Belief, Sickness, Football, & Self Publishing My Novel

There was a moment this past weekend when I did not believe. I did not believe because I was face down in a toilet bowl getting railroaded by a stomach bug. I thought it would never end. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t believe I was ever going to get better. Truly, in my bones, I thought it would never end.

This is a new irrational fear I’ve discovered. It is probably due to age and responsibilities. When you are sick and incapacitated enough that you can’t even take care of your own children, the thought of mortality begins to set in. Luckily my wife has the immune system (and looks) of a Greek Goddess and was able to fight off any illness to take care of her three children (2 little ones and me).

I am better now. I wouldn’t wish this bug on my worst enemy. If you haven’t heard the term “shuke” before then I’ll let you intuit what the meaning is. My belief has returned. The belief that I will be okay, that I will be able to take care of my children, that I will live to see another day. Through this little harrowing experience, as well as Notre Dame’s latest win over the Georgia Bulldogs, I have been thinking about belief. What it does, how it’s formed, and what it means.

Let’s start with Notre Dame…

Three years ago Brian Kelly, that fucking scumbag rat piece of human garbage low life shit for brains assfuck, left Notre Dame for “greener” pastures. At the end of the 21’ season, before Notre Dame was passed over for the college football playoffs, Kelly decided to leave the University after a fairly successful 11 year run. 113-40 aint’ so bad a record and Notre Dame had a couple big wins in that span of time. But they never won any REALLY BIG games. Kelly felt, or rather, BELIEVED that Notre Dame could never win the big game. He felt that because Notre Dame is a school that cares about grades meant that Notre Dame couldn’t get the recruits that big schools in the SEC could. The SEC schools don’t give a flying fuck about academics which turns out to be a winning strategy when you are trying to recruit football players who have been gifted with insane talent and size but zero brain cells. Kelly believed Notre Dame could never compete at the highest levels and this belief trickled down through to his players and, ultimately, the fans. There was a period where I too believed that Notre Dame could not compete with the big boys because the sacred University would never drop it’s academic standards.

Would you believe in this guy?

Enter coach Marcus Freeman.

First of all, this guy just exudes cool. Yes, it’s partly because he’s young and black, but also because he is a guy who has supreme confidence. He is a guy with supreme belief in himself.

Uh oh, Alex has a man crush…

And can you imagine where that belief extends to? His players. Every player on this Notre Dame team believes they can win any game. Even after losing to NIU earlier in the year this team has not stopped believing. The win against Georgia is one Notre Dame losses 100/100 times because they never believed they could beat an SEC team. That’s because their previous coach didn’t believe they could either. But Freeman believes, and through that belief, Notre Dame Football has a new outlook on the years ahead.

Looking back on my football playing days, it is now clear how much belief played a part in not only my success but every team I’ve been on’s success. (I have no idea if on’s is grammatically correct, nor do I care).

There are two examples that live rent free in my head.

The first example is of unbelief. My high school football coach, who I won’t name, was a fun guy. I liked him as a person. But a good football coach? Not at all. Our coach was more interested in us winning the off-season weightlifting competition than actually dialing up plays that would work against opponents. Every time a play call was run in from the sidelines you could almost feel the eyes roll in the huddle. He’s calling that? Now? There were times when our quarterback my senior year, Chris Chiarelli (a sophomore with a huge set of balls), would have to call a completely different play. Those plays usually worked because we believed in Chi. But our coach? We simply did not believe in him.

This all culminated in one of the worst coaching calls in high school football history.

I went to Colts Neck High School, though I grew up in Howell. Howell is a massive town in Monmouth County, New Jersey that has its kids split up into three different high schools. A few go to Freehold Township, about a quarter go to Colts Neck, and the remainder go to Howell High School. Luckily for Colts Neck’s football program, the 25% that attended were made up of pretty solid football players. Otherwise, Colts Neck most likely would have never won a football game in its existence. Colts Neck is a rich town where 45% of its inhabitants make over 200k a year. Not necessarily a recipe for creating high caliber football players.

I had grown up playing Howell football. A totally different beast. We were always good. We had a wealth of talent. We played hard, fast, and physical. Howell, along with Jackson, was a football factory growing up. The Colts Neck kids called us Howell-abamans. We were the red neck to their white collar. Granted anything less than 200k a year was red neck to these blue bloods.

The stars would align and in the first round of the playoffs my senior year, it was Colts Neck vs. Howell. It was a chance to beat the kids I grew up playing with. They were all very good. They beat us earlier in the season. They were undefeated. They ran the fucking spread offense in HIGH SCHOOL and were lead by my friend and Pop Warner quarterback Timmy Lamirande. This kid was the Johnny Manziel of New Jersey Group 4 Football. He would make defenders miss and throw dimes like you read about. We had our work cut out for us.

The game was close. It was back and forth. It came down to the fourth quarter. 27-21 Howell was up. We were driving to go up. We got down to the goal line. Fourth down. Three yards away from immortality. Three yards away from bragging rights. Three yards away from continuing our playoff run to a state championship. So what does our numb nuts coach call?

