MY ROSETTA STONE

"I always let LeBron know. They love you man, they love you right now. But please believe me. The first incident, the first time something happens, they are waiting man. They are waiting."

                         --Allen Iverson

Dear Thierry,

I have so much to say to you. And I wish it were all simple things like, "How do you get your socks to stay up?" "Did I miss anything having never seen you play at Arsenal?" "May I have an autograph?"

But let's be honest, the only signature that interests most writers are their own and I am no different. So, I would probably quote, the above A.I. quote, Allen Iverson's words to LeBron James, to you. I would definitely ask you to read Peau noire, masques blancs and tell me in English what Frantz Fanon is saying because I rarely trust translated works from unfamiliar folks. And that's only the beginning. And after the massive mental stimulation ; I could provide the physical. If you can walk it out, we can work it out because not to toot my own horn, but when it comes to the streets of NYC, TOOT TOOT, I am a sui generis (<--extremely big word) tour guide!  Who else, in the same day, goes from dining with a recovering homeless crackhead (<--must discover PC term for "crackhead") in Marcy Projects to Bergdorf Goodman (only to have the alarm sound at entry--yes, this happened to moi). Please note that the superVirgin Tours involve neither housing projects or department stores :) Shooting and shopping are two of my least favorite things.

So Thierry, there it is, you bring your brilliant command of French and I'll bring my serious collection of Fanon...Césaire...Senghor... And I know all of this sounds wildly fantasy, but in the words of our ancestor Aimé Césaire, "Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.” <--Now, en Francais S'il vous plaît?!
 :)

--superVirgin

BACK THEN

Dear Thierry,

Remember back on June 12, 1998, how it felt when you scored your first international goal against South Africa and Les Bleus won 3-0...Do you remember? Well, when you take on South Africa next year, I hope you find scoring just as exciting 12 years later--if you do, please, do us all a favor and CONTINUE to play, but please, if you don't, don't just do it to just do it.
Afterall, you're no longer contracted to Nike :)
You have solidified your place in history and even though you are my favorite player--the player who inspires
me to walk multiple city blocks and avenues in freezing cold rain (with no umbrella or head covering)just to see you play (haCHOO...yes that was a sneeze), I'd also go the same distance to hear you speak. You have so much to offer the world. Remember, it wasn't your game that sparked my interest--it was your words. And whenever you retire be it tomorrow or 2012--remember that just when the caterpillar thought it was over it became a beautiful butterfly.

--superVirgin

P.S.: Today I watched Roma play Lazio. I must say that if you leave football so will my interest, as I was bored out of my mind watching Roma & Lazio! I try to diversify my footballing portfolio \^-^/

GAME DAY

Dear Thierry,

Sometimes I forget that I'm a girl. When I visit a pub to watch you play my ear becomes a microphone for the 'ish "gents" [English, Scottish, Spanish and yes,even Irish] who say the darndest things i.e. "So where is Getafe located in Spain," or "HENRY,eh,he left us" or "Henry, he's a cute one isn't he?" or "Would you like another?" Sure the latter is simply asking me if I'd like another drink--but because I tend to forget that I'm a girl I initially always feel uncomfortable--especially at the drink offer. I often look at my $5.00 cup of cranberry and lime juice * which is always strategically 3/4 full* and wonder who would accept another drink when they're already holding one?
I abide by a very Native American philosophy, "Don't take more than you need." Today I need :) to watch the game. Where will I watch the game? Now that's a good question.
ALLEZ THIERRY!!!!!!!!!

--superVirgin

P.S. I wonder what would happen if I chewed pieces of hot garlic bread during the game then walked up to random men and put my mouth a centimeter away from their ears and said, "Hey, I heard Messi is from Argentina do you know how long it takes him to fly there from Spain?" ...absolutely nothing. Men.
They'd probably just Twitter "I'm getting hit on..."

DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE

Oozing amazing personality is what's expected of "unattractive" people as compensation for lack of pleasing aesthetics. Personality can be overshadowed by a cute face a nice body a fat wallet and it's only after the lust has gone that we are able to see the pricelessness and rarity of something so simple as a great personality. I work at a gym that brings amazing bodies full of muscles: collagen: sillicone: hair extensions...and sometimes I just look and wonder, I wonder what would happen if people worked on their personality like they do their abs.
But then we live in a microwave society where a short skirt, high heels, new breasts and a firm arse gets one instant gratification in which or whatever way they desire it. And I can't leave men out with their puffed chests, expensive cars, lip-licking,... Thierry Henry is an athlete. He's an attractive athlete. He's a paid athlete. He's a mega-star athlete. Yes. Oui. Si. This is all well and good but what I think about most, when I THINK of Thierry Henry is how after France beat Togo 2:0 in the 2006 World Cup he made his way over to the Togo bench/side wearing Togo shorts and holding a shirt. The man traded away his entire uniform (which perhaps is customary)? But I just remember seeing a sweaty Thierry sit alongside team Togo chatting smiling joking...clearly so far removed from Ego-star-mode that I can barely word it. It was all personality.
That's my fondest Henry image.

*************************************************************
"Here is some advice. As a reader of body language, look past looks. If you look beyond looks, you'll have better employees, better friends, and better marriages."
-- Peter Andersen Ph.D

PLAY BEAUTIFUL

Henry At His Best - For more funny videos, click here

At 31 seconds--look at him dribble backwards. That is my favorite, he is my favorite, Monsieur Henry, you are my favorite! OMG, America, I have a favorite footballer and he doesn't wear a helmet. While all of my international pals are so proud of me ,my friends in the city, well, they, sometimes accompany me to watch games... A friend once said to me, "How is this fun for you when you don't drink?!?" Au contraire mon frere (did I say that right?)
I do drink. I just don't drink alcohol.
Do you know how much water and cranberry & lime cost at a pub/bar?
Too much. I had to diversify my game place portfolio. Sometimes I go to a Mexican spot, sometimes to an Ecuadorean spot (Jackson Heights stand up!) a Senegalese spot, sometimes to a bar but by far my favorite place to watch a game is ESPN Zone. Where else can I drink TEA and watch football? Agh, I know it's so cheesy (like my fries--yum), I know. But I like it there. And as a New Yorker, Times Square is NOT my scene, but if you catch me on the second floor you'll think I live there. Oh to lounge in that center leather recliner with cheese fries (sans bacon) steaming!!!
Giggle :) Can't wait for WORLD CUP!!!!!!

--superVirgin

PLEASE LEAVE AIDS ALONE

I would like to turn my own problem into something good that will reach out to all my homeboys, I want to save their asses before it's too late. I'm not looking to blame anyone except myself. --Eazy E (September 7, 1963 – March 26, 1995)


Well, I'm convinced that the boys in the hood would be a lot less hard if they juxtaposed condoms and diapers inside stores. So what does this post have to do with Thierry Henry?
I don't think he's a virgin so I suppose anyone gettin' in, on or whatever colloquialism sex goes under these days could use a reminder that AIDS has not gone away. If you can't get your Lenny Kravitz on (he's been celibate [as in NO SEX] now for 3 YEARS--and he's Lenny Kravitz)--actually, there's no one who can't abstain--there are just those who won't. I learned once from a cute little old lady at a nursing home that something you do at age 18 can stay with you forever. In the case of the cute little 80-year-old-lady , well, one day she wasn't feeling well enough to come out and play (activities) because her HERPES was "acting up."
AIDS. When AIDS acts up--you're going OUT. HIV, sure, you can live with that, right? But why? Who wants to live off of a cocktail of medication? My friend's grandmother has been doing that for 10 years and she's decided to stop. So guess what...
Yeah.
I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to get you to think.
In parting I'll leave you with words from Pete Rock ft. dead prez's song "Warzone."

