Le coup de trop

[Music] In the documentary "The Masculine" by Levin, the director Jennifer Sibel Newsom explores the construction of masculinity and social injunctions that boys must face in their development to prove that they are real men. We can see the activities that have been carried out as signs of masculine success, such as sport, career, or even access to power posts. Pierre is obsessed with his physical form. He dreams of being muscular, like Sung Goku, the hero of Dragon Ball Z. With his rugby friends, he spends his time in the room, he lifts up the altars, he purges his ideal. He gives everything for rugby. But to give everything, we sometimes offer too much. You are listening to "Transfer", this testimony was collected by Julie Plouvié. [Music] I'm 14 years old, I'm going to see friends who play rugby and who are in my class. I was already doing a sport before the fight, I was doing judo. So they say that I may have an appetite for this sport. I'm going to see them, they are indeed very beautiful. I'm on the side of the communal field, it's nothing extraordinary. But there is this atmosphere before the game, because I arrive early, which I immediately like. That is to say that there are the two teams, the team of my friends and the opposing team, who are warming up, each of them in their area of ​​the field. And there is all this ceremonial, a little confrontation, this opposition that is going to be between two teams. I see the spirit of the team, the spirit of the body that is created between each team. The freshly cut lawn, it's a mix of smell, also of vision that I like. And the team of my friends is taking a huge lead. But it's okay, they really lose a lot, but yeah, I'm still conquered. Before, I had done judo, which was an individual sport. And when you take a shot, you take it all by yourself. There, at least you take it at 15, and it hurts less. And yes, after this match, I tell myself that I'm going to start, that I'm going to sign up for rugby. What strikes me right away is that I'm not too afraid of contact. And that, rugby, it's rather an advantage because there are a lot of them. So I like this contact, but I don't like it so much, I would say, for what it is, but more for what allows me to think about myself. That is to say that the fact that I'm not afraid to put skin on it, to sign up, to be signed up, makes me strong in fact. The fact of doing it gives me the impression that yes, I'm brave. To not be afraid, not to have this reticence, to prove it to others, gives me pleasure, gives me joy. And so the first training sessions go pretty well. Because I'm not up for it, but I'm pretty big. So I have a physique that sticks to what we expect in rugby. I'm not extremely fast, but I'm not too slow either. So I'm about to shoot my pin of the game. And for the moment, I have the sense of the collective. So, get on the field, take a walk and all that, it's okay. When the first match comes, I have a few training sessions in my legs. And I'm up for it. I'm super proud of myself, of course, but I also have a lot of pressure. And I'm so scared, I'm so stressed. That I say to myself, there is something that shouldn't happen. It's a press conference during the match. So I'm drunk before playing. So I get into the locker room. I'm immediately part of a ceremony. So we give myself my jersey, the number 14. Everyone is super tight. I'm here, I have my friends next to me. And I attend my first training session. What the coach tells me, and what the team says, is that basically, you have to be able to give your life on the field. You have to get out of these trips, you're at home, you're going to get into the face. You're a bit excited about the warrior instinct of teenagers. It takes me to the trip like everyone else. That is to say, I'm part of this group. We look at each other, we are shoulder to shoulder. Some are crying. It's very intense as a moment. When we get out of the locker room, there is this kind of energy release before the confrontation, which is super embarrassing. And I'm galvanized, which also makes me less stressed. We are at the very beginning of the 2000s. And the World Cup of 1999 of rugby has just happened. And I am super impressed by the semi-final of the 15th of France against the All Blacks, where France wins in a rather spectacular way. And I'm so upset that I recorded it in VHS. And I often finish it at home. And so I do sessions where I do pumps, I take my altars, I finish the game at the same time. I watch the games, of course. How many times have I dreamed of being able to sing an hymn on a rugby field? And in fact, it puts me in condition. That is to say that my muscle sessions, they are accompanied by this ritual, of this kind of dream that makes me fantasize, that makes me mirrored, in fact. In the locker rooms, we all scroll a little bit. It's also the beauty of rugby. For the moment, there are quite different physiques. There are people who can be big, who can be small, who can be big, who can be precocious, others more fluid. It does not prevent me from having my representation of ideal physique and that I would like to correspond to this ideal. So I would like to have more skin, I would like to have more thighs, I would like to be faster, more powerful. I am so obsessed with muscles that when I get bored in class, I draw the Sangoku, the character of Dragon Ball Z, a little everywhere, on the rocks, on my sheets. And so I apply myself well to do the pectorals, the abs, the big biceps and all that. And in fact, I want to be like in Dragon Ball Z, I want to be a great hero. So I do these muscle sessions at home, but I also go to the sports room, to the communal muscle room. And with