Hunter S. Thompson was right. The Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved.
What he may not have realized, though, is that’s neither a flaw nor a rebuke, neither judgment nor insult.
It’s just one of those things you aren’t supposed to say out loud.
The Kentucky Derby is a big-to-do for really nothing much at all, 150,000+ wearing outlandish clothes (or in the infield, very few clothes) drinking overly sweetened, watered-down drinks crammed with crushed ice and paltry, wilted mint costing upwards of $12 a round, all to watch, or to come close to watching, maybe seeing from a distance, perhaps catching on a far-away screen, maybe just being in the vicinity of, a two-minute horse race — albeit the world’s most famous horse race.
“It’s what we always do,” the argument goes. “And we do it every year, on the first Saturday of May, like clockwork.”
The gears of every clock imaginable have now whimpered into a restless slumber.
What began in March as a distortion of days and nights morphed into a melting of weeks, skewing our perception of time passed and time to come, challenging us on how to fill the time directly in front of us.
By now that distortion has consumed not just days and weeks but months and seasons — and crushed the rituals we use to mark their arrival and passing.
For the first time since World War II there was no Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday of May. Plans to hold the 146th running over Labor Day weekend seems like wishful thinking.
We’ve struggled to mentally and psychologically adapt the parallel of today to past historical events. Few of us have been around to experience something so dramatic, so sudden, so long, so consuming of everyone’s everyday lives.
Is it accurate or fair to compare life during Covid-19 with World War II? Are we in a war? Thousands are dying, but this will not end with an armistice or truce.
Perhaps it’s naïve to expect our leaders to guide us through, calling for sacrifice, unity and resilience. Some will, some won’t.
Regardless of how this period mirrors anything from the past, we all know by now, we all feel by now, are reminded of it almost daily, that sacrifice is here.
This pandemic is a historic event. Something that will be told to generations, something that will be written about and reflected upon, a commonly-understood reference with a label to mark the very days we’re living through.
When this history is studied, deep into the future, they’ll know how the full story goes, how it ended, what it cost, what we paid, what we endured, what we lost. They will know the answers to all the uncertainty that grips us.
Living through it, though — it’s not words on a page or pictures in a book or video of empty streets and fruitless press conferences.
It isn’t history — yet. It’s our lives.
Our actual daily lives.
One day there will be a vaccine, and theoretically that will be the beginning of the end of this. Maybe there will be some sort of cure or treatment.
But the promise of a vaccine or the hope for a cure, one day down the road, is not exactly a finish line we see with our eyes and cross with our bodies.
It’s just out there in some imaginary future, a future we’re waiting for each day while suspended in time.
We’re living through a monumental event, when all really want and never thought we’d miss is the subtle, easy to ignore, mundane repetitiveness of normality.
A chance to live through and witness history sounds exciting, but be careful what you wish for. Sometimes it’s easier to live through periods of time history overlooks as unventful.
When Churchill Downs announced the postponement of this year’s Derby, a small part me of was, if not excited, then at least appreciative of the moment. As an amateur Derby historian, I found novelty in being alive for a postponement, for a special Derby, one that stood out.
I ordered official Kentucky Derby glasses with the original date of May 2 to have as novelties, an aberration captured in glass.
It was a noble effort to view there not being a Derby this May as special, but now it rings hollow.
Waking up on the first Saturday of May without a Kentucky Derby is a birthday without friends, family and cake; a New Years’ Eve without champagne and midnight kisses; a Super Bowl Sunday with no game; a stay-cation spent by yourself, Thanksgiving without a festive meal, all rolled into one.
I hadn’t gotten around to making my 2020 Derby plans, which is the only sense of relief that the Derby’s postponement gives me.
Wherever I would have wound up, though, wherever I would have watched, I’d have worn a hat and nice clothes, I’d have had a mint julep or three, I would have bet on the race (I had my eyes on Sole Volante), I would have sang “My Old Kentucky Home,” probably at a party under my breath turning away in case a tear got stuck in my eye.
