The Pain Of Being Cleveland

In case you aren’t a sports person, the NBA Finals started this past week. They’re a pretty big deal around these parts. No, not in the blessed land of Oakland or San Francisco — wherever the hell the “Golden State” is located. We’re from the opposite side of the country. We Are The Underdogs.

We Are From Cleveland.

My teenage son, a highly educated student of a basketball fan, told me the day of the explosive Game 1 rematch between our LeBron-led Cleveland Cavaliers and the cocksure, history-making Golden State Warriors, that he wasn’t interested in watching The Finals. In fact, he said the whole concept had been ruined for him midway through the season, during that relentless 73–9 run by the Warriors. From his perspective, everything was stacked in favor of Curry, Thompson, Bogut, Green and Igudola. The chatter all season long was about Steve Kerr’s Warriors and how vastly superior they were to any other team on the planet let alone the galaxy. It was evident to him that the NBA, for good reason, was salivating over the Warriors winning it all. It seemed to my untrained ears that announcers during nationally televised NBA games could only talk about Steph Curry regardless of if he was playing in that game or even that night. They were all rubbing their hands together, eagerly waiting for them to top their run with the cherry that is the Larry David Trophy. Or whatever its called. Blah blah blah.

Yeah, yeah. We got it. We’re invisible.

And now here we are on this national stage. It’s Us Vs. Them in the NBA Finals and the very fact that the team opposing these Warriors is from Cleveland is a foregone conclusion that we will simply be rolled over. Our necks stepped on and broken like one of a fragile porcelain doll.

Sounds like a blast.

I was bit incredulous about my sons’ indifference to watching the one good team in Cleveland (putting aside for a moment, the wildly inconsistent Indians) put together their playoff run and try to finally bring some sort of glory to “Believeland”. But I get it. Even if the Cavs are the best team in the East, we are still demoted to being in the “Leastern Conference”. That we are no match for the mighty Warriors. That we are destined to repeat the history that is every native Clevelanders’ birthright. That we are simply losers. And we will always be losers.

This is no secret. At least to anyone who lives here. Even at moments when we feel we are overcoming this vast deficit in self-esteem, even when we bring up something worthwhile happening in this city, there is someone standing right there behind us, like a burly, lettered jock of an older brother, tapping on our shoulder, reminding us about the time the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Along with Mayor Perk’s hair. How the city went in default. And how we are destined to achieve nothing and always be from nowhere.

This is The Pain Of Being Cleveland. And you simply don’t understand that brand of pain unless you are from here.

I can only speak for myself here. But ever since I was in High School, I’ve always felt inferior to everyone else. I could chalk it up to being bullied growing up as an Asian kid in a mostly white grade school, or listening to weird bands on my oversized Sports Walkman or growing my bangs below my chin AND having a rat tail at the same time during my senior year in high school (It was a great look, really). But I honestly think this inferiority complex was attached to my DNA simply for the fact that I was born in Cleveland. It took me a while to notice. It was like realizing that you were the kid at the park who wasn’t quite rich enough to wear the matching Garanimals outfit. Or understanding that your parents were struggling to make ends meet and could only send you to the birthday party with a gift purchased at the local Discount Drug Mart toy aisle. You weren’t quite there. You weren’t fully formed. And everyone secretly (and not so secretly) felt pity for you.

I‘ve met many people who proudly hail from other cities like LA, Boston, Seattle or Dallas and wear that heritage like an invisible badge across their chest. When they find out I’m from Cleveland, they feign interest and try to think about what they know about the city, which only seems to be what they learned from that tourism video from a few years ago. Either that, or it’s LeBron, who they are quick to point out isn’t from Cleveland, but from Akron, which in their mind isn’t any better than Cleveland, anyway. At some point, I just gave up and stopped mentioning it at all.

When the Indians lost in extra innings in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series thanks to Jose Mesa’s blown save (someone who I will forever solely blame that loss on) I fully understood the kind of heartbreak that had explained to me so many times over the years. I had never had something that wasn’t rightfully mine taken from me so quickly and unceremoniously. The pain continued through the night and into the next afternoon. That dull throbbing emptiness of loss. I was on a commercial shoot the next day and Ken, the videographer I was working with, could barely speak to me. We said almost nothing during that shoot and we didn’t need to. We both knew exactly how each other felt. In fact, most of everywhere I went on that cold, rainy post World Series Monday, I was met with broken and defeated people. But more than that, it really wasn’t much of a surprise. This was our lot in life. We were Clevelanders. And we just had to lump it.

In many ways, LeBron’s leaving for the sun-drenched shores of Miami in 2010 mirrored the sentiment of many that in order to do anything worthwhile in your life, you have to get out of that cesspool, dead-end of Cleveland and go elsewhere to realize your dreams. Strangely enough, I took that challenge personally and have worked even harder to make my mark as a professional artist from Cleveland for that very reason. In some weird way, my drive for success is linked to this unconscious (or conscious) idea of trying to be a part of making my hometown proud of something and someone.

Which brings me back to my son and his reluctance to watch Cleveland possibly get smashed to pieces in the NBA Finals, even though we actually are a really good team.

I told my son that he needed to watch these games, even in loss, to really understand what it is to be a Clevelander. As a Clevelander, you have to suffer through all the pain and the anguish. You have to look at the warts and ugliness and the blight otherwise you’ll never fully appreciate the joy when one day, hopefully, the chains will be broken, the cloud lifted and the pain of being from this city is erased.

At least that’s what I hope will happen one day in my lifetime. My worst fear is that nothing will change. That we will always be a victim of this broken, ugly perception and that even if we manage to accomplish the seemingly impossible, that our luck will always remain the same. That is what’s most scary to me. That we, as Clevelanders, have been pre-destined to fail.

If LeBron and The Cavs are actually able to somehow win the NBA Finals and bring home a trophy for the city, I honestly think I would spontaneously burst into tears. And I won’t be the only one. I think you’ll see fully grown Cleveland men and women of all ages and sizes just simply losing it. Because regardless of the great individual successes each one of those people have accomplished in their lives, nothing could match the success of being accepted for who we are and being told, even for one night, that we, as Clevelanders, are rightfully worthy of praise.

In the end, what I really want to see is an opportunity for Cleveland to go from being lovelable losers to just being loved.

I not only hope I get to see it, but I hope I get to share that experience with my son.

Go Cavs.