Leviya Francesca and the Art of Wasting Away

Two hours before I have to meet Chel in downtown Brooklyn, I drag myself out of bed, throw on an outfit of some sort, and run to the NBA Store on 5th Ave, where I drop half a paycheck on a custom Dario Šarić jersey.

The man behind the jersey machine — a printing press of sorts — looks me up and down as he hands me the still-warm Denver Nuggets jersey.

“You a Nuggets fan?”

I slide one side of my headphones behind my ear. “No,” I say.

“You a Šarić fan?”

I nod. I feel my face getting hot. I hate talking about this.

“Are you… from there?”

I assume he means Croatia. “No.”

He looks at me quizzically, chunky silver chain glinting in the fluorescent lights of the NBA Store basement.

“It’s a long story,” I begin, voice hitching a little. “I’m a Sixers fan, and I really liked him when he was there, and…”

The man laughs. “Well, have a good one.”

Lately, all I do is stumble. I flounder my way through conversations. I miss my train. I speak up in class and everyone just looks at me funny. I scream into the void. I beg to be understood.

“I’ll be there at 2:30,” I tell Chel. 

It turns into 3. 

3:30.

4.

I’m walking through quicksand. My body is glued to my bed. My head hurts. I take my adderall at 2 PM. I starve myself all day. I fall asleep after the sun rises. I wonder why I’m miserable, why I’m late to class all the time, why I can’t write anything anymore. The only way I can function is if I chuck my phone across the room or throw myself onto the floor and say “I have to do this,” like it’s life or death. Everything is life or death, yet I can’t bring myself to care. I’m not sure why.

I get rained on for the whole walk home. I stumble through my front door and peel off my boots and my sweater. Even something as simple as buying a basketball jersey had turned into a gauntlet of mythical proportions. I’m tired. I could curl up in bed and miss the game and sleep forever. 

But I do get ready and I do make it to Brooklyn on time. I meet Chel at the DeKalb Market and hop up onto a stool at the high-rise table by the wing place.

“You brought the friendship bracelets?” Chel asks.

“I hope so,” I laugh between bites of a boneless buffalo wing, digging into my bag. “Yeah, I did.”

“They’re cute,” Chel says as I hold up one of the bracelets and let it glisten in the fluorescent light.

“I hope he doesn’t hate me.”

“I don’t think he will.”

And things are good, and things are beautiful, and I am so incredibly happy — but there is still a melancholy which I cannot shake.

When I was 17, I suddenly developed a special interest on Dario Šarić. 

It wasn’t unheard of. I’d had special interests before. Since I was a kid, it’s always been something, and it’s always been something niche and unpopular and hard to explain. It was Bert from Sesame Street for a while when I was really little. Then, it was tigers. It was Daft Punk for two years, and then Franz Ferdinand – the band – for six, and then Dario. 

For years, I didn’t know quite how to define it, but I figured it out later on – when I have a special interest, I see the world through its lens. I connect all things back to it. I ‘live and breathe this shit,’ so to speak. It makes me smile. It makes my heart hurt. Sometimes, it gives me panic attacks. Regardless, it is the most important thing in the world to me, even if no one else understands.

For a long time, I assumed everyone on Earth had a special interest. I thought everyone just lived and breathed one thing for a few years. I thought everyone understood. When I was 13, I realized my friends looked at me funny and that my parents silently begged me to grow out of it. I got a lot quieter about it around then. But even in secret, I lived and breathed my special interest, whatever it was.

When I was 19, I wrote an open letter to Dario. He’d been my special interest for two years at that point. I was starving myself all day. My meds were keeping me awake until the sun came up. Dario tore his ACL in the first game of the Finals and the world was crashing down on me in particular. It felt like the Universe was playing a cruel joke on me. I was having the best summer ever, but I was haunted by a melancholy which I could not shake, no matter how hard I tried. After weeks and weeks of writer’s block, an open letter was the only way I could express how I was feeling.

The pandemic took everything from me — my friends, my hope for the future, the end of high school, and the beginning of college, just to name a few. Unknowingly, I turned to basketball to cope. It turned from an interest to an obsession, and I turned from a fan to a stan. I spent hours every day online, watching old highlights and interviews on YouTube, defending you on Twitter until four in the morning like my life depended on it, and most importantly, writing about how I thought you deserved better. In an article that I wrote for HeadFake Hoops in June of [2020], I said:

“You want to root for Dario. You want to cheer him on, no matter what city he’s in, because in a way, there’s something in his story that resonates with all of us. You’re not always going to get into that dream job. You’ll probably get snubbed for that award you’ve been seeking since your freshman year of high school. Sometimes you’ll feel like you’ve been through hell and back with no reward, no celebration at the end of it all, no recognition. You might believe that there are ‘good old days’ to get back to, but all of the people and places aren’t exactly what they used to be, and you can’t recapture them.”

