Top Gooner – Theo Macdonald

November 25, 2025

He’d finally got the goatee just how he wanted it, thick but not unkempt. Pronounced without feeling affected. The women at the traffic lights had augmented, dream-sequence faces. The larger one, who was in the passenger seat and made him think of a divisive reality TV contestant, gave an ironic thumbs-up. The driver, lean and beaked, poked out her tongue with an unnerving rhythm that made it seem detached from the rest of her body; an autonomous muscle.
        “Dad, why did they look at you like that?” Jesse, his son, asked from the backseat after they turned. They’d just been to the big Waitrose.
        “It’s hard to say why people do what they do,” Gerard said. “It’s hard to say.”
        “They were hideous.”
        “Jess, love, don’t be a misogynist.”
        “I hate when you call me that.”
        “Jess?”
        “No.”
        “A misogynist?”
        “‘Love.’”
        Gerard closed his eyes as if anticipating a crash.
        That afternoon, he was managing his daughter Niamh’s football game. It was a top versus bottom clash.
        “Girls, you’ll always be — you will always remember this day. Because this is a tough team you’re up against. They’re no mugs.” He pointed at the eight pubescent girls warming up in the other half of the pitch. “They will do whatever it takes to win. They’re dogs. Animals. But we will use that tenacity against them. For some of them, this might be the last game of football they ever play. So crushing will defeat be. Keep that in mind as you’re soaking up their pressure. As soon as we transition their hearts will break. This is a bloodsport.”
        Niamh led the forward line, but when Gerard gave his team talks she tended to shrink to the back. She had a thin, intelligent face and didn’t resemble either of her parents, who were both on the rounder side. Her snaggletooth rankled with Gerard’s wife, Karen; he called it “a beauty spot of the mouth.”
        At half time they were two-nil down.
        “Mate, what’s going on? You’re camped in your own half and inviting pressure,” Monica’s father, Raf, said. Monica was Niamh’s best friend. Raf owned several textile factories and introduced himself as a “rugby man”. For this reason, Gerard didn’t respect his opinion. His wife was beautiful, young and Czech. He drove a Lotus Elise. Gerard’s relationship with Raf was complicated by the fact that years earlier, during a sleepover at Monica’s, Niamh burst in on him in the bathroom and casually mentioned afterwards that he had an “enormous willy”.
        “It’s kamikaze stuff,” Raf said.
        Gerard glanced at the bulge in Raf’s tight jeans and assured himself that it was a combination of lighting and a child’s warped perspective. “Suicide’s a sensitive issue among teenage girls.”
        “Jesus, mate — I didn’t mean it like that.”
        “We’re playing on the counter. That’s how you set up against superior teams. Stick to your rape-adjacent sport.”
        “I want you to get onto that big lump,” Gerard said to Niamh, referring to a six foot girl with short, drill bit pigtails. “She can’t live with your pace.”
        The tall girl, as it turned out, was pretty fast. Her long legs helped. The game ended seven-one.
        Gerard addressed the group as it started to cloud over: “I want you to feel terrible about this. To truly hurt to the point you can’t fall asleep. Play it over when you’re lying in bed; let it torment and overwhelm you. Only that way will you learn from it. You will never want to feel like this again.”
        “What are you telling them that for?” Raf asked, putting his arm protectively around Monica, who didn’t seem to need it much. Monica always had a look suggesting she knew something you didn’t. On a fourteen year old girl, this was an unappealing quality.
        It began to drizzle. Jesse was crying. He was ginger and something about this made his tears more impactful, traumatised. “I don’t care about women’s football,” the nine year old told Gerard.
        “I know, son.”
        “I just don’t like to see my family lose.”
        The three of them got in the family car.
        “Sorry,” Gerard said to Niamh.
        “That’s okay.” Her head was down. “We learn more from our losses.”
        “How weird, I just read that somewhere.”
        “You said it last week.”
        “Okay. I got carried away at the end there.”
        “I don’t mind.”
        “What’s the matter?”
        She was sliding down in her seat, an imitation of a raindrop on the window, as her teammates passed, their voices seeming to come from inside the car.
        “Dad, your number plate is cringe,” Niamh said.
        “Why? Because it’s about football?”

“Strange,” Karen said that night. She was a project manager. She was in the process of trying to find a short hairstyle that didn’t make her look like a lesbian. They’d had children fairly young, or younger than their peers, which on the one hand had aged them but on the other increased their chances of a second wind, they hoped. “Maybe it’s something to do with hormones, or her boyfriend or something.” Her laptop was on her knees.
