Three Kinds of Cheese

This piece of found poetry was created from an essay by Ellen Etchingham.

There is a fundamental sameness

the apparent makings of good advertising

It’s big, it’s loud, and it’s on

the shiniest available object

one glob of formless, pointless bluster

just One Great Meta-Product

the One God of the Israelites

the One Ring to Rule them All

Likewise, every player I’ve ever seen

one Hockey Player

blondish and muscleyish

vague, unfocused expression

he’s not entirely sure where he is

low monosyllables

dragging ummmmmm

a laugh that isn’t really a laugh

He always says the same things

What’s your favorite pre-game meal?

Chicken and pasta

It’s always just “chicken and pasta”

Never penne alla arrabiata with sliced herb-marinated chicken breast

or roast chicken legs on a bed of spinach linguine

or even Kraft Dinner and buffalo wings

just “chicken and pasta”

dude just boiled a pound of spaghetti and slapped a slab
of boneless skinless on it

called that dinner.

last Saturday

I saw something on a Jumbotron

a challenge:

guess how many types of cheese a Toronto Marlies player can name.

The fan suggested five.

Then cut to Hockey Player naming cheeses.

He said one quickly, I couldn’t hear which,

Cheddar and Swiss,

and then just stopped.

At three.

Three kinds of cheese.

Everyone can name more than three kinds of cheese

most people have more than three kinds of cheese
in their house right now.

This continent has six fundamental kinds of cheese:

cheese on pizza

cheese in plastic wrap

cheese with ham

cheese on tacos

cheese on pasta

cheese on bagels

not fancy, high-falootin’ cheeses

aged in the dank bottoms of Swiss caves

You don’t have to be uppity to have the basic six-cheese-consciousness

Yet here is an adult human being

who made nigh on a million dollars last year

and lives most of his life
in the largest, uppitiest, cheese-filled-est city in Canada

and his awareness of the food ends

with Cheddar.

“Three kinds of cheese”

the best possible shorthand

for the professional hockey lifestyle:

really, really boring.

Boring for a reason.

For us, things like “dinner” are pleasurable occasions

fulfill our animal need for sustenance

explore a variety of social and sensory experiences

For hockey players

“dinner” is not about silly things like “pleasure” or “food”

It’s pumping fuel for hockey through your mouth hole
as efficiently as humanly possible.

Why doesn’t Hockey Player eat cheese?

Because cheese is food,

not hockey fuel.

Hockey itself is unbelievably intense and dramatic

the off-hours lifestyle is dull, rote, and repetitive

His game day routine

it’s not that different from the average day

of a heavily medicated, institutionalized psychiatric patient.

Think about the houses

so-and-so invites the cameras into his palatial estate to show it off

sometimes you get guy with a ritzy condo downtown

sometimes you get family dude with a mass of children
who all seem to be the exact same age

playing on stained beige carpeting

mostly you get blondish muscleyish dude

guiding you through an enormous building

that he appears never to have been in before

a really nice enormous building

clearly there have been decorators

a tour of a model home from an extremely disinterested trainee realtor

enthusiastic host desperately trying to get Hockey Player

to express some enthusiasm

Sometimes they get it,

usually for the room with the video games in it.

That’s what hockey players do in their houses

They sleep and play video games and eat chicken and pasta

then they get on an airplane and go to a hotel

they sleep and watch CSI and eat chicken and pasta

then they get on another airplane and go to another hotel

they sleep and watch CSI Miami and eat chicken and pasta

then they go home

do the whole thing over again

a desperate attempt to keep up these dull routines

in an endless succession of generic non-places

in airports and on airplanes

in hotels and hotel restaurants

in the private hotel that is, technically, his house

The routine is necessary

absolutely peak physical efficiency

always

consistent inputs

regular, predictable, optimal fueling

regular, predictable, optimal sleep

regular, predictable, optimal exercise

constant travel

injuries great and small

illness, exhaustion, stress, anxiety

it takes every ounce of boringness a man can muster

to preserve physical and mental stability

waiting and preparation

rest and recovery

more waiting.

Some players

do interesting things

photography

wearing clothes

a band

a really cool dog

Paul Bissonnette

But how much evidence do you ever see that hockey players

live anything even remotely resembling a superstar lifestyle?

Millionaire or no, celebrity or no,

there’s only so drunk a human being can get

It ain’t any better for Mike Richards

than it is for you

We assume hockey player lives are amazing

because we assume that they get to stick their penises into lots of people.

But there is only a tiny fraction of one’s life

that can be spent with your penis inside other people,

given that one has to wear clothes

and play hockey.

Maybe, once upon a time,

it was possible to play hockey and live like a rock star

Most of that is gone now,

gone with intermission cigarettes and huge steak dinners

gone with the WHA and the bench-clearing brawl

An ever more disciplined game

demands ever more disciplined players

I don’t doubt that there’s drugs and debauchery

somewhere beneath the bland surfaces.

I do doubt that it is so much or so exciting as we imagine

It has to happen in the interstices of the season,

those few precious days when there’s no routine to hold,

no coach commanding a dry island

or checking your key card

The rest of the days pass in repetition,

each much the same as the others,

on airplanes and in hotel rooms,

eating chicken and pasta

and only three kinds of cheese.