I got home from my Theory and Writing class last night and realised that there is far too much depth in my life. Not enough superficiality in this girl’s house of cards.
One of our esteemed tipsters remarked to me last Sunday morning that she struggled to understand how someone who knows so much, or at least absorbs so much, about football could be such an unsuccessful tipster.
‘I’m too emotional a person’, I defended.
We’ve been over that turf. We’ve gardened my personality in these pages enough to know that I am someone who prefers to believe in the dream rather than the reality, someone who bucks the interminable ‘expected’ with a small but willful effort to divert it, someone who sacrifices accuracy for the throngs of the narrative. We know this turf. We’ve been there before.
But another thought occurred to me.
On Saturday night, I had been at the Legs on the Wall fundraising cabaret and a female friend and I had been admiring a young man – a young man, I might add, who we both know. It was not a silly perve. There we were, having this conversation about this boy, when Patrick – who agrees with our assessment – asked what was so impressive about him. Said female friend astutely replied that he is simply one of the most 3 dimensional people she knows. He is good looking – in an off-centre, dark eyed kind of way; very cool; creative - a musician; demonstrably intelligent; well read and well thought; charming; extremely personable but aloof enough to maintain your interest. Voilà. Three dimensions.
Later that night, back on the living room floor in my woolen fair aisle socks, mug of chamomile in hand, I watched the Saints demolish the Doggies. And what occurred to me was, that the Saints are finally looking three dimensional. They’ve always been pretty boys – Riewoldt, dal Santo and all those blondes down back … Gilbert, Gram … they have a ready made ‘boy band’ down there. They’ve always had the creative potential. But up until this year, this group had never quite mustered the umph, the seriousness of what they could do. And now … they’ve got it. They’re the boy coming out the back-end of the worst stages of puberty and realising his power as a young man.
It occurred to me then, that this business of young men … it affects my tipping. It may account, in part, for my poor record. Young men account for a lot in the world. These boys, in their different colours, remind me of the boys of my teenage years, the boys of my early twenties, the boys who awakened me to the world of all things male.
The Saints have just become the prized catch – the boy who was good looking, smart enough, good with the girls, but not overly so, skilled at something with enough disinterest in the mob to go and actually make something of it.
The Cats used to be that, until they pursued it so well that they made an interminable gap for themselves. Nobody likes old, established talent as much as the thrill of a new find.
The Doggies are the brainy boy who was good looking enough. He was smart enough to be fascinating but lacking the confidence in himself to turn your whole head. Unfair. The Hawks are the school dude who was equipped for everything but ruffled to the hilt in a disguise that made it look like it came all too easily. The rich kid with a bit of brawn. Charismatic but not totally reliable … which just made him all the more attractive.
The Pies are the boy with skills but no class, the over-entitled bully. The Blues are the boy who always came an admirable second in the class, got the girls on the rebound and was too shy to take the baton and run for first. Even if you liked him, you knew he wouldn’t go all the way.
The Dockers are the ‘spunk’ who rode on his looks and let the substance he didn’t fully understand trail behind. He was charming enough to get away with it, but likely to have peaked at the age of about 17. The Cokesters are the older brother of the guy you liked, narky and agro. You always knew there was something ugly brewing behind his bedroom door. The Port boys were the boys who looked up to these older brothers, heading in that direction.
The Bombers are the quick witted boy up the back making all the girls laugh, with enough potential not to be a mere disruption. He had cheek to burn and was the year’s most likely to mature into an interesting person.
The Lions … maybe it’s just the Jonathon Brown thing – although Daniel Rich is keeping the mould alive – they are the big, tough country boy, the boarder. I never had anything to do with them and their moleskins. And the Roos, Tigers, Demons, Crows … don’t think I said a word to those boys ever, only if they were on the stage management team of the school play.
And … my own boys? The Swans are the boy who had your heart for real, the one you phoned a few times a week, the one with whom you pretended you were just best friends, the one who talked to your parents when he came to your house. Good looking but not suspiciously so, smart, sensitive and funny, more hard working than flashy and never on the wrong side of the jerk-o-meter. You figured you’d know them the rest of your life.
It’s a personal thing. Your view will be different to mine. As it should be. Cause we all traversed those moments of discovery about boys and/or girls on fragile and particular ground. We made our own archetypes, they crossed and traded places over the years, experience deepened or scratched them. But they prove to be imprints which are hard to discard.
On some deep but superficial level, I think they’re just another thing affecting my tipping. I may be, in part, tipping for the boys of my adolescent imaginings, showing my preferences, fulfilling old longings. Sigh.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Back to literary theory.
Happy tipping!
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