friends, we do sessions, we do sleeping developments, we do squats and things like that. There are big glasses, and obviously the pleasure is to get up, in fact, get up with the muscles a little inflated by the force. So obviously we are much more muscular just after that than in reality. But I have this body a little inflated, topped by the force. And that, I really like to look at me like that. I know that in fact, it's not really my body, that is to say that it's temporary. And indeed, my body changes a little, despite the effort I put in. It doesn't make me sad, but it's true that it makes me despair a little. That is to say that I have this idea of telling me that I can't get out of my body too much. That is to say that I am limited. The high school is over, I go to Sciences Po Grenoble. I am a rather good student. And well, you have to do a university sport, it is mandatory. And without thinking, in fact, I don't even ask myself the question, I register in rugby. I already do two workouts a week plus a game. I add at least one more training, another game for the university. So I feel that the load is still a little heavy. The level is not terrible either. But hey, that's my sport. I still think it's good to do a little more. We are on Wednesday afternoon in autumn. And it's the very first game that I do as a member of this university team. It's clearly not a level of madness. And I feel that the referee are a little dull, they don't follow much, they don't know the rules very well. And it doesn't reassure me that much anyway. Because it's a sport with risks. And well, the minimum is that indeed, the rules that are still there to reduce a little the risks are respected. And I feel that there, we are not totally there. But hey, like me, I have this know-how of rugby man in club, it's not too complicated for me. I can shoot my pin of the game and we are a moment of action. In fact, I just hit someone and I want to recover, scratch as they say the ball to the ground. And so in fact, I get up to take the ball to the ground. No one who is on the ground holds his ball. So I fight a little to scratch him. And someone from the opposing team arrives in front of me who wants to push me and who doesn't pay attention at all and who sends me a knee kick at the level of the face, in the right eye. And well, there, it's a shock as I have never known. Something that upsets me. So I don't lose consciousness, but I really have the feeling of having the trunk exploded. That is to say that I tell myself that probably I have lost my eye. It's the first thought that I have. I get up right away with the adrenaline and I get out of the field a little nervous. I immediately put my hand on the face to try to feel my eye. What is there is that it is too inflated. So I don't touch anything. I just see that I feel that it is bleeding but that's all. And by putting my hand on my face like that, I immediately understand that my skull is collapsed above my eye. It's flat. That is to say that there is no more resistance. It's soft and it's flat. And I don't worry. That is to say that it's not serious, it's broken. But the obsession is my eye, my eye, my eye, my eye, my eye. And so I get out of the field. I ask people to look at me if they see my eye. And very strangely, we don't call the rescues. The firefighters don't come. It's a bit of a mess actually. No one knows how to handle the situation. And it's a friend of the team who takes me in his car to the hospital. So I arrive at the hospital. I am immediately charged. And I am escorted by a doctor who will first clean the wound. So in fact, there was a lot of blood. That's what they were doing. In fact, I couldn't see it. So he removes the blood. He looks at my eye, making sure that my eye is there and that it is intact and that I don't have the dead eye. Right away, I feel much better. In the meantime, my mother also arrived because she was warned. And when she enters the room where I am escorted, I haven't seen my face yet, actually. And she sees me and she is empty. And in fact, she turns into the apple. She is so shocked by what she sees, by my face being murdered by the shock that she vanishes. And I am completely trying to relax in the atmosphere. Well, no, everything is fine. Because I was totally absorbed by my eye, that indeed, I totally forgot that I have the mouth deepened. The doctor arrives in the room and explains to me what I have. I have a fracture in the lower part of the skull. And he explains to me that I will have to conduct a series of tests to make sure that I have no sequels at the cerebral level. I understand a little more the measure of what happened to me and the seriousness of all this. He asks me, "How did this happen to you? Were you in a car?" And I tell him, "No, no, it was a rugby match. I took a knee shot during the match." And he tells me at that moment, "How can we inflict this on ourselves for a game?" This sentence, I don't answer it, I stay a little dumb. And she comes back inside me. She really comes back inside my brain because I tell myself that he has, of course, touched a sensitive point and that he is right. In fact, it makes me reason something in me. This sport, indeed, I do it maybe not for the right reasons. And I inflict something in it. And so there, I think that I realize that, that is to say, I tell myself, "You took the risks for your health to repeat. Because my whole career as a rugby player was about to get hurt. I always get bruises on my shoulder. So all these risks that I take, all these bad things that I feel in my body, I do it, I accept it to prove myself something, to prove to myself that I am strong, that I am resistant. But in fact, I am not. And