***
I am Sergei fucking Fedorov.
And it is not supposed to be like this.
When we first got together, everything was exactly as it should have been. We were both Russian. We were both athletes. We were both beautiful. We both shone superstar from every angle, every view. Every picture of us together shows us exactly as we ought to have stayed.
Perfect.
She gave me a list, you know. Before she left, I mean. She gave me a list of what exactly was wrong with us as a couple. It was delivered neatly and clearly, with every argument and counter-argument exactly planned out to the last detail.
She was always nothing if not thorough.
Breakup reason number one was that we never talked. Shit, there was a no-brainer. I mean really, what was there to talk about? Once we got past the discussions of what it was like growing up in Russia, what it’s like to come from a country where your limitations are set in stone, to discussing all the petty joys and petty woes of fame, well, what was left? How many times can we really talk about how no one in the tennis world takes her seriously? And it’s pretty much useless for me to talk to her about my work. She couldn’t care less that I play hockey. Fuck, she couldn’t even tell you I play center. All she knows is that I play for Detroit, I’m pretty damn good, and I make lots of money.
Add this all up and you don’t get deep, profound conversations. You don’t get deep, profound anything. I’m gonna let all of you out there in on a little secret. Fame, as an athlete at least, really is as empty and hollow as it seems. If you live the life long enough, you become the person you see smiling vacantly back at you in all those pictures. You become a smiling shell, an afterimage of someone’s ideal.
Before I continue and before you ask, yes. I am drunk. In fact, I have been drunk or hungover since the night of those goddamned awards. Halfway through the show, the bottle of scotch I had leftover from one of the Cup parties was just a queasy memory. I very quickly got back into the habit of stumbling out of bed about two in the afternoon, getting drunk by six, stumbling off to bed about dawn, sleeping on and off for a few days, and then starting over.
Don’t look at me like that. Everyone has a way to deal with this shitty experience called life. Some people handle their problems by screaming and throwing tantrums. Some bury theirs deep inside until the bitterness they exude becomes who they are. Some people turn to God when life gets rough. I drown my problems in a bottle. I’m sure this is nothing new to most of you out there… yet another wonderful thing about living your life in the world’s living rooms. You can save your lectures and speeches. Eventually I’ll crawl out from underneath my hangover and life will go on. So for now, shut the fuck up and listen.
Where was I? Oh right. The list.
Reason number two was that I didn’t understand who she really was. Now, if you ask me, I don’t think SHE knows who she really is. I, on the other hand, have a pretty good picture. She is 21 years old, and she is just like any other 21-yr-old. Confident and cocky, insecure but determined not to show it. She wants to enjoy being an adult and party as hard as she can, but she doesn’t know what she wants in the future. She only wants to keep having fun. I’m making a prediction right now. As soon she’s sure she’ll be all right if she stops playing, she’ll be off the court faster than during her singles tournaments.
She has the talent to be a top tennis player, but not the drive. But I don’t blame her, neither should you. She doesn’t have to. If you read any interview with any pro-athlete, 10-to-1 you’ll read a pretty little speech about how all the work is worth it, it’s all for love of the game… and the fans, of course. Always kiss ass to the ones who pay to see you play. But you know what? That’s all a load of bullshit, and if you got any one of those people to tell you the truth? They’d say the same thing I’m saying now. It’s not for love of the game that we work so hard. It’s not for the fans, fickle sons of bitches that they are. It’s not even to be the best, to be a champion; that’s only a means to an end. The real reason we bust our asses is to be famous, to be a brand name. Because when your name is famous, it’s worth money. And that is the goal, my friends. That is what it’s all for. If I wanted to play hockey purely for the art of the sport, I could have done that in Russia. It’s here in the NHL where I can be paid what I am worth. And I am worth a whole hell of a lot.
Apparently, though, she doesn’t agree. Not anymore.
Believe me, I know what it’s like to be young and famous. I was 20 my first year in the NHL. I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted out of life. All I knew was that if I continued to play hockey well, I would be famous, and I would be rich. Hockey is the thing that allows me to live the life that I do. It’s who I am. It’s all I have.
Now, Anna, she doesn’t have to use her tennis talent to make it to the top. She has other skills. She can stun a crowd into silence just by walking through the room; she could ever since she was 15. And that is what propelled her into the spotlight. Tennis is, let’s face facts, a sport where the women don’t have much going for them in terms of looks. When Anna walked onto the court, all of a sudden people had a new reason to watch, and you could see the promoters’ eyes light up as they began to calculate returns. She’s learned that she can use her looks to get wherever she wants to be, and that she doesn’t need the sport. With the fame her looks have given her, she can basically do whatever the fuck she wants.
