Many names will be
changed to protect the families and reputations of solid members of
the community. Many pussies ill be called out, eventually. This is
the first draft and we do not know the final destination of this word
train. These words serve notice that certain topics may come to light
in a humorous celebration of life. A loving recreation of my rugby
experiences. The formation of a man. How to stick and move and stay
sane in a world that exists in many ways just to break a man. A world
of constant, never-ennding tests to a man's integrity.
Marlon Perkin's
Wild prop kingdom. Who is the prop that you are most afraid of? Is it
me? Is it some other force of nature, as yet unheard of? As I
remember it, you guys pointed me at the toughest fucks on the other
team for twenty years, and kept offering me jobs as an incentive to
wear your colors. Jobs as an incentive to wear your colors, instead
of having to face me in a situation where manhood, speed, ferocity
and brute strength were areas where it was best not to compete with
me. It was better to appease me for those long years. These are the
stories that I collected from my years of defending my little patch
of turf. Stories that I only know part of. Stories that I have eighty
percent of. Not pure fiction, but the accounts, descriptions and of
this rugby life are mostly written down from memory and the author
wants you to know that I have had a concussion or two, done a drug or
two, and protected a friend or two over the years.
I first played
for a team that was playing on the memory of a recent final four
division one appearance. They got there by skillfully recruiting an
Argentinian and a Welshman at number ten and eleven and that
combination was deadly in the late seventies and early eighties.
Dudes that grew up playing the game and see the game differently.
Real skill where it is needed and big brutal meatheads and brothers
in the scrum. This is a combination that still works well and has
been copied in one form or another a most of the successful teams
that I have played on.
My next stop
was at what became a solid University program ranked in the top ten
of the country. The rugby team called me 'Sasquatch', but in my dorm
I was 'buffalohead' . This was flavor country. The vibe was strong in
this one. So when I started there, the exchange students from England
had just left. They formed a rugby club and left town. I never even
met them. Our rugby leader was a man they called 'Clueless'. The
motto on the team was 'D for degree' . We were a motley bunch. And
this country is a big-ass country. Not bad for a tiny 'normal' school
in tiny Pennsylvania farming community. Tiny Kutztown university goes
head to head with Life and Cal and huge Penn State and other diploma
factories. Their secret was a coach that knew rugby and all the
tricks from US Eagle experience in the front row, where rugby is
real. I was part of solid foundation of old boys and alumni who set
the tone for rugby ferocity in the mid eighties. There was a time in
my life when Saturday meant an A game at flanker, a B game anywhere
they lost a dude, and a C game when the other team still needed some
more reality correction. That's what rugby is. Reality. You may be
something big in the world, a real force of nature, the man. But when
you are in a scrum with me then you are my bitch or my family. And
while I may have let my actual flesh and blood brothers down, I was
always the due who was ready on saturday to do error corrections on
the people wearing the wrong colors. Kind of like the fashion police.
My third
installation was in the front row. I was sitting in a bar in
Washington DC and it triggered some memories. Memories of my first
bus trip from Philly. A unique bar with a low ceiling in the cellar
of a fancy schmancy retaurant that I was never allowed in, upstairs.
There was a sign on the steps, no props upstairs, please. I was cool
with that, once I learned that props run the world. Well, props and
wives and yes I would love to flirt with your girlfriend while you
inportant men are talking about your important non-rugby bullshit.
That is the essence of life there. Rugby and non-rugby bullshit. And
understanding women. I know that women have to appreciate the passion
that we have for a stupid game and offer support to us, their
gorillas of love. They called me 'Magilla gorilla' here, briefly. I
teamed up with a set of hulking brothers here and really got good at
scrumming. Our women understood that with rugby we may limp or need
knee surgery, but without it we are a hurricane waiting to happen.
Rugby points our energy in the right direction, mayhem ensues. Mayhem . We
then have at it. An all you can eat buffet of manly delights.
Something approaching gay heaven, I would imagine, but that has to
stay in the imagination while I still have functioning knees and
elbows and teeth in my head. I bite. I can imagine some dark future
where I will be some sort of gay man's cat toy, bit it is not anytime
soon. And there are aspects of the game which would seem to be a
spermy delight, if you wanted them to be, but try it and see. Try
hitting on rugby players is my advice to gay rappers everywhere. That
would be pure entertainment. That is what is needed tp save the
country. A travelling freakshow, exhibition of brutal force and music
festival for all. E Pluribus Rugby.