I am afraid, in fact. I have never listened to this fear. I continued. I wanted to prove that I could get there, that I was also courageous with others. But there, I took a big hit on the face. And it makes me go down a little bit of all my desires, of muscle, of victory, like that. It brings me back a little bit to what I am. That is to say, a passive body like that. I am 18 years old and I think it's really the first time I understand that I am mortal, that all this can stop and that sometimes I don't see much. And what is still crazy is that I will come back to rugby. That is to say that the season had started and I want to finish it with my club team. So I'm going to see my friends train, I'm going to see them play on weekends. I'm going to the locker room with them. And in fact, I am taken as a model, as an example by the coach who values the fact that even if I made myself a little bit damaged by the cram, I am there to see them play, that I will reintegrate the team and that somewhere I have proven to be brave. So in fact, no, I just took a hit on the face. But I am so put forward and valued for this injury that I can't, even if I'm afraid, I want to come back to rugby because I want to be strong, I want to be brave, brave. I manage, despite everything, to come back on the field. So I wear a helmet, which is absolutely useless, but I still wear it because it gives me a little scratch, but I manage to resume training, I manage to resume the matches. I'm a little scared, but it's manageable. And it goes well too, I'm not shocked. The first match where I come back to the competition, I'm in the locker room and then it's really my moment. That is to say that the whole team, the coach values the fact that I'm there, that I beat myself to be there, that I'm beautiful to have had the cram in its place. I'm there to fight with my friends and I took an example. So I feel a little heroic. Somewhere, I say to myself, I won, in fact. Even if we don't win the title, it doesn't matter, I'm there and I did it. And I proved to myself that I was able to do it. And that's maybe the most important in the end. So with my team, we went through all the stages that come to an end. We qualified in half a quarter. And so it's the weekend of the final. It's the good days, it's super beautiful. And it's really a whole weekend that we're going to create the final. We're leaving in a quarter, the wake of the match. We all know what we're doing in blond, because we want to reproduce a little the image of Bargeot, the team of Hand, the French masculine team. And yeah, we're all up for it. We're all up for it. We have our corn, we listen to music, we do serious kinks, we are the kings of the world in the bus. Then we go to the hotel, we sleep in our rooms. In fact, we would also believe in Claire Fontaine. It's the eyes in the blue, we are in our rooms with our friends. We go to the meal with the chicken and the pasta. We are living this dream, this dream of a team that goes to the final. The day of the final arrives. We wake up, we do a muscle awakening. And there, yeah, clearly, the pressure starts to rise. And then there, for the moment, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, I'm super motivated. We're all on the edge of tears. The coach's speech and the wrist. Yeah, it's been four years, five years that we're all training for this moment. So it's super strong. And we use each other's hands against each other. The coach is crying, telling us that a failed final is tears for a whole life. So it's now. And we arrive on the field, there is the audience, there is music. It really looks like everything I watched on TV. So we are living a little bit our dream. And the final is a super tight match. It doesn't happen much. There are few opportunities. It's really defense against defense. And we manage to score one try, the only one in the meeting. It's the end of the match, we wait, we wait. Because obviously, if the team scores, we potentially lose. We have to balance, we have to extend. So all the bench, all the players are waiting for the liberator whistle. The referee whistle at the end of the meeting. And there, we explode two players. It's a moment of individual oblige, I would say. We are only a team and we are too happy, we are too happy, we are together. And we did it. After the victory, we have to go home, so we take the bus back. And in the bus, it catches me. I tell myself, OK, I got this title of French champion with my team. And I'm alive. I don't know which one is serious. It's good. You've played enough, you're leaving. It's a bit like a poker player. The feeling that I took risks for my health, that now I just caught the Pactol, but on the other hand, I have to play again. So I stop the rugby, but there is still a small idea that comes to my mind, that I'm a bit lazy to be gone. I start to make dreams. In these dreams, I am called by my team, which asks me to come back to play to play a few games because they need me, because there is an interference, because I don't know very well, it's not very clear. But basically, I have to come back on the field. It's super important. And I'm petrified to the idea of coming back. I come back in these dreams, I come back every time on the field. And it stops before I even start playing. Basically, I wake up saying to myself, I shouldn't be on the field. In fact, I think that when I make these dreams, it's that I feel, yes, guilty and let go, to have let my fear somewhere win. [Music] So it's been a year since I stopped rugby. And I keep going to see my friends playing, especially Mathieu, who is a very close friend. And I'm on the field, he plays. And in fact, at one point, there is a kind