The Victors

### The Victors

The board wakes up before the people do.

Somebody is talking about football.
Somebody else is talking about Trump.
A man is angry about billionaires buying elections.
Another man is angry because Liverpool needs a better striker.

Nobody has solved anything.

A guy wants to know which electric mower to buy.
There are batteries and motors and warranties and Chinese batteries for a hundred bucks.
This is civilization now.

Somebody is in Aruba with twelve Colombian women and is counting tits and ass and selfie lights like a man taking inventory before the ship sinks.

Somebody else is wondering if Taylor Swift is a good wife.

This is also civilization.

There is talk of ICE and Milo and MAGA and Democrats and Republicans and the usual machinery of hatred.
Everybody has a position.
Nobody has a solution.

The Tigers leave a runner stranded at third.

Of course they do.

There is a man going to a Rush concert.
Another man is reading *Blood Meridian*.
Another is talking about Hemingway.
Somebody is making jokes about old board names and everybody remembers everybody, which is what happens when people spend enough years staring at the same screen.

A man has a piece of black cherry wood from a dead tree.

It needs to season.

That may be the most sensible thing on the whole board.

There are dreams about Sam Sword.
There are rumors about football players.
There are arguments about actresses.
There is a discussion of beards in the military.

And somewhere underneath all of it is the great American hunger:

Tell me something.

Tell me who is winning.

Tell me who is losing.

Tell me who is fucking up.

Tell me who is beautiful.

Tell me what mower to buy.

Tell me whether the future is coming.

Tell me whether it matters.

The board keeps moving.

The posts pile up.

Morning becomes afternoon.

Everybody types.

Nobody leaves.

And that's the strange thing about these places.

They look like nothing.

But if you sit there long enough, you begin to see the whole miserable little animal of humanity crawling across the screen.

Wanting.

Complaining.

Remembering.

Drinking.

Fucking.

Reading.

Rooting for Michigan.

Hating Trump.

Hating the people who hate Trump.

Waiting for the game.

Waiting for the news.

Waiting for *it* to happen.

And then somebody posts:

**“today may be the day it happens.”**

Another guy answers:

**“it appears to be a long time.”**

And there it is.

The whole fucking human condition.

We wait.

Then we refresh.