Get your groove on, get your yak on
If your game tight, playa, get your mack on
Get your thug on, get your buzz on
But don't forget we livin' in a warzone*

STAND UP SPEAK UP

Dear Thierry,

I'm sure you didn't make the Million Man March (1995) , perhaps you don't even know what it is/was. As a woman I wasn't invited:) But I have read the transcript of a very important speech given during the march.

And there were words spoken there that pertains to you. And because you are my brother (despite the fact that you don't even know that I exist) I want to give you these words spoken by Minister Louis Farrakhan, knowing that if it's meant for you to receive them you indeed will. Mashallah.

"Black folk that got talent, they all grow up in the "hood." When we first sing, we sing in these old raunchy night clubs in the "hood."
When we play sandlot ball, we play it in the "hood." But when you spot us, you draw us out. You say "that Negro can run. Look at how high he jumps." So you give us a scholarship to your university. But the blacks who are in college, who play basketball for you, who play football for you, who run track for you, you disallow them to get involved with black students and the suffering of black students on all white campuses. You hide them away. Give them privileges. Then they find themselves with your daughter.
Then you take them into the NBA, the NFL, and they become megastars. Or in the entertainment field and when they become megastars, their association is no longer black. They may not have a black manager, a black agent, a black accountant. They meet in parties, in posh neighborhoods that black folk don't come into. So their association becomes white women, white men, and association breeds assimilation. And if you have a slave mentality, you feel you have arrived now because you can jump over cars, running in airports, playing in films.
I'm not degrading, my brother, I love him [O.J. Simpson]. But he was drawn out. He didn't sell out, he was drawn out. Michael Jackson is drawn out. Most of our top stars are drawn out. And then, when you get them, you imprison them with fear and distrust. You don't want them to speak out on the issues that are political, that are social. They must shut their mouths or you threaten to take away their fame, take away their fortune because you're sick. And the president is not gonna point this out. He's trying to get well. But he's a physician that can't heal himself.
I'm almost finished. White supremacy has poisoned the bloodstream of religion, education, politics, jurisprudence, economics, social ethics and morality.
FARRAKHAN: And there is no way that we can integrate into white supremacy and hold our dignity as human being because if we integrate into that, we become subservient to that. And to become subservient to that is to make the slave master comfortable with his slave. So, we got to come out of her my people. Come out of a system and a world that is built on the wrong idea. An idea that never can create a perfect union with God.
The false idea of white supremacy prevents anyone from becoming one with God. White people have to come out of that idea, which has poisoned them into a false attitude of superiority based on the color of their skins. The doctrine of white supremacy disallows whites to grow to their full potential. It forces White people to see themselves as the law or above the law. And that's why Furhman could say that he is like a god. See, he thinks like that, but that idea is pervasive in police departments across the country. And it's getting worse and not better because white supremacy is not being challenged."

A VIRGIN AND A FOOTBALLER: How America's Top Saver "discovered" France's Top Scorer

Taken from my memoir--A Million Big Pieces (aaaah, just kidding) This isn't a memoir; this is a true story!


Who scored? I didn't know. Who scored. I didn't care.The team wearing the yellow shirts, like the yellow shirt I was wearing didn't score and they didn't win.And somewhere between saying bye to my co-Fellow Matt Saldana and a bathroom stall insideof Chicago's ESPN Zone, I lost it.I looked in the mirror and couldn't believe that I cared--this much. It was one goal. And that Southern woman, the one who was visiting me from 400 miles away, had cheered the goal.
It had been that kind of year, God knew I needed a drink--but instead of a bottle. He gave me a World Cup.
In the spring of 2006 I stood on a Brooklyn St. wondering what in the world was going on. I just kept repeating to my mother, "I was robbed! I was robbed!" I was robbed.
Whoever said big girls don't cry should've met me that night. I'd been robbed before--but as a writer, you've got to wonder what the universe is saying when the robbery takes only your computers--my second laptop in less
than three years--in less than 30 seconds was Audi5000. And for the next week I just kind of sat...thinking that I would never write again. Perhaps writing
wasn't my purpose?Then I got a phone call. Was it the police saying they'd recovered the computer? No--it was a man saying I'd been selected out of 400 applicants for a
journalism fellowship. Yup, just when the caterpillar thought it was over it became a butterfly.
So I returned to my hometown, cocooned myself in my mother's covers, ate her oatmeal and woke up early to talk to her--just like when I was a kid. And just like when I was a kid I awoke and immediatley put the TV on Sportscenter. On a completely
random note, allow me to send love to Stuart Scott for just being the best sportscaster ever.One morning as my mom applied her makeup I applied my attention to the TV--RACISM IN EUROPEAN SOCCER...with the World Cup less than...I can still hear that
man so clearly...But the man that to this day I can't get out of my head--the guy who had me at "Even if it is one person in the stadium it is one person too
many..." is Thierry Henry.


