf competitions. That’s not why you surf. You’re out there for the silence. When you paddle out past the
furthest break and turn your board around, you float barely tethered to this world. San Diego minimized
in a yellow stretch of color with pinpricks of neon umbrellas. You’re out there to feel small, to feel grace.
This is your church. You paddle in front of a swell and feel the exact moment the wave has you in its grips.
You drop in, gut bottoming out, and turn at the bottom. You glide on top of the water, and for the briefest
of moments, you ride the celestial tide of the universe.
But--day by day--you watch the population at the beach, at your home, change. You know what’s
happening.
BMWs replace station wagons and old sedans. Polos and loafers replace flip flops. Fewer people walk
around, but the roads are bumper to bumper. Upscale boutiques and hair salons edge out dive bars and
community markets. A new homeowners group has started a petition to revoke the license of a local
tattoo shop down the street from your home.
Your friends are the children of plumbers and mechanics. Of retail and service staff. The rich live just 5
miles east in the Ranch or down the coast in La Jolla. They steadily infiltrate your break, the one you grew
up surfing. Tourists escaping the heat of LA and Arizona are right behind. They buy up the coastal
properties and leave them mostly vacant year round.
There’s nothing to do but laugh at them side-stepping down the stairs on careful feet, new RipTide
wetsuits in hand and zinc bands across their noses and cheeks. Tucked under their arms are shiny short
boards they can’t even stand up on. They don’t know about learning first on long boards, preferably foam.
Watch them gaze out at the surf, trying to figure out where to paddle out. They don’t know they should
start with whitewash. They don’t know how to get out of an actual riptide. They don’t know about the
stingrays or bees in the tideline.
And the local grimeheads at the break--Skindog, Bones, Condor, Beetle, and Slater-- won’t suffer fools.
You watch them outgun each other for waves. You see them drop in on tourists. They break boards
sometimes. He’s a kook. Get the fuck outta my water. But this is your crew. The broke-as-fuck-but-live-inparadise
crew.
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FAULKNER 73
In the water, you surf alongside them. You’ve sat front row to their off-color jokes about public hair and
VD. They rate the girls on shore (mostly 7s). You hear them comment on your ass (meaty). You see them
make jerk-off gestures to their buddies when you paddle by. You hear them greet each other hey boys.
Always hey boys. In the water, they don’t talk to you. They only talk around you. You’re allowed in this
space because you can surf and you can swim, but that’s it.
Even so, you like these dirty boys. They smoke you out and drive you places. You drink their beer and film
their tricks. If you ask, they’ll give you tips on pumping the wave for maximum speed. If you ask, they’ll
teach you how to drive off from the bottom of a wave, turn up the face and carve back down led by your
heels and arms. Don’t move your shoulders, Slater always says. They enjoy it when you need them. And
sometimes, sometimes, it’s like that.
But most of the time, you have to arrive a fully formed surfer born from the head of Zeus before even
entering the break.
Every girl knows this. Every queer kid and every black and brown kid, too.
After surfing, you load up your board into your truck bed and deck change into a tank and sweatpants. A
car horn blears at you and you turn in time to see a man’s flaccid penis shaking back and forth out of the
passenger window of a car. You see the silhouette of the driver throw his head back to laugh as they speed
out of sight.
Before you are anything else, you are a fantasy. The beach girl. Desirable, young, and tan. You laugh easily
and wear little clothing. You’re Pam Anderson and Gidget and Brooke Shields. A Betty. You have
nicknames like Roxy and Blondie. You are vitality, sexuality, and innocence, and you decorate the shore
like living seaglass. People don’t expect to see beach girls at the drug store picking up in the morningafter-pill
or feeding coins into a washing machine at the local laundromat. Beach girls are known for
watching surfers, but never are surfers. Their hair isn't a polished pile of waves, but rather a frizzled briny
mess. Their noses are red from the sun and eyes puffy from the salt. They drive run down station wagons,
not corvettes. They are tired from working long shifts at the pizza place and at the tire shop. They’re tired
of trying to find breaks with the fewest possible boys. Of living in bodies perpetually on display. Of
entering spaces which only want to see them as fantasy.
You once overheard Beetle say i love beach girls but Beetle doesn’t love anything but surfing and Tijuana
and everyone knows it.
Wait for Slater outside the Java Depot. Find Condor on the outside patio, plucking his guitar over a cup of
yerba mate. He’s got a Spanish textbook out in front of him. Last month, he walked but technically he
hasn’t finished high school until he gets this class done. But after that--he tells you--he’s headed to
Thailand for an epic surf trip. Maybe Bali after. He’s trying to go pro. His hair is shaved close to his scalp,
and he’s copper bronze all over. He wears a hemp necklace and an oversized Mexican poncho. His big
coffee brown eyes always look a little sad. He gives you a clove cigarette and it feels like fiberglass in your
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lungs but you stay and smoke, listening to Condor’s litless plucking. Realize Slater is standing you up again.
Realize you don’t care as much.