        “I mean, do you find it embarrassing?” Gerard said, scratching his chin hair, hoping it would prompt a comment or reflection.
        “No,” Karen said, not looking up.
        “Do you think I’m straight?” he said, testing her.
        “No,” she said in the exact same tone.
        The other day, she had dropped Niamh off at Monica’s, then came home three hours later smelling of alcohol. Monica’s mother was visiting family in Prague and Karen said she took pity on Raf because he seemed lonely. They drank a Greek spirit together. Karen claimed Raf had a sensitive side. He painted watercolours and was teaching himself his wife’s first language. He had also been diagnosed as dyslexic a few months ago. “A mature dyslexic,” Gerard had said, rolling his eyes. He suspected Karen was writing to him now. Sensing he wouldn’t go away, she lowered the lid so the light of the screen illuminated her crotch.
        “Is everything okay?” she asked.
        “Raf had something to say this afternoon. Unsurprisingly.”
        “Oh really?”
        “Who does he think he is? I don’t need tactical advice.”
        “Didn’t you lose six-one?”
        “Seven, but their heads dropped once it got to five, to be honest.”
        “Then maybe you should take the feedback on board.”
        A while ago, Karen set up a monthly Google calendar invite for them to have sex. She had forgotten to delete the conference call link from the event and sometimes Gerard would open it up and stare at himself in video mode, waiting for his wife to join.

        The next day, his football team lost so he was feeling vulnerable, like a limb was missing. His capacity for pleasure had been reduced; he saw everything through this aching sepia filter of defeat. Even food tasted bland. He was having a Turkish meal with his friend, Nathan. Nathan was proudly childless and unmarried in his early forties. He was in optimistic negotiations with his youth: grey hairs seemed more like frosted tips. He’d just told Gerard about letting a medical student shave off all the hair on his body. “In the name of science I was happy to submit.”
        “These Essex-y women propositioned me at a traffic light,” Gerard offered in return.
        “Sex workers?” Nathan asked, picking kofte out of his teeth.
        “That’s what I maybe thought. But there wasn’t a pimp in sight.”
        “Nice, you’re growing into your looks.”
        “The goatee, perhaps.”
        “Yeah, what’s that about?”
        “Don’t like it?”
        “You look like a cancelled magician. Or influencer. Someone they’re panicking about in schools.”
        “Sometimes I feel like Karen doesn’t even look at me.”
        “I’m sure that’s not true. She’s just a busy woman. Marriages go through ebbs and flows, or so I’ve heard.” Nathan took a slug of Efes, focussed on a waitress with tattooed wings peeking above the neckline of her vest. “About to turn me into an ornithologist.”
        “Seems more like religious imagery,” Gerard answered earnestly. “Don’t ask her. Do you think Karen’s having an affair?”
        “Why do you say that?”
        Gerard talked about, what seemed to him, her impassioned defence of Raf. He didn’t bring up the ouzo incident because he still hadn’t processed it himself. He’d rather it hadn’t happened. Nathan grew up in the area and knew Raf from school. “You know what happened with the head girl, right?”
        Gerard didn’t.
        “Sure, I was out of my league, maybe. But I remember talking to him about it. How I was worried she’d have her head turned. I made myself vulnerable, you know? It’s not often that men — and we wonder why we don’t. Next thing I know, they’re together. Apparently she always wanted a rugby player.”
        “Not a slim king?”
        “Apparently not.”
        “Her loss.”
        Nathan dipped his bread in tzatziki. He seemed choked-up.
        “You didn’t let it define you,” Gerard said.
        “Yes, I refused to be a victim.”
        “Apparently he’s well-endowed.”
        “Karen told you that?”
        “No, the head girl did.”
        The waitress brought more bread over to the table.
        “Excuse me,” Nathan said, “my friend and I were just having a bet.”

Alfie, Niamh’s boyfriend, smelled like a stockbroker and was taller than Gerard. He was tanned and had hefty, sluggish brows. Gerard was driving them over to Monica’s. Monica’s was the party house. They were giggling about something.
        “Want to let me in?” Gerard said.
        “It’s stupid,” Alfie said.
        “Even better.”
        Alfie started to speak but Niamh hushed him.
        “Too big to talk to the driver?” Gerard asked.
        “‘Gooner,’” Alfie started, “means something different now.”
        “Yeah, a true fan; you’re looking at one.”
        This made Niamh and Alfie burst into laughter.
        “No, like— what?” Alfie said as Niamh shook her head at him. “Sorry.”
