Chapter 21: Gunged!

I had long since stopped the automatic emails which Twitter sent every time a message I had been copied into was retweeted or favourited; it brought too many unwanted emails and my phone was constantly beeping with a slew of notifications. But even without the constant reminders of my unexpected notoriety, I knew that Betty’s tweets were popular.

After an uneventful day at our client, I pondered on the journey home whether her analysis was correct; could a Betty Maxx-Marc Lowton film really be that popular? Who else would want to be in this? What would Anna say?

Betty was ludicrously successful; a popular entertainer in her own right, she also part-owned a film company that sold DVDs and website subscriptions by the bucket load. She was smart and astute, and she did nothing in the industry that wasn’t well-calculated and sapient. And most of all, I’d be negotiating from a position of strength myself.

I put out of my mind the idea that I could have a career change into a bisexual male pornography artist, and attended training with relentless zeal the following day. We had two more games left, and the squad, depleted for the abject humiliation at the weekend, was back to full strength. Every member of the team wanted to play in the Cup final, a re-run of the match against AFC Kerlon, and everyone trained hard.

The spring-time rain showers didn’t disrupt the intensity of our efforts as sweaty, muddy bodies collided relentlessly in the mud. We longed to demonstrate to our coach that we were ready to be picked. No-one cared about bruises or gashes; it was more full-bloodied than most of our matches.

This continued on Wednesday and Thursday; we all lapped up extra training sessions as the Cup Final against Kerlon dominated our chatter. It was all we thought about. It was all we wanted. It was at a proper stadium, in front of a worldwide audience. It would be the pinnacle of our season, and one of the most important matches in the team’s history.

Before then, we had the small matter of our final league game; the cameras would record the “special event” of Framlington Giants coming to our stadium as the warm up to the big game. AFC Kerlon were also treated to live cameras as they sought to claim the win that would hand them the league title. They played Elvedon Bridge Warriors in a winner-takes-all game while our match against lower-half opposition was a “dead rubber” for both teams. We would finish eighth with our 34 points from 25 games; we couldn’t catch The Cock Inn in seventh and neither could Framlington Giants catch us, no matter what the score in the game was.

When I mused over our position in the table, it made it all the more strange how Woodford Wanderers had become a poster-team for the league. The relentless ManLube promotion helped and the initial media exposure was focused on us, but with seven teams doing better over the course of the season, it made little sense for our small village to become an epicentre for the attention.

And I was hardly the Gareth Bale of our team; I worked hard and I made a net positive contribution. I wasn’t the goalscorer or the goalkeeping hero. I was just a single cog in the machinery of a mid-table unexciting team. We all possessed limited skill, but my skill was far more limited than others. I didn’t have the body of an Adonis and I wasn’t anything special. Why was I the focal point of so much of the Twitter attention? Why was I so special? What did I do?

I didn’t know, and nor did Anna. “If fame was a logical beast, do you think Piers Morgan would be famous?” She asked. A point, excellently made.

Our opponents had been beaten earlier in the season by a resurgent Woodford Wanderers; we won 1-0 at their ground, claiming three points from the light-blue team. I had particularly enjoyed fucking an arrogant young lad as I held his ankles above his body and bounced my cock over his prostate. The impeccably shaved striker groaned and squealed, and I knew from the thick erection he had enjoyed himself almost as much as I had.

In the game last season against our opponents, we played in the heavy rain and their churned pitch resembled a quagmire; the last day of the league season had drawn the elusive sun from it’s home and was shining brightly and warmly on our isolated village. Our stand was full too; ManLube had sent a handful of erotic male models bearing their logo; they posed in front of the cameras and along with advertising hoardings. I looked for Paul but didn’t see him.

The coach fielded an experimental side; Dmitri, Lee, Ralph, Hugh and I were relegated to the bench as a number of our second string got the nod ahead of the Cup final. I was annoyed, but couldn’t show it. They had played in the previous weekend when the team had been demolished by AFC Kerlon and although I hadn’t been there to witness it, I had been told the performance of our reserve goalkeeper had been diabolical.

It wasn’t his fault; he was only eighteen and was learning the game, but playing him in front of TV cameras was not fair. There may have been no league placing riding on the outcome of the game, but the sanctity of my anus was. The coach treated the violation of our bodies as a fair price to pay for his experimentation and I could tell that I wasn’t the only one on the bench who was unhappy.

As expected, there was no experience and leadership on the pitch; Framlington Giants dominated the midfield and took the lead before half-time. They were two goals to the good a few minutes after the restart and Connor’s own goal made it three.

Our coach put Ralph and Dmitri and I onto the pitch to try and salvage something from the game. Framlington retreated, changing tactics to protect what they had. Dmitri scored our first and Ralph headed in from a corner a few minutes before full-time. But we could not force an equaliser.

Our league season ended as it had begun. With a loss.

We shook hands with them all; they wished us luck in the Cup final as we waited for the “special event.” I wanted our coach to apologise for his monumental tactical mistake, but he didn’t say a word about it, just watching as we stretched and “warmed down.”

The special event was brought onto our pitch by way of a tractor; a trailer draped in tatty, faded tarpaulin was sited in the middle of our pitch and plastic soulless presenter walked onto the grass in front of a camera.