Lose endless afternoons with Rafe driving down and up the coast in his Wagoneer to different surf or
skate spots. Sing along to Fugazi and Bad Religion. Rafe’s afro has grown out and when he sings, he shakes
it back and forth wildly. He pantomimes drumming on the steering wheel. His drink cup holds a lighter, a
hair pick, one of his silver rings, and the haiku you wrote him during your creative writing class last
semester: we drip like honey; a slow and golden sunset; now a fire sea. He’s a year younger so you don’t have to
worry about him moving away just yet. Lean your seat back. Prop your right foot out the window. Rafe
switches it to 91X and then it’s the Chili Peppers and Bob Marley and Sublime.
When you’re alone, listen to The Jesus Lizard, The Pixies, The Replacements. New Order, Bjork. Thom
rhapsodizing from your speakers: kill me Sarah, kill me again with love.
Rafe has a problem with fighting. He’s easy to anger. Not at you. Never to you. But he’s been suspended
twice, and this summer he’s taking an anger management class his parents insisted on. He tells me he
reads the whole time. Bukowski first. Then Kerouac. He’s moving onto Ellis next. His knuckles are still
scabbed over from a scuffle at the skate park last week. Maybe read some girls, you say.
Spend your mornings and early afternoons nannying for a couple kids. Their mother used to be your
counselor from the Boys and Girls Club. After that, you go home, walk the dog, and eat your mom’s food
from the microwave. Take a shower, and wait until it’s dark. Drive to Slater’s. Walk through the unlocked
front door. All the boys are sitting around watching Bones’s new video. Sit behind them on the kitchen
stool. You watch their tawny manes nod and jeer at each other when someone gets a good wave. Condor
turns around and signals you to meet him outside. He lights up a joint and takes a long inhale. You don’t
speak. Not when he passes it to you. Not for the entire it takes you both to finish. And then, you forget
time. You’re as high as the motherfucking eucalyptus which tower over the house. And what a perfect
word to capture such a feeling. You’re so high you don’t notice Slater coming outside and reaching for you.
He pulls you face forward into his chest and you tuck your nose into his armpit. He smells like salt and
beer. He takes you down the hall past his roommates. In his bedroom, you fall into his unmade bed and
sand on his sheets grits the back of your naked arm. He stands over you, giving you a strange look you’ve
never seen before. You know I like you, right? he asks. If you were sober, you’d answer I know, but since
you’re not you stare back at him. You stare for so long he flinches and says I’m sorry. You reach out and
press your hand between his legs. He hardens under your touch. When you look up at him, his features are
pained. For a brief moment, his ache matches your own. It makes everything desperate. When you take
him in your mouth you feel him shudder all the way from the tip of his dick to the center of his third eye.
At parties, watch the boys zero in on the drunkest girls. You watch as they settle around one on the couch.
They ignore her. The joke around and posture with the animal energy of young men. The girl is timid,
almost unsure how she became the center of the group. She nods in and out, laughing with them at times.
Through it all, no one says a word to her. When she gets up to leave, you watch Beetle grab the back of her
shorts and yank her back down. Her legs jut out from the force as she lands on her ass. The look on her
face haunts you as you leave. Happy to be noticed, terrified about what that means.
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FAULKNER 75
The fair comes to town and, like always, your mom gets the free summer pass from her job, some perk that
came from her union’s bargaining. You go with Rafe. You go with Slater. You go with Condor. You go by
yourself. You eat grinders, kettle corn, fried oreos. You wander the exhibition halls, rubbing on age-defying
lotion on your unblemished skin and buying a toe ring. You look at woven purses from the Rasta shop and
Russian nesting dolls from another. You watch a demo of a paring knife that does all the cutting while you do
all the eating. Go outside and sit on the Footsie-Wootsie. Sometimes you slip in a quarter, sometimes you
don’t. You wander through the Gem & Minerals tent and the woodworking tent; the local art expo takes a
whole afternoon. Your favorite is the floor hosting collections. Old license plates, brass spoons, Star Wars
collectibles. Old Watson’s bottles, pastel pyrex cookware, and jade buddha statues. You wonder about the
one who owns the Cabbage Doll collection and the one with the switchblades. On the Grand Stage, you
see Smokey Robinson and Carrot Top. You ride the Zipper, the Falling Star, the Scrambler. You bribe adults
to buy you Coronas in the beer garden. You get your natal chart rendered (born under a waxing crescent
moon traveling through Aquarius); the mystic tells you you’ll never fit in. You look down at your tan skin
clasped in the milky flesh of hers; you fucking know that already. You walk past the pig races and the
motorcycle bike competition, through the livestock tents and gardening showcase. You leave the
fairgrounds and walk west less than a mile until you hit the Pacific Ocean. You walk the beach under a full
moon traveling through Taurus. Where God is.
At the beach, you lay out on your towel nearly naked. You cross your arms behind your head and tuck your
chin to look down the length of your body. Through your parted thighs is the endless glass of the Pacific.
No waves means no surfers, so there’s nothing to mar your view. It’s just you and the sun on your flesh and
later the cool ocean water tonguing you like a lover.
