In an extract from his new book, Greg Bruce investigates the impact Dan Carter has had on his life.
In 2009, shortly after I broke up with my fiancee, I moved into a fourth-floor studio apartment in central Auckland, with a single floor-to-ceiling window looking out on a giant billboard of then-All Blacks first five-eighth Dan Carter in his underpants. I could not look out that window without being confronted by the enormity of that near-nude body with its not quite symmetrical abs. I knew the location of every crease on that lopsided stomach and every thought suggested by that naughty smile. In that apartment, to which I had moved in part to provide myself a life that might be conducive to meeting someone interested in me sexually, the image I saw most frequently was of the country's most sexually admired being, the man representing the ultimate in physical self-mastery — good looks, large and well-defined muscles, great kicking skills both from hand and at goal, distribution, vision, speed, acceleration and tackling: the full package. He was the biggest part of my life, visually. I saw his image more often than I saw my own and I understand the impact of the omnipresence of such idealised and unattainable beauty in one's life.
Each day, after showering, I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror, wet and smooth and straight, without a single cut or curve to interrupt the pillowy whiteness that comprised my body below the neck, then I would go sit at my computer, where I could not fail to be aware of that smug smile, with its intimations of superiority, out the window to my right. I began to work out: a 30-minute daily regimen of sit-ups and push-ups, mixed with light running on the spot, after which I would go and stand naked in the bathroom in search of what I hoped, but was never able to prove, were emergent creases. I created an internet dating profile and began to meet women and was shocked to find some of them coming back to my apartment, where they engaged with me physically on the couch in such a way that, if they wanted, for the entirety of the enterprise they could see Dan Carter.
My issue with his presence wasn't so much physical — his looks and body were so preposterous as to be undaunting — but his image stood as a daily reminder of the way he had mined a large, rich vein of natural resources to build for himself a life of purpose, wealth and sexual success, while I had used my red hair, lazy eye, blemished face and weak wrists to build for myself a life dominated by a job to which I was particularly poorly suited and a seven-year relationship, which had failed.
I had seen him once in real life, two years before I moved into that apartment, on the night the All Blacks left New Zealand for the 2007 Rugby World Cup. They gathered in the atrium of the Manukau Shopping Centre for a farewell signing and photograph session on the way to the airport and I went with my girlfriend, who stood in line to get player autographs while I stood outside the barriers, only a metre or two behind Carter. When he turned, I took a blurry photo of his profile on my phone. I sensed his awareness that the photo was being taken, and felt excited at this flush of contact with a man who was already considered, age 25, one of history's greatest first five-eighths, and who I believed to be on his way to win the World Cup. But I also felt ashamed, because I was 30. At the time, I was editor of New Zealand Printer magazine, which claimed to have a remit of keeping readers up to date with all the important news and events in New Zealand's rapidly shrinking printing sector, but which in reality had very few readers and not much news, and in lieu of that was filled with pages of fawning and effusive articles about advertisers, written by me, based on interviews with them, then rewritten by them. The correct location of a comma was the one thing I knew I understood better than the average person, and I will never forget the pain of having that source of self-worth taken away from me by a semi-literate sales manager I was contractually bound to agree with.
My company's office, on the edge of what was about to become one of Auckland's largest subdivisions, was in a building originally intended to be a house, which had subsequently been divided into offices for a range of disparate organisations with no need of, nor budget for, a good location. The company accountant and I — the only full-time employees — co-worked there with some other people I carefully avoided. We had our own rooms and I kept my door shut at all times and maintained the air conditioning on 27 degrees for seven or eight months of the year. The accountant and occasional customers or suppliers would come in and say, "You must be hot," but I never was.
The days dragged and moaned. I was ready, by the time of the 2007 World Cup, for the tournament to carry me off with it, as I knew it would, and although I wanted it to, I also wanted it to not, particularly if we were going to lose, as we usually did. I had been working for New Zealand Printer and/or its overseas equivalents for seven hopeless years, during which time I had read a large collection of business self-help books and used many charts and matrices derived from them, in a failed attempt to increase my effectiveness and thereby give my life greater meaning, by which I think I meant wealth.
The tournament sat above everything, offering respite and release. By the time I stood there that night at the Manukau Shopping Centre, close enough to smell the residual CK One on Daniel Carter's downy neck hair, I understood I was in too deep, with no way out. I looked at him, bathed in brilliance, success and the universal acclaim of the populace of the Manukau Shopping Centre, this man attractive enough to have contaminated the entire complex with sex hormones, and I looked at him again later, on the late news, when a camera crew gained access to Air New Zealand's business-class cabin prior to the team's take-off for the United Kingdom, and in him I recognised all the things I had never had and could never have. I felt a commingling of excitement and rising bile, that bitter human concoction, which I knew could only be dislodged by an All Blacks victory in the World Cup final.
A month later, as I sat on the floor of my lounge on a Sunday morning, in the closing minutes of that terrible quarter-final against France, feeling the rising in me of the pancakes I had eaten so contentedly an hour or so prior, I looked at the image on my screen of Daniel Carter, sitting, crying, on the sideline, icing his injured calf, and I didn't feel sorry for him.
Edited extracted from Rugby Head, by Greg Bruce (Penguin Random House, $35)