"Mom--that's your future son-in-law." I said. "I'm marrying that one!"But fast forward--somewhere between "your future son-in-law..." my new laptop Googling Thierry Henry's bio and reading that he was married [gasp], I
developed amnesia."Oh, well, you can't have everything." And with that statement I clicked off Google and erased Thierry Henry from my memory. Because I didn't even know he
was the one that made me cry, he was the one who scored that goal sending Brazil home in the Word Cup Semi-Finals.
So I "discovered" and forgot him in 2006. Soccer, which for the sake of my American readers, I keep writing although I call it football, for almost 10 years meant only one thing to me: Brazil. I owe
a great deal of gratitude to a pen-pal in Singapore for knowing any of this. Remember, I'm just a little black girl from Tennessee. But my pen-pal, Lenny,
was riding the Ronaldo wave back in 98 and I was just enjoying her excitement and in trying to discover what it was all about I found out that I enjoyed this
soccer stuff too. And today when people talk about soccer and I talk Thierry, they all say "Oh Arsenal...this and that." And I never [gasp]--have any clue
what they're talking about. I never saw him play with Arsenal...because I didn't. Nope I never saw Arsenal-Henry but I did pray for Barca-Henry--when he developed the back problem and was out--I was scared. Don't ask I still don't know why
So how did Thierry Henry become my favorite player?This happened somewhere between ESPN and EBAY.For all my years of football-fascination I only had one soccer jersey--Robinho. So I decided to get another. Ronaldinho. But then I spotted this Eto'o STAND
UP SPEAK UP jersey on Ebay? And I was fascinated with the name and the look of the jersey so I bought it. Can you say Eto'o? I couldn't.I bought it before I even knew how to say it. Of course feeling like a trader I would then go on to buy KAKA. Deciding that soccer once every four years wasn't enough I decided to become a club
supporter. And yes, I chose FC Barcelona--home of Ronaldinho. So I did what any new club supporter would do. I Googled the team to learn players whose last name's didn't end with O...You know--true fan things and mymy
first FC BARCELONA GOOGLE returned big news--Barca was getting a new player. Thierry Henry had joined the team.Aaaaaaaaghhhhh! And guess what--he was no longer married--[gasp]...Aaaaaaaaagh! Let me stop. Seriously I forced myself to stop. I was so excited that I had
to turn off the computer. I refused to be excited about a divorce. But then I turned the computer back on and went straight to EBAY. I needed a new jersey.
And now two years later I own one Kaka jersey, one Eto'o jersey and three Henry jerseys. The last time I saw my Brazil jersey was at my birthday party at,
you guessed it, ESPN ZONE in Times Square. I refuse to think that it was stolen--but I do seem to be predisposed.
Turn that six upside down and now it's 2009. I am sitting in my favorite leather recliner at ESPN ZONE in Times Square surrounded by a sea of Barcelona
fans. And I fit in. My shirt is yellow. But this time the B's for Barcelona not Brazil. Ole Ole Ole Ole, it's official: I'm a Barcaaaaaaaa-fan!!I took off work for this. But back to this ESPN Zone and these cheese fries--I'm eating cheese fries-- a complete change from quinoa. Note to self:change tastes soooo good. I'm going
to finish writing this after the game. [GAME OVER]BARCA WON!!!!!!!And I can't fight back the excitement. I am hype. The people behind me are hyper. They had liquor. I had tea. And now I have to pee and pay and practically run non-stop to the A Train in order to get to work on time. I can only miss one job. And job #3 begins in 40
minutes.And well, I could say this is how the story ends but honestly, as I try to wiggle my pants down (too much tea) and keep my eyes on the screen above (ESPN
ZONE lavatories have TVs) I...well, again,Whoever said BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY lied. However, this is definetly a change from 2006 except the same man has made
me cry-- Monseiur Henry."Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!!!!" The tears are streaming down my eyes I'm working hard at keeping them from trickling down my legs--I can't pee just yet. I have to stand for this man who's
in Rome standing with that big silver cup atop his head. My phone rings (the Southern woman from Tennessee is calling)."Mom," I say, "Your future son-in-law just won the UEFA Cup, but I'll call you back when I get to work!"

