i gotta be me

 

 

as a big brother i was kind of tough on my brothers growing up

some one had to be

my dad was raised in a house with  6 women

it ain't easy being a bully

but when my brothers tried to pass it down the line

to my adopted sisters

was where the bully shit came in handy

i did what i could to save them from what i created

anyway, being a bully was perfect

i had to be the lead asshole on my team several times

if you were wearing the wrong color on saturday i am sorry

i'm just doing me

doing what i do 

that's what harry's are known for

if there is any one who thinks i have a selective memory, please share in the comments

i do not edit them

i will take spam out

i will take out attacks on my family and threats

but i welcome debate

so what do you do when an athletic team mate is bonding with a team from Virginia

kicking your team's ass

and laughing with his new team mates as he scores?

ADD A LITTLE HARRY

the ball was in his hands when i hit him late in the lineout

but 

THAT'S WHAT TROLLS DO

that's why i never paid dues

i did the heavy lifting

so, I slowed this fella down alot

and when in the middle of a tackle

on a dead play

who in their rugby mind chooses NOT to land on dude

who chooses not to slow down the GAZELLE

for the others in the hunting pack

my neck on the line every scrum

because im the type of bastard that has no fear

thats what rugby was

me facing my fears and sharing the violence with the world

thank you rugby

it's the nature of the game

unless i missed a day 

please help me understand my flaws

i'm getting really zen in my 50's

rugby provided me some of the finest moments in my life

a freedom of expression

a place to grow 

a place to flower

Violent Opportuities

     If it seems like I have a chip on my shoulder sometimes, there is a very good reason for it. I was a smaller than average bear until I got to college. The clowns I hung out with in high school were a diamonds in the rough. I ran into my egg throwing buddy while I was home from college a couple of times. He was still the same size roughly at 132 where he was quite the competitor. I was over 210 at this point having shot up and out 4-5 inches. My 28 inch waist in HS was now 34 and I thought for sure I could handle this tiny old friend. Not a chance. Slippery and quick he kicked my ass on the front lawn. Then after some adult beverages we tried on the back lawn. My theory was that my beer muscles were superior to his. They weren't. It is fun to get your ass kicked every now and then. It keeps you humble.
    He told me about taking his wife to the diner catching their kid, and then his wife, from the bathroom window in a classic up date on the dine and dash. The next time we met he was telling me of his new used bicycle business. "They just leave them on their porches in this town', they never lock them up! I have a garage full.!' Being a victim of bike theft as a youngster wasn't enough to make me break the code. Losing a bike teaches  you a very zen like detachment from objects. You either have a code or you don't. When I have a code I buy two pineapples and a bottle of tequilla. Both slay viruses in a fun way. Mandarin juice is my second choice, but any vitamin C does the trick.
    The last time I ran into him I was carrying a quarter keg up the hill to the dorms from the distributor in my dad's army duffel. Army duffels are very handy in this regard. If you can't fit your life into one you have attachment problems. He was on parole. He was less enthusiastic about the area because "the cops were being real dicks." The last I heard was something about construction in the west. He missed the 25 year reunion. I wish I had.
     So this was one example of a low risk violent opportunity for macho mayhem. My dad was a different kind of veteran. My Uncle strafed water buffaloes in Nam. His kids called him "Sir," as in "Can I have more potatoes. WHAT?"  I had a Dad. They were fun to listen to at the beach with my Grandad and all of us cousins just running wild. So I wasn't exactly encouraged to play the sport I wound up loving. My Dad came to one game. It worried him. He goes to my nephews football games because the violence is not as sustained. It has order. They stop every five seconds and re-organize. The flowing, chaotic, poorly reffed game he watched in the 80's was too much for him to take in.
     I wanted to talk about violent opportunities because I was remembering a newsletter I read from my days of yore. Days when I had a job because of my sensitivity. My sensitivity to an insult, to the wrong color jersey, to a New York or North Jersey accent. I would hear that "funny tawkin"  and want to kick their ass for the time the Jets fans shit on my car. Or for their Capitalistic, world polluting attitudes, or just  because they needed to be beat on on account of general practices. Get a bunch of them together and it is a fine, bruising day of fun. People who were a perceived threat to "Tiny high school me" did not know that this fully operational death star neanderthal was targeting them because of something that happened years ago, or some tv show about New York attitudes that I recently watched the rubbed me the wrong way. It was not always a lot of fun to be mad at the world, but rugby provided relief. I could not very much pound on the frustrating little kids at work, now could I?
     The newsletter called me  "one of the most opportunistic players" he had ever seen. I extended that attitude into all areas of my life. No one else was going to do what I was going to do all day Saturday. Dealing with the bullies on the other team. Containing them, striking fear into them or at least trying to give our colored shirt the advantage in this one facet of the game. Being better than the dude across from me my first priority. That's what's easy about rugby. I would also try to terrorize their dainty woodland creatures whenever possible. There was a rumor that I was a little "over-strategic" sometimes. But that's the game, find their weakness and exploit it. Use your strengths. to do so while hiding your own softer rugby players.
     When you look at your team and there is a lot of hard physical stuff to do in scrums and rucks and there is no one who you trust to do it better than yourself, that's when you stop playing wing forward and start playing prop. Like a saint. Saint Harry, the asshole. yeaaaa. The stereotype of fat dudes playing prop is only found on beatable teams. Rugby is about running. Fat slow dudes are an exploitable liability. If  you let them disrupt your game, I feel sorry for your rugby experiences, you missed some wonderful moments.
    

