Mood:
accident proneDear Grove,
What a strange day. The morning was spent strolling through the contemporary wing of a local art museum with friends, imaginary smoked salmon canape and glass of Chardonnay in hand, looking at paintings and reading artists' statements like Octopi and helicopters are a recurring theme in the work of Ernie Dinkelfwat. His angry, slashing line evokes the conundrum of the human predicament. The exhibit had everything from creepy talking dolls in trunks dully repeating "Fire...Fire..." to a red room full of tables and chairs being gnawed by grey plaster foxes. There were also 30-foot-tall purple velvet bathrobes, neon figures poking each other in the eye, and some urinals made out of red lipstick. It was delightfully, bizarrely nonsensical.
What the exhibit really needed was something like this:
with a placard: The viewer is asked to accept that this is one of Australia's finest actors; and if unable to do that, then the viewer is invited to have his/her head examined.
In the afternoon, just for a change of pace, I impulsively pulled off the highway and went to a rugby match, after spotting a billboard along the road. (A certain portion of my life is ruled by impulse.) The billboard was advertising some sort of North American tournament going on this weekend. I love unconventional sports, and it was a beautiful day to be outside. When I pulled up to the stadium, England and Argentina were about to begin their match.
Rugby isn't a sport I know much about. In college I dated a rugby player for awhile, but I never went to any of his games. I was too terrified he was going to get his head ripped off. I do know rugby is different from Aussie Rules - no extra posts in the end zones; no fussy flag-waving umpire dressed like Inspector Gadget in a white lab coat and little hat; no bouncing of the ball off the turf every few steps; lots more interruptions in play - but beyond that, I remain happily clueless about the rules.
As I walked into the stadium, some staff members were handing out cardboard placards that read, "TRY".
"Gosh," I thought, "what a lukewarm cheer. 'Try'? Are both teams so depressed that it's all they can do to make the effort?" (Later,
perusing the program, all became clear: a "try" is when someone crosses the goal line and plonks the ball down onto the grass).
At first, it was quite enjoyable watching the game without any idea what was going on. Groups of Shrek-shaped men, bent over like question marks, shoved back and forth and dug at the turf with their heels. Occasionally the ball squirted out at a random place. Some hapless victim would grab it, run 18 inches, and instantly get smacked to the ground. All supine bodies would then freeze in place, like a 300 Spartan Death Tableau, while the survivors frantically rummaged around in the debris looking for the ball. My favorite part was when two guys would hoist another guy high into the air to swat at the ball, as if they were all at the ballet. By halftime, Argentina was ahead, 6 - 3. (Yes, I know it's proper Queen's English to say "Argentina were ahead", but I've never understood that. On this side of the pond, Argentina refers to one rugby team. Singular. It's like "math" vs. "maths". What's with the plurals, Sceptered Isle?)
Up in the stands, passions ran strong on both sides. Everybody, it seems, was an ardent partisan for one team or the other. The crowd rippled with flags and team colors. Directly behind me was a mixed group. Some were Argentina supporters, some were England supporters. Both were equally loud and obnoxious, and absolutely schnockered on cheap beer.
"England!" howled the guy right behind me. "ENGLAAAAAAAAAAND!"
"...Sucks!" rejoined an Argentina fan.
"Oh yeah? Wha' has Argentina done for you lately?" slurred the English fan. "Or the world?"
"Two words: Diego Maradona!"
"Maradona shoulda played rugby. He's good with his hands."
"That's like saying Picasso should have played piano."
"You know what the problem is with Argentina?...It's full of Argentinians."
"Better than being infested with English maggots."
Falkland Islands War zinger in 5, 4, 3, 2... thought I. Sure enough:
"Nice try with the Falklands, losers."
"Who wants that crappy bunch of rocks anyway? You're welcome to 'em. MANO DE DIOS!"
The taunts, howls, and good-natured jibes flew thick and fast around me. I seemed to be the only neutral spectator in that section of the stands. For a neophyte, there weren't any obvious grounds for picking one team over the other. Sometimes I go by who has the prettier uniforms, but both teams were fairly bland: England in white, Argentina in white and pale blue stripes. From an ethnic point of view, the Irish half of me was tempted to cheer for revenge on the murderous English oppressors - and who better than Argentina, the underdog? But then my other half - the murderous, oppressive English half - stirred to the soul by my neighbors' besotted renditions of 'God Save The Queen', wanted to see the glorious motherland triumph. I decided on a policy of rooting for whoever had the ball.
My neutrality was short-lived, however. A spray of something wet and sticky went sloshing across my back and elbow. I turned around and saw the loudest Argentinian fan - a bandy-legged guy with a head of curly hair - waggling his beer cup around as he trash-talked someone behind him. I slid several feet to the right to sit in front of an English fan. He leaned over and whispered confidentially, "Sorry about that. You should root for England. Our fans don't do shit like that."
