...It Had Become Pathetic

My roommate and I are on a losing streak.

Six games.

Six times we've faced our roommates Bill and Louis in a game of football.

And six times, we've lost.

It's not because we're not good athletes.

Jy Murphy, my roommate, rows crew and I swim.

So we're in shape. Better shape, I think, than the other two, the two guys who sleep in the first room of our six-person suite, the enemy.

Louis played on the freshman soccer team. But that was in the fall, and he hasn't put on cleats--except for these football games--since.

Bill was a fourth-line forward on Harvard's JV hockey team. His season ended in the middle of February.

He lifts weights occasionally. And once I caught him doing sit-ups. But besides that, he sits around the room and mocks us.

He's a hockey player and a Canadian and he's beating us--Americans, after all--in football.

He says he barely understands the rules.

And he's beating us.

Six games.

We usually play on Sundays.

I'm usually the quarterback and Jy is the wide receiver.

We huddle and I call plays.

Sometimes tricky ones.

In the beginning of the year, when our record was a perfect 0-0, we played in the courtyard behind Matthews Hall.

I here are trees and bushes there, giving the game a special dimension.

And of course when Jy and I lost the first time--the score was 105-91--we blamed it on the obstacles.

"Yeah, we were winning by two touchdowns," I explained to our other roommates, Randy and Andrew. "But Bill ran Jy into a shrub and Louis intercepted a pass. And after that, we just couldn't recover. We'll get them next week."

Next week we recruited two girls from upstairs to play on our team.

I got a crew cut to intimidate the opposition.

But it had the reverse effect.

The girls laughed at me. And we lost again.

We had begun to bet on the games. A liter of Coke to the winners. And after the third game--a two touchdown loss--I went to the store and bought the winners their Coke.

I sat and watched them drink and knew the next game would be ours.

We were better.

This was just bad luck.

Jy and I stayed up late in our bunks talking about the game.

Next time, we would beat them.

Badly.

By 50 points.

Next time, our two other roommates played.

We got Andrew and they got Randy.

Slightly different teams, but the same result.

0-4. It wasn't pretty. We bought them their Coke and I went to the library and Jy took a nap.

Deep down, we knew we had been wronged.

We didn't speak openly about the games anymore. Jy and I just looked at each other. And nodded. We would beat them next time and we would gloat as we sipped our Cokes. Slowly sipped our Cokes.

Next time, we played on the Common and got trounced.

We had Andrew again and they had Stephan Hall, the soccer player from upstairs. He's a goalie and has good hands. He caught everything. He even threw for a couple touch-downs.

It was raining and our shirts were covered with mud and we were getting angry at ourselves.

"Run to the ball, Murphy," Jy yelled after missing one of my passes.

"I don't believe it," I said, watching Louis catch a pass behind me and stroll into the endzone.

Bill and Louis smiled.

Another liter of Coke awaited them. In the refrigerator. We wouldn't go near them.

Winter came. Christmas came. Spring break. No football.

Jy was tired of losing. He didn't want to play anymore. It wasn't fun anymore.

I agreed. But I still thought we could beat them.

Bill and Louis kept pestering us. They wanted another game.

"No, no," Jy said. "I'm getting sick of it." I nodded. No, no, we'd had enough.

Jy and I didn't talk about the games anymore. We didn't even nod to each other confidently. We'd had enough.

But last Sunday we dragged ourselves out of bed and walked to the Common.

It was just me and Jy again.

The day was nice. The field was hard and fast. Louis and Bill hadn't exercised in months and Jy and I were as fit as bulls.

They scored first. They scored again. They jumped ahead of us, 42-14, and I was breathing hard and Jy was cursing at himself.

But, somehow, we pulled within two touchdowns.

Jy caught a pass on fourth down and slipped past Bill into the end-zone.

We held them on the next series. They didn't even complete a pass.

A couple short passes and a long bomb later, and we were in striking range.

But then Louis beat me on a fly pattern and Jy dropped two passes on the next series. On third down, I threw a wobbling pass into Bill's arms.

He didn't even try to run. He just stood there and laughed.

They weren't trying anymore.

When Jy and I got the ball again, losing by four touchdowns, I sent him on a long route.

If they're not trying, we'll make them pay for it, I thought.

I flung a long pass.

"I hope he catches it," Louis said. He didn't. It had become pathetic.

Jy took over at quarterback. And he called a play--the only play he had called all year--a Statue of Liberty.

He faded back and started laughing. I took the ball from him and started laughing. Louis tagged me.

But it didn't matter. We were laughing.