I don’t really think that was about you, Dario. I’m pretty sure that was just about me. 

…

Life can be both amazing and downright horrendous at the same time, and regardless of how you feel, you just have to keep going. There are ups, downs, and championships in this world, and sometimes you find yourself staring down all three at once. NBA careers only last so long, as do school years, summers, and the simple act of being a teenager. Above anything else, you taught me how to make the most of all of it. You taught me confidence and charm in your two seasons in Philadelphia. You showed me that all bad things can be turned into brilliance during your time in Minnesota. In Phoenix, you proved to me that it is absolutely possible to get back up when the universe kicks you while you’re down. And for that, I am unbelievably grateful.

I don’t think that was about you, Dario. I don’t think you needed to hear the lessons you’d already learned. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think that was for me.

I think it’s time to re-open the letter. I think it’s time to split the whole thing wide open.

Dear Dario,

In Brooklyn, Chel and I stand in line at the season ticket holders’ entrance. I rock back and forth on my heels in my platform Converse.

“You’re nervous,” Chel says.

She’s right. 

“I guess,” I say. “I don’t know why. I shouldn’t be nervous. He’s just… some guy.”

“But he’s your favorite player!” Chel says. “I’m the same way with KD.”

I shrug. I guess it’s a valid way to feel. I just feel like the weight of the world is collapsing on me in particular. I feel like I’ve been here before.

Last season, I went to a Golden State Warriors game when they played against the Wizards in DC. I don’t know what it was about that game in particular, but I could not have a good time. I paid so much money for my ticket. I went to the Portrait Gallery and to conveyor belt sushi before the game to make a night out of it. I got to see Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and Chris Paul play basketball. 

And yet.

I wanted to give Dario a friendship bracelet, I wrote later that week. He’d – in theory, in my head – helped me through some of the worst times of my life. Why not return the favor? Why not pull up to the game in platform Converse and a bright purple-and-orange Suns jersey bearing Dario's last name and let him know that no matter how hard it gets, no matter how bad he plays, someone cares about him?

That night, Dario scored five points, logged two assists, and stormed back to the locker room before the clock even hit zero.

I got near-trampled by Steph Curry fans before I could even think to send my pathetic little friendship bracelet sailing over the barrier. I don’t know why I thought it would have worked.

As I walked home in the rain that night, phone dead and Wawa sandwich soggy, I thought I was just cursed. I thought maybe I didn’t like basketball as much as I thought I did, or that the money ruined it. I thought I was cringe, parasocial, the most embarrassing girl alive, a pathetic wet paper bag of a thing trudging up Wisconsin Ave with a friendship bracelet in the inside pocket of her jacket to sit in a drawer in her desk forever. 

It felt foolish to believe that anything I could have done would have mattered. It felt foolish to believe that I had an impact on anyone, on anything. I could have disappeared into the ether right then and there and it could have been caught on camera outside the Russian Embassy and no one would have batted an eye. All that would be left of me would be the “X” on my Phoenix Suns jersey which had spent the night slowly but steadily peeling off in the humidity.

I couldn’t get my mind off it, so I kept writing, as I tend to do. I imagined you screaming into the void. I imagined you begging to be understood. 

Dražen Petrović died in a car crash in Germany on July 7th, 1993. Dario was born nine months and one day later. Dario was raised – engineered, in a sense – to rectify the death of his father’s friend and former teammate. Dario spent sleepless nights (or so I’d imagine) working on his goofy jumpshot and quelling angry tears as a larger-than-life bronze statue of Dražen watched on sightlessly from the bench. He played game after game at Dražen Petrović Hall in Zagreb, where he could never make his father proud enough, never emulate his father’s best friend close enough, never bring the same amount of glory to his family, to his hometown, to his country.  Molded from the same clay on the rocky shores of the Adriatic Sea, but clumsy and hot-tempered, born with a cleft palate and impossibly large shoes to fill, would he ever live up to the precedent set for him one summer night in 1993? Was he already a disappointment then? Was he some prophesied resurrection of Dražen, or was he just a boy born into immeasurable grief and immense pressure?

I was born into grief, too. I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand it. Maybe you’ve spent all this time trying to understand it, too. 

I think that’s why it would have mattered. 

In Brooklyn, I tell myself that cringe is a lie, that the world is smaller than it seems, that we’re all interconnected and that any act of kindness can change the world. It falls on my own deaf ears, but I push through that denial, because I know I need to do this.

