You’ll Never Walk Alone

World Cup is over. It was fun. It was good. I liked it a lot, once I finally got into it.

I didn’t get into it right away, though. In fact, I hadn’t gotten into the World Cup for about 24 years before this past month, and even then I didn’t get into it until the knockout stage — specifically, one match of the knockout stage: England vs. Mexico. And as I watched the last 40 minutes of play in a game that seemed absolutely rabid, England down a player due to an unfortunate red card, holding off Mexico on their home field to pull out one of the most exciting games I’d ever seen in ANY sport, something clicked.

Something re-clicked, I guess you could say. I was back, baybee.

In the summer of 2000, I visited Kerrie in England. She was a study abroad student, and I was a barely-holding-it-together 21-year-old who didn’t know much about England outside of Monty Python and Arthurian legend. I made the trip over, fell in love with the differentness of England while still feeling very comfortable in the sameness of England. It was a safe trip for me but I loved every moment of it and, upon arriving back in the states, I went full Anglophile.

It was good timing, from the sports side of things, because by the next year England was busy working their way into the 2002 World Cup. Needing a local club, I also latched onto Liverpool for no reason other than they were a good team that hadn’t won it all in a very long time and their jerseys still bore the legendary Carlsberg logo. I bought some of those jerseys off of eBay — Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard — and didn’t even totally mind when the letters fell off after a few washes. I was Sioux Falls’ newest Liverpool fan, and it felt exotic.

I followed them for a few years, and then when we eventually graduated and moved back to Sioux Falls, I kind of lost track of the sport. We got jobs, we had kids, we planned our lives, and professional soccer/football just … faded away.

Twenty-four years passed and I was content remembering a brief dalliance with English footy — until a few weeks ago. The strange part about this whole England vs. Mexico match wasn’t so much that I suddenly cared again, but more about the ease with which it came back — like muscle memory. But, more than that, it was the ease with which I allowed myself back in.

A billion times before, I might have flinched a bit before diving back into this fandom. Was I allowed to feel this after 24 years away? Can I show up at this front door — at this GATE, if you want a peek into what’s coming next — and just waltz in? What’s the protocol for dusting off an old love and diving back in?

I’ve spent the last two or three years marking — and in most cases, re-marking — my place across several different fandoms. This Liverpool thing is the most recent one, but it’s been bubbling under the surface elsewhere. I dove full throttle into the WNBA and the Minnesota Lynx. I felt nostalgia for (and then went full scholar on) 20 years of hardcore and post-hardcore albums I’d missed. I revisited games and made 90s playlists and bought SPORTS FLAGS that I HANG ON OUR HOUSE for EVERYONE TO SEE! If base longing for the things you grew up with is the sign of a midlife crisis, I’ve gone through dozens of very small midlife crises, one new fandom at a time.

It all raises a question of authenticity. I grew up on the edges of our local punk scene, an environment that’s fueled by authenticity — a legit concern, because the core tenet of punk is equal parts DIY expression and self-preservation. A punk scene comes together around people who stay true to themselves enough to resist bending, who push back against convention because they believe in their own likes and dislikes, and because it can be socially dangerous to be different. Punk has always been a big tent.

Until it’s not. Punk can also be a cruel and bitter gate, difficult to cross without some kind of hyper-authenticity, and while the scene itself prides itself on inclusivity to those who wouldn’t be included elsewhere, individual agents — gatekeepers, innit — assign ranks, because they themselves feel more protected.

I say this like it’s a core tenet of punk alone, but it’s a core tenet of any scene. As fans and communities, we balance inclusivity with protection — we get frustrated when new people show up with big egos, and we try to weed out those who might seem like bad agents. We make rules, and I saw these rules firsthand poking through a Reddit post asking how to “become” a fan of the English Premier League. “How do you pick a team?”

Among the jokes about staying away from the Spurs (they always choke!) and hating Manchester City (they bought championships with Emirati money!), there were two pretty clear lines:

• You pick a player you liked during the World Cup and follow them.
• You root for the team from the city you grew up in.

One is open and free. You like who you like, and you continue to like them. The other is rigid, but protective. You don’t get to choose a team. The team chooses you, lest you be a bandwagon fan. What’s funny about these answers is that I understand both sides. I understand the freedom. And I understand the protection. I understand that we put fences up to both keep people out and feel comfortable inside. But that metaphor doesn’t really matter because fandom is first and foremost a personal identity. No one gets to determine if the gate’s open or closed except for you.

When we’re young we care so much about where we fit. We build whole models of who we are, and fall into bad habits where we assume other people have the power to approve those models.

I envy the people who stay — and always stayed — visibly and openly true to their weird little things. We can talk gatekeeping all we want, but I’m now old enough to realize that, for a really long time, I was gatekeeping myself. There are certain archetypes we assume at different points in our life — parent, professional, author — and those archetypes come with directions. We don’t follow those directions because we want to fit in, even though that’s obviously a part of it. We follow them because they’re a blueprint for success, and when we become a parent, or professional, or author, we want to be successful, and it’s a lot easier when we stay on the clearly marked trails.

Haha! That sucks! It really does! But it’s never really too late to open things back up again — to wander off the trail, or to remind people who you are to the level that you are comfortable. We’re never really taught how to balance the full spectrum of human existence, and instead keep all of our shit compartmentalized. It takes getting older to fully realize that none of that compartmentalization matters at all — that our lives are a messy miasma, and that we can take time to rediscover new (and old!) things and mush them into the paste that is our everyday lives.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little self-conscious. I feel like I’m waltzing (or waltzing back) into these things — England, DRAIN, the Lynx, Neurosis, Liverpool — partly because I’m 47, and I’m returning to rooms that will have me back. But I also remember how it felt to be that kid standing at the door for the first time, wondering if anyone will have me, getting carded by the locals. Now, I kind of don’t care, and that’s really fun! But that freedom to stop caring is its own small privilege.

There’s joy in ignoring the need to prove yourself. To like what you want to like. Ironically, the punkest thing I’ve done in the past year is fall back in love with two very popular sports teams, and in doing so I found some pretty incredible people ready to welcome me back in. Turns out what they say is true: you’ll never walk alone.