I woke up punching my headboard. It was at that point I knew it was going to be a good day.

My wife and three young daughters were already awake, downstairs. I heard them clinking around in the kitchen, readying for the day. The sun was free, pouring in through the composite Venetian horsebone blinds (from an original 16th century Venetian warhorse, whose bones we purchased on the deep web) onto our merino wool-backed, 22 karat goal-threaded Charlotte Thomas Bespoke bed sheets. My wife once told me there are people in this world who sleep atop less than 1,000 thread-count sheets. My incredulity stretched like my stomach after a Wagyu beef truffle-and-diamond burger from Serendipity 3 on East 60th. I still have trouble digesting both.

I flipped off the bed and strutted to our 1,500-square foot closet, my legs kicking out from the knee like a goose-stepping Nazi. My morning routine. I flung open the jewel-encrusted sliding doors, revealing smooth fabric hanging limp from identical rose gold hangars and stretching into the mists of time. I cleared the gathered sleep from the corners of my eyes to see the glory itself: 67 identical light blue adidas track jackets, paired with 67 identical light blue adidas track pants.

The way the white stripes lined up made me smash apart the sliding doors. Today was going to be a good day.



I pulled on my outfit for the day and bounded down our dual staircase inlaid with ivory from the tusks of grieving elephants and the specific fragments from a rare Bengal tiger’s brain that process fear. I strutted into the kitchen to find my wife and daughters discussing Wilde.

“But mummy, I do so think Dorian Gray was not damned, as you say. His soul was beautiful, in that wretched way a tree twists round something manmade, like a fence, or a headstone.”

My eldest. So cute.

“Ah yes,” I chimed in, goose-stepping to the kitchen’s island, where the family had gathered, “but does Gray not ultimately find himself…” I paused here, a lip-curled smile creasing my face, “hewing his very life from itself? As a,” and I paused here, again, a small squeak escaping my pursed lips “duckling finds itself tottering alone, apart from its mother?”

The guffaws and chuckles at this warmed my soul. I smashed apart our $50,000 Fletcher Capstan Table as I laughed.

I had my typical breakfast of lemon-squeezed oysters and caviar from Thomas Keller, our personal chef who we keep chained in the basement, before bidding my family adieu with a kiss on the cheek and a blood-curdling scream into an empty bowl. I arrived at the Amtrak station just in time to step aboard the first class cabin, where Geeves, my Saturday morning traveling companion whom I pay several thousand dollars to tell me Roman Empire-era jokes, awaited. The calming clack-clack-clack of the wheel on the rail whisked me south to my destiny.

My track jacket radiated strength. Today was already a good day.

When I arrived in Newark, that most chummy of everyman cities, the sun had already begun its descent to the horizon’s madness. I goose-stepped – ah my familiar goose-step, how it distinguishes and disgusts – to Bello’s, its familiar light red brick welcoming me as the dawn welcomes a weary traveler. I could see patches of light blue fabric spilling from the door, the beer and riposte flowing in equal measure. A man who I knew to be named ‘Jerry’ was yelling, “I am Pirlo! See my feet make blinding these days upon your discontent! Woe betide the moose who seeks to quell these feverish long passes! Ha ha! Charade!”

New York City Football Club fans. My people. We are, to a man, the picture of class. I believe it was at that point that I put a sandwich board through a grown man’s femur.

There were red shirts in this place, we had heard, those Marxist bastards who had so long played soccer in these suburbs and so long chased failure with so much gusto. When I heard on my personal radio (TV is so gauche) their newest rivals had purchased Pirlo – had I not been to his vineyard just months past? – I knew I had been a fan the breadth of my life. It didn’t matter how long NYCFC had existed, in actuality. Its bonds wound their way around my soul when I was born. I knew very little about the team – I still do! Until the day before our fracas I was entirely certain I was supporting a bocce ball club – but this Pirlo is a demigod to our people. And so we goose-step for all eternity, following a beard and a vine.

More importantly, I took a ceramic beer mug from a nearby table and fashioned a shiv from its handle to threaten one of the Marxist’s lives.

I am uncertain how the fight outside Bello’s began, as I was in the bathroom. When I emerged, blinking hard into the sunlight, Jerry and a man unknown to me were shouting stirring words to the Marxists, their faces twisted like a lightning-gnarled piece of bark. I shall attempt to relay the exchange in its purest form here.

“Bully for you, ye brigands!” Jerry snorted. “We shall tie you to a railroad and watch our steam-powered locomotives pulverize you into non-existence!”

Pleased at this, the NYCFC crowd pounded its fleet of walking sticks into the concrete, “Here heres!” and “Ayes!” escaping from the group. I cannot stress enough the high breeding and class of these longtime NYCFC fans. We have supported this club for so long with so much fervor that – and I cannot pound this point home enough – we would all die for it. For Pirlo and… his chaps. Whoever they may be.

The Marxists yelled something back – I must admit their words sounded much like the teacher in those delightful Charlie Brown cartoons, all wompwompwomp – but by then a man we know only as His Rotundity had already picked up a chair. It was halfway to the communist pigdogs when a fevered cry rose among our ranks, and more projectiles filled the thick afternoon sky.

I blacked out for a time. My berserker rage flooded my brain with blood and endorphins and I allowed the power of the track suit to guide my actions. When I came to, I had a Marxist on the ground by the throat, and I was threatening him with page 137 from Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. Realizing this did little to cause fear to rise within his soul, I promptly smacked him in the face with an open hand, wheeled off his chest and grabbed a table. I threw it on him and joined the braying crowd.

It was at that time, I believe, that the woop-woop of the police sirens threw its noise into the din. Realizing our legend had been cemented for all of time as the heroes of Newark, we opted to remove ourselves from the fracas post haste. As that loveliest and most blindingly authentic of chants settled on the edges of the atmosphere like Saturn’s rings – Who are ya? Who are ya? – we retired to our first class train cabins and then back to our manicured lawns and electrified fences in Connecticut. We later learned there was a sporting contest to follow our fine fight, but who has the time?

Perhaps, one day, when we learn why or who we were fighting, those mysterious truths will imbue us with truth that will follow us into the hereafter. Until that day, we shall continue to destroy things in service of a cause that has been our own for generations. Today had been a good day.