Condor gets his passing score on his Spanish I test and now he’s a high school graduate. You drive him,
Skindog, and Bones to the airport in your truck. They're indeed off to Thailand. Bones is going to film
Condor. He’s newly signed to Hurley and he needs footage decked out in his sponsored gear. Skindog’s just
going to drink. Drive them 45 minutes south to Lindbergh Field, San Diego passing by in a series of dreamy
postcards. Del Mar, Opal Cliffs, OB, Old Town. At the airport drop off you lean over the center console and
say through the opened passenger window don’t drown motherfuckers.
Slater’s moody without the boys. He wants to shoot video but nobody’s around. You ride his skateboard
down to Pizza Port to grab the two of you dinner. You run into Marisol there, your old friend from swim
team. She’s sloppy drunk and she holds onto you, swaying on her feet. She’s not going to college in the fall,
and she’s already begun her new life. I have to tell you something, she says. You know Casey, right? From
school? Of course, you reply. Everyone did. He’d been very popular in school, a bit of a charming bad boy,
always dating the newest popular girl. Marisol shakes her head in disbelief and proceeds to tell you how
they ran into each other at a party. He came up to her and started flirting. She was perplexed at first. I
didn’t think you knew who I was, she told him. They went back to her place where she accidentally spilled a
bottle of beer all over them both. So they took a shower together. All of a sudden, she says, he’s crying. The
kind of crying where he’s fighting to hold in each sob. Where everything comes out choked and harsh. She
didn’t know what the fuck happened. She patted his back and he reached for her hand. He said he was
sorry. He said he was lonely. This guy didn’t look at me twice in school--she tells you--but there he was telling
me I was as beautiful as the moon.
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You skate back to Slater’s, the pizza balanced on your palm. The cool humid night curls your hair and
dampens your skin. The sky’s in twilight the whole time. You don’t look up at the moon. You never do.
There’s so much down here.
You don’t really like it but Rafe loves ska. He’s forever taking you down to SOMA Live to watch $10 shows.
One time he even got onstage to sing with The Aquabats. And you marvel at it even though you’ve seen
him on countless stages. The way he was born for it.
You check the mail and find a letter from your university. Inside is an off-to-college checklist with items
you don’t even own now. Shower caddies, under-the-bed storage bins, stackable desk trays, and portable
speakers. You hope your roommate doesn’t care when you just show up with good music, an extensive
book collection, and your hippy-dippy clothes.
Rafe swings by and you down a Coke real fast as he explains his progress in moving from a 3 to 5 stair ollie.
Wanna see? he asks, and like always, you say yes. You pee right before you leave, but on the five minute
drive down to the County Plaza steps next to the beach, your bladder fills up again. And it’s so stupid but it
fills you with shame. You watch him run up the steps and set up the trick. You try to ignore your discomfort
but just as soon as he pops the ollie, front knee shifting into a slant as he sails through the air and lands,
you tell him you have to pee again. You always tell him the truth. Well, you did drink a whole can, he says
without a hint of insincerity and then takes your hand as you walk back to the car. He rubs his thumb over
yours. The two of you have never even kissed. You probably never will. On the ride home, he puts on Social
D and smokes a joint. You race in the house to pee and notice your mom--still in her scrubs--stretched out
on the couch, her feet in nursing clogs up on the coffee table. In the bathroom, you pee in extreme relief
and overhear Rafe chat your mom up and down like he’s not high as a sonuvabitch. Always the actor.
Always onstage.
Later, Rafe says how cool your mom is. How much love she has for you. How he could tell right away when
he met her she was a nurse. Except he didn’t say nurse; he said healer. And it rewired something in your
brain about her.
Mail update: you get your dormmate’s name with a short description she provided and her phone number.
Meet Priya from Los Angeles who loves flea markets, Converse high-tops, and street art. Call her up and
say you’ll bring the records if she brings the wall deco. She responds back:
All over it. You drink?
Like a fish. You smoke?
Like a chimney.
Lately, your dog has been standing in the doorway to your bedroom. That’s it. Just standing there, staring
at you in your bed. Like he knows.
Slater comes over and you sneak him past your mom’s room. He is quiet, even for him. He takes off your
clothing, item by item. He watches your face as he does it. He seems sad and for the first time since this
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FAULKNER 77
started with you two, kind. He licks you out until your thighs are shaking and you're arching your hips up
into his mouth, desperate to come. Always so desperate.
Wake up and see Slater passed out next to you. He’s got an angry furrow in his brow. Reach over to
smooth it out and wake him. Drive to the Potato Shack. Share a plate-sized pancake in silence. He’s
distant, staring at food without seeing it. You suggest a nap on the beach after? He declines. He says he has
to go. He pays and says I’m sorry. Always I’m sorry. You look around at the table in confusion, ignorant your
whole life. For what?
The next day Rafe tells you about seeing Slater with his ex Caroline. I’m sorry honeybee. Don’t lose your
stinger, ok?
Back home, you find a letter from Condor in the mailbox. He’s met someone. A Thai girl. They’re in love
and he’s going to stay. He doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He has to marry her first for the green card.
