Memoir of a Twenty-four Year Affair
It's time to come clean with a periodic affair that I've been having for two dozen years.
It started in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1990. It moved from there to Sewanee, Tennessee four years later. Four years after that, in 1998, it moved to DC, where it's been ever since, except for a brief jet set affair in Turkey in 2006. It's not a constant thing--it only crops up every 4 years. I can return to my happy life between meetings, but it's always there, always something that makes me look forward to the future.
It's had some ups and down, like any affair. I was very innocent at first, though my first taste made me want more. I've had to learn its rules, learn to endure the wait for the next time, learn to explain and share to a chosen few. When I first started, few knew about it. But now it seems that everyone, well, in DC at least, wants to share it.
My affair has been with the World Cup. Like cocaine from the continent home to this year's tournament, it provides a powerful high when you're in it and a desperate crash when it's over that nothing can help.
My first meeting with the World Cup was in July 1990, in Nova Scotia. I was on my way back to the US after driving around Newfoundland and was staying in a youth hostel in Halifax, a great town I had visited a couple years earlier, full of bars and bookstores. I was eating breakfast one morning before wandering about and the guy on duty at the desk was watching the final between West Germany and Argentina. I never knew a soccer game could be so exciting.
When West Germany won by a penalty kick, the English commentators droned on that the whole tournament was a travesty (my first exposure to the tradition of the English media complaining about England not winning every tournament). The closing ceremonies featured women in bizarre costumes that would be rejected by New Orleans Mardi Gras clubs as too silly. I asked when the next game was and the guy chuckled and told me, "In 4 years!" (and, with the restraint of a nice Canadian, did NOT add the implicit "Stupid American.")
The flashback continues, 4 years later. While going back to school in Ohio where I was living, I got a job in the summers teaching math at a boarding school I had taught at years before in Tennessee. The school very kindly provided free housing in an apartment or dorm each summer. In 1994, they put me in the apartment of the women's soccer coach. Years before, she had played division I college soccer, so she lived the game. Before she left town for the summer, she asked me to record a lot of world cup games on her VCR and I agreed to. As programming a VCR to record is a akin to translating Ancient Greek into Chinese, I would hang out in the apartment at the beginning of each game to record them. Gradually I started to watch the whole game, ostensibly with papers for grade and lessons to prepare, but that eventually went out the window. Other summer school staff would come in to drink beer and watch. The beauty and agonizing tension of the game, the sudden surprises, the narrowing of the competition as the tournament went from the opening stage to the finals. I…became…addicted.
The affair changed location 4 years later. I had moved to DC to teach high school. The tournament began just as the school year ended. We didn't have cable TV in my group house, so I had to find bars that were showing it, which was a challenge, as the games tended to be in the morning, before lunch. I tried some places near where I was living, asking the bartenders if they could please change the channel to show it, but many didn't even have the channel. I eventually found a bar on Capitol Hill called the Capitol Lounge where other folk came to watch the games. The bar inside had a large collection of soccer scarves draped above the bottles (all sadly incinerated in a fire a few years later, and, alas, never replaced). Most days would find maybe a half dozen guys watching, maybe twice that on Saturdays and Sundays.
A friend and I planned to go out west to visit the Grand Canyon and other national parks that summer. By the time we left, there were only two games left, the third place game and the final. I asked my girlfriend at the time to record them and spent two weeks out west avoiding every newspaper and television news broadcast so I could come home and watch the games fresh. I had two days at home to watch before going on another trip to sing with a choir in, yes, France. The French were still recovering from their revelries.
Staging the World Cup across the planet in Japan and South Korea in 2002 presented some difficulties. American broadcasters still did not broadcast most games. Live games would be broadcast in the wee hours of the morning, past closing and before opening of bars and most restaurants. DC gave provisional alcohol licenses to serve beer at 8 a.m. to three establishments. One was the Lucky Bar in Dupont Circle.
I was working at Washington National Cathedral at the time. I made an arrangement with my boss to come to work 2 hours late every day, using annual leave for the time off. This was among the 179 reasons he was my best boss ever. Anyway, a group of a couple dozen folk and I showed up every morning to watch the games, plus added crowds of nationals from teams participating each day.