Slow Motion

     This is supposed to be tiny little vignettes of rugby reality. A lens of reality.  Three of my vertabrae  are fused, c6,c5, i forget which way the sequence goes. They used to let us slam into each other in the front row. And I was sitting on the shoulders of a massive individual known as the love beast, among others. Sometimes it takes a minute for me to turn my head and the signals still get to the same place, but they take a detour, that's all.  Doctors bore me. Here is a true account of what happened when I weighed what a fat prop weighs and had  a tiny little stroke-ish thing that I fought off. Paralysis is no fun. A collapsed scrum is no fun.

                              .....something happened to me in a scrum collapse.....

     Rugby became my only reality in the mid-eighties sometime. I am using this post to get things down that are triggered by other memories as a sort of rough draft, so sorry if this is choppy, this isn't close to finished...

    
    In my senior year in high school, I wrestled at 124 and could have gone lower but there were two freshman "legacies" at those weights. A zimmerman and a bieber, both from wrestling families, brothers to sectional champions, purebreds. So it really started to surprise me to be called "big guy" when I started attending Community College of Philadelphia in 1981. I thought they were calling me fat. I had the typical small dude  chip on my shoulder and walked around in a rage when people would call me fat. 

       It wasn't long before I met the great-great-great-great-great- grand nephew(twice-removed)  of the Roman God Of Wine, who recruited me for Blackthorn Nation.

     My first rugby practice was somewhere in the northeast, and they quickly determined that I was a second row and told me kneel and to put my hand between some fat dudes legs and grab. A scrum seemed kind of meterosexual from the second row, frankly(thanks for the years of support, big Metro AC).

    An  elfish, yet tubby, rugbytuffguy wing was nice enough to pick me up that Saturday in a car full of sugary treats, We wound up at Burholme.  I got into that game in the last ten minutes on the wing and it was a great place for a total novice to stand, in borrowed shorts, cleats and the fabulous wool green and yellow knee highs. As it usually goes on the wing, it was a great place to watch some rugby and get some sun. My experience at wing was so pleasant that I started to think that maybe I was some kind of rugby tough guy. Out there with the butterflies.

