Last Night I Got Into a Fight at a Sporting Event

and other deep thoughts about bad people

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain, and I love it so much that I am listening whenever possible—for five minutes when I’m getting dressed, for half an hour when I wake up in the middle of the night, whenever I’m alone, really. It is so good and so horrifying and it is making me see the world through—-what’s the opposite of rose-colored glasses? Toxic glasses.

Last night, my nine year old and I went on a much much much anticipated trip to the Barclays Center to see his beloved Atlanta Hawks play the Brooklyn Nets. I’m sure the Nets are fine but I just don’t know anything about them. I bought the most expensive tickets I’ve ever bought for anything, really, because they were just a few rows back from the visitors’ bench, which meant that we could watch our sweet boys (the players are all so young, they look like teenagers to me) up close for the entire game. A THRILL.

This player is nicknamed G. Wagon (We looked it up) and now he’s out new favorite. Thanks for signing his hat, Georges!

Here’s what I noticed, sitting in the good seats: 1. Everyone who works there is so, so nice. We walked in as soon as the doors opened, and the guard closest to our row told us where we might be able to get things signed, and then we made friends with the man who runs the shot clock, and he walked Miles onto the court. (Shout out to James and Gary, two guys who clearly get a kick out of making children's dreams come true, absolute legends.) 2. The people who sit in the actual front row at sporting events all pose for picture, their arms slung around each other, and every single middle-aged man in every single one of these groups looked like he was about to go to jail for insider trading or embezzlement. Every. Single. One. I felt like I was on the boat on the White Lotus. Which brings me to my fight.

Love you, Gary.

There were two families sitting directly behind us, two boys about my son’s age and their parents. The boys were named Joseph and Aidan, because of course they were, and the parents that I could see, Joseph’s parents, were what I would describe as Long Island Kardashian chic. The mother had long, dyed black hair and a face that had been bestowed upon her by a series of professionals. The father never spoke, never looked up from his phone, and had the greased-back hair of a 1980’s stockbroker, but, you know, Long Island. The child, Joseph, was a monster, because of course he was.

Here is what Joseph did, throughout the entire game: he shouted SCREW YOU, HAWKS, at top volume, and directly in my ear. He shouted YOU SUCK, HAWKS, which I do think it slightly better than SCREW YOU, HAWKS. This child was, at most, nine years old. He gripped the back of my son’s seat and rocked himself back and forth like he was on some sort of ride that he had to propel with his own body weight.

At one point, I asked Joseph to take his hands off the back of my son’s seat. He did. A few minutes later, he made what I can only describe as a gesture that one of Keifer Sutherland’s goons would have made in Stand By Me, a sort of loogie-hocking-zero face, while hanging his body over the back of my son’s seat, and I asked him not to. Joseph looked aghast, as did his mother. She said, he wasn’t going to do anything. This is a sporting event. And I said, yes, it is. She told me to address her with any future concerns, and I said that I would. This is the closest that I have ever come to shouting at someone in public. I am sure that this woman shouts at people in public on a daily basis. I can see her now, road rage-heavy, on the Long Island Expressway. But then I thought, I bet this lady owns a gun! And then I started thinking about the embezzlement dads and her husband, who is not yet at that level but certainly aspires to be, and I thought about Joseph’s doomed life, and my son’s beautiful love for this team that was losing the game and we got ice cream and ignored them.

Anyway, Empire of Pain is really good, and you should read it. Go Hawks.