Subtlekiah 4:5

I was missing a friend of mine horribly the other day, the kind of miss where being with that person is exactly what you want – like a pregnancy craving for a piece of frozen bacon, only with a person instead of frozen bacon and without a new life or swollen belly involved – so I texted my friend and asked him when I would see him next. He was, at that particular moment, in another state about fifteen hundred miles away. 

“Look to your left” was the text I received back. 

I read these words on my phone in my sushi restaurant (it’s officially “mine” when the staff says, “Hi Charis!” and brings me my regular order, including a beer, and expects that I will read my book and cry profusely the whole time) and immediately got a huge smile on my face and looked to my left, for about five minutes, before I realized that of course my friend was not actually to my left. After looking left a bit too long, I replied, “I am so disappointed!!” His endearing response: “I just disappointed myself!!” 

Since this mutually disappointing moment I have received other texts such as, “Look between your feet” and “I got sunburned today – look to your right to see for yourself.” These little insertions into my life via iPhone always make me smile. But they also always make me look left or right or between my feet. 

The gut reaction that takes over at the possibility that I could see my friend defies logic, previous disappointment, social norms and physics.  Despite the insanish implications, there is a rather distinct piece of me that absolutely believes I could look between my feet and find my friend waiting there.  I can imagine it now, my friend crouched under the table, somehow curled up under my chair texting me until the moment I look, at which point he would give me the thumbs up and smile, “SURPRISE!” Ridiculous.  Impossible. And goddamn it I look every time. 

I recently read an article in the New York Times about Rafael Nadal.  I know, shocker. Those of you who know me know about my mad soul and body lust for this man.   It is so much more than sex.  And it is also definitely about sex.  But here’s the thing – I do not often have mad crushes.  Sure, I was horny for the guys in Jars of Clay when I was thirteen (BUT WHO WASN’T? …Nope), but my serious “I am utterly useless in the presence of this person” moments are few and far between. I tend to feel protective or motherly or sisterly towards men (yes, yes, I know… my issues are rampant…), so when there is a man who undoes me, who leaves me speechless and brainless and blushing and trying not to shit on myself, I notice. 

Something about Rafa undoes me. 

I have a serious, mad crush on him. Yes he is hot, and yes I would absolutely tap that, but that is not enough in my life to have a real crush on someone. His ridiculously hot body is not why I feel like a silly thirteen year old singing on the top of my lungs: “I want to FALL in love with you” (my tears were not for Jesus… oh no indeed). 

I loved the article in the Times because it articulated a bit of what I find so deeply, magnetically attractive about Rafa. 

Come, gather round. I will tell you of my Rafa lust. 

As with any hero there must be something or someone to defeat – otherwise the huge swollen biceps seems pointless and comedic. Federer is considered by some to be the best tennis player of all time. Of course I call these people fools – but there is no denying that Federer is ONE of the greatest tennis players of all time – so basically I call them fools because I am angry and jealous. 

But it is Federer’s greatness that makes Nadal’s greatness so definitive; because Nadal beats Federer. 

It started with the magnificence of Nadal on clay – and everyone said “Oh yes, he’s a strong young buck with an award winning ass and a killer smile who just made Federer look like a drunk old woman on clay, but Nadal will never touch Federer on grass.” 

Enter last year’s Wimbledon (best tennis match of all time) where Nadal defeated Federer on his precious, precious grass. (SUCK IT, Federer). 

Here is where the article so brilliantly articulates the differing appeals of these men (I seriously get so excited when I read about this). 

Here’s an excerpt: 

He thrills people. Federer thrills people, too, but the Nadal thrill is so different from the Federer thrill that studying the two of them is like a gorgeous immersion course in the varieties of athletic possibility. 

Federer is elegant and fluid and cerebral, so that his best tennis looks effortless even when he is making shots that ought to be physically impossible. 

Nadal is muscled-up and explosive and relentless, so that his best tennis looks not like a gift from heaven but instead like the product of ferocious will. His victories and his taped-up knees and his years as a very good No. 2 in the world all resonate together, as though the rewards and the wages of individual effort had been animated in a single human being: if you hurl yourself at a particular goal furiously enough and long enough you may tear your body up in the process, but maybe you can get there after all. 

People have loved watching Nadal create trouble inside Federer’s head. This is how they characterize it in tennis, that Nadal makes Federer crazy, that Nadal’s refusal over and over to be beaten by Federer in Paris was the one problem that Federer — who usually has uncanny on-court telepathy about what his opponent plans for three shots hence and exactly how to wreck it — was unable to figure out. 

Then Nadal finally beat Federer at Wimbledon too, and then at the Australian, where Federer famously picked up his runner-up trophy and looked at the assembled reporters and burst into tears, causing Nadal to put an arm around him, the young Spaniard at once respectful and consoling, and murmur something private into his ear. That Nadal now has the capacity to outplay Federer on multiple surfaces — that the signature game of the world’s highest-ranked tennis player is not a beautiful ballet unto victory but an imperfect, bruising, savage refusal to yield — this is why Nadal thrills people. This and the biceps. “Every tennis lover would like, someday, to play like Federer,” Philippe Bouin told me. “But every man wants to be Rafael Nadal. Which is different.” 