You try calling Slater but he never picks up. He ignores you at parties and at the coffee shop. He gets
Bones to go over and grab his favorite Encinitas Surfboards hoodie from your house. At the beach, you see
Caroline wait for him on the sand. She doesn’t surf, but she stars in the side skits in his surf videos. In one
she’s doing a bike trick dressed as Evil Knievel; in another she’s walking down the street, asking random
men if they want to fuck her.
You get up every day. You nanny. You surf after work. You drive down the coast, smoking cigarettes and
listening to The Cure. You wonder how long it will take for your skin to lose its salty flavor and for your tan
to fade. For your sun-bleached hair to grow darker. To get used to wearing shoes again. You wonder how
long it will take to miss this fucking beach town because right now you hate it.
The days grow shorter. Rafe coaxes you out at night to watch him hit golf balls down at the course next to
your condo complex. He hits these long drives. The balls sail into blackness and disappear from sight. He
leans back and his too-large mouth opens up to howl at the moon. He nudges you to join him, but you
don’t. You don’t want to hear the sound of your own voice so loud. He taps one finger--so light it’s a kiss--
on your upper lip. I miss it already, he says.
It’s barely August when you get the news about the fight. A sidewalk fight. All three under 20. The details
are scant, but a passerby says Rafe started it first and in your gut you know it’s true. Running his big mouth
and he got a knife in the gut for it. He died at the scene, his blood rushing out like high tide all over the
sidewalk before paramedics arrived. The other two males were last seen escaping in the same direction.
Their fight forgotten in the wake of its violence.
Overnight, Rafe becomes a lost cause, a martyr of the working class, a cautionary tale. The news report
calls him a “troubled young man from the poorer side of town.” But in the pictures sitting on your desk, he
appears a beautiful young man with a caramel-colored afro and a ferocious smile, a caged sun, the love of
your life.
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A memorial is planned down at the beach for Rafe. You rsvp yes. And you want to go, you really do. You
want to show everyone what this grief has made you, you want to show him, but you can’t. You can’t pick
out the clothes. You can’t lift your hand to apply the makeup. You can’t get the hair dryer out. You sit at the
top of the staircase and tell your mom you’re not going. She nods with understanding. Of course, you
always forget. She loved him, too. She makes you roasted chicken and rice. Your favorite meal.
In the water, you dolphin out until your waist-deep. You dive under the next wave and begin swimming.
You swim out to the kelp beds. As soon as the slimy tops of the kelp forest touch your feet, you stop. A
pack of Garibaldi disperse at your arrival. You push your chest out and float on your back. You heard once
that otters tangle themselves in the kelp so they don’t float away when sleeping. You reach out and grab
the frond closest to you, twining the stripe around your arm as you drift. But it’s not quite right, you see.
Because you’re already gone.
Slater leaves you a voicemail but you erase it without listening. The rest of the crew go out of their way to
avoid you. The grief hollows out your eyes and turns you brutal. Gone are your easy smiles and your gowith-the-flow
nature. Now everything matters. It matters so much you can’t fake anything. They’re right
to steer clear of it. The things you would say to them.
Take all your nanny money and go to Target. You buy everything from your checklist, plus new
headphones, shoes, a plaid flannel and a jean jacket--essentials for city life. It feels surreal to plan for this
future. If Rafe was here, he’d be dancing in the aisles. He’d be singing about your upcoming move. He
would be too much about it because he was too much about everything. Too loud, too charming. Too angry
and too joyful. He gave you too much love and made you big with it. And now you watch your items as they
slide across the checkout counter. These new items that will mark your new life. Because that’s the
cruelest joke of all. That you will go on living without him in this body made big with his love, and it will
pour out of you but never again into him.
Your last weekend at home arrives. You spend the day at the beach with your mom, smelling her sun block
(Bain de Soleil) and eating her tuna fish sandwiches. You write Rafe’s name in the sand. The tide washes it
away, so you write it again. You resolve right then and there, the sun as your witness, to write it forever.
The next day you hear Caroline is pregnant with Slater’s baby. Cry about it deeply for 34 minutes in a
beach parking lot. Deep anguished sobs, all of your grief mingling into one release. You’ve never cried
something so completely out in your life. Drive home in complete silence, feeling your organs and blood
rearrange under your skin to their new fit. Come home and tell your mom you’re fine when she sees your
face. Actually mean it though. Go upstairs and smoke a cigarette on the upstairs balcony. Watch the moon
appear through the swaying eucalyptus. Think about the girl Condor met in Thailand, how you’ll probably
never hear from him again. Think about Casey crying in Marisol’s shower. The girl Beetle yanked down by
her shorts. Your dog, staring at your childhood bed. The mornings you woke up in it with Rafe. His smile
eating up his face. Think about the dreams you’ll have of him for the rest of your life. The way he will
appear, forlorn and angry about his death. That you’ll always be slightly reeling from it. Get OK living just
on the border of that black hole. You’re leaving in 12 hours. Look down at the sand between your toes and
realize that’s all that’s left now. Just the sand.
