It’s 62 degrees and raining: the first real day of fall. It’s the kind of afternoon that reminds me of Cleveland, where I grew up and where I returned to after college. In October of 2004, I moved from the East Side to Lakewood, to the first and only apartment I would ever have all to myself. I painted my secondhand bedroom furniture to match, hosted Thanksgiving, and fell in love with someone who didn’t love me back. I left for Manhattan a year later.
I think of Cleveland, particularly in the melancholy autumn, as a place of struggle and loss and, ultimately, growth. So when The New Yorker staffers were asked on Friday to share our hopes for the 2010 NFL season, my bit on the Browns got a little mushy:
Only a real masochist can return annually to the heartbreak of Cleveland Browns fandom. The first time I saw my dad cry was after The Fumble of the 1988 A.F.C. Championship game—he’s since gone on to buy season tickets, countless jerseys, and, when the old Municipal Stadium was torn down, a row of seats which now sit, dramatically uplit, in his rec room. Every year, he claims to expect nothing from the team, and every year, he’s both affirmed and bitterly disappointed. I plan to spend this Sunday afternoon on a barstool at the Greenwich Street Tavern, home of the Tribeca chapter of the Browns Backers. Like Dad, I have a loyalty that is heavy on defeatism and sourness—which is to say, it’s true.
The Browns lost today, after a great first half and what my brother called “a swagger I haven’t seen in years.” My iPhone tells me it’s sunny in Cleveland right now, but that doesn’t seem right.