The Creature
When Jake was nicknamed The Creature his transformation from character playing soccer for Drake University to caricature playing soccer for Drake University was complete. He quickly bought in and began introducing himself in the third person, “Yeah, The Creature is here and he’s going to do some damage. The Creature has come to play today.”
Oftentimes after his impromptu WWF monologues he’d sneak up behind you and molest your chest. No one quite understood why The Creature molested us. Was it sexual? Was it part of his WWF schtick? Was it male-bonding? No single explanation really fit, but they all made sense.
I first met The Creature, still Jake at the time, during my official visit to Drake when I was a senior in high school. My parents sent me by bus. I had never traveled solo by bus before and haven’t since. By auto, Milwaukee to Des Moines is about 6 hours – by bus it’s 11. The bus was hot and smelled like cigarettes and regret. I pressed against the window reading William Faulkner’s Light in August feeling adventurous and Bohemian as well as sweaty and sticky.
The Drake coach picked me up from the bus station. We shared some small talk about soccer before he dropped me off at a dorm to stay with Chuck, a tall, friendly kid with a tiny head. Chuck spoke with a soft St. Louis drawl. His dorm room, typical for the 80s, was the size and shape of a prison cell without the toilet or cool hiding spots for your shiv. I had just dropped my bag on the floor when this kid with flowing blond hair and the build of a Venice Beach weight-lifter walked in talking real fast. “Hey, man, Chuck what’s going on? Are you going out tonight?”
“This is Rob Harrington. He’s a recruit.”
“Hey Rob. I’m Jake. Where you from?”
“Milwaukee.”
“Yeah, Milwaukee, that’s cool. You should come out tonight. You bringin’ him out tonight Chuck? I’m going dancin’. Did you hear about the Drake guy who got kidnapped and some guys made him do some sex stuff (not his exact words) at gun point? What would you do? I think I’d let them shoot me.”
The whole scene was a bit overwhelming: the long, smelly bus ride, small talk with the coach, Chuck’s tiny head, student abduction sex stories, motor mouth Jake, who left the room as loudly and suddenly as he had entered – “Nice meeting ya Rob. Maybe we’ll see you guys tonight. It’s gonna get crazy.”
“That’s Jake,” Chuck said almost apologetically. “I’ll introduce you to some other guys,” as if to say we’re not all like that.
The day I arrived for pre-season a few months later, Jake gathered all the freshman for a pick-up game. It seemed he had appointed himself our personal mentor and guide. When we got to the field, he immediately stripped off his shirt. Jake never seemed to wear a shirt for very long. For all I know he attended class stripped to the waist. I linger on this because, personally, I’m not one for taking my shirt off given my soft doughy physique. I’m also quite hairy with pasty white skin that never tans. Maybe you’ve heard of the fashion Industry look Heroine Sheik. Well my look is called Pilsner Gorilla Albino. Very popular in remote Russian villages.
Jake, on the other hand, was tan and muscular, a mini Hulk Hogan. He had massive arms for a soccer player. For that matter, he had massive arms for a bricklayer. During the pick-up game, he talked the entire time giving us advice and info about everything and nothing. “You guys ready to run three miles in eighteen minutes. I’m totally ready. I’ve been working out all summer. It sucks when you don’t make it because you have to run it every day until you do. Don’t be nervous though, you just gotta go for it man. You just gotta have the vision of finishing.”
He never waited for us to respond. “You guys know where you’re livin? Goodwin Kirk’s got the chicks. That’s where you want to be livin’.”
He wouldn’t/couldn’t stop talking. When we played, he talked even more, mostly about us getting him the ball: “Play me, play me. You got me man.” None of us knew what to think, at least I didn’t. Why had he gathered us up for this game? Why were no other upperclassmen present? Why wouldn’t he stop talking?
Later, during one full-team practice, Jake’s Creature routine got dangerously real. He was dribbling at goal only a few yards from our goalkeeper. His finishing options were obvious and easy: pass into the net, dribble around the keeper or maybe for showmanship a deft chip. Instead, he blasted the ball into our goalkeeper’s face.
Coach yelled, “Jake, why didn’t you just pass it into the goal?” Jake responded, “I’d rather make him pay for it Coach!” This didn’t go over well with the team. For the remainder of practice we fouled and harassed him every way imaginable: a trip off the ball, tackle from behind, trip on the ball, tackle from the side, run by punch to the kidney, folding chair to the back of the head, pile-driver, body slam.... Coach, bless him, didn’t call a single foul as we meted out frontier justice, or in Jake’s terms – “made him pay for it.” Though Jake got angrier and angrier he never fought back – he must have known he had crossed a line.