THE UNDER REVIEW
79
The End of Things
CLAIRE KORTYNA
It’s the last game of our season, of my whole athletic career, although I don’t know it yet.
My tongue is thick and dry, chafing against my worn black mouth guard. I suck it against the hard roof of
my palate until I feel the urge to gag. But I don’t retch. I’m too tired. The air here in southern Maryland
hangs still and heavy over the Bermuda grass field.
It's double-overtime in our semi-finals game, sudden death, during my senior year of college. Losing this
game means immediate elimination. I haven’t been subbed out all match and we’re defending our third
penalty corner in a row.
I’m crouched in a runner’s sprint alongside the goal cage next to two other players and the goalie herself.
Since it’s overtime there are less of us on the field than normal. The opposing team lines the white halfcircle
around the net, poised to rip off a shot, poised to score. If they make this, they win. If they make this,
my time as a collegiate athlete is over. Forever. Field hockey will disappear from my life—the sweat, the
blood, the injuries, the fun, the joy, the wildness, the years—all will vanish, shrink, to a blip on my
undergraduate radar, not even worth mentioning in a resume.
From my crouch I heave to drag breath deep into my lungs. I can feel the sear of the sun along my hair’s
zig-zag part. Today I have three intersecting French braids—nothing will slip. My foot taunts the white
paint line—leg tensed. Inside my turf shoe one toenail blackens with each dull throb of my pulse. I clench
my stick in my right hand—sprinting position.
I’m panting things out like, “Let’s go ladies!” and “We’ve got this! Heart and pain!” to the young women next to
me, just as breathless as I am. I’m a captain, servant, and leader. It’s my job to keep us going. My legs feel
like rain barrels, but adrenaline still surges. My personhood has been boiled down, sharpened and honed,
and all that’s left is this will, this intent: reach the ball before their lead striker takes the shot. Everything
we have been trying to build together is laid out before me, all factors culminating in this singular moment.
At the last time-out, girls on the sidelines ran to bring us our water bottles. Our coach, Katie, brought us in,
gestures snapping with emphasis. She said something like, stay focused and we need to be passing up our
strong side, but time-out was a blur of chugging water and shaking my thigh muscles to keep the muscles
fluid, warm. In our huddle I glanced around and noticed that Maria’s eyes had gone vacant in the heat. I
clacked our sticks together, bringing her gaze to mine. We got this, I mouthed. We all had to believe it, or it
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80
wouldn’t work. Rachel, my fellow captain, gasped beside me, grimacing as she folded her toes against the
ground to stretch. Coach spoke again, first two minutes, she told us, let’s finish this in the first two minutes.
Then she crossed her arms and headed back to the bench. It was up to me to sound the final rallying cry.
Field hockey balls are solid, hard plastic—and can be hit in the 80 mph range. I’ve broken two fingers and
have permanent calcifications on several of my metacarpals that ache cripplingly when hit the wrong way.
I’ve gotten a concussion, broken a toe, and lost at least 4 toenails. Then there are the countless scrapes,
twinged muscles, blisters. Preseason is plagued with diarrhea and ice baths, lactic acid build-ups, and heat
stroke.
Then there are the bruises. Field hockey really makes art of the bruise. They bloom like tropical flowers on
shins and thighs. The tender center is a dot of stark white—the shock of the ball’s initial contact. A perfect
ring of red surrounds it, a teacup of pain. From here, color fans out in a nebula of purple and green like
black marker chromatography. Upon contact, the smacked flesh immediately goose-pimples despite the
body’s overall heat. Lightly textured, richly colored, bruise art.
In the huddle I take another quick gulp of water and reiterate the well-worn phrases, “Alright ladies, we’re
going to go out there and give everything we have. It’s going to take a lot of heart and a lot of pain. We are going to
play hard. But most importantly we’re going to have fun and we’ll do it together. Hawks on three: One, Two, Three,
HAWKS!” It’s ritual, it’s oath, it has to be enough to ignite a final push, to get us all to pusher harder, dig
deeper. It’s begun to fascinate me, even then, the ways language carries a power greater than mind, than
need, than exhaustion. Our success or our failure hung on those words, and their ability to garner absolute
investment.
All twenty-three of us press our sticks together, shoulders in, body to body. We chorus on “HAWKS!” and
part ways. The seven of us overtime players jog back out to our positions on the field, while the rest
disperse to stand in a tense-edged row on the sideline.
Our fans are their customary mix of rowdy, often drunk, soccer players who yell and holler from camping
chairs and blankets along the edge of the field, along with the committed family members who come
regularly with cameras and signs. Today however, all sit quiet. I’m praying that we get the ball out of the
penalty circle—that it’ll make it to one of our forwards who will be racing in from midfield. I can’t do many
more of these. I’m the “fly” so it’s my job to flat-out sprint at the top of the circle as that same opponent
winds up to take a huge shot on goal. I’m supposed to cut down the angles, to make her hesitate, to get my
stick there, if I can travel fast enough. I know at least one of these penalty corners is my fault: foot-foul.
But I am so, so tired. I have reached the edge.
