"I will never forget the night that Virginia Tech played against West Virginia on November 20, 2002.
For one, it was a fucking Wednesday. Wednesday! Why? I never really understood that one. Wednesday was a bad night for me. That was the night that my ultra heavy metal band, DeathSpoon, played at The Underground Underground, a sort of concrete bunker underneath the Underground Pub. But in all honesty, the band wasn't doing so well, and I was just a bass player. Bass players are a dime a dozen after all (it isn't that hard to just go bommma bom bom bom bom bom bommma! Da bomma bom bom bom bom bom bomma bomma!) and if they really needed one they could just pick one up from the six or seven bass players who kind of camped out in front of the Mish Mish, just waiting for a van to pull up and offer them some work. Painting, strange bass player sex stuff, even sometimes bass playing, just whatever those guys could get. Just enough to keep the dream of being a real life bass player alive. In any case, I could read the reading on the wall. DeathSpoon would at least go on without me, and perhaps cease to be altogether.
So though it was school night, and I probably had an exam soon to come, and my impending expulsion from the band weighed heavily on mine heart, I decided that a Wednesday night in Lane Stadium (any night in Lane Stadium, really), was worth the cost. So off I went.
I don't remember much of the game. Just that at the half, the Hokies were winning. I am not sure why I decided to leave at half time, aside from maybe the delicious notion that leaving at the half showed my complete contempt for the other team, a real Edward the Longshanks kind of move, retiring with the battle still raging but clearly well in hand. I also think someone in the stands may have thrown up on my shoes, thereby dampening my enthusiasm for the contest.
So I walked back home, which at that time was a townhouse on North Main. It was a long walk, and no doubt a thoughtful one. I suffered with depression on and off through college (as I still do), to the point where at times the only thing I was capable of doing was sitting in bed eating a bag of Krispy Kruellers and reading "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt". Doing anything else was just too hard. I don't think I was there yet on this particular day, but I am sure something was on my mind. I do remember looking in the window of a restaurant, a puddle of light on a dark November night, and seeing a few patrons sitting around a table, some of the few people in Blacksburg who were NOT at the football game. I admired their cool disdain, their lack of concern that not one or two miles distance the mighty Hokies, THEIR mighty Hokies, were engaged in combat against the Barbarians from the Northern Coal Districts. I wished for a moment that I had their confidence and comportment (be it ever so smug), and imagined they were interesting artsy people who wore black turtlenecks and read dead French philosophers. For a brief moment I almost decided to walk in and introduce myself, asking them to take me in like a band of jaded soldiers takes in a stray dog, for the sheer pathos of the thing, the idea that anything could be alive in a world so cold. But the moment passed, and I walked on.
In any case, by the time I got home the third quarter was well underway and Tech was losing. I was upset, but not really all that surprised. We ended up losing that game 18-21. Won't forget that anytime soon.
So yeah. Happy 125, Virginia Tech Football! Wishing you many, many more."
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