Or whoever the fuck she wants.
I don’t understand who she is? Ha. I know only too well. What she meant to add to her little list was that I didn’t understand the person she had, in her own twisted version of the world, created herself to be.
The third reason she delivered to me during her lovely little presentation, looking as solemn as a schoolgirl delivering a book report, was that we never spend time together. This is another one of those times where I am sure I must have looked at her like she was five years old. My God, can she really be that naïve? Does she have absolutely no clue what’s involved in playing professional hockey? What with being with me, and at times with Pavel, you’d think she’d understand at least a little of the life by now. With our schedule, I barely have time to sleep, much less go out and party, and that’s just the regular season. When you’re on a team like the Wings, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be in the playoffs. Then a whole three months off, and then back to training camp. When exactly was I supposed to go shopping with her, and be seen at public events with her, and escort her to party after party full of those plastic people swarming out of every filthy corner of the Valley? And it’s not like she has absolutely nothing to do. What with the photo shoots and music videos and appearances, I don’t know where she put all this supposed “free time” she was demanding from me. Oh yeah, and all the time she puts into her tennis career and tournaments. Can’t forget that.
All right, I’m bitter. So what? I think I have a right to be.
I really did care for her, you know.
I know what everyone was saying about us. We made sense as a couple, they all said, but at the same time they laughed. Laughed as they talked about how much older I am compared to her. I heard all the talk about me “robbing the cradle.” I heard about how we used each other to further our time in the spotlight. About how I used her for sex. I heard it all. And not just from snotty media “personalities,” ha, what a joke that term is. Those people haven’t got souls, much less personalities. It wasn’t just from the general public, either. I heard the cruel and snickering remarks from my own locker room.
I guess it hurt so much because there was an element of truth in what they said. I am older then she is. Eleven years, in fact. That’s not really a lot, when you think about it. I suppose it’s because we spent our time together in the spotlight that got everyone so upset. Maybe we seemed a little too happy.
Were we happy? It’s hard to say. She seemed like she was happy. We didn’t argue very much, she seemed satisfied with how things were going. I know I was happy. It wasn’t just the sex, though that would have been enough. Sex with Anna was incredible. You couldn’t ask for a more flawless body, a more beautiful frame. Night after night I would hold her in my arms, her silky skin rubbing against mine like soft fire, and marvel at how easily she ensnared my senses. All the experience I’ve gained with women was useless with Anna. With her, I was powerless every time our bodies touched. And all she had to do was look at me, her eyes wide and burning, and her gaze held me prisoner. I would literally tremble, desperate for release but unable to gain it as she slowly ground and undulated against me. Such sweet torture. After she came, ah God, so beautiful in her peak, she’d press even more tightly against me. Her cool breasts, with nipples like pieces of flint, would slide against my chest. Her thighs would hug my hips as she whispered one word in my ear. “Sergei.” Immediately the floodgates would open, and pleasure would rip forth from every pore of my body. The magic word.
With Anna, sex was more than a physical act. It elevated my senses to a higher plane of existence.
But despite the cutting comments delivered in bullshit sessions in locker rooms across the country, it wasn’t just the sex that kept me by her side. And it wasn’t the money, or the spotlight. It was what she brought to my life by just being there.
Fuck. This is hard to explain. Maybe another shot would help.
OK. I heard this expression somewhere, I dunno, it sounds like maybe from a kid or something. But it works perfectly here, so if you laugh I’ll fucking kill you.
It was like having a rainbow in a jar.
She shone so brightly, so beautifully, that it lit up my life with an inner fire. She sparkled, and I glowed in her presence. It didn’t really matter that I could never really touch her; could never feel the tangible reality. Having her by my side was happiness in itself. We didn’t need anything to talk about, we didn’t really need to do anything; it was enough that she was there. We appeared in life as we appeared in a picture: beautiful, smiling, happy, perfect. It was enough.
Enough for me, anyway.
There’s one thing I forgot to tell you about what fame can do. I said that it can make you hollow, a fake and smiling shell.
I forgot to tell you that it can make you lonely.
Sometimes it seems like I’ve been lonely for my whole life. I’ve very rarely been alone, but I’ve always been lonely.