Chel does all the shouting for me and eventually we get your attention. Some kid in a Jokić jersey asks me who you are and I go “oh, trust me, he’s one of the best to ever do it. He’s incredible. You’ll love him.” I am not lying.

You greet me with a gentleness that suggests you might know me, but I don’t think you do. I give you the friendship bracelets and you hold them out in your hand and I flip all the letter beads around so you can read them.

“This one says trust the friendship,” I explain, likely mumbling. “And this one… It’s every team you’ve been on, except for Denver. I tried to give it to you last year, but, uh… that didn’t work out.”

“Thank you,” you say, smiling. I think it’s genuine. Your eyes are kind. Your hands are gentle. You have to go warm up, and the security guard is trying to get me out of there anyway, so I wave and run off into the ether. Before I go, I think I see you put the bracelets in your bag on the bench.

That night, I watch you struggle on your feet even just hitting your warmup threes. I watch you storm back to the locker room. Deandre Jordan hugs you tight and shakes you by your shoulders and it doesn’t change anything. You run back and forth up and down the court during every time out, every break between quarters. It does not fix anything. Your joints still ache. Your body still falls apart.

I have a hard time writing about it. It feels like I’m watching the end of something while I’m still right in the middle of it. You still have time. You can’t go out like this. You’re being played at the wrong position. You put up a triple-double in the Olympic Qualifiers just a few months ago. You can’t go out like this, Dario – there’s so much time left.

Yet, you grew up emulating Dražen Petrović and Magic Johnson. Of course you’re doomed by the narrative. You were meant to be cut short by injury, by bad coaching, by terribly-built rosters, by general managers misunderstanding your very essence. It’s inevitable. It’s inescapable. At least, it feels like it.

“He was a 22-year-old with the world in his hands, looking up to the promise of that aforementioned Young Player award,” reads an article by FIBA published during the Olympic Qualifiers earlier this year. “Blink once. Blink twice. What do you know, Dario Saric is now one of the oldest players in Croatia!”

On Saturday, I ride the A up to Thilo’s apartment. We try to make brownies. They turn into goo. We eat them anyway – or at least, we try to. I tell Thilo how I’m having such a hard time writing this, how between the writer’s block and the pseudo-sadness that isn’t even mine, I just can’t put the jigsaw pieces into place, and he finally puts it into words.

“The Velveteen Rabbit,” Thilo says, eyes lighting up.

“Oh my god,” I reply, trying not to let my voice break, tears biting at the back of my throat.

Thilo runs to grab the book from his bedroom and I press my forehead against the top of my Hydroflask. “Oh my god,” I mutter again, squeezing my eyes shut.

“Here,” Thilo says, setting the book down on the coffee table. I nod and open it. The Skin Horse tells me his story.

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I don’t know when it was that you became Real, Dario, but I do know you were Real a long time ago, before you were traded to Minnesota, before you tore your ACL, before you endured the Warriors Season of Perpetual Despair, before your shots stopped landing, before your triple-double at last summer’s Olympic Qualifiers. You were Real with six teeth knocked out in Manila, you were Real with a scratched cornea in Cleveland, you were Real with a sunburn so gnarly it almost sidelined you after the 2018 All Star break.

Yet, you became Real that night in Brooklyn – or maybe that was just the night I realized you’d been Real all along.

Regardless, you are Real. 

You were meant to become Real, after all. You never broke easily. You never had any sharp edges. You were not carefully kept, though your mother tried. You were a wunderkind. You were a rising star. You were so bright, and so promising, and then you weren’t. I think that might be why I like you so much, but I can’t be sure. 

I don’t know why you became my special interest, Dario, but I think it makes sense that you are. I liked you on the Sixers, after all, when you were 23 and not yet Real, but maybe I could see it in you. You narrowly lost out on Rookie of the Year. You were traded to Minnesota just as you found your footing again. You screamed into the void. You begged to be understood. You

I had a dream back then, when I was 15, before my special interest even started, that I met you at a Sixers game, and you treated me with the comfort and understanding I so badly craved. When I meet you in Brooklyn, you’re just as kind.

Blink once.

I’m 22 years old with the world in my hands.

Blink twice.

Let’s blow this popsicle stand!

In Brooklyn, I watch from the 200s and scream “BANG” when you hit your only shot of the night — a fadeaway middy, of course — and I’m so loud that the people in front of me turn around. I laugh so hard I’m curling into Chel’s shoulder. I have the most fun I’ve had in a while.

After that game in Brooklyn, you play one more, and then sit benched for seven games in a row. 