     That night at the Mermaid was a night of singing, Elephant walking and "ALL WE OWE, WE OWWWE HER" The party was probably the second bar I had been to. The first bar Was across from CCP and was called Froggies. The cops came in. I cried that I was only in there playing the video game while I waited for my bus. I think I embarrassed the cops and they let me go. Thanks Cops! This the first REAL party I had been to as an "active" participant and a signal from the future that THIS WAS THE SHIT THAT I WOULD BE DOING FOREVER. This is where I learned about Fraternal love. Girls, I dig you now about how loving men is never easy,  they are such assholes!(nohomo).

    The next week was even more legendary as it was a bus trip to DC to play SUD. Club Sudamericana de Rugby.  I was handed a magazine with rucking and other techniques to read and I was good to go! Someone on SUD must have sniffed out my new car smell there on the wing in a borrowed kit.   I soon was fielding a kick. I did what came naturally. Run as fast as I could into the closest group of opponents. Not a good idea, I found out. These dudes were much meaner than the neighbor kids and the our unending "kill the man with the ball" marathons. We had a fine party at the Bottom Line and a boozy bus-ride home. I was the one drinking brandy and puking in the black plastic HUFFY trash bag all the way home with my hyper extended elbow that didn't move for a week or so. Some kind soul dropped me off in Swarthmore on my Aunt's porch in the wee hours of the morning. She was a trooper and didn't say too much. There is a bit of a family history in this arena and her tact and lack of judgement was just one of the reasons that I loved my sainted aunt, Aunt Kitty. She also loved wordplay. So that's who I suppose I am writing for. It could have gone much differently.

   I started to really get rugby Kutztown a year later. This one is easy to pinpoint because, shortly after I dropped out they got a legendary Eagle coach and got a lot better at rugby. Kutztown forged my innate big brother bully machine into a fast mean dude after a summer of running every night. B-side was not cutting the mustard for me. There I was, at my natural position, wing forward, eating light bulbs with West Chester, serenading rugby queens and jumping off roofs with Reading Rugby and the pig who caught on fire. The fathers of Readings finest today. I was dangerously close to graduation and stayed at the beach that summer instead of returning to school. That prompted a move to DC. I was drinking at the Bottom Line and feeling deja vu and the President of the club, approached me and it like sorcery or something.

A man Called Clueless

     "What are Ya? A bunch of Pussies?"
   
     This modern day Henry the fifth, on the morning of Saint Crispin's Day, was a dude we called "Clueless"
It worked wonders. We were also coachless, that crisp October morning in Lehigh. A bunch of us had jumped into some cars the night before for some psychological warfare. I mean, why just win the post game party? Let's take over the town for the weekend. No one was interested in another Friday keg surrounded by corn. There was corn everywhere in Kutztown in the Fall. Our field was surrounded on three sides by corn, which was how we got away with the goat sacrifice on the Summer Solstice that one summer when we all took summer classes to try to graduate within 6 years. The 6 year plan. D for Degree. We weren't geniuses, but we were not a bunch of pussies either. Lehigh never had a chance.

    

Rugby brothers,cousins, ghosts and snakes

    There is no doubting the brotherhood of mud and blood that exists between rugby players.
    A clever dude once put a Shakespeare quote on a tee shirt that rings pretty true.
     There is no place to hide on a rugby field. The action seems to somehow seek out the cowards, i know I always ran at the new back on the wing!

 That the man who stands his ground and sheds his blood on St. Crispin's day with feats that echo thru time is my brother in Eternity, BE HE NE"ER SO VILE.

        Yes, I am vile. As in Violent. The front row does that to you. Scrum after scrum after ruck after ruck after scrum . Rugby is based on the word Ruck. If you aren't in a ton of rucks you are basically a spectator so shut the fuck up when the real men are talking. Unless your name is Lomu and you are a beast. Or when your name is Kenny Madden or Paul Dennis your massive hits echo in fellow rugby brothers brains for eternity. I have a ton of respect for centers. I played a couple of games there and it was a lot of full speed head on collisions.  Deft tacklers like Rob Church may not have been true cruncher, but no one got by him. Technique is technique. There is room for all kinds of people on the rugby field. It's tough to find fifteen to twenty good ones. So you make do and try to limit the exposure of some of your team mates to the real rugby. Or am I wrong?
     I am open to the idea that I may have missed some heroic shit. But I never missed a party. And Shakespeare mentions rugby parties in an odd way in the same speech from Henry V. http://nfs.sparknotes.com/henryv/page_186.html The names of Harry the king, et al...be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. That's a rugby party he is talking about and that was a big part of the game for me with the shit talking and singing,eating light bulbs, jumping off of roofs, and other assorted feats of idiocy, male dominance and gentle mayhem. The post game stuff is where the collective memory of rugby lies. It all comes out.