Some games that were played in the wee hours were rebroadcast at the slightly more reasonable hour of 8 a.m. I sometimes went to bed early, woke up and traveled to places that were showing them. My friend Rachel, her friend/eventual husband Darren, and I went to a 24-cafe run by Palestinians, now alas closed, on a couple late nights to watch the games live, downing coffee like most folk drink beer. I had watched one of the most magnificent games, the US-Portugal 3-2 game, on my girlfriend's TV (different girlfriend and different TV from before) in the wee hours one morning and went to that morning to Lucky Bar intending to watch another game that was live. The staff at the bar were very kind, requesting those who knew the results of early morning games to refrain from spoiling the games for others. I would leave the game I was watching periodically to join the crowd watching the USA game to see the explosions of excitement as each goal was scored.
Enthusiasm for the game grew during the tournament. More and more folk showed up for games at Lucky Bar at 7:30 in the morning. I was interviewed by a cute reporter from Reuters who filed a story that appeared on the online Sports Illustrated, to date my only quote in the media regarding sports (the Chinese media picked up on it, but probably because I said something desparingly of the US) The line to get inside Lucky Bar curved around the block before the doors opened for the final game when Rachel, Darren, and I arrived.. Every piece of furniture was removed, standing room only, for the final match. We managed to sit on some steps to watch. It didn't matter, as it was a beautiful game.
My affair took wing in 2006, when my eventual wife Robin and I went to Turkey at the same time the World Cup was being played in Germany. I found drinking Turkish Efes beer during games in the afternoon less pre-alcoholic creepy than drinking Guiness at 8 a.m. the previous tournament. An added plus was the whole country was addicted to the tournament, particularly after Turkey placed third in the previous competition. There was never any difficulty to find a place to watch the matches or other people interested in the results.
In 2010, I had a consuming day job which prevented me from watching many of the games live, though I had learned from a colleague at the Cathedral of the joy of watching the Guardian newspaper's online scroll of games. I only watched a couple games, but I did make it to Lucky Bar for the final, where Dutch fans loaned Robin an orange shirt to cheer on the sadly-fated Netherlands team.
Fast forward to today. The affair is in full flower, with the US dreaming of escaping the bonds of the Group of Death. I rejoiced in the smashing of Spain and Portugal in the first games. I cried at Brooks' goal in the first game. 'Cried again at Dempsey's goal in the second game. Americans fill the streets after games. I can't stop thinking about the cup, reading stories online about the cup like one reads letters from a lover. Walking to work, I chant "I believe that We will win." My schedule is arranged being with her, the World Cup, to the exclusion of wife, work, the rest of my world.
I hope the affair never ends.
It started in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1990. It moved from there to Sewanee, Tennessee four years later. Four years after that, in 1998, it moved to DC, where it's been ever since, except for a brief jet set affair in Turkey in 2006. It's not a constant thing--it only crops up every 4 years. I can return to my happy life between meetings, but it's always there, always something that makes me look forward to the future.
It's had some ups and down, like any affair. I was very innocent at first, though my first taste made me want more. I've had to learn its rules, learn to endure the wait for the next time, learn to explain and share to a chosen few. When I first started, few knew about it. But now it seems that everyone, well, in DC at least, wants to share it.
My affair has been with the World Cup. Like cocaine from the continent home to this year's tournament, it provides a powerful high when you're in it and a desperate crash when it's over that nothing can help.
My first meeting with the World Cup was in July 1990, in Nova Scotia. I was on my way back to the US after driving around Newfoundland and was staying in a youth hostel in Halifax, a great town I had visited a couple years earlier, full of bars and bookstores. I was eating breakfast one morning before wandering about and the guy on duty at the desk was watching the final between West Germany and Argentina. I never knew a soccer game could be so exciting.
When West Germany won by a penalty kick, the English commentators droned on that the whole tournament was a travesty (my first exposure to the tradition of the English media complaining about England not winning every tournament). The closing ceremonies featured women in bizarre costumes that would be rejected by New Orleans Mardi Gras clubs as too silly. I asked when the next game was and the guy chuckled and told me, "In 4 years!" (and, with the restraint of a nice Canadian, did NOT add the implicit "Stupid American.")
The flashback continues, 4 years later. While going back to school in Ohio where I was living, I got a job in the summers teaching math at a boarding school I had taught at years before in Tennessee. The school very kindly provided free housing in an apartment or dorm each summer. In 1994, they put me in the apartment of the women's soccer coach. Years before, she had played division I college soccer, so she lived the game. Before she left town for the summer, she asked me to record a lot of world cup games on her VCR and I agreed to. As programming a VCR to record is a akin to translating Ancient Greek into Chinese, I would hang out in the apartment at the beginning of each game to record them. Gradually I started to watch the whole game, ostensibly with papers for grade and lessons to prepare, but that eventually went out the window. Other summer school staff would come in to drink beer and watch. The beauty and agonizing tension of the game, the sudden surprises, the narrowing of the competition as the tournament went from the opening stage to the finals. I…became…addicted.