A half back toss pass.

Keep in mind our running back, who goes by the name of Ashton Jackson (how can you not be elite with that name?), is first team All-Shore. He can get us three yards. If anything, I am the backup running back and I am KNOWN for getting three yards a pop. Give me the ball and I can get you three, I promise.

Nope.

Half back toss pass from the three yard line. When that play was called in the huddle you could have seen the loss on everyone’s face. No one believed it would work. To put a cherry on top of this banana-land call, I am put in at tight end. My goal here is to run across the field towards where Ashton will be getting the toss and I should catch an easy touchdown pass. But…we are playing against kids I GREW UP PLAYING WITH! They’ve never seen my skinny ass in a three point stance in their life. I’ve never played a single down on the line in my 15 years of playing football. So what do they do? They all yell out “Muka’s in a three point stance, watch Muka, watch Muka!”

The play failed. We lost.

Now to the belief.

My best friend Sean’s dad, Big Sean, who I’ve written about here (The Fighting Irish) was the best football coach I ever had. He knows football better than anyone can know any subject. He eats, breathes, and lives football. There isn’t a scheme or play he doesn’t know. Him, and Sean’s uncle Coach Pat, were our Jr. Pee Wee coaches. To say I was given a plethora of football knowledge at a young age is an understatement.

Let’s set the stage…

We are playing Long Branch. We are down 20-0 in the first 10 minutes. Everyone is dejected. We’ve never been down like this. We were the bullies, we never got bullied. But there we were, getting the brakes beat off us. But Coach Sean and Coach Pat don’t let us get down. They methodically and meticulously call a game to get us back within striking distance. By the 4^th quarter it’s 20-15. There’s a minute left on the clock. And Coach Sean calls a half back toss pass. The SAME play our high school coach called. Keep in mind we are 10 years old. For the uninitiated, we should not be able to pull of such a play. We are too young, too slow, too stupid to pull it off. Our high school team couldn’t pull it off. But lo and behold, we believed. Coach Sean would never steer us wrong. If he called a play we know it’s going to work. And work it did.

I get the toss, drop back to pass, Sean is streaking towards the end zone. Ball perfectly placed.

Touchdown.

Belief is a wild thing.

So this whole diatribe on belief, of course, comes back to me. Maybe writers are just narcissists. I certainly am. Or, maybe, they are filled with a belief that they have something to say.

Over the past ten years I’ve written three books, but I can’t get passed this one. The one this Substack is named after. Hell or Hangover. I have to publish it. I have to get it out there. I’ve probably read it, edited it, and read it again over 200 hundred times at this point. I still like it. I still think it’s good. I still think that it represents the 2010’s more so than any other book I’ve ever read. It’s been rejected by hundreds of agents but I won’t let it die. There’s only one option left…self-publishing.

I guess, by self publishing, I am putting my taste on the line. I guess that’s what any writer does really. They think their book is good and if their taste is good, other people will agree. We’ll have to see if my taste is up to par or not. That’s for other people to decide. What I’ve decided is this book is worth getting out there whether anyone else believes it (literary agents, mainly) or not. Maybe they are right. Or maybe they are stuck in a game of trying to, you know, keep their jobs and have to really think about what publishers will actually publish so that they can get paid. I do not dislike literary agents. They should be crucial in taste making but, more importantly, they have bills and children and lives to pay for. In that regard, they are beholden to publishers who are intent on schlepping shitty books for profit. This is the nature of the game. I am deciding not to play it. I am deciding to do it myself and put my money where my mouth is because…

I believe my novel is good enough.

I’ll be posting here and everywhere I can when the book is ready. The goal is to have it published in April or May.

Fuck it.

I believe.

P.S. – Go Irish.

P.P.S. - If you are interested in the novel, here is the gist…

Lou Kennedy wants out. Though he doesn’t admit this to anyone, and barely admits it to himself, there has to be a reason to stop the debauchery of his current life, he just hasn’t found it yet. That is until a drunken night out in New York City leads him to Marissa, the girl who just might inspire him to clean up his act. She’s a Spanish spark unlike any woman he’s ever met. But there’s a problem. At some point late in the night Lou’s bad habits get the better of him. He blacks out and wakes up in his ex-girlfriend’s bed with no recollection of how he got there and no evidence Marissa ever existed. No phone number. No photos. After furious online searching he can’t even find an Instagram handle.

Desperate, irrational, and questioning if the Marissa he met is real, Lou seeks out his mother’s Babalawo (a Santeria priestess) who says he has five days to find Marissa or he will lose her forever. In a bibulous jaunt through the streets of Hoboken and Manhattan, where family, friends, addiction, old flames, the spiritual, and the superstitious all play a part in hunting down the beautiful apparition that just might change Lou’s life forever, he faces a choice - find Marissa or succumb to a life of depravity, enroute to the brink of insanity.