      The big fellow who came up small, haw haw haw, the slippery moves of a face, a stuey, or the fear you face as All-nAmericanDixie Dean is dancing in front of you, a simple prop, on the sidelines of the final at PAC sevens. Dixie, of the real Duck Brothers rugby dynasty in the 80's. Give him a step and you are toast. Half greyhoud, half antelope and trying to wrong foot me, so I did  what came naturally and hit him late and out of bounds and made sure I landed on top of him hard. The nest time he's dancing I am shitting my pants again because he is lightning. He's dancing, I'm trying to stay between him and his destiny and edging closer. Sevens is a funny game at times. Lucky for me he passed it back inside just as I tripped over my feet trying to dance with him on that sideline.
      Endless ten minutes halves in the final of a sevens tourney. Our rallying cry of  "Cheeba Cheeba!" echoed by team mates across the field as we somehow hung on against Goliath. What a summer that was. One kick away from nationals. Washington made it from about midfield. Those are some rugby brothers. The Cheeba Cheeba crew, John Porter, the REAL AC, Rob Church was that you driving that night past all  those Maryland cops on 95 protesting something on the border there by pulling everyone over. Mooning those chicks. Singing Tone Loc. We won the game and were the last ones out of the party. Of course we found a rugby brother who had a place to sleep for the night because we were the conquering vikings, in town for some pillaging. Nothing is sweeter than returning to the city where you really learned to scrum and drinking from the champions cup as your ex team mates eyes bug out at your new skill set. Yes that was that prop who used to play for us on that fifty meter sprint down the sideline for a try. That was the summer when I learned to pass and score and put people through holes. Thanks DOC!

     It is in Shakespeare's flowing cups of lore that the memories sear into your brain. There is no higher affirmation than when a true rugby warrior from the opposing Visigoths seeks you out at the party to pick your brain, that's the stuff there. That's the Brotherhood I speak about when I am talking about this fraternity of mud and violence. When the opposing team gives you the hard earned man of the match award. I lived for my violent rugby Saturdays. We all make our choices in life. I chose to put rugby ahead of women and jobs and would do so again. Those things come and go.

     Do you remember when you caught the  rugby bug? I do. It was in the beaucolic countryside of Kutztown Pa with a bunch of coal miners kids and Jersey boys. Hunters. Alphas. I would play A,B and C games back then a more relaxed era when you could have a keg or 4 on the sideline. Before the rugby police. Coach Ernie would talk wistfully of when rugby was even more real. Fifteen dudes a side only. You lose one to injury, you play with 14. 
     Then there are my rugby cousins. Dudes you are related to, dudes that fill out a side, but who seem to disappear when the rugby starts somehow. Too smart to hurt themselves in a stupid game played by aggressive drunks I guess. Superior men. Self proclaimed Cro-magnons, alleged supervisors to my Neanderthal Bretheren. Guys that wear the shirt and love to be around warriors, but dudes that stay on the ground an extra second or two miss a lot of rugby that way. Always joining the ruck just as the ball is working its way out. It's sad what lengths people will go to to protect themselves on the rugby field. The fear is the fun, isn't it? Use it.