“It’s not easy,” you tell a Denver Post reporter in mid-November. “It’s not easy mentally. But sometimes you just need to do it. Go over there and try to be in the best shape you can when your name is called.”

And then, you’re called.

You log a double-double. You hit a dagger against the Grizzlies.

You’re slow. You’re clumsy. Your shots don’t land. Yet, there is still confidence and charm. You still get up when you’re kicked while you’re down. All bad things are still turned into brilliance. You are only ugly to those who won’t understand.

“God, it’s like poetry, watching him play,” I say on a livestream for work later that week. “People say it about guys like Jokić and Steph Curry or whatever, and I don’t really see it, but I watch Dario, and, like… that’s magic to me.”

It was never really about the friendship bracelets, was it?

When I was 21, I studied abroad in Venice. I went on a Tinder date with a 24-year-old graffiti artist named Lorenzo. He spoke almost no English. I spoke almost no Italian. He said he likely wouldn’t travel to the United States for another five years at least. I said I had no idea when I’d be back in Italy. He bought me a Campari spritz and took me to an abandoned pier at the end of the island. It was just me, and him, and the cargo ships out in the harbor, and the stars.

After a while, I looked down at his wrist and noticed a stack of bracelets. I looked down at mine and noticed the same. Suddenly, I got the brightest idea I’ve ever had. I swear it lit up the whole pier.

“We’re trading,” I grinned, toothy and intoxicated.

He took the rainbow seed bead bracelet I made for myself for Pride, and I took his blue string bracelet with a singular bead of yellow Murano glass.

“Now we’re forever connected,” I said. I cringed at myself for saying it, but I said it. I’m glad I did.

I didn’t really think about it much after that. We traded Instagrams, but we never spoke again. I wore his bracelet every once in a while. I hate the feeling of strings dangling on my wrist, but I didn’t want to repurpose it. It wouldn’t have felt right. 

A few months ago, I got a message from Lorenzo. It was a photo of the rainbow seed bead bracelet — or what remained of it — the string snapped and the beads scattered across his dresser. He captioned it with a singular frowny face. I couldn’t stop grinning all day.

There’s a certain magic when somebody remembers, when somebody tells you they’ll wait for you and they actually do, when they show up even when you’d doubted they ever would. I think that’s what makes us Real. It’s not what we go through, not the grief we’re born into, not the points we score, not the days spent rotting in bed. It's love. It always will be.

Shine on, wunderkind

You won’t go out gracefully, Dario – that’s the Realness in you. You won’t be LeBron, you won’t be Dwyane Wade, you won’t be Dirk Nowitzki. You won’t be Chris Paul – or maybe you will be, in a sense. You might not ever even win a ring, at least not in the States, though I doubt you’ll still be able to play for long enough to get one with Panathinaikos or Anadolu Efes or KK Cibona. Maybe you’ll have one last Olympic run in you – like Kruska this year, like you said over the summer. I think you do.

Or, maybe, you’ll have a spectacular comeback. I hope you do. Maybe something will click or you’ll get sent packing out of Denver or you’ll finally sign with Panathinaikos for real this time and the Mediterranean sunshine will heal something in your soul. Maybe you’ll prove something to somebody, but I don’t think you need to.

As for me, maybe I’ll come back to this in a few years’ time – everything is cyclical with me, after all, the Universe a series of concentric ellipses, a tight spiral of time unwinding itself. Sometimes I brush hands with my 19-year-old self in the hallway. Sometimes 16-year-old me possesses me at 1 AM, giggly and hungry and dreaming of something more, more, more. Sometimes, someone asks about you, and it’s my 12-year-old self who answers, like she never felt the need to hide her special interests at all.

Do you ever pass by your younger self, Dario? Have you ever crossed paths with him, the 22-year-old wunderkind with the world in his hands and stars in his eyes?

Maybe you ran into him last season with the Warriors, when you had to just play through the grief that consumed you, no matter how much it hurt. Maybe he stood at the foot of your bed when you woke up bleary-eyed from your ACL surgery in 2021. Maybe he was there when you put up that triple-double during the Olympic Qualifiers. Maybe you caught a glimpse of him when you met me, in Brooklyn, under the hot halogen lights of the Barclays Center. Maybe you didn’t. 

Maybe, by the time I meet my 22-year-old self again, you’ll be retired, with your little boat and your olive trees like you’ve always wanted. I hope you are. Maybe you’ll sign up your son for the rec basketball team wherever you end up living. Maybe he’ll really, really just want to make movies instead. Maybe you’ll let him. I hope you do.

Regardless, you will be Real.

With love,

Leviya

P.S.

I’m wearing my bracelet right now. Are you?