        “Just leave it,” she said.
        “You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.”
        “No I don’t.”
        “I find it immature.”
        “Oh yeah, I forgot you have such a refined sense of humour.”
        “Niamh,” Gerard said.
        “All he does is quote The Office.”
        “Well.” Gerard felt personally attacked by this. “What’s so bad about that?”
        “They’re someone else’s jokes.”
        “You’re allowed to have references.”
        “Monica finds me funny,” Alfie said.
        “Oh yeah?” Niamh said.
        “Yeah. She considers me a wit.”
        “Maybe you save your best material for her then.”
        “Children,” Gerard said, checking the rearview. Their hands were on the middle seat, not quite daring to touch. He had half a mind to dump them on the side of the road. “Do you think I’m too old, or something? I shouldn’t be one at my age?” This set them off again.
        “You can do it at any time in your life. No judgement,” Alfie said.
        “I could be devoting myself to more honourable pursuits?”
        “Not at all. In some ways, it’s good. Shows you still have some fight left in you.” Alfie had to gasp this last sentence out.
        “Don’t worry, dad,” Niamh said, wiping tears out of her eyes. “Keep doing you.”
        Gerard swerved into a lay-by, hurling Niamh and Alfie into a spooning position. Twitching, Alfie avoided Niamh’s daggers like a circus routine. Wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth, he now started to explain.
        Raf was waiting in the driveway. The door closed after Alfie put his arms around Monica and Niamh in a way that Gerard found presumptive and arrogant. Raf flicked a couple of dead bugs off his sports car.
        “Is it anything to do with the Für Elise?” Gerard asked.
        “What?” Raf said.
        “The Lotus and the Für?”
        Raf shrugged then pushed his shoulders back, flexing his chest. He was wearing boating shoes with thick socks, a pair of slim cut 511s tucked into them. “Listen, Gerald.”
        “Gerard.”
        “Right. Sorry. I don’t like to do this. But listen, the way you spoke to me the other day — in front of my kid, or even kids in general — was unacceptable.”
        “It was the heat of the moment.”
        “Yes. I know.”
        “That’s elite sport for you.”
        “Okay.” Raf titled his head slightly, unsure if Gerard was being serious. He shivered. “Will you apologise?”
        “Sure. I couldn’t get a tune out of the girls.”
        “I mean — Gerard, for how you spoke to me.”
        Gerard looked up at the glaring white sky. It had a hungover tint to it. He blinked and saw Raf in front of his car and sixties mansion in negative, a dream he was trapped inside. He felt his personalised number plate burning a hole in his back. “Fine,” he said.
        “That’s your apology?”
        “Do you want me to elaborate?”
        “I would, actually.”
        “No.”
        “Karen wouldn’t stand for it at home, so what makes you think you can do it in public?”
        “Karen?” Gerard said.
        “She’s a good woman.”
        “Okay, let’s talk about each other’s wives, then. How about I give my verdict on Adela?”
        “Gerard, I meant in a nice way. No need to bring Adela—”
        “I see how it is.”
        “It’s not like anything. You’ve — to be honest, I don’t know what you’ve…”
        “Yeah yeah yeah yeah shut up.”
        “What are you going to do?”
        “What am I going to do?”
        “Yeah.”
        “What am I going to do?” Gerard repeated.
        “Yes.”
        “Anything I want.”
        “Oh dear,” Raf said. “You’re serious.”
        As Gerard walked away the crunch of gravel rang in his ears like rat bones. He got back in his car and noticed his hands were shaking on the steering wheel. His number plate. It was starting to make sense. The two women at the traffic light. Someone had randomly made the masturbation sign at him the other day. It was meant to be a sign of devotion. Now he was a laughing stock.
        He would never apologise.
        He entered the living room and Karen closed her laptop. “I’ve just spoken to Raf Belloni,” she said.
        “That’s sweet,” Gerard said.
        Karen stood up from the sofa, making Gerard flinch. She didn’t generally intimidate him, but because she kept her head, when she got angry he knew he’d made a grave mistake. Although not this time. Gerard was correct.
        “Do you have anything to say?” she asked.
        “Why’s he grassing?”
        “That’s our daughter’s best friend’s father.”
        “Could be the cat’s mother.”
        “Why are you being weird?”
        “I’m not.”
        “You don’t sound like yourself.”
        “How do you know what I sound like?”
        “Are you drunk?”
        “I’ve just driven.”
        “Is it your number plate?”
        “You know about that?”