"Where are you now," she says.

I'm in the bathroom :)

--superVirgin

CHARACTER

[FIRST]
"So many people say that obviously my game has changed since I arrived here and I say that it's good that it changed, otherwise it would show a lack of intelligence. You learn from your mistakes. When I was younger I was trying to do what I wanted to do, not what the game wanted me to do. I would say that's the difference."

[AND]

“It’s true that I have a character of a pig. It’s not lying to say this. Sometimes I like to be right, even when I am wrong. But to claim that I wanted power, no. To claim that I wanted to play in 4-5-1, no. All those who know me know that I prefer to play with a teammate up front. To say that I pushed my friend David aside… I always defend David for selection. But…fine, I am going to try to smile a little more on the pitch.”

[A CHARM]

'Big boats everywhere, big cars, beautiful women, the sun, the sea, the famous people. Life could seem easy in a place like this and, even as a kid, I thought, "This might not be the best place to learn football".'

These words are Thierry's. It's easy to see why he is my favorite. But, if it's not resoundingly clear--next post--I will tell you how I "discovered" Mr. Henry. And you can decide if it was fate or default .

--superVirgin

PRINCE CHARMING

Why kick a man when he's down when you can offer a hand to help him up? There are so many puns that could come from that statement,and I should probably know better, but it's 5 A.M.and sarcasm aside--it's true. Thierry's obviously a bit down, because (not to go all Domenech on you) his sun sign is LEO. And the Leo thrives on praise and cracks under criticsm. People, let's address all the name calling. As an Aquarius (like Domenech) injustice just makes me want to pick up a sword (ahmm, keyboard).
Tell me, O mean Irish lads-is frog the mascot for Les Bleus? No. Is it the national animal of France? No.I'm baffled. OR are you suggesting that Thierry looks like a frog? Well, Thierry, I'll kiss you. Although I've never had a French kiss and choke at the thought of anyone's tongue in my mouth besides my own--I could [swallow] take one for the team. And if fairy tales do come true, perhaps it will make me a princess ?
--superVirgin

A UNICEF ON MY CHEST

I am female, "American," and have never set foot on a pitch in my 20+years of being, making me, to some of you, unworthy of opinion on a footballing matter--but just know that the lady who writes from her Manhattan-sized bedroom is as snug in footballing matters as she is in her cupcake pajamas. Oh, and so that there are no Stevies left wondering out there, my opinion is completely bias. I am pro-Henry. I'm so pro that I've got UNICEF on my chest and HENRY on my back. Ok, let me rephrase that, I'm so cold that I've got...the Super in my building is being stingy with the heat. And so right now I'm fighting off the urge to curl up like a potato bug under my covers to write for a man who's worth writing for :) This is my first "PLEAVE LEAVE THIERRY ALONE" post. In the future I will convince you to support my favorite footballer or I'll write trying. ONE LOVE.
--superVirgin