The goalie thumps her stick against the wooden back of the cage. It’s nearly time. Through her mask, her
gaze remained fixed on the inserter of the other team: watching, waiting. I glance at Rachel, whose fingers
grip the coarse black weave of the net beside my head. We make eye contact and breathe. I know her shin
splints are killing her. She has a small, delicate body, and sports have been a strain—muscles and tendons
unraveling.
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KORTYNA 81
“GO!” The ball is passed. The goalie gives the signal. I take off.
Acid burns in my legs, in my lungs, in my arms. I’m sprinting, sprinting, sprinting—straight at their main
striker who’s getting passed the ball, who’s going to try and slam it right back in my direction. The direction
I’m trying to block.
I’ve been up against this player all game. She’s thick, the largest player in our conference, with a full sleeve
of tattoos on each well-muscled arm. I’ve never been anything but sturdy, solid from childhood, but I have
had to struggle not to be pushed around by her. I dig deeper, arrowing toward her. Go. Gogogo. I’m snarling
across final few feet between us, stick outstretched, 10ft, 8ft, 6ft. My hip flexor strains—the muscle still
tight from when I ripped it last season. But this has to be enough. The striker receives the ball—5ft. Her
body twists as she winds up for the swing, stick high in the air behind her head—4ft. I’m closer, but not
close enough. Shit. She’s going to get off a full shot, and I just have to hope I stop it somehow.
Please. I'm praying in that tiny private voice, so small it goes nearly unnoticed. Please, don’t let this shot hit
me in the throat. As always, in a speed nearly too rapid-fire to gauge or recall, that possibility flashes
through my mind as I charge forward: me on my back, suffocating under crushed voice box, straining to
breathe until the world goes dark.
Sheer willpower and I lunge the last few steps. Thwack!-Thwack!
She shoots; I make contact. I deflected the main shot! This is good. This means I could have stopped the—
Wesleyan erupts into cheers.
It went in. I was the last to touch it. I deflected the shot. And it went in.
My stick thuds from my grip. And I'm on my knees in the grass, head in hands. My body shakes. My face is
hot and wet. Everything that has held me together dissolves. It’s a reaction I would never have had
publicly if I could help it. But it was uncontrollable. An unspooling. It’ll be commented on later, when I’m
out that weekend and run into those who were watching.
It takes my team a bit to find me because I’m near the Wesleyan players who have mobbed together,
screaming and jumping. Then my team arrives. My own women surround me. Hands are in my hair,
gripping my arms, dozens of voices soothe and weep. We're all pressed together and I'm up off my feet.
Someone has grabbed my stick and together we make our way to the sideline. I find Rachel and we hug in
silence.
In our post-game huddle, we peel off socks and shin guards from throbbing feet. Coach speaks at length,
but my brain reels without recording. By the time we finally gather our equipment and head toward the
locker room, most of the crowd is gone. My family couldn’t make it, school too far away, but my boyfriend
Christian is there. He waited, although I didn’t expect him to, lanky tallness hitched to the side against a
crutch.
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82 KORTYNA
He hugs me briefly, an arm rubbing up and down my soaked back. His kiss brushes dried salt crystals off
my forehead. He says nothing. His blue eyes dart within their thick-lashed frame, returning to my gaze and
avoiding it in turns. I want more from him, but I know he can't give it. He's still in a brace for his torn ACL—
an injury that cut his soccer season short early. He was a captain too. We both grieve. There aren’t words
for either of us. Our relationship will end that winter.
I can’t remember the locker room. Next thing I recall I’m in the bathroom of my townhouse alone, stripping
off tape and blister guards and spandex. Then I’m in the shower. And I have music blasting. And I’m letting
myself feel it. The end of things.
Over, all over. A whole part of my life shorn. I’d been fired from a job I’ll never be able to get back.
Everything I’d spent years working for, finished. The entire portion of my self, a self that felt like a warrior,
that got to feel wild and strong, a sense of community, of sisterhood, of purpose, it’s over, gone, forever.
There’s a shockingly high rate of suicides and depression among Olympic athletes. Even Michael Phelps
has spoken out about his struggles with despair. Because, who are you if what has defined so much of your
life, your eating, your habits, your schedule, your pain, is over? Who are you when you lose the feral,
playful joy that made you feel strong and beautiful and free?
My dad calls later. He watched the game online. The main shot was a direct bullet at the lower left corner.
It was wide open, he says. Almost guaranteed to go in, but I deflected it upper center. I gave the goalie a
chance. It just happened too fast. We couldn’t have anticipated it. So it’s not my fault, he tells me. But I
only hear the end: My fault. My fault.
It’s just a game. It’s just a game. I tell myself that for weeks. For years. It’s just a game. But of course, as you
know, it wasn’t. It was something more.
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83
On Walking into a Basketball Gym
DANA LOTITO-JONES
Why is the crude swell
of nostalgia like
cresting sun and falling darkness
kissing?
How can this sweetness
lather something so
twisted, conflicted, crazed
and tired?
Why will it never leave,
even after I have
resigned myself to a statistic
of mediocrity?
