I’m addicted to coconut water. I’m obsessed with my dance class.
I have a tramp stamp. Seriously. I’m that
big of a white chick. Is this the reason I didn’t care about football until I
started watching Friday Night Lights? Maybe, but I actually think no.
It’s not that I’ve ever hated sports. I’m from L.A., so I’ve
always had an emotional attachment to the vapid flashiness of the Lakers. I’m
also a goddamn American, so you’ll never have to twist my arm to get me to drink
a beer and watch anything.
It’s just that instead of sports, I was raised around
musical theater, so to me, sports have always seemed obnoxiously melodramatic
yet somehow boring. They were never
something I thought much about – the background noise at a bar, the reason to
make guacamole. That is, until I fell in love with someone who was in love with
sports.
As a sports agnostic, I try to be tolerant of my boyfriend’s
athletic beliefs. He gorges on football in eight hour stretches, and I keep a
straight face when he claims not to watch T.V. I watch him slam chairs and
slurp tobacco when his team shits the bed, and keep the thought to myself that
there are more relaxing ways to spend a Sunday. The lost bets, the raised blood
pressure, the idolizing of athletes who will never reciprocate his love. I
mean, sure, they’re talented, but Jesus Christ; it’s not like Adrian Peterson
is Alice Ripley.
Although…
(For my fellow lay/me people) Adrian Peterson was this
year’s NFL MVP. Not only did he push past a torn ACL and legions of other
hungry players to claim said title, he clawed his way through a childhood of
extreme adversity to attain his wild success. He intercepts like a shark
bearing down on its prey. He runs like beast being hunted. In a life littered
with status updates and manufactured thrills, watching that kind of unbridled
tenacity and skill tear through the stadium reminds us of our simple human
capacity for greatness. It’s the space shuttle launching. It’s the pyramids at
dusk. It’s a fierce bitch belting a high F from her pussy while she’s airborne
and dressed like a witch.
I spent my childhood singing Think Of Me to the balcony in my bathtub. I used my fourth grade
project on the pioneers to shoe horn in my rendition of On My Own. Fed, bathed, and housed by my parents in suburbia, I
obsessively told an imaginary Argentina not to cry for me. This was my shooting
hoops with a phantom Michael Jordan; my throwing a football to a Joe Namath who
would one day be my teammate. The romance of these figures barely fades in
adulthood. They will always remind us of who we want to be when we grow up.
Lucky jerseys and peanut shells tossed onto stadium floors
are a new dress and candy unwrapped quietly between scenes. Going to a game or
show is an event: wrapped in familiarity while pulsing with the excitement of
not knowing what you’re about to witness. The first movement of the orchestra,
the lights of the scoreboard are as comforting and important at Christmas music
or fireworks on the Fourth of July.
I wish there was a football Sunday for musical theater. If
livestreams of Catch Me If You Can, Newsies, and Book of Morman happened all
day once a week, you can bet your sweet ass where I’d be with a wedge of brie,
my girls, and my gays*. (*I am not trying to make some hackneyed statement about
gender or sexuality here. I am fully aware that there are plenty of women who
love sports and plenty of straight men who love musical theater. I’m just
saying that in my particular case, that crowd would be comprised primarily of
girls and gays.) I can only imagine what it would be like to bet on said
livestreamed theater. If I could win money and
watch Patti LuPone go up on a line?...Just the thought has me downing mimosas
and cussing like trucker at a rest stop. But, alas, this beautiful institution
exists only in my mind, so for now, all I can do is crack a Coors Light, eat
some tots, and watch my boyfriend yell at his divas in tights.
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