The Year of Destiny

“It’s a conspiracy,” my girl slurred, “Those poor bastards threw the game to get Arlen Spector off their backs!”

“Baby, Arlen Spector’s a Republican who’s shooting for re-election in two years in a country that now hates Republicans. He’d say anything to look like he’s doing something that a corporation didn’t pay him for. Besides: everyone south of Rhode Island hates the Patriots, so threatening them is a no-risk proposition. It’s like saying you’re against Hitler. Spector’s an empty threat. It’s not what cost the game.”

“But they’re gonna drag Belichick in front of Congress!”

“Big fucking deal. They dragged John Denver in front of Congress, and it took an airplane crash to get rid of him.”

“Well… they shouldn’t have had to worry about it before the game.”

“And I shouldn’t have had to worry about you pouring a half-bottle of 16-year-old scotch on top of a quintuple dose of NyQuil Cough.”

“Fuck you. I’m sick.”

“Not right now, you’re not. You couldn’t cough if I maced you.”

She looked pained. “I can’t believe the Patriots lost. It hurts.” She pointed at her chest. “It hurts right here.”

“That’s just heartburn from spitting up a half-quart of Lagavulin.”

But she had already fallen asleep, so I rolled her over onto her side so she wouldn’t die.

———————–

And the evening had started so promisingly. Here in Boston, we’d spent a week hearing the local sports pros predicting a Super Bowl win by score margins that thinking people would have realized could only be reached if someone replaced the Giants special teams squad’s Gatorade with Hanta Mouse Urine, and if Eli Manning were given a partial lobotomy… although based on his constant wide-eyed, vacant stare, someone might have already taken care of that. Let’s just say that, if someone gave Eli a head MRI, I wouldn’t be surprised if the film showed a Lego with “Peyton” written on the side in the vicinity of the parietal lobe.

Of course, we’d only been half paying attention to all the hype, because my girl and I are baseball folk (When we bother to pay attention to any sport). We’d only been watching the Patriots since the last game of then regular season, when it began to dawn on me that each game might be undefeated history in the making. At least I, thanks to four years of high school marching band enforced attendance at football games, understand the rules of football. My girl, however, spent four years playing as a field hockey enforcer, valiantly battling the forces of the Western Massachusetts Field Hockey League and potential impending lesbianism. She does not know the rules to football… but she knows that girlfriends who ask stupid questions about football are hack, so she just enjoys the savagery in silence.

And, after watching the Patriots win three quick games in a month with relative ease, we all thought it was a foregone conclusion that the Giants would go down again, so we weren’t even that excited about the game… until my girl informed me that we had been invited to a Super Bowl keg party being hosted by her college buddy, Backdoor Johnny Balls. And if I have ever learned any lesson, it’s this: if you are invited to a kegger by a man who, without a trace of irony, refers to himself as “Backdoor Johnny Balls”? You fucking go.

Of course, I learned this lesson in 1994, when I was 22. In 2008, a “kegger” means a pony of Magic Hat Number 9, a variety of gourmet Buffalo wings, and a catered giant party sandwich. It means all couples. It includes an ill-chosen fuzzy toilet seat cozy that is guaranteed to trap every molecule, of, say, a spray of slightly used scotch and NyQuil.

Apparently in 2008, when someone mentions that one of the guests used to sleep with the host until she dumped him to sleep with her boss who then dumped her, leaving her desperate and vulnerable, people naturally approach her with sympathy and kindness, instead of with a bottle of tequila, dirty talk and a fake name. Which is what I would have done in 1994, but in 2008, that was the moment my girl walked into the conversation and said, “Eli Manning’s starting to look like he thinks he’s a real boy. The only choice is for Tom Brady to beat him like a rented goalie.”

“Tom Brady’s on offense. He’s not on the field when Eli is.”

“Then someone else. Like what’s-his-name… the stroke guy. Obviously he’s willing to sacrifice higher brain function in the name of violent retribution. God bless Stroke Boy. Remind me to send him something shiny to keep him distracted and content during baseball season.”

(My point is: growing up and coupling off is horrifying and inevitible unless you pick someone who also doesn’t want to grow up. Choose wisely kids; the Crate and Barrel money you save will be your own.)

Interestingly, that comment was about the sum and total of all comments about the game at the party. There was an overall feeling, both at the party and in Boston as a whole, that no one needed to talk about the game, because it was a lock no matter what you said about it. Talking up the Patriots in 2008 felt like cheering for Stalin administration in 1947; the sons of bitches sure as hell didn’t need your support, but vocalizing it was a good way to keep your ass from getting beaten when you visited the local таверна.

In fact, the only people at the party even wearing Patriots jerseys were me and my buddy Lance Manion, and we only had them because we got them as gifts from our employer. And, in fact, neither of us even had real Patriots names or numbers on them. Hell, the only Patriot name and number I could pull out of my ass in less than five minutes with Google is “Tom Brady” and “12,” but I’m sure as hell not going to wear the man’s jersey; on a good day, that implies a level of hero worship that I’m only willing to reserve for Batman. On a bad day, it implies something like: “Oh, this? Tom forgot it when he left in the morning. I would never kiss and tell… but the butt-slamming? Fantastic.”