The affair changed location 4 years later. I had moved to DC to teach high school. The tournament began just as the school year ended. We didn't have cable TV in my group house, so I had to find bars that were showing it, which was a challenge, as the games tended to be in the morning, before lunch. I tried some places near where I was living, asking the bartenders if they could please change the channel to show it, but many didn't even have the channel. I eventually found a bar on Capitol Hill called the Capitol Lounge where other folk came to watch the games. The bar inside had a large collection of soccer scarves draped above the bottles (all sadly incinerated in a fire a few years later, and, alas, never replaced). Most days would find maybe a half dozen guys watching, maybe twice that on Saturdays and Sundays.
A friend and I planned to go out west to visit the Grand Canyon and other national parks that summer. By the time we left, there were only two games left, the third place game and the final. I asked my girlfriend at the time to record them and spent two weeks out west avoiding every newspaper and television news broadcast so I could come home and watch the games fresh. I had two days at home to watch before going on another trip to sing with a choir in, yes, France. The French were still recovering from their revelries.
Staging the World Cup across the planet in Japan and South Korea in 2002 presented some difficulties. American broadcasters still did not broadcast most games. Live games would be broadcast in the wee hours of the morning, past closing and before opening of bars and most restaurants. DC gave provisional alcohol licenses to serve beer at 8 a.m. to three establishments. One was the Lucky Bar in Dupont Circle.
I was working at Washington National Cathedral at the time. I made an arrangement with my boss to come to work 2 hours late every day, using annual leave for the time off. This was among the 179 reasons he was my best boss ever. Anyway, a group of a couple dozen folk and I showed up every morning to watch the games, plus added crowds of nationals from teams participating each day.
Some games that were played in the wee hours were rebroadcast at the slightly more reasonable hour of 8 a.m. I sometimes went to bed early, woke up and traveled to places that were showing them. My friend Rachel, her friend/eventual husband Darren, and I went to a 24-cafe run by Palestinians, now alas closed, on a couple late nights to watch the games live, downing coffee like most folk drink beer. I had watched one of the most magnificent games, the US-Portugal 3-2 game, on my girlfriend's TV (different girlfriend and different TV from before) in the wee hours one morning and went to that morning to Lucky Bar intending to watch another game that was live. The staff at the bar were very kind, requesting those who knew the results of early morning games to refrain from spoiling the games for others. I would leave the game I was watching periodically to join the crowd watching the USA game to see the explosions of excitement as each goal was scored.
Enthusiasm for the game grew during the tournament. More and more folk showed up for games at Lucky Bar at 7:30 in the morning. I was interviewed by a cute reporter from Reuters who filed a story that appeared on the online Sports Illustrated, to date my only quote in the media regarding sports (the Chinese media picked up on it, but probably because I said something desparingly of the US) The line to get inside Lucky Bar curved around the block before the doors opened for the final game when Rachel, Darren, and I arrived.. Every piece of furniture was removed, standing room only, for the final match. We managed to sit on some steps to watch. It didn't matter, as it was a beautiful game.
My affair took wing in 2006, when my eventual wife Robin and I went to Turkey at the same time the World Cup was being played in Germany. I found drinking Turkish Efes beer during games in the afternoon less pre-alcoholic creepy than drinking Guiness at 8 a.m. the previous tournament. An added plus was the whole country was addicted to the tournament, particularly after Turkey placed third in the previous competition. There was never any difficulty to find a place to watch the matches or other people interested in the results.
In 2010, I had a consuming day job which prevented me from watching many of the games live, though I had learned from a colleague at the Cathedral of the joy of watching the Guardian newspaper's online scroll of games. I only watched a couple games, but I did make it to Lucky Bar for the final, where Dutch fans loaned Robin an orange shirt to cheer on the sadly-fated Netherlands team.
Fast forward to today. The affair is in full flower, with the US dreaming of escaping the bonds of the Group of Death. I rejoiced in the smashing of Spain and Portugal in the first games. I cried at Brooks' goal in the first game. 'Cried again at Dempsey's goal in the second game. Americans fill the streets after games. I can't stop thinking about the cup, reading stories online about the cup like one reads letters from a lover. Walking to work, I chant "I believe that We will win." My schedule is arranged being with her, the World Cup, to the exclusion of wife, work, the rest of my world.
I hope the affair never ends.
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