DAY ONE: one more look at you
A Guide to Eating Very Particular Esport Feelings, LCK Edition
(With apologies to Jess Zimmerman.)
Feeling: That stretch of two or so weeks during the split when your team is doing very well. They have won their third 2–0 match in a row and you are beginning to take it for granted that they will not lose to anybody but the best teams. It is eight in the evening and you’ve just gotten back home from work after commuting in sub-freezing temperatures and you have six hours before their game starts and you wonder if maybe you can skip it. Do you trust them? What does it matter if you trust them? Can your trust buoy them from across land, across ocean, across sky, across rift? And if not, why does it matter if they lose? Why can something so far away sink you, when you cannot hold it up in your hands?
How to Eat It: Ceylon tea, brewed too strong and steeped too long. You burn your tongue on it at first, and you set it aside, thinking I’ll drink it later. Suddenly you are waking back up and it is 2:17 in the morning and champ select is just starting. The tea is cold and black and the same color as the sky outside and you think you can smell it. Then someone locks in Blitzcrank, and you forget all about it.
Feeling: When you are one of the few fans of one of the worst teams in the league, the one that can’t stay in the league for more than one split, who keeps getting promoted and then getting relegated and then climbing back up, and you don’t know how much longer you can take this. You are overworked and sleep-deprived, their games so early in the morning it is late at night, and at some point you have to wonder, is it worth it? Then you remember the one time they won against a top team. How they looked in the postgame interview, their legs swinging from the stools, so young they seemed like students that had wandered accidentally onto the stage from the crowd. They were awkward in front of the camera, because they had won so few times and had no opportunities to get used to being on stage. You saw your face reflected on the computer screen, slack with happiness and relief — a mirror.
How to Eat It: You keep a tray of Halloween candy on your desk at work, the mixed pack that has Reeses and Kit-Kats (which everyone likes) but also Whoopers and Hershey’s (which no one likes). You hold out until late afternoon, then eat two of the broken mini-Hershey’s. The smell is overwhelming, and it tastes so, so sweet. When you go for days without proper sleep, your breath smells sweet. Your body eating itself for energy. Or at least, that’s what you’ve been told.
Feeling: You are very familiar with loving strangers. (Perhaps love makes strangers out of all of us?) Esports is no different. The ex-pro streamer who opens his life to you, who tells you in interviews that it’s been cold lately, please wear gloves, or maybe the boy you’ve watched grow up under the competitive spotlight, who went from the youngest among seasoned players to himself the older brother figure, trying to promise a whole nation victory. Sometimes you believe this is the purest kind of love: no involvement, no control, no ability to affect. They are untouchable to you, from you. Nothing you do could help or curse them. You struggle with helplessness, with this particular perversion of expectation, duty, devotion. And then you see it — someone, on Twitter or in a throwaway Reddit comment, who tells you, “you just want to fuck them.” Your mouth forming the word fuck even though no one says it out loud. Tasting it, the brutal elegance of each sound, compact, one syllable, your tongue clicking, pushing out air, pushing you out. Fuck.
How to Eat It: Pizza from the night before, straight out of the fridge. The crust is impenetrable. You have to tear at it with your hands, your whole mouth dry, for it to give way. Between imperfect circles of pepperoni, the grease has congealed, tiny stalactites, almost uranium yellow. They don’t melt when they hit your lips. There’s a metaphor in that, somewhere.
Feeling: That one when you see your team failing on the largest of stages. There is nothing you can do. Where did it go wrong? You can’t remember. Maybe they don’t make worlds. Maybe they were very close. Maybe they faltered horribly in group stages, one disaster after another, so bright and obvious you wished they never made it after all, so that no one had to watch your pain with you. Or maybe it wasn’t anything that bad, maybe it was a slow suffocation, little series of bad decisions, so that you blinked and suddenly the game was over, their run was over, your time with them was over. Or maybe they are on the last stage, surrounded by fans, and they lose. The spotlight blinding on both teams, so there is no hiding. The way he looked, wild, untamed. Face red in his hands, crying. No less passionate after years of playing. Inconsolable. Like this was the first time he had ever lost. And maybe, in a way, it was.
How to Eat It: A slice of hot chili pepper, raw. So green it pierces your mouth. At first you feel nothing. Then the pain sears through you. It is so intense you can feel nothing else. You know, intellectually, that there will be an after. But for the moment, your whole life is reduced to one thing: you, hands clasped to your heart, eyes closed, and crying.
(This post is part of 12 Days of Esports for 2018.)