So my jersey said “Nexus 6“. Lance was rocking “Manionlikey 69”. I give myself more cleverness points; referencing “More Human Than Human” in conjunction with an undefeated team has a certain je nais said quoi that Lance’s subtle “I sure do enjoy trying to breathe through pubic hair! Any pubic hair!” reference just can’t match. Regardless, it’s probably safe to say that neither of us will be wearing our jerseys to the Cask N’ Flagon until one of use outgrows this silly morbid fear of being kicked to death, but I digress.

So when the kickoff happened, most of us missed it because we were in the dining room, digging at the three-layer dip, showing off pictures of various drooling infants, or screaming at Balls that we couldn’t find any drink ice for the 16-year-old scotch. We all managed to meander into the TV room by the time Bud Light asserted that it can make you emit fire (Which it can, but if there were any truth in advertising that balding fuck would have aimed his ass at the candles).

But the idle conversations continued… right up until Eli broke tackles on something like 77 guys and completed the pass to what’s-his-name with the sticky helmet with something like a minute left. Then the room didn’t exactly deflate, but… people suddenly looked confused, like they had been watching something familiar, but now they simply couldn’t comprehend what they were seeing. Within seconds, the party had stopped being populated with 21st-century proto yuppies (plus three unrepentant booze-suckers) and started being a room full of my dad, circa 1990, when I showed him the dwarf-dancing episode of Twin Peaks… or circa 1998, when he followed my Web browser history to savagesonblondes.com.

And then it was over. And the instant Belichick ran off the field, everyone in the room stood up and put on their coats, like they couldn’t stand to watch the last second run off the clock. Although, to be fair, my girl had already started drunkenly muttering for the balls of Arlen Spector, and had half a water glass full of scotch left, so they may have wanted to gracefully exit before she asked someone to borrow their car and a rusty coat hanger.

————————————–

2008 was supposed to be the Patriots year of destiny; Googling the term gets you around a quarter-million matches (Although “Patriots Suck” nets you just under a cool half-million, which proves to me that I shouldn’t wear my jersey to San Diego ComicCon this year, sweet Blade Runner joke or no).

The common consensus outside of New England is that we deserved to lose for a lot of reasons: from Brady abandoning his kid with Bridget Moynahan (Which I could care less about, since I personally have abandoned countless children I’ve fathered with Nike Gymsock), to his taking up with Giselle Bundchen (Be real: she’s a supermodel millionaire whose name is “Gis.” The only woman who’d be more a a no-brainer for any man to nail would be purely theoretical Microsoft Heiress Cumdumpster Freebeer Gates), to the whole Spygate thing.

And I’m sorry, but I can’t get myself cranked up about Spygate, no matter how many middle-market sports hacks write “Belicheat!” and pat themselves on the back with JD-reeking hands. Where the rubber hits the road, Belichick used 50-year-old technology to make it easier to figure out how to stop the Jets steroid beasts with his own HGH monsters. Cheating happens at every fucking level of the NFL, and unless you’re willing to supplement the 15 yard penalty for facemasking with a trip to the waterboard, demand that your team’s coach supply more effective performance enhancing drugs and shut the fuck up about Spygate.

The ugly truth is: we did deserve to lose the Super Bowl this year, but not for any of those reasons. We deserved it because this is BOSTON, and it never even occurred to us it wasn’t our year of destiny. Which is a slap in the very face of destiny, because apparently every Boston sports fan except me forgot that we already had a year of destiny: 1986.

We started 1986 with the Patriots getting stomped by the Bears in Super Bowl 20, crested in June with Len Bias taking a dirtnap, and ended in October with Buckner’s failed stop. That’s what being a Boston sports fan historically is like: watching your teams snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. As a wise man once told me: Boston teams will always have plenty of time to suck.

Boston teams have been so successful lately that it’s easy to love them. But because of that, we’ve forgotten that catch phrases like “Year of Destiny” and “Quest for Perfection” are easy for any dipshit to latch on to. They’re bumper sticker slogans for bandwagons that any yuppie, fair-weather fuckwad can get behind. They speak to infatuation.

Which is fine, but those of us who’ve been around for a while know that it takes something more than Infatuation to get behind a war cry like, “Wait until next year!” That takes love.

Well, either love or 80-something years of blue ball driven false optimism, but what can I say? I’ve become a romantic in my old age, so I’ll go with love.

———————————

“I’m calling in sick,” my girl said on Monday next morning, “I think I blacked out last night. Did I do anything embarrassing?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Oh fuck. Was there police involvement?”

“Don’t worry about it. Nobody got maimed.”

“Did the Patriots win?”

“Nope. Giants, 17 to 13.”

“Shit… oh well; fuck it. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training on Valentine’s Day.”

Indeed. Happy Valentine’s Day, Boston.

[tags]Super Bowl, New England Patriots, New York Giants, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Giselle Bundchen, Belicheat, Spygate, Tedy Bruschi, Those ten pricks who couldn’t tackle Eli Manning, dark humor[/tags]