A few minutes later, two Japanese ladies came and sat in my recently vacated spot. Within thirty seconds, they sprang to their feet again. English Fan had knocked over his beer, and there was a flash flood of carbonated malt cascading down the concrete steps.
"You probably should have brought swimsuits and umbrellas," I said to the ladies.
"That's OK, we were just leaving," they said, glaring at the row behind.
I shifted a few more feet to the right, since Lake Beer was rapidly spreading in my direction, and settled in to watch the game again. Two minutes later there was an urgent tap on my shoulder, this time from two female Argentinian fans.
"Stand up! STAND UP!" they pleaded. "Quick!"
I leapt to my feet just as a waterfall of spilled Red Bull drenched my rear end, purse, and sandals.
"I don't know whose that was," one of them said. "It was just sitting here."
"I'm starting to feel like the Hoover Dam," I said through clenched teeth. "Tell me - and you can be completely honest here - are there any MORE half-empty cups or bottles of random liquid sitting on the floor in your row?"
"No, I think we're clear."
"All righty then. Watch yourselves." I perched myself on the 10 remaining square inches of dry concrete and concentrated again on the game.
Three minutes later, there was a pitter-patter of wet droplets on my head. I looked up. Curly Haired Argentina Fan was weaving back from the concession stand with two cups of beer. Correction: one and a half cups of beer. The other half was now dripping from my hair.
"ARGENTINAAAA!" he screamed. "WOOOO!"
Less than two femtoseconds later, I was sitting down in the front row, cheering lustily for England and pledging my undying rugby loyalty to that green and pleasant land, for now and all eternity. (If the great nation of Argentina is willing to pony up for $4.50 worth of dry cleaning, I may reconsider, but until then: UP WITH SAXONS!). The view wasn't as good from the new seat, but at least it was outside the floodplain. I could return to letting my jaw go slightly slack and watching the game uncomprehendingly.
As I watched the ball being flicked from hand to hand, and swarms of burly men piling up on one another, I suddenly realized that even though I don't understand the rules, in a primal sense rugby is deeply familiar. It closely resembles that perennial schoolyard favorite, "Kill The Guy With The Ball" (as it was called in our neck of the woods). The game consists of a football, tossed into the middle of a huge baying pack of boys. Whoever comes up with the ball runs for his life, with the rest of the crowd in hot pursuit. Once he's tackled and buried beneath an avalanche of bodies, the ball is dug out and the cycle begins anew. It's pretty much exactly like rugby, only without boundaries, scoring, or etiquette. (We girls preferred to play "Watch From The Safety Of The Swings".)
Thinking about that led me to remember another schoolyard game, in some ways just as brutal, called Suicide. Suicide was one of those rare gender-blind games that everyone played, boys and girls alike. It was wildly popular at our school. All that's needed are a tennis ball, a brick wall, and a mob of children without any common sense whatsoever. The basics of the game are simple - throw the ball against the wall and catch it - but the rules are extremely complicated, verging on obsessive-compulsive. The ball must be caught and thrown in very specific ways, in the right order, with stern edicts about how to behave if the ball rolls into the grass, if it caroms off the gutter, if it's caught on the fly, if more than one person touches it, which hand may be used to catch it, and so on. If any of the rules are violated, if the throw and catch sequence doesn't go exactly perfect, you must run and touch the wall before someone else grabs the ball and pegs you with it.
As I recall, if you were hit with the ball, you had to assume the "Being Frisked By The Police" stance up at the wall, and present your rear end as a juicy target. The other players lined up and each got one shot at your tush with the ball. I never threw very hard (truth be told, I threw like a girl) but some of the boys relished the opportunity to whip stinging fastballs that left welts. Suicide was one of those nasty, brutal Darwinian games that, for some reason, you never see depicted on nostalgic greeting cards. Frequent was the day I would limp home from school, rainbowed with bruises, feeling as though Eden Fletcher had worked over my butt with a cudgel. (Well, okay, I wasn't really thinking that...that would have been an anachronism, since The Proposition hadn't been filmed yet. Also, Eden Fletcher didn't personally do floggings. He had a flunky do his dirty work. Bastard.) I don't know why we all kept playing Suicide so unquestioningly, but I guess it was just one of those gratuitous tests meant to toughen us up, to prepare us for life's hardships, like P.E. lap running and Sister Mary Agnes with the ruler. It makes the spectacle of 250-lb. men ramming into each other like locomotives seem almost normal.
On the way home from the rugby match (which England won 25- 20), with my soaked pants smelling like a frathouse floor on a Saturday night, I had the most wonderful daydream. A daydream of a row of Argentinian rugby fans, lined up and bent over against a brick wall, waiting for me to baptize the asses of their nice trousers with gallons of Budweiser's finest. (I briefly considered using Guinness, but what a waste.) Only one problem: I can't decide if this act should take place in a stadium, or an art gallery.
