We’re (Kind of) All in This Together: Watching the World Cup at the End of the World
It isn’t that we sought to separate the “real world” from the matches—just that, for a time, we had something else to think about.
This is Asides and Offsides, a World Cup 2018 notebook by Bryan Washington.
We had already veered back into reality. It hadn’t taken very much. But then my mother texted her friend, asking her what we should bring, and they said, Nothing, just yourselves. We’ll be here when you show up.
Bryan Washington is the author of Lot, with fiction and essays appearing in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, MUNCHIES, American Short Fiction, GQ, FADER, The Awl, Hazlitt, and Catapult. He’s the recipient of an O. Henry Award, and he lives in Houston.
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Bryan Washington
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Bryan Washington
More by this author
What It Means to Live in Houston
In a city made up of many cities, spread out, like tiny countries, ascribing their influence is a lot like trekking through a tiny country of your own.
The Case Against Making a City “Beautiful”
On finding beauty in Houston amidst the ugliness, and what the city stands to lose from increasing gentrification.
Montrose, the Neighborhood That Gave Us Everything
Montrose was unofficially codified as the nexus of queer life in Houston. If you held a map to the wall, I could tell you how we came to be on those streets.
More in this series
What Internment Did to My Family
The court finally condemned Korematsu v. US, but the lessons of history are being overlooked by those claiming to have recognized them.
On Playing Risk and Studying the Maps of Colonialism
Soon after I bought the game, I began to obsess over another map, one that also didn’t fully exist.