Via Mr. Irrelevant and The Big Lead comes this excellent Esquire magazine profile of Clinton Portis. And it’s an excellent piece, and I hate to boil it down to just one quote, but … it’s a good one.

A fish tank in every room, for starters. His obsession with them also began in college, during his sophomore year, when his roommate bought one and suddenly their cinder-block cell felt like a pad. The most elaborate of his current collection has been reserved for his bedroom, where the magic happens. More specifically, it’s reserved for his bed, the headboard of which consists of an aquarium that nearly reaches the ceiling, a square-shouldered arch filled with salt water, coral, fish, and a freakishly large sea anemone that looks an awful lot like a gaping vagina.

“You gonna fool yourself, too?” Portis says. “I know what this looks like, but I got a woman down in Miami. We been together seven years.”

Um, dude—

“You know what, man, honestly? Yeah, I have my share. I have fun with it. I’m twenty-four, bro! You love to think that the woman you with, that’s the woman you want for the rest of your life. And I done felt that way. But I’m twenty-four! I don’t do shit to disrespect her. I try to keep it outta her face. But we have an understanding.”

Which is?

“Let’s just call it an understanding that I’m not perfect.”

Understood. In this regard, you are perfect, and you are not even going to make an attempt to try. Got it.

Before we get to that, though, first let me say that having an aquarium as a headboard… that’s just awesome. I would almost be willing to have sex with Clinton Portis if it meant that I could spend a few hours in his giant bed with the aquarium headboard.

Anyway, on to the green light. I’ve talked about this before, and honestly … it’s not a life or culture I’m familiar with. In my mind, if you have a woman, be it a wife, girlfriend, or whatever, cheating on her is bad. It happens, and people make mistakes, but at very least, it should be something you’re sorry for, right?

But for a lot of people, particularly athletes, that’s not the way things work. And understand, I’m not judging Clinton Portis. He does what he does, and I’m just saying that it’s not a lifestyle I’m familiar with. I don’t get Mormon polygamy, and I don’t get this sort of thing.

There’s just a lot of guys in the NFL, MLB, and NBA who are married … and there are a lot of guys in the NFL, MLB, and NBA who go out and pull a lot of strange trim. And there’s got to be quite a bit of overlap there. The wives and girlfriends know about it, they accept it, and they knew it was part of the deal going in. It’s just a very strange concept to me, and I don’t understand how the hell it works.