      This is not to say that you have to drink to  play this game. Nope. I know a couple of determined and brave tacklers who don't touch the stuff. One of them is a prop who was the scrum captain of a team that went from D3 to D1. You hear the flesh smack when he is the man leading the charge to stop the penalty move. That is something you can't teach. That is instinct. That is desire. And a dude like that makes you try to beat him to the fun in the next ruck and you become a true pack of war dogs on the hunt.
     The other tea-totaler, adding tea? That can't be right. Whatever, this "adder of teas" (now he's a snake? focus man  focus). The other  non drinker  of merit is a straight edge dude who loves the same kind of music that the non-drinking prop does. Maybe that's what fuels their fire, the music of Rage. This dude can't be more than 160 but he is in the mix, dragging dudes twice his size down, a bantam fury. A natural. Real recognizes Real is how the kids in the hood would say it. You just KNOW who these guys are. The Naturals.
    
        It was nice to finally know what to do with my violent tendencies. A  lightbulb went off in my head as I chewed a lightbub with the West Chester team in a ratty basement party. A society that wants and needs my services. A place where my bad attitude could be put to good use. A way to stay out of jail most weekends. A home in the front row for almost 20 years with a few vacations out at wing forward in college and when a team called the Hibo's gave me a job to come and play for them. Living the dream. With an all world fly half from Australia named David Niu who played for the US national team. Those guys are fun to play with. Those guys are fun to play against.

     I remember a Blackthorn team playing at the Washington Irish tournament vs. NOVA against one of David's countrymen. A Samoan shit house. A linebacker size dude who was clearly my targeted opposition. A dude that need to be slowed down as much as humanly possible. You never get tired of tackling Pacific Islanders because what other option is there? That's the job. Stop the big slob, or go play softball. No fags in the tight five baby. The engine room. You are welcome for all the balls, back line glory boys. Anyhow, this was back when the great new idea in penalty plays was to have four or five forwards turn their back and do something tricky with the ball. I loved this play because it gave me a free run at a target that could not see me coming or put a move on me. There was no way I could miss laying this dude out and I did with relish. On the next penalty play they ran he was peeking over his shoulder with an elbow waiting for my face so I hit the dude next to him.
   
        So spotting the rugby cousins is a little bit harder, but you sense something about them that. Something is missing and they don't quite fit into the "brother" category, but they are dressed like you. Guys that are overheard talking to the other teams captain before the second day of a tournament on a hot Sunday morning. Guys who say"take it easy on us we were all out drinking pretty late last night, ha ha" That is an actual quote, from an actual rugby cousin. That quote forced me to rethink my alliance with a certain club and made switching teams very easy. It is a sad thing that happens to a rugby team. They lose focus on the rugby and instead become side line cooler hero's with craft beers clinging to memories as they develop mammaries. People who retire from rugby in their late 20s even.
      It is even sadder when the performance of a team is different when key tacklers are missing and you suddenly are haunted by rugby ghosts. Making ghost tackles, getting to every ruck just as the ball is leaving and somehow getting caught up or in the way of whats left of the rugby players. Get the fuck off the field. Pussies who slow to get up, saving their mojo for what I ask you? What? But yelling at them makes  them  stop coming to practice. Then you are playing A and B side games in your late thirties because propping is hard work and this is saturday and I have a ______________ this weekend that I can't get out of. Real rugby players go to weddings concussed and still a little muddle from the quick shower, running on the adrenaline that a truly pissed of woman is able to give you an endless supply of. Yes dear. So you make your choices. She makes hers. Life goes on.
   
     Then there are the rugby snakes. Your girlfriend is not safe on the sideline when you have one of these guys on your team Or the shit talking snake. The un warrantedly arrogant snake, all snide comments and judgement. That's why I love rugby practice and rucking so much. There is no place to hide from me. Don't poke the sleeping tiger. 