The most
important thing that happened to me in DC was hat it was there where
I was eventually convinced that I was a member of the elite fratenity
and true brotherhood of the front row. We put our necks in there and
risk a lifetime in a wheelchair because you fuckers would lose the
scrums. Scrums t that we so find natural and easy. While life on the
wing is fun and all, the real work is done with numbers one through
five on your jersey, and that's just the way it is. The way it was
explained to me is that it was my special purpose. To do the heavy
lifting, drink all of the beer and occasionally meet a female of the
species who did not find me too distasteful. That was the best deal a
rage-fuelled neanderthal like myself was ever going to get. I told
them I was a wing forward and they kept telling me that I was a prop.
These were men with accents. Authorities on the game I was still
learning from over seas. I listened this one time in my life and my
life changed forever. Thank you Api Q. Thank you rugby.
At this point
in life everything was going perfectly. I had a bartending job that I
bent around rugby hours and a loving, big-canned woamn who thought I
invented sex. Life was swell. Some Sunday brunches could be
bothersome. Those sundays when my neck was too sore to move and I
would be driving to work turning my whole body to check the rearview
mirror on the belt way, but thats the price of glory. After a few
hours of moving behind the bar the body warms up and there were
always a handful of percasetts in someones rugby bag if the pain was
truly annoying. Plus my boy around the corner always had some
fragrant flowers to alter perspective. But then one weekend my chick
went camping with the barback. And started smoking again. So I went
back to Philly to finish college. I never graduated from Kutztown. I
dropped out of my professional semester. They were offering me a
lifetime of work. Rugby was offering me the world. Easy game.
So I went back
to college. This was to be the return of the prodigial sun. But
someone forgot to tell the team I was rejoining. So I hung around
long enough to catch the eye of the all star coach and got invited to
select side practices. I soon saw that, unless I was willing to wait
for someone to retire, this team was good. Wasn't this the same tight
five who had led the team to final four glory? Well, almost. But my
brother was amenable to playing on the Temple team with me and there
were a lot more women at the college parties than at the men's club.
And I got to play wing forward again and this time I had enough rugby
under my belt to do some damage against kids five to ten years
younger than me who were still learning the game. I'm kind of a bully
on Saturdays. No one could offer me the same mix of young pussy and
the chance to play Penn, Saint Joe's and other future millionaires on
a level playing field. Where I frequently knew the referees's from
playing against them and the young kids had no chance, whatsoever.
Teaching millionaire's sons that there are a few things that your
money can not protect you from. After seeing the ambulance doors shut
behind another young man's stretcher I stopped using the purple
crystal aggression additive that I thought helped take my game to new
levels. I am just not cut out for being a dick. But I had to try it
to see. I am talking to an attorney about a historical reference to
be added here that pertains to historical incidents of deep South
Benzedrine fuelled rugby, but tha's not my story. I will ask if I can
share the story, but stimulants are part of the game. Asking your
body for eighty minutes and working full time and a full college
schedule make demands on a body. My body was cool with four hours of
sleep. But rugby demanded peak athletic performance and a solution
had to be found. I found different sources of aggression activator.
Some completely legal when prescribed by a doctor and some lucky
combinations of ginseng, bee-pollen and Irish coffee.
So I was a
college graduate and rugby veteran and some college friends were
playing on my old club side and rugby is the most fun when you are
playing with your boys. My brother tagged along for a year or two,
until he met the girl of his dreams. That was as fun as it ever got.
Or maybe that was Argentina or the Maggotfest. But Saranac is right
up there. This is where an old boy and rugby legend, Marshall Sturm,
asked for match reports, and I started stringing words together on
assignment. My previous writing was all butt-hurt poems about the
girl from DC who savaged my world. Plus there were a few semesters of
writing term papers for money. But this was the kind of writing I was
meant to do, team-building. Celebrations and razzes from a dude with
a pretty good view. I called it “the view from the front row” and
a few people told me that they looked forward to their most specail
shit of the week. The Blackthorn newsletter shit. So I have that
going for me. Then there was this mercurial scrumhalf from Japan,
Kazoo Seto. Mother fucker could play some ball. We were destined for
great things at Blackthorn and then I got a better offer. There is a
mixture of dickheads on every rugby team. It's the testosterone of it
all. So much macho and not a construction worker or Indian chief in
sight. Some of the most talented players I ever played with simply
had no personal skills at all. They were fast of furious or sometimes
both, but no one was ever going to write a movie about them because
they were just concieted shitbirds. The old boys on the rugby team
vicariously enjoyed their exploits and gave them all the
ego-stroking their high maintenece asses needed, but ruby is a
community. Like a man who provides freedom lecturing the snot-nosed
whiz kid hot-shot who only gets to express his physicality because
Shrek-like assholes like myself enjoy beasting on the weekends. After
a while it gets to the point where the grass is greener and that was
certainly the case in Doylestown. I was offered a construction job
near my house with an open tab at a nearby restaurant on Delaware
avenue.
