The Drama King
“Kill The Yank”
Playing rugby in England was much safer than playing at love
It was noon on some suddenly sunny day in October of 1990 when my soon-to-be ex-best friend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and fellow Yank, Alex Feldbaum, was knocking at my flat to play soccer — okay — fútbol.
The fields, too, were dry — unlike my liver from the previous night — and that’s another story! Newcastle Brown was a mate who had risen in the ranks.
“We could use a good game,” Alex said.
Alex received a measured dose of cold politeness. The cramp in my stomach wasn’t from the previous night’s debauchery or that lonely man walk along the River Tyne. Emotional trauma hits me in the gut — more powerful than a blind-side flanker hit.
Did I smell Laura’s perfume on him?
Heading a ball back and forth — like Monsieurs Tweedledee and Tweedledum — two French guys from Nancy stood behind Alex.
Were they his “ringers?”
I wasn’t a jock, but I shocked many with the physicality of my play.
“I may not have the strongest leg,” I confessed. “But I have heart and hustle.”
What I lacked in talent, I over-compensated with enthusiasm. Growing up in Southern New Jersey, I played stints as a striker. Who else received more red cards? This included tripping twin girls who had an open field. I wedged myself between the two and then —
My Cossack Kick — or now “The Rasputin.” I was not “big and strong,” but my eyes were cold blue ice.
Actually, my competitiveness pushed me — perhaps out of sexual jealousy. Okay, cross out perhaps.
As a third-year, I was interested in the club sport rugby. I had been sizing up the other blokes. Did the coach someday resemble Madam Hooch, the Quidditch referee, and coach at Hogwarts?
She seized my shoulders. Stand straight. Did that grimace reflect confidence? Did I have any experience? At rugby — no — but I loved colorful rugby shirts! Did that count?
They never had a Yank, but they were starting. She told me the “kit.” She smiled. Should I add the adverb deviously?
At Eldon Square, I bought a pair of boots — or studs and a John McEnroe headband. I needed head protection, right?
The first practice was horrible. I was trying out as flanker — far removed from that mass of congealed man meat — the scrum.
The problem? — well, I didn’t have the gear. My shorts were for ambles along the Arno in Florence — and not Annihilation on the Pitch. My gray sweatpants were rolled up, but with every sprint, they unraveled.
The club had fun playing “Kill the Yank.”
I looked pathetic. Determined, I bought cheap shorts and a shirt — and froze for a fortnight in Northern England. Out of panic — I also froze. What Norman keep did these mastodons escape from?
When cries of “Kill the Yank,” “Remember Yorktown!” and “Revenge for Bunker Hill!” rang out, I post haste, pitched the large hand grenade back to anyone — even the opposing team. That — or I booted the weapon out of harm's way.
On Thursday nights, I called Mummy. It was expensive. Mummy worried about injuries. Heck — any excuse to stop “Kill the Yank” seemed fine. I talked to Coach. Did she understand? Was she relieved?
Would the health insurance reattach a severed head? But the good rugby lads would go out, hook me round the groin, and then buy rounds of stout underneath John Smiths' South Stands. We watched the professional team play at Kingston Park Stadium.
Rugby players are killers — but complete gentlemen!
Back to Alex.
The field was just behind the Lorriane flats — not regulation, but it worked.
We picked up ten players. I sat on Texas Tom to knock him out of bed. In American football, he would play a linebacker — or one fierce tight end. In one pub, he picked up a local lad in Bigg Market after the jerk was talking smack to our American lasses. That’s the guy you always want on your team. I pegged him as the keeper — or the Destroyer.
It was also an excuse to find out about Montclair Jill — a blonde, sweet American girl who attended Montclair State College. The previous night she went to the hospital after a flying pint glass greeted her head without a proper introduction. Montclair Jill needed a few stitches, but it was just a notch above the hairline.
“Unless male patterned baldness runs in her family,” Texas Tom said, “the scar shouldn’t be noticeable.”
Walking briskly and brightly to the pitch, Alex asked, “Where did you go last night? I turned around and you weren’t there.”
I gave an account of the evening — except for the end. Alex was earnest and friendly. Why hate him so much?
Alex wanted Americans vs. the World, but I wanted my Spanish mates from Valencia, and so the teams were mixed.
This was no pick-up game for World Unity. I managed to revenge my bruised ego, as I played opposite Alex, challenging Alex, on every occasion, for the ball.
“It’s just a casual game.”
“It’s the way the game is played,” I replied. “It’s a gentleman’s game played by hooligans. And I’m a hooligan.”
He told me to speak for myself.
When Alex had a shot, I tripped him, adding an elbow to the ribs. From the ground, Alex looked at me keenly. “What’s fucking with you, man?”
Nothing was fucking with me. “Maybe you shouldn’t play against me.”
“It’s a bloody game.”
“It’s a game I don’t like losing. And I’ve been losing enough.”
“Is this about Laura? And why you left the pub?”
That name didn’t make an impact. What was he talking about? I left because Texas Tom asked me to come downtown where Montclair Jill intercepted that pint glass. Laura’s name crippled my gears; I couldn’t pass or dribble or shoot. Texas Tom didn’t make a good keeper. My Spanish flatmates ran bullrings around me.
Is this why the U.S. Men’s Team will never win The World Cup?