Why do the athlete’s muscles
retain so much memory,
all of it and none of it
touchable any longer?
How cruel, to teeter
on the physical sphere,
to thrust realms together
within me
without hopes of reunion.
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84
Book Review
TERRY HORSTMAN
We Ride Upon Sticks
Quan Barry
Pantheon, 2020
ISBN: 9781524748098
What do you get when Dazed and Confused meets Stranger Things? How about when The Crucible and
Macbeth challenge the Bad News Bears and The Craft to a game of field hockey? Put all of those things
together, plop them down on the middle of a pitch in the same town that hosted the infamous witchcraft
trials in 1692, hand the referee’s whistle to Emilio Estevez and you get We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry.
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85
It’s a daunting combination, but don’t worry, Barry ties everything together and does so in surprising,
satisfying, and hilarious fashion.
The 1989 Danvers High School girls’ field hockey team is an endearing and entertaining bunch.
Unfortunately for them that hasn’t helped them win too many field hockey games together. That all
changes when the Falcons attend a pre-season summer camp and Mel Boucher, the team’s goalie (because
it’s always the goalie) signs a dark magic pledge in a spiral bound notebook with Emilio Estevez on the
cover. Each player on the Falcons signs as well and is given a torn strip of blue tube sock to tie around their
arm as a symbol to their collective witchery. Mayhem and a historic winning streak promptly ensue.
The magic propelling the Falcons to new heights isn’t the only sorcery at play in these pages. In a dense
and acutely detailed story containing stories on top of stories, Barry guides the reader gently, yet firmly,
and sometimes a little slowly, through the lives and realities of each one of the girls (and the one boy on
the team, too) who make up this team/coven.
Every player is developed with a rich and thorough back story. Tackling together personal struggles like
racial identity, gender norms, sexual desires and shame, and the overall struggle of just being a human in
the 1980s. The diligent details of so many parallel backstories at times come at the sacrifice of the pacing
of the novel, but Barry is excellent at letting dramatic tension slowly percolate in the background that it
kept me turning the pages eager to soak up every piece of information of each Falcon and how they move
through the world.
We Ride Upon Sticks is also a master class in Point of View as a clever, sardonic, and omniscient narrator
speaks for the team as one. A voice equally calculating as it is intoxicating.
We don’t spend a ton of time on the field hockey pitch because we don’t need to. Former high school
athletes know well the stories of what takes place on the field often pale in comparison to the ones taking
place before practice, after practice, on the bus rides, at the parties, or in this case, the woods conducting
sacrificial rituals.
Barry constructs the Falcons as a likable, easy-to-root-for underdog, but not in a campy, Disney sports
movie sort of way. The players are all wry, raw, messy, and flawed. All of them devout to Emilio, the official
harbinger of dark spirits at play. This is not sports fiction so much as it is fiction in conversation with a
sport as the vehicle to help us find our place in the world, what we’re searching for, and the support and
camaraderie that can only be forged in a high school locker room (or a coven).
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CONTRIBUTOR NOTES
TY CHAPMAN is a Twin Cities based author and poet of Nigerian and European descent. His recent
accomplishments include being named a Loft Literary Center Mirrors and Windows fellow & Mentor
Series fellow, creating a one-man shadow puppet and marionette show for Puppet Lab, and publishing
poems through SOFTBLOW and Oyster River Pages. His poems made the longlist for both Button Poetry’s
2020 Chapbook Contest, and Frontier Magazine’s 2021 New Voices contest. Ty’s debut picture book
SARAH RISING, represented by Savannah Brooks, is set to release in May 2022, through Beaming Books.
SCOTT CHIUSANO is a writer/editor, currently at MLB.com and formerly at the New York Daily News, with
fiction published in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and The Twin Bill. He is a fan of slow rollers and Jacob
deGrom sliders.
MORGAN CHRISTIE’s work has appeared in Room, Aethlon, The Hawai'i Review, BLF Press, as well as others, and
has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry chapbook, Variations on a Lobster's Tale was the
winner of the 2017 Alexander Posey Chapbook Prize (University of Central Oklahoma Press) and her
second poetry chapbook Sterling was released by CW Books. Her first full-length short story manuscript
These Bodies was published by Tolsun Books (2020), and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy
Award in fiction. Her most recent poetry chapbook when they come was released by Black Sunflowers
Press (2021) and is featured in the Forward Arts Foundation’s National Poetry Day exhibit.
EDWARD M. COHEN's story collection, Before Stonewall, won the Awst Press Book Award and was published
in June, 2021. His novel, $250,000, was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons; his novella, A Visit to my Father
with my Son, by Running Wild Press.
BOBBY CRACE is a writer, editor, and teacher in New York City. He has been published by various literary,
service industry, and sports publications. Bobby has an MFA from Stony Brook University and a BA from
Berklee College of Music.
ARIA DOMINGUEZ is a writer whose poetry and creative nonfiction navigate the terrain between beauty and
pain. Her work has been published in anthologies and she was the winner of the 2021 Porch Prize in
Creative Nonfiction, finalist for the 2021 Lighthouse Writers Workshop Emerging Writers Fellowship in
Nonfiction, and winner of a Fall 2021 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. She works with a nonprofit focused on
food justice and lives in Minneapolis with her son.
