Page 55 of High Notes & Hail Marys

***

Dettweiler makes headlines the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. He was the guestspeaker at a holiday church service in Laredo, where he gave an impassioned sixteen-minute homily about preserving the nuclear family and reaffirming the glory of God’s perfect design. The pastor lovingly videoed the whole thing and uploaded it to the congregation’s Facebook page, where it went viral. The Christian Right immediately latched onto Dettweiler’s pompous ass as a paragon of truth and virtue, and everyone else blew him up for the barely-veiled homophobic and misogyny in his screed. The wheels had barely started turning by the game right after Christmas, but, by Week Eighteen, the spin machine was working overtime. Dettweiler preens insufferably, obviously thrilled by the attention.

Jameson, discontented with his rapidly-dwindling share of the spotlight, decides to seize back some flash the best way he knew how: by being a louder,biggerjackass.

@jay.danger667:@dettweiler_kurt is a HATER. Why you clownin on the gays bruh? Like we ain’t got a member of our CYCLONES BROTHERHOOD (wuz good @c.reinhart) who flies the pride flag? GOD LOVES ALL, THE BIBLE LITERALLY SAYS SO. And all that ish about women staying home??? Spoken like someone who ain’t got no head in a MINUTE. Fuck, ya wildin.

On paper, the message is supportive, but it enrages you all the same. First of all, there was no reasonfor your name to get dragged into this muddy bullshit. You and Jameson are not and probably never will be close. It was a calculated move for maximum drama. There’s an unspoken rule about not commenting on this kind of thing in any way but being supportive. If you can’t be supportive, you just don’t say anything.

It tears up the locker room. The whole team is divided into camps: those that agreed with Dettweiler to start with (not very many), those that hate him for what he said and feel validated by Jameson’s rant (quite a few), those that are pissed at one or both of them for stirring the pot (you fall into this camp), and those who think Jameson took it too far by indirectly insulting Dettweiler’s young wife.

Things get bad enough that Coach rips the whole team a new one, ranting about howyou all have presumably had media training, why the hell aren’t you acting like it?and thatthis sort of bullshit is what loses championships.One thing thatnobody’sgoing to do is countermand Larry Beausoleil. But nothing changes, either.

So Sandy tries to step up. The first round of the playoffs, your hard-earned bye-week, he invites the whole team over for dinner. All fifty-three guys on the roster get summoned to the Covelli manse in Coral Gables for catered barbecue, while Sandy delivers a highly-motivating and inspiring call toaction. To be part of a brotherhood. To be part of ateam, and somethinggreater than ourselves. It’s the kind of delivery that foreshadows the poignancy and verve of his future Hall of Fame induction speech, which won’t happen for another fifteen years. The words of a born leader. A captain, both on the field and off.

Yeah, that doesn’t work either. Dettweiler refuses to show up, and the only result is that his small, but loud coterie of supporters now include Sandy on their shit lists.

Paparazzi start hanging around outside the practice facility. Just a few, at first. But it quickly spirals, and soon, there are fifteen or twenty cameras aimed straight at your face when you’re sweaty and tired, just trying to go home from your fuckingjob.Oh, sure, they want pictures of GoGo, Jameson, and Dettweiler, too, but you are the big game. The white rhino of the safari. The one that makes them scream and jostle for your attention, loud and completely obnoxious.

For your part, you keep your head down. You work out. You meal plan. You reluctantly start paying for grocery delivery. You stay up late talking to Sterling from across the world, falling deeper and deeper into a feeling that you aren’t ready to name. It’s thrilling and amazing, heady and terrifying.

You manage to half-convince yourself that this isnormal.You’re the same man that you were backin April. Sterling is just aperson.He hates going to the gym, but does it anyway. He reads voraciously. He loves the colors blue and green. He’s growing his hair just slightly, and waiting to see how long it takes the world to notice. He’s the most dedicated person you know, and works harder than anyone you’ve met.

All of this is fine.

You’ve got this.

Chapter Fourteen

BREAKING NEWS: MIAMI CYCLONES HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM PLAYOFF CONTENTION!

MIAMI GARDENS, FLORIDA: In what will surely go down as the upset of the 2024-2025 NFA season, the Miami Cyclones—#1 seed and Vegas favorites for Mega Bowl champions—have been unceremoniously defeated by the underdog #7 seed Denver Mustangs in the Divisional Round. A fumble recovery for a TD gave Denver the points they needed to come from behind and win the game 20-17 in its final seconds under the lights at Miami’s own Hard Rock Stadium.

The Mustangs will proceed to the Conference Championship, which will be hosted by the Baltimore Blackbirds. It’s only been an hour, but the Blackbirds are already heavily favored. Still, who wants to bet against the little team that could, especially after toppling Mighty Miami?

***

Not making it to the Mega Bowl after aphenomenal season is disappointing. Getting kicked out in the second round of the playoffs is humiliating. The Mustangs can’t even believe their own luck. They’re hugging and crying in front of the cameras, thanking God and talking earnestly about what great opponents the Cyclones were, as if they’d already clinched a trophy.

Sandy’s on the sideline, talking to Erin Andrews. He looks tired, and older than his twenty-seven years. The public has no idea how badly his shoulder’s fucked up. It’s been a source of conflict for him the whole second half of the season: his desire and drive to succeed versus his need for recuperation. You know he’s frustrated. You feel it too, deep in the marrow of your bones.

Your height gives you excellent sight lines on the field. A whole clutch of reporters are making the rounds. You’ve given dutiful soundbites to most of them. You’ve doled out back-slaps and handshakes to your opponents. Black-and-yellow confetti litters the grass. The Cyclones fans have long since beat feet, off to drink away their disappointment or play armchair quarterback in forums on the internet. Your hands find the collar of your shoulder pads, and you raise your eyes to the friends-and-family suite.

Your mom is at the glass, her arm around Sterling. They make a funny picture: Mama tiny and round with her big glasses and her long red braids, Stertall and thin in his jersey and a pair of thousand-dollar jeans. They hit it off famously. Pops can be gruff, but you get the sense that he approves, too. He’s talking with Sandy’s father, their lined faces betraying no emotion. Gabi and Jamie are in tears, holding each other like the world is ending.

You breathe the moment into your lungs and hold it. The last game of the season is always more bitter than sweet. Not just the losing, but not having all this for a few months: the crowd, the loved ones all in one place, thegame.

Later that night, you and Sterling will fly to New York to spend the next three nights holed up in his apartment with Apollo and Artemis, ordering takeout and streaming true-crime documentaries. Coach will deliver a blistering post-game press conference, blaming the loss onlocker room drama and poor cohesion.GoGo will get kicked out of a five-star hotel on Miami Beach after throwing a massive, unsanctioned pool party in the middle of the night and ending up fully-clothed on an inflatable alligator float, flinging the bird with one hand as the other holds his bottle of booze. He’ll call the hapless concierge asad-ass n****r, and the whole thing will get captured in 4K on someone’s phone and sold to a tabloid. Nobody will be surprised.

You will watch everything with mild disgust and a feeling of gut-churning defeat, and make aresolution to shelve it all for a few months.

***

February 28, 2025

Golden:STERLING GRAYSON: **8.3 (BEST NEW MUSIC)**

Genre: Pop

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