A day later, long before dinner, Alex showed up at my flat. It’s all in my journal and from my letters to home. Would I want an American meal at Wimpy — where you can overeat with a ½ pound burger and French fries and a Coke?
It was early. Not crowded. Alex’s tone was serious and obsessive. Oh, where to begin? He picked up threads — as if composing a sonnet. And then lost the scheme, and started over. Uncomfortable, I couldn’t say, “I’m happy for you.”
Alex wanted to negotiate, like meeting on the heath of Runnymede. “I know you have liked Laura for a long time,” Alex said while switching the lettuce with the tomato — placing the lettuce on the beef like a well-made bed. “Do you want my onions?”
While I sipped my Paddington’s Ale, I lifted my plate. “Sure.” For once, I listened.
“I know you always had hopes that something would work out between the two of you. Am I right?”
It was awkward. I gritted my teeth. Shrugged my shoulders. My raised eyebrows suggested Alex was right and wrong. I was around Laura all the time as if we were actually together — which didn’t help attract other interested women to me.
Alex said he knew Laura saw me as a friend. I wanted to add: a porter, an aide-de-camp, a house slave, but that was my choice — and no one was throwing me a sock.
“You’re one of my closest friends,” he said. “You know that.”
Did I know that? Why was I so shy about male closeness? That shocked me. Why emphasize that? I didn’t want to provide an easy out. Should he have to squirm?
Did Alex need a hug? Was he ready to cry? His eyes were gorgeous. On a rubric, he was better looking than me — at the time. When his eyes moistened, as they frequently did when talking before the Whole Lotta Laura Thing, it made him more endearing.
It was odd. Alex was shaken up. What should I do? I continued dipping the end of my bun into an abyss of ketchup. Alex continued yammering, concealing his mouth with his wrist, which was just good manners.
“So what I’m trying to say is that I’m asking your permission to date, Laura.”
“I don’t care,” I replied, wiping the ketchup-like blood from my mouth.
“You don’t?”
“Oh, sure, I thought something was going to happen,” I said, “but things didn’t work out.”
I said: she’s Catholic, even a Republican, and I’m a highly religious agnostic polygamist progressive rebel. We actually had an argument about Vietnam in Venice after three bottles of wine! She dries off a pizza with ten zillion paper napkins. The way women handle food should tell us a lot, right?
“Laura thought it would be a good idea if I talked to you.”
“I have no right of prior claim,” I said — as if a human could be a possession. “I’m so over her.”
Alex swigged the last of his ale. Wiped his mouth with his hand. Smiled. Was he just being gentlemanly and gallant — something a knight would do for his fair lady?
That night down by the River Tyne I wrote in my journal: it went something like this for one thousand words: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
In the weeks after the settlement at Wimpy, I rarely saw Alex or Laura. When the Yanks got together, they would sometimes show up, and I would be cordial, but Alex rarely came to my flat.
Alex rarely hung out anymore with our chum, the BBC Animator, and Royal Archer bartender, Simon Snow. It was as if Alex was married — with Laura securely locked away.
What did this ordeal reveal? I knew what he told me about his former drug habits. I felt honored he felt safe sharing such secrets. After all, the story has verifiable facts, and truths are attached to those facts, but interpretations are countless.
There were dangers of being self-aware. I knew my affectations: a stylized romantic who hated authority. A drifter, but a drifter from a pampered, comfortable home. An elitist with working-class roots. Why wear an Oxford University rugby? Talk about over-compensating!
I gazed in the mirror. Did I witness all the romantic embellishments? Was this that sad moment in Don Quixote when Quixote realizes the Truth? Was he happier as a delusional lunatic?
That’s why it was easy to live on the surface, skimming along, like Laura, who avoided deep conversation to avoid the log or rapids or waterfall; and Walter Bowne does not steer for waters clear. That wasn’t a challenge. I was willing to risk because I wanted to have the knowledge — even if that knowledge was troubling — like my sexism and my egotism and my issues with my M and P — and that’s a whole other bankroll of therapy hours.
And what were Laura’s parents thinking by allowing her to travel with a stranger? There were many opportunities for real danger; the way we slept on an inactive train in Füssen, Germany with two drunk guys from Ohio because we all missed the last train on Sunday back to Munich. The way we shared a bed in some hotels — like our first awkward night in London.
Walter Bowne may have been a gentleman, but wasn’t that asking too much? All Laura said was her parents “trusted her” and that she was “a good girl” who was “raised right.”
Soon, however, there was a knock. It was Texas Tom and three girls from New Jersey — one from Rowan, the other from The College of New Jersey — and another one from San Jose, California. Now I knew the San Jose girl liked me — maybe — but I had long been myopic and stupid —
My friends were planning two adventures — one to Durham — and San Jose couldn’t make that — but San Jose asked me if I was serious about the Lake District.
And that, dear reader, is another story. Let’s just say I almost died — but spoiler! I didn’t!
By the way, I still love rugby shirts. I even brew my own brown ale — called the Murphy Brown — named after my wife — Mary Jane Murphy. It’s so rich and potent.
As far as my hair — I’m emulating Sergio Romero — the Argentinian goalkeeper because with a name like Romero — he has to be sexy.
Thank you for reading! Cheers, mates!
