Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

13 страница из 85

Visible through a floor-to-ceiling window in front of me, I saw a middle-aged man bound and gagged. Beside him was, to use a word of my father’s generation, a buxom blonde woman who could be no other nationality but German. As I watched, she began whipping the hapless man. Worse, she seemed to be enjoying it.

I’m not sure what he thought — he had a leather mask on — but I presume that, given that the whole episode was taking place in full view of people walking by, he had elected to be subjected to this public humiliation.

I still recall thinking “What on God’s green earth could be the point of such an exercise?” and “How could it possibly be enjoyable for either of them?” But then it hit me: I was a Leafs fan going to extraordinary measures to try to find the game on television in a faraway land. Ultimately I knew, or ought to have known, the result would leave me asking similar questions of myself. It may not involve being clad in leather restraints, but the invisible shackles of my addiction were just as emotionally painful.