        “Niamh told me.”
        “Were you going to mention my new facial hair?”
        “You’ve had that for weeks.”
        Gerard stormed into the bathroom. When he came back, Karen had left the house. Her laptop was on the sofa cushion like a sinister pet. He moved it to the kitchen table.
        Karen with Raf Belloni: he made two fists and shook them. His heart did the same thing. It leapt around inside him like a ball in a spray paint can. He went to pour himself a stiff drink. The sight of a bottle of ouzo among their spirits cupboard sent him stumbling. His need for inebriation betraying his own sense of injustice, he poured himself a glass and took a seat. To his dismay, it tasted exotic but not too sweet. Like Raf himself. Adela’s beauty didn’t put him at ease; if anything, it just underlined Raf’s wanton cruelty. Besides, Gerard thought Karen extremely beautiful. He’d encouraged her to get the short haircut, an ultimate vote of confidence.
        He wondered about opening the laptop. In his mind, he would be “ripping it open”. This didn’t sound like a good idea.

Gerard was a quantity surveyor. He’d been doing this for fifteen years. He walked around sites and traced outlines with his finger. Regeneration was at his fingertips. He rarely saw any of them go up. They lived in his memory the way sandcastles do to a child before they’re washed away. The starts were early but he didn’t have to bow to anyone. His feet were mangled from steel toe boots.
        Monday morning, he was talking to the foreman, Costi. Costi was a small but thick unit. Wraparound sunglasses sat on his face like an inefficient blindfold. The sun came through the unfinished building and etched its structure on the air in gold. Costi’s team were arriving with white-tipped cigarettes or sausage rolls in hand. These were some tough men. Even their stares had a kind of muscle about them, extensions of their sinewy bodies. Gerard thought he could commission one or two of them. Raf wouldn’t have so much to say then.
        Looking for the best candidates, he heard a few sniggers.
        “What’s going on?” he asked Costi. “Do they know who I support?”
        “You could say that.”
        Gerard’s car was parked up by the gate. “Ah right,” he said.
        Costi hid his mouth.
        “They’re Romanian,” Gerard said.
        “Yes?”
        “And they still — it translates?”
        “That’s the beauty of the internet, it’s a global language,” Costi said.
        Gerard went home earlier than usual. He knew Karen had a meeting in central. He sat down at the table and entered her laptop password, the Irish town where her grandparents had lived.
        He typed Raf’s name into her email, WhatsApp and iMessage. The only mention was from himself, a pick-up arrangement. He felt sordid and dumb. He was about to close the laptop when he noticed a word document lurking at the back of the tabs. It was titled ‘It’s Cumming Home’. He didn’t understand the last paragraph, so he scrolled to the top. His mouth slowly opened as he read. He couldn’t stop.

“Didn’t know she was such a fan,” Nathan said.
        They were in a pool bar. Gerard could beat Nathan with his eyes closed, but Nathan never gave up hope. He made the point to Gerard that he’d got lucky last week with the waitress. Gerard didn’t humour him with follow-up questions. He was too mired in self-doubt. All Nathan volunteered was: “You’re looking at a biblical scholar.”
        “It’s not football per se, it’s the players,” Gerard said, potting his fourth ball in a row. This time he’d tried and failed to miss. He needed to rest.
        Behind them somebody was trying to break records on the punch machine. Since they’d been there, he must have spent thirty pounds on it. Without fail, one of Gerard or Nathan flinched: it was the kind of nuisance with an in-built answer to any objections.
        “Did you know she was into creative writing?” Nathan asked.
        “Shut up,” Gerard said.
        “I’m serious.”
        “She won a uni slam poetry competition.”
        “Impressive. So you’re not worried about Raf Belloni anymore?”
        Gerard’s kissed yellow fell short. He wanted to speak quietly but had to enunciate over the concussive percussion. “No. Raf’s okay. I mean, he’s a prick, but who cares? My enemies now are John Stones and Conor Coady.”
        Nathan turned as he lined up his shot. “Really? What’s the general plot?”
        Gerard took a deep breath. “It takes place in Room 66.”
        “Nice.”
        “Stones’ ‘Herculean thighs’ get a lot of attention. And there’s something about a ‘fleshy branch of cock.”
        “Lovely turn of phrase. Did you find it hot?”
        Gerard hesitated. “Well.”
        “So you did?”
        “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get a reaction. But no, no,” Gerard was chalking his cue like a bald man trying to preserve the hair he had left, “it’s too weird. The secrecy, it feels — alien rather than mysterious?”