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SARAH FAULKNER is originally from San Diego County. She is a 2021 University of New Orleans Lab Prize
finalist for her collection, American Heartbreaker. You can find her work at The Los Angeles Review, PANK,
Night Train, Iron Horse Literary Review, and The Southeast Review.
TOM FRANK is a multispectral writer and filmmaker living and working in Minneapolis, though some aspects
of this bio may be out of date.
AVERY GREGURICH is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi
River, and has never strayed too far from it.
M.A.H. HINTON grew up in Montana and lives in Minnesota. His publications include poetry in Spitball,
Minnesota Review, Into the Void, Temenos, GFT, West Texas Literary Review, Blue Heron Review, Aji, Emerald
Coast Review. His chapbook Ordinary & Minor Mystics was a finalist for NDSU Press’s 2021 People of the
Prairie and Plains Award. He has also published several Western short stories. You can find out more
about him at his website, www.mahhinton.com.
DAVID KILPATRICK is a poet who divides his time between Minneapolis and Spicer, Minnesota. He recently
completed his MFA in poetry at Hamline University and, even so, still has a high opinion of Terry. David
also holds a PhD in Renaissance Art and has taught college art history.
LYDIA KLISMITH HANSEN lives and works as a freelance writer in St Paul, Minnesota, and is in the MFA
program at Hamline University. The Under Review is the first to publish her work; you can congratulate her
at www.lydiaklismith.com.
CLAIRE KORTYNA’s work has been published in The Maine Review, The Baltimore Review, The Jellyfish Review,
The Offbeat, and others. Her essay Lunar Musings won Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment’s
Home Voices Contest. Claire is a nonfiction PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati and an Iowa
State University MFA graduate. Claire reads for The Cincinnati Review and The Sewanee Writers’
Conference.
MAREK KULIG was born in Poland and raised in New Jersey. A founding member of the Network of Eastern
European Writers (NEEW), his poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in 86 Logic, Fish
Publishing, Seneca Review, Entropy, National Translation Month, and elsewhere.
KATHRYN KYSAR is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited the
anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. She is the founder of the creative writing
program at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. She performs with the Sonoglyph Collective and resides
with her non-sporty family in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
DANA LOTITO-JONES is an Upper School English teacher in New York City. She has published poetry in Ithaca
Lit, The Legendary, and The Academy of American Poets college prize section. She is an aspiring novelist.
MICHAEL METIVIER is a writer, musician, and editor living in Vermont. His work has appeared in journals
including Poetry, Words and Sports Quarterly, Washington Square, and African American Review, and is
forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Green Mountains Review, Moist, and Northern Woodlands, among others.
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88 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES
WILL MUSGROVE is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State
University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Versification, Unstamatic,
(mac)ro(mic), Ghost Parachute, Serotonin, Rabid Oak, Flash Frontier, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter at
@Will_Musgrove.
RUSSELL NICHOLS is a speculative fiction writer and endangered journalist. Raised in Richmond, California,
he got rid of all his stuff in 2011 to live out of a backpack with his wife, vagabonding around the world ever
since. Look for him at russellnichols.com.
RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA is a writer and performer of Peruvian heritage heavily involved with
Palabristas, a Minnesota based Latinx poets collective. He is a contributing author for A Good Time for
Truth: Race in Minnesota and received an MFA from Hamline University and writes about fatherhood, the
duality of two cultures in English, Spanglish and Spanish, and issues pertaining to his community.
MATTHEW SCHULTZ is the author of two novels: On Coventry and We, The Wanted. His chapbook of cento
paradelles is forthcoming from Beir Bua Press (January 2022) and his collection of prose poems is
forthcoming from ELJ Editions (May 2022).
ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO (he/him) is a poet and artist from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He reads
submissions for Frontier Poetry, serves as business and grants manager for Another Chicago Magazine, and
co-curates Exhibit B: A Reading Series presented by The Guild Literary Complex. His debut poetry
collection is forthcoming in Spring 2022 with Unbound Edition Press. More of his work may be found at
www.alexwellsshapiro.com.
DANIKA STEGEMAN LEMAY is a Minneapolis poet whose work has appeared in 32 Poems, Afternoon Visitor,
CutBank Literary Journal, Forklift, OH, Harpy Hybrid Review, Leavings, and Word for/ Word, among other
places. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest
Video Poetry Festival. Danika’s debut collection of poems, Pilot, is available from Spork Press. Her website
is danikastegemanlemay.com.
JESSIE WALKER is a non-fiction writer currently based in Baltimore. She received her B.A. from the
University of Richmond and is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing and publishing arts at the
University of Baltimore. Jessie is a swimmer, wife, cat mother, educator, and lover of anything that makes
her belly laugh. Her creative work has appeared in publications including Black Fork Review and Random
Sample Review.
RILEY WINCHESTER is a writer from Michigan. He will always be a Lions fan.
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