[Dean's World] Celia Farber: Superbowl For The Female Eye

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Posted by Celia Farber:
Superbowl For The Female Eye
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1202181275.shtml


   We had the time of our lives last night. We were all part of a wave
   that picked up in the late afternoon and put us down around 1 am. My
   father, me, and my son--3 generations--had money on the Giants. My
   father is recovering from a very serious surgery at a hospital a few
   blocks away--I dropped my son off in his recovery room with 3 oranges,
   a bottle of water, a bagel, and a pack of depraved cupcakes from a
   bodega. I stayed through kickoff, then went my own way. My father said
   that the way they prolonged kickoff to accomodate commercials made him
   "ashamed to be an American."

   I told V. I wanted to be at a very packed bar, any bar, and we found
   one within half a block. I enjoy the Superbowl the way a rat might
   enjoy the melted butter spraying over his head near the traveling
   amusement park's concession stand. I don't understand the game in the
   slightest but I take any opportunity to be around men acting like men
   without feminine interference: The way they all become a single vast
   organism, reacting in the same instant, the same way, leaping from
   their barstools and hollering and pumping their arms into the air, and
   high fiving. I hollered right along with them, in ignorance, and felt
   happy.

   Everything about it kills me: The way they know what they're doing
   every second, they way they play so utterly together and the way they
   weave and spin this fantastic drama in front of our eyes--the
   unquestioned drama of the ball which may be the last American story.
   To my eye, it all looks like a crazy pile of men in helmets never
   really getting anywhere, but I follow the roars and when they catch
   the ball or drop it or run with it, I feel the thrill and I begin to
   grasp, little by little.

   It's a story, football, told in a few hours, that picks you up, tosses
   you around, suspends you, slams you down, and finally gives you true
   catharsis.

   We walked up Broadway and people were just screaming straight out.
   Leaning out of windows screaming and running up and down the street
   screaming. I screamed too. I didn't stop smiling all night. For once
   in my life I was "on" the winning team.

   Vincent almost knocked my tooth out from flailing in laughter over the
   Doritos mouse commercial.

   The Victoria's Secret commercial struck me as a bummer; It insinuated
   an end to the world of all men acting like men, and that was the very
   thing that I was having such a good time with. I have become convinced
   that women should have their worlds and men should have theirs. It all
   gets boring when it mixes too much. I was once at a neo-Orthodox
   Jewish wedding and they separated the men and women for dancing and I
   was in heaven. A few women complained and I told them they were crazy
   wrong. I pulled up a chair and watched as the charismatic young Rabbi
   started dancing right in front of me, for the men, not for me.

   The world of men is a place of great beauty, clarity, conviction.

   I am well aware that I can't touch it, can't join it, can't understand
   its laws or partake in them.

   But I can watch, under cover of caring about the Superbowl, per se. I
   can love the sight and sound of all those thundering hooves across the
   plains, the dust, the hunt, the importance of the kill. I can know,
   once in a while, that I am utterly insignificant, that it is time to
   stand back and just watch a group of creatures acting natural. There
   will always be beauty in that, as there was last night.

   Tomorrow I am actually getting on the 1 train and going all the way
   downtown to join the Victory parade--pretending to be a very advanced
   Giants fan.