        Nathan nodded. “Coady, though? He’s a fringe player, at best. There for morale.”
        “That all plays into the sexual power dynamics.”
        Nathan’s reaction propelled him forward, skewing the ball. “I get to retake that.”

Gerard drove home erratically. He supposed he’d have to change the number plate. He’d had for nearly fifteen years, the beginning of what came to be known as his club’s ‘banter era’. He’d survived that embarrassment. Now a new one had come along. The meanings of words, like people, weren’t fixed. One day everything was innocent and normal. The next his wife having masochistic fantasies about defensive rotation options. But he knew himself even less than he knew her. He received a couple of beeps — his number plate or his driving, it was hard to say — but they didn’t get through to him. He’d drifted outside of time and was being penetrated by the mysteries of the universe. His legs were open. He felt like a virgin submitting to a great unknown. Every first time is partially a rape, he thought.
        On either side of the road the fields of England droned, physical in their emptiness, a mockery of our attempt to make a dent in history. He parked and stood at the side of the road. The stars shook above him like a kid was playing with a globe. He marvelled at the cruelty of the world. How everybody died in the same silence. The night air tasted of medicine and he drank it thirstily.
        His phone jolted him out of his revelation. It was Raf. “Hey, Gerald. Fuck, sorry: Gerard.” He sounded different. Tentative. Contrite.
        “Look,” Gerard said. “We can talk now.”
        “We’re both big boys. Yeah?”
        “Yeah.”
        “Okay, so there’s been a little party at ours. I’ve taken my eye off the ball, right, and Niamh’s had a bit too much to drink. I’m sorry. She’s fine, just needs to sleep it off. Should I drop her back at yours or do you want to come and pick her up? Fine either way.”
        “En route.”
        “Cheers, mate.”
        Gerard stopped via home. “Monica’s a bad influence,” Karen said. “Always throwing these big blowouts. What steam do you even have to blow out? You’re fourteen.”
        “You blow off steam,” Gerard said.
        “You knew what I meant.”
        “They were trying to impress Alfie. It’s your classic love triangle.”
        “Monica?” Jesse said.
        “It’s just a theory,” Gerard said. “But one I’m quite happy with.”
        “Yeah, I would,” Jesse said.
        “Jesse,” Karen said, then she looked at Gerard. “Maybe.”
        He sighed and looked back at her. “Teenage love. Right?”
        “Disgusting,” Jesse said.
        “It is and it isn’t.”
        They’d met when they were slightly older, seventeen. Stealing his stepfather’s car, they would drive to a secluded spot, get stoned, and kiss like someone eating a disgusting meal when they don’t think they are being watched. Later his stepfather died of aggressive cancer, casting a pall over the romantic memory.
        “Might not just be booze, either,” Gerard said.
        “What do you mean?”
        “You remember.”
        “Come on,” Karen said.
        “What are you talking about?” Jesse asked.
        “Skunk,” Gerard said.
        “What’s skunk?”
        “A psychoactive and depressive substance. It makes your mind do crazy things. Like me recently.”
        “What have you done?”
        “I rifled through your mother’s possessions. Not big or clever. Although I’m happy because I discovered a seminal work of fiction.”
        “Seriously?” Karen said.
        “There are hidden depths to us all.”
        “I’m speechless.”
        “Not judging by your prose.”
        “Can I read it?” Jesse said.
        “When you’re eighteen,” Gerard said. “Your mother has a real — what’s the word — facility with words. I’d love to read more. Next time I’ll await an invitation.”
        “If this chastening experience doesn’t force me to retire,” she said.
        “You mustn’t say things like that. Wasted talent is — okay, sexier — but also a crime.”
        “Some of these things you’re coming out with, Gerard.”
        “I know. I’m getting in touch with my poetic side.”
        “Aren’t you going a bit fast?”
        “I’m saving the family.”
        “Not sure about that.”
        “What’s it about?” Jesse asked.
        “Adult relationships,” Gerard said. “There are things in there even I was not cognisant of.”
        He could feel Karen’s hand on his knee. She pinched him, tripping a nerve. He felt like his kneecap was about to explode. The faster they went, the harder she squeezed. They tunneled through the hedges. They felt like they’d stood up too quickly and could smell their own blood.
        “This is so cool,” Jesse said.
        “No, your dad needs to slow down,” Karen said.
        “I mean your writing.”
        “Oh, that. It’s just a hobby. Nothing serious.”
        “Listen to the kid,” Gerard said. “He’s not an idiot.”