Total Loss Weekend

CJ lives in Yonkers now. The sign on the train station reads Mount Vernon but I know this is Yonkers, a place strong and settled in its facelessness. There is a second level of weather here, subterranean and dangerously mild. I think of Los Angeles, Brasilia and the moon, places known not for their landscapes as much as for their fundamental beings, what they seem to represent.

The large apartment building where CJ lives is only five minutes from the train station (13 minutes from Yonkers Raceway), and after I ring the outer bell, get buzzed into the lobby, take the elevator to four and walk through the long dim hall, he opens the door and leads me into the living room. I notice the TV sets, two of them, both turned on. CJ himself, T-shirted and unshaven, nearing 40, seems the least animate thing in the room right now, not yet having reached his Saturday afternoon glow point. He appears eager enough for the siege of events but, as always in times like this (the beginning of ordeals), his very flesh reflects a pale stain of trepidation and doubt.

CJ is a gambler. He likes to bet on sporting events, almost any kind, and the dark crawling horror of Total Loss Weekend is never very distant. Misgivings and dread. Panic, remorse and deep trauma. A fumbled punt in Knoxville, a missed sign in Oakland, foul trouble in Baltimore, a slow track at Monticello. That is Total Loss Weekend, when it all comes apart at once, and the fragments of many such weekends are standard parts of CJ's life.

The living room is long and narrow. At the far end are the televisions. The larger one is a color set assembled by CJ himself over a period of some five weeks, with parts and materials ordered from a manufacturer in the Midwest. The smaller one is a black-and-white portable that sits on the floor. CJ and I are cousins and as we take our respective places in front of the TV sets we exchange views on disease, poverty and madness in our family. We stick to recent developments and keep it brief. CJ sits in a swivel chair that has been covered in plastic ever since he purchased it. I sit a few feet away on a sofa also equipped with a plastic slipcover and for this reason suggestive of a giant slug deep in slumber. This is appropriate because the humans in the room are also about to enter a kind of sleep. The color set is tuned to the Pirates-Reds in game one of the playoff series, and the smaller model to pregame films of Notre Dame and Michigan State in action against other teams.

The blinds are down. CJ puts on a pair of dark glasses. Then he reaches behind the swivel chair for a portable radio, which he places on his lap. He tunes to Columbia-Princeton and the weekend begins.

GAME TIME 1

"Hi, sports fans, it's Saturday, Oct. 7th and this is Chuck White with Bud Brown alongside me bringing you a daylong sports cavalcade of misery, paranoia, bitterness and defeat."

Sound from these three sources, I learn, deepens the feeling of submersion. TV, radio, TV. It is as though we are listening to tapes of the electrical discharges of some rare species of fish. But CJ needs plenty of action today. He spent the previous evening at Yonkers Raceway and was shut out, dropping nearly $200. One way or another, today's action will obliterate all those miscarried Exactas.

An outfielder pauses under a fly ball as a voice says: "Here are the Spartans of Michigan State." And it's true, they're coming out of the runway, the Spartans of Michigan State, black and white for the moment, none of them aware that the game they are about to play is only part of the true contest, the interior contest, the struggle that takes place within and beyond the limits of the point spread.

CJ is getting 15� points with Michigan State and he has them 20 times. He also has the Reds 20 times. (One "time" equals $5.) As we discuss his other bets for the day, he suddenly switches stations (radio) from Columbia-Princeton (he has Columbia, minus eight points, 20 times) to a simulated broadcast (delayed) of the first race at Belmont (he has $20 on numbers 8-3 in the double), and we listen to the announcer calling the race as if it were taking place now instead of half an hour ago, a practice not meant to fool anyone but designed merely to give bettors a measure of action, and I see the idea justify itself when CJ bounces slightly in the chair as his selection, Izadore, the 8-horse (OTB letter H), finishes first. He will remain in his chair for most of the weekend. But he is engaged in action. He has action. The action is his.