    

    A wing was talking shit on Facebook about a prop from the safety of the West Coast. That shit doesn't fly. That shit never flew. This is the chronicle of one props fight against a libellous back-line "brother." this back  is pretty slick. You have to be to skillfully avoid contact for as many years as he has. Taking JUST the wrong angle. Missing the Fijiaan by a hair. Hard to see the cowardice of the just-missed shoestring tackle until you see a pattern.
    Backstory. Dude is a notorious bull-shitter. I have listened to half-assed rationalizations from this fellow for almost three decades. That's how long it takes for me to get tired and call BS. Dude claims "all who wore this jersey are my brothers for life",
                                                    Quoting Shakespeare.
      He who gives blood with me this day....great source material, BUT not backed up by actions. That is where BS stops. In the REAL world. In the rugby world, where you play with some dudes because there isn't a better option and you know he is a shitty tackler so your wing forwards back him up to keep the games close. you are only as strong as your weakest link. But still a chain. Still a BRO. Until you break the BRO-CODE. Talking shit about a prop? Ok. This is where reality catches up to your trail of bull shit  BROTHER.
     You HAD to poke the tiger, the trouble tiger poking is that one day the tiger rips your face off as an afterthought. Just doing what tigers do, like godzilla farting and accidentally destroying Fukishima. Godzilla's gonna Godzilla. Better just keep buying Godzilla beers and try to stay out of his range of with your weak ass bullshit jive talking game. My man.
     So this story is about a college all star [CAS] and a prop and a wing taking a trip to Penn State for some sevens. Seven a side rugby is a fast brutal sport. The fields are rock hard, baked in the sun. One missed tackle and the other team scores. It is a game that quickly separates the pretenders from the real rugby players.
     On this particular afternoon the three players were headed to Penn State, four hours west, to play in a tournament on the following day. The college all star was the prize recruit of the season. Big, fast and a punishing tackler. The prop and the wing picked him up and the prop gave the CAS a beer and told him the rules. One beer every fifteen minutes until they are gone, or you get punched in the face. The CAS agreed, the wing sniggered. he played college ball with the prop when the prop was a wing forward. An attack dog, a greyhound, mean and lean and chasing the ball until someone mishandled it and then making them pay. Lowering the boom. Ask Chris Vealy, stalwart of West Chester what happened at the Princeton tournament when his hands were a little slow and the prop was a wing forward for coachless Kutztown. True rugby Pirates in the best approximation of Bluto Blutarski. Senator James Blutarski to you....
     My point being that later in the night, after all the beer was gone, after the prop threw the keg off of the 8th story dorm room, after a day of mega-phonic sexual harassment. (It was legal then). It was a funnier world then. It was before the internet and PC and camera phones and we still serenaded "rugby queens" It was getting late. 2 or three AM. The college all star and the wing had a difference of opinion about some garden variety macho bullshit. The college kid wanted to go. He had been punched in the face by the prop in the first hour, having not finished his third beer. Boom. He was shocked and silent, but then he laughed and agreed that he had agreed to the GAME. Rugby is kicking someones ass and then talking shit over beers for half the night or the rest of the weekend.
     The wing didn't drink. He was the kind of dude that got really loud to "win" arguments knowing that most people did not want to cause a scene. Psychology major. Captain of ass. As the only sober dude after the game at the sideline kegger, he could often be heard to tell a pretty freshman, "oh no, these guys are getting crazy, drinking from the boot, you saw the queen, next comes the bat races and then the rugby Princess is next and you do not want to be around for that one, lets go back to my dorm room and watch some mtv. "Billy Dee Williams was not even close to the smooth of this Kutztown Legend.
     So, it's early in the morning and a fracas is imminent. The kid wants to balance the scales. The wing is talking about kung fu and breaking knees and "he doesn't ever fight unless its FOR REAL" He didn't want to hurt the college all star and the college all star started suspecting him to be a big mouthed pussy. He solicited the prop for back up of his alleged bad assery, of how he was tougher than Chuck Norris' beard or some such nonsense and the prop honestly told the college all star that he  had never seen the wing lose a fight. There had never been one. Come to think of it he never saw him make a tackle either. One of those hugger type dudes who slows people down by grabbing their shirt.
       So the wing didn't want to hurt the dude, He is a saint. A Hero. And a legend. A legend in his own mind telling his rugby stories a whole country away from reality.