Good reading. And good GOD I have chills, which says a lot since I’ve read it about 900 times. 

Gorney nailed it: watching Federer play is like watching a dancer who soars through the air, defying petty human things like gravity and weight.  But Nadal.  OH Nadal.  He is not an angel.  He is a man.  You can FEEL gravity and weight and sweat and grit when you watch him play.  

And my whole heart pulls for him – I feel exhausted after watching him play because of the word Gorney names so perfectly: WILL. His soul is exposed through his body. He hurls himself and pits himself against every obstacle; he plays every point as if it was his last, and my heart identifies with gritty Nadal so much more than with the graceful dancer that is the Swiss god Federer. 

Plus, if you think about what kind of lover you want, a graceful dancer who makes even the most impossible moves look effortless, or a fierce, determined, gritty, sweaty man who growls and yells and strains…. I think my point is obvious. 

Good lord I’m going to have to change the subject. 

Go read the article and then add “in bed.” 

I recently had to stop running because of severe shin splints (I was serious about needing to change the subject…kaboosh alert).  I ran through the pain for a few weeks, but it turns out my body is actually able to say “fuck you.” 

The pain was so bad for a few days that I could not get out of bed without warming them up and taking 1000 milligrams of Advil. So I waited a few days and then went running again, because I’m a bitch like that. And so the cycle has continued. 

The thought of not running is a thought too horrifying to consider. Nope, I’m not considering it. 

Nope………………….................................................................................………….. nope. 

(Still not.) 

I calculated that I ran approximately 1,500 miles during the past 12 months. I ran through my heartbreak and my divorce and my loneliness and my rage and all the clusterfuck repercussions of the aforementioned things.  I have run so far and so often that the state of running feels more “me” than the state of walking. 

And now my shins are on strike. 

AND turns out they’re union. 

Fuck. 

I wake up every morning with the very strong urge to run. And when I swing my legs off my bed and feel the shooting pain, I still want to run. 

Life lately has felt like a gigantic taunting asshole. Not an actual gigantic asshole taunting me (creepy), but an entity full of malice. 

But there really isn’t any entity or malice. I just want there to be so I can have something to curse at instead of just crying because I have hurty shins. Story of my life. 

Nadal holds my heart in his hands because I simply cannot imagine him throwing up his hands on a bad day and saying “Awww hell, fuck this.” I cannot imagine him as a lackadaisical cool guy (I hate cool guys, btw – another time, another time). He defies apathy and boredom not because he hates them but because he’s surging with the antithesis.  

He grits his teeth and runs his gorgeous ass off for every point, even when it doesn’t seem logical or possible.  And that makes me hot. 

I am no proverbial weightless dancer. Life is not flowing with milk and honey and most days I’m grossed out by my own whining. 

I am flopping and falling and flailing around the stage like a motherfucking hippo on some serious Xanax and with some serious shin splints. 

And I really do wish I could turn off all the ways I want for a while; just a little break from the heartbreak that inevitably comes when you let yourself love. 

…because people are sad motherfuckers who use you up and let you down, and not because they want to but because they’re lost, spineless, sad and bruised up fools with tiny ego’s (she sang with a bitter but kinda sexy twang.). 

When running is impossible it is torture to feel the desire to run. Same goes with wanting a man (did you like how I just threw that one in? As if it were an afterthought? Yeah, I’m good like that… they call me Subtle McSubtleton). 

For every attempt to act bored and nonchalant and self-sufficient I only believe more fully that the word to describe me least in the world is, “subtle.” 

I am surging with desire, and bruised the fuck up from disappointment, and usually would very much like to punch someone in the throat and cry before I go to bed (it’s the new version of “a cup of warm milk”).  

And, she admitted, I still look between my feet for my friend, every, single, mother, fucking, time. 

Life is to Charis NOT as Tennis is to Federer.  

I am not graceful, and I can’t even make walking look effortless anymore, but fuck trying to make it look effortless, or wishing I was above it all… because I’m not. 

My shins hurt, I want to fight you and I’m lonely. 

But here’s the good news: the good book says, “she who will maybe someday perhaps find love and peace and beer and money will keep her heart open, despite the disappointment and asshole men and abandonment and shin splints that are inflicted upon her.” 

And, the second part of the verse (that first part is actually just Apocrypha): “her glorious, human life will look not like a gift from heaven but instead like the product of ferocious will.“ Subtlekiah 4:5

Comments

[Meghan]

The good book makes me laugh and cry all at the same time... like I can't even exactly tease out what's funny, sad, funnysad, sadfunny. That's why I love it. (did you get that "it" is you? Did you get that SUBTLE inuendo?) That's why I love "it" so so so so much, because "it's" full of sooo much passion. Love you friend.
p.s. things that are overrated (and typically enraging to me)
1. subtlety
2. effortlessness (word?)
3. aloofness (word?)

[Mike]

that was easily the best sports article I've ever read ever. also, now when I awkwardly attend church I can say my favorite book is Subtlekiah. Word son.