And I would have spent lavishly on food and all the rest, and generally soaked in the joy of spending time dedicated to nothing else but frivolity.
Ah, yes, a full-day, maybe even a weekend, fully committed to the essence, purpose and goal of not giving a shit about normal life, and instead, diving head-in to something that doesn’t, in the end, matter for any reason other than the fun and joy it yields.
That, Mr. Thompson, is why people keep coming back every year. He of all people should know that sometimes, you have to make having fun your top priority and bask in the absurd.
Frivolity, really, is just decadence and depravity in moderation.
Now more than ever, we need an afternoon to goof off and celebrate as we watch horses run in a circle, not an update from governors on death counts.
Today, we could stand to make an extra chocolate pecan pie instead of worrying about depleting our flour supply.
I want to log-on to social media and have my biggest concern be the changing of the odds of the 20 horses in the race, not the changing of the odds of when the count of new cases will decrease, when a vaccine will be developed, when schools will open, when our health workers will get a break, when I can go to the grocery store without risking my life.
How lucky we were.
How fortunate and clueless and absent-minded were we to not just take for granted the luxury of a Kentucky Derby Day, but to assume we’d always have one.
How preposterous and short-sighted were we to spend millions on mint julep syrup and transporting thoroughbreds and elegant Derby dresses and seersucker suits when we should have been stockpiling medical supplies.
A horse race is not important. The absence of it is not something to mourn.
But it’s not the race or the juleps or the bets or the corny song in the late afternoon, when the sun shines just right, that I missed Saturday.
What I miss, what I feel the absence of, is the fun, the celebration, the togetherness, the marking of the passage of another year.
Last year on the first Saturday of May I was at Churchill Downs with friends. This year I was home, physically distant from all and who I love, alone.
What to make of these rituals we won’t participate in today? What about those mint juleps? It is still the first Saturday of May, isn’t it, with or without a Derby?
Should I have made myself one to celebrate, to mark this day, or must I wait until September, or whenever the next Derby is run?
Our rituals seem to be package deals. I would only have birthday cake on my birthday (or someone else’s). I would only eat apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah. I would only wear a tuxedo to a black-tie event.
Churchill Downs is having a virtual Kentucky Day celebration. A virtual toast, an online sing-along to “My Old Kentucky Home.” A virtual race.
Hey, if you want to get dressed up today and have fun, why the hell not?
If you want to have a mint julep because you (somehow) enjoy the drink, or just because you want to be reminded what the good and fun times were like, go ahead and crush that ice.
As we endure this pandemic, together in being alone, if you can find joy, you should. If we’ve learned anything through this, it’s that we shouldn’t ever put a roadblock in front of joy.
But I’m tired of virtual. And these rituals aren’t the same without the race, without the crowd, the horses, and most of all, the people.
This first Saturday of May was not Derby Day.
You need the Kentucky Derby for it to be Derby Day, so without it, it’s just another Saturday.
One of the many things we have to look forward to when the pandemic ends are special days. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, holidays. And we’ll savor them, I imagine, more than we ever have.
There is a lot of worry, concern and anxiety in our daily lives. Today’s frivolity, rather than gathering around to watch a horse race, is even mourning its absence.
We instead should focus on what we have, and what we need to do to get back to a world and life we want.
Hopefully frivolity, and joy and celebration, will be a part of that world. As we all feel on our shoulders and necks and lower back and even my calves that are cramping for some reason, we need days to shrug it all off and cut loose.
Instead, all we can do is what we’ve already been doing. Wading, and waiting, through time and history, one day after the other.
We’re stuck in the paddock, waiting for the call to the post.
We’ll be ready when we hear it, but until we do, I’ll settle for hearing the chirping of birds rather than the wailing of sirens.
Churchill Downs is matching one million dollars for funds raised for Covid-19 relief services. Click here to contribute.
—
Previously Published on medium
—