After a come from behind 2-2 tie versus Bradley University, the school newspaper interviewed our goal scorers, Jake and Steve. Steve, a mellow, hippy-like kid with a sleepy expression, described his finish, “The ball bounced in front of me so I kicked it in. I was lucky to be there I guess.” The Creature, who was probably shirtless and oiled up for the interview, added a little drama to his heroic moment on the pitch: “The ball was floating in the air just in front of me. Everything felt like slow motion. I lined it up, then hit it sweet, right off the laces, couldn’t have hit it better – no one could have. I’m comin’ for you SIU. Yeah! Beware The Creature!”[1]
It was performance art. Jake was becoming The Creature. Literally. He was also getting weird.
By year’s end The Creature had become a consistent source of entertainment and curiosity. His third-person boasting, wavy blond hair, shirtless tan, and awkward attempts at socializing were conversation fodder for the team.
“Did you see him last night?”
“Yeah he walked in wearing bright white overalls and no shirt.”
“Right, he was standing there and then he was gone.”
“I honestly don’t know where that guy goes or what he does. Not sure I want to know.”
Jake had one true friend on the team, Matt, a guy from his hometown. I think Matt knew Jake in ways different from the rest of the team – not as the caricature we glommed onto and encouraged. He knew him the way you know the kid from your neighborhood who you’ve been around your whole life. The kid whose odd behaviors and secrets have a background and inception. Matt hinted at it a few times, offering, “Jake’s a goofy guy. He’s weird but he’s cool. I’ve known him a long time. He’s not what you guys think.”
The summer after my freshman year Matt died in a car accident, Jake was the driver. He was devastated. He didn’t return for his junior season.
I don’t know whether anyone stayed in contact with Jake, but we did hear rumors. Jake was a hairdresser. He finally finished college. He never finished college. He played semi-pro football. He raced cars. He was in adult films. He was gay. Bisexual. Played semi-pro soccer. All were imaginable, none were substantiated.
I hadn’t thought about Jake in years. Then one day in 2012 his name came up. I was talking to a parent of a kid I coached and he asked me where I went to college. When I told him Drake, he said, “Then you knew Jake and Matt. I played with those guys in high school.”
“Yeah I played with them my freshman year. It was terrible about Matt.”
“Did you hear about Jake?”
“No Jake left after his sophomore year. I think Matt’s death really threw him. No one really kept in touch with Jake. He was so odd. Nice but odd. Why, what’s he up to?”
“Yeah, Jake was shot and killed by the police in Alabama a couple years ago in a high-speed chase.”
I spent the afternoon reading about Jake on the internet. He did play semi-pro soccer and semi-pro football. His teammates didn’t call him The Creature, they called him Diesel. I wondered if he had nicknamed himself. He was engaged to be married. He had lost both of his parents in the six months prior to his death. People eulogized him as a big-hearted guy and a good friend.
His alcohol level was .21 the night he was shot – five times. He was unarmed. A few months before the chase he had gotten a DWI. The car chase reached speeds of 100 miles per hour. Jake lost control of his vehicle and ended up in a ditch. I watched the chase on the internet from a dash-cam video in the cop’s car. The video ends in the ditch, with Jake’s blurred head popping up over the steering wheel for a last peek at life. Of course, there are differing opinions about what happened next. Bottom line, the officer who shot him was exonerated.
Every so often, I think about Jake. These days, I’m supposed to help the Jake’s of this world. Because soccer’s just a metaphor, right? I’m guessing Jake wasn’t happy in the months before his death. He’d lost his parents. Maybe he never knew happiness, certainly not contentment. But how the hell would I know? Jake was made for nicknames – The Creature, Diesel – and whatever other names he picked up along the way. Maybe that’s how we deal with people we can’t figure out; give them a nickname, put them in a box. Jake took to The Creature like a guy in search of an identity. Did he ever stop searching? I wonder if in those final moments of consciousness Jake was Jake and he knew he would die. Or whether he became fully and completely The Creature – and therefore immortal. Never mind – that’s for me to ponder.
[1] I may have embellished this last part a bit.