You see, people can be very fond of the pretty pictures they own. They can care for them very much, consider them among their most precious possessions. But what do they do with them? They encase them in frames of wood and glass, and hang them up on a wall. They can look at them anytime they want, but they remain safely out of reach.
When I was with Anna, someone else was in that picture with me. Sure, the two of us made a pretty picture, almost real… but not quite. There was something that just didn’t ring true, but her presence filled a part of the shell that’s slowly beginning to take me over. For awhile, I pushed away the lingering loneliness, the feeling that she really wasn’t there at all, and wrapped myself up in joy. What we had wasn’t love, but it was something. It was enough.
For me.
I understand now that it wasn’t enough for her. I need to keep remembering that.
The fourth and final reason on her list, the last one she gave before she left, was that what we had together wasn’t stable. She said it had been great, dating Pavel, dating me. That one stung. As if the on and off flings she had with Bure could even stand next to what we had. But, she told me, lifting her chin and fixing me with a hard stare, our relationship was too impermanent. She needed something, someone more concrete. She said that two celebrities didn’t belong together in the long term; that relationships between two famous people never lasted. She said she wanted someone she could count on. Someone who was stable.
I sat there silently as she finished her list. I looked down at the floor as my outraged mind took in all that was trite and profound in her words. I still don’t really know what she expected to hear. Was it all a sort of reverse psychology? Was she fishing for me to beg her to stay? Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I knew that I could never make her truly happy. I knew she would never make me truly happy, either. There comes a point where a rainbow must fade. I knew that if I kept this one with me, she would dwindle over time into nothing but an annoyance; someone I’d eventually have to divorce and send payments to for the rest of my life.
So, yeah. I guess deep down I knew that our picture wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later the shot would be overexposed, and then it would fade away. I expected that we would break up. I just didn’t expect her to do it. Or that she would do it so soon. I thought that I might have more time to enjoy the light that had come into my life. I thought that I could go a little while longer until loneliness completely swept me under again.
I stayed silent until I heard the click of the door she pulled shut behind her.
I suppose that if she had gone on to date someone, well, ordinary, someone who didn’t belong under glass and hung up on a wall, I would have been OK. If she had started seeing someone who would give her the permanence and stability she said that she wanted, I would have understood. I would have been jealous, but I would have understood.
But my God. Look who she chose. Enrique. A fucking POP star, oh yeah, that’s stable. The majority of people who become famous in the music industry are the most unreliable, self-important, ignorant, undeserving rich assholes on the planet. She’s looking for permanence and she chooses a man who’ll brush her aside when the next model walks in to audition for his video.
Oh, she wants stability. Fuck that. Fuck that little bitch. What she wanted was another type of picture to stand in, a different shot from a different angle. The same smile on a different face. She wanted someone rich, beautiful and famous, but who wouldn’t outshine her on SportsCenter, that’s what she wanted. She wanted someone who could whisper in a different accent and who could promise a different circle of associates. The fucking bitch. Can’t fucking make it in the sports world so she leeches off of me, someone who can actually go the distance and be the best, until she finds some generic Latin singer who will sing to her, and overexpose her in his videos. Some no-talent pussy who will call her “baby” on national television and tell her what a great and talented tennis player she is until she finally opens her legs so he can fuck her.
Sometimes I think I’m not a very nice person. Sometimes I know I’m not.
You want to know something funny? The rest of the guys in that locker room, they don’t think I give a damn that she left. Oh, they figure I’m pissed because my perfect picture got ruined. They laugh when they think I’m not listening and say how much it must suck to be me, having lost such a nice piece of ass. But they think I just shrug my shoulders, and replace her without really thinking about it. Because, of course, all she really was to me was high-profile arm candy. My posing partner.
I guess they think that I have no feelings at all.
I know that living this life can make a person an empty shell of a human being, a shell that holds nothing but champagne and false promises and flashes of camera bulbs. No one knows that better than I do. But goddamn it, that’s not who I am! Not now, not yet! Yes, that smiling man in all of those pictures of yours is a version of me, fuck, sometimes he seems more me than I am. And he scares the hell out of me.
But I DID care for her. She is a bright, beautiful picture of a woman but she is also real. And even though in all our time together I never really got more than a glimpse of that reality, I still felt it near me. When she was here I wasn’t completely lonely.
I’m tired of being lonely. I’m tired of being framed in heavy oak and smothered with glass. I’m tired of being hung up on someone’s wall. I’m tired of being seen but not touched.
I don’t want to be a shell. I don’t want to be a picture of the things people expect me to be.
I want to be real.
***
