It’s always been about McEnroe. It’s funny we ever thought it wasn’t. Or silly maybe; silly is the word. We saw him two all in the fifth set and we saw him with his hands on his hips and we saw him start his rant at the ump and half of us said that’s too much and the other half stayed quiet because maybe he wasn’t saying anything out of line and those cameras to his right were filming in 120 for some reason, on 16, which was from god himself. Every time he was filmed on 16mm we should thank who ever created us and every time he’s filmed at 120 we should kiss the ground, and those two things were happening when Lendl wins and that woman in the pink and the man in the red in the stands say what we do and people are on the clay and we as a country and whatever, we as people who like the drama, we see tragedy and we beg to be a part of it.
After that we had many more but they didn’t matter, the McEnroe stuff didn’t either but it mattered just as little as the rest while it happened on the red of Roland Garros.
How quick he leaves the stage with that second place trophy.
Why does he think his life would’ve been that different had he won.
He gets his 80 like the rest of us.
But there is something clean and platonic and sharp about this loss that none of our other smaller tragedies can measure to. His bang to our whimper maybe. Or our whimper in his sport, his bang, his nothing, Our End. ■