of group-up, so a lot of players jumping on it. And he takes a shot of this shoe behind the skull. He gets up, but he comes out of the field because he doesn't feel very well. I think that he put you, in any case, he came out of the field. We are waiting for the help, I'm next to him and his friends. We are waiting to see how he goes. And in fact, we realize that he doesn't answer well. He is a little far away, we feel that he is in the crowd. He is evacuated to the hospital. Well, of course we are worried, but at the same time, he was aware. So here, I am moderately worried. But I still need a shot because I, here, it's a close friend. He also took a shot at the skull, and I know what it is, and it hits me. And then, well, I am called by his parents the next day, who tell me that Mathieu is not going well, that we don't know why, because the scanner doesn't reveal anything precise, but he's not there, what. He doesn't answer, he's a little weird, in addition, a little aggressive. And that, well, there is no need for improvement, he will be hospitalized and hospitalized at the psychiatric hospital. And that drives me crazy here, a kind of blow to the stomach. I feel like I'm falling from two floors. To hear that, it's all that I was super afraid of. That is to say that, beyond the physical trouble, there is also, well, yes, the effect on the brain. And there is like that, a few hours, where in fact, we wonder what's going on, because he is no longer there. The doctors don't know why, because the scanners are not that worried, they are normal, but he doesn't answer. So he is elsewhere, in another place of consciousness. And that ends really well, because after a few hours, he falls asleep deeply, and when he wakes up, he is there. So it's really ultra-strange, no one understood. But he unlocked himself from this state of consciousness. Well, the earth, what. It's also a trigger for me, what happened to him, because I say to myself, it's not just me. It's not just me who is in a bad mood. It's not us who have a problem, it's maybe the sport that exists. In the following years, I continue my studies, rugby is really starting to take a place of less and less important. I still have close friends who play, but it's not at all my obsession, it's not at all a dream, obviously. I prepare my adult life more. And I think there is always, in the background, this kind of feeling of possibility of being a part of it. But it doesn't weigh on me, it's not something I think about. It comes back punctually by these dreams, but I don't suffer from it. In 2018, I was 33 years old, and when I look at the information on Google, I fall on a news, the death of a young player, Nicolas Chauvin, who played for the French State in junior. He suffered a very, very bad score, since two players played for him, and it caused him to move away from the field. And he died in the hours that followed this game. Seeing that, I have a mirror effect. I say to myself that I want to, I had the same age at the time I had my accident, the same age as him, who died. And I say to myself that there is really a big problem with this sport. In the end, maybe part of this team, for a long time, I was ashamed, but now I realize that I don't have to be ashamed, and that I have inflicted a lot of things for bad reasons. In fact, I realize that I don't know if I really liked rugby. I liked the fact that I proved something, that I could say that I was doing rugby, that I was able to support, to score, to score, but what I was enjoying on the field, frankly, and Nicolas Chauvin's death, it totally shattered the dream I had for rugby. And in addition, we were born in the mid-20s, it's 2018. And it also includes a reflection on virility, all this toxicity that men can cultivate to try to stick to an ideal. Maybe if I had been less obsessed with the muscles and the fact of proving that I was heroic, that I was blood-sucking, maybe I would have done a completely different sport practice, maybe I would have done dance, and it makes me realize how much, yeah, I was overwhelmed by values such as courage, combativeness, heroism, how much I also wanted to have this muscle body, which is not mine, and to be a little detested from it, that's why I do these dreams. That's because I don't like who I am, I don't like the fact that I haven't been able to achieve this idea. It's my relationship with rugby, but at the same time, I feel that I have a slightly ambiguous feeling in front of my former teammates, because I still feel like I'm crashing into the soup. Because this very strong memory that we had together, especially as a champion of France, I feel like I'm pushing it. On March 10, 2022, I become a dad. For the first time, as a little boy, it's obviously a great honor, but it's also a lot of questioning about what we want to convey, and it's a little boy. So I know that as a boy, there will be all of a particular socialization, and I say to myself that I have work, to actually allow him to be as free as possible, and not to feel forced to do sports between two boys, to prove what it is. That's my mission as a dad, and I don't know what my reaction would be if he went into 3-4 years and said he wanted to do rugby. I think I would be happy. You just listened to "Transfer". This testimony was received by Julie Plouvié. "Transfer" is a podcast produced by Slate. Direction and editorial production, Sarah Koskiewicz and Benjamin Septem Hours. Production load, Astrid Vardin, post-production load, Mona de l'Aie, Prys De Son, Joana Lalonde. The introduction was written by Sarah Koskiewicz and Benjamin Septem Hours. She was read by Aurélie Rodrigues. 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