Super Bowl Sunday

I stand dripping inside the Emergency Room. I watch the rain fall through the big door. It glides to a close. What a pain in the ass. A sliced up and bloody knee. Wounded by an exploding bottle of carbonated mineral water. A freak accident. I feel like an idiot.

I shake the black umbrella with the Four Seasons logo on it, christening the floor of St. Joseph’s, and trying to miss the newspapers I carry in a red canvas bag. It was going to be a long Sunday. The waiting room is filled with people trying to avoid each other’s eyes. Fake light and pastel walls are meant to make the room cheerful. Three vending machines and a pay phone line the far wall, and a TV set hangs from the ceiling, the sound turned down.

I fill in a form at the Admitting Desk and find a seat near a table. I pull out the Sunday papers from the red bag and glance up at the TV. There’s an animated logo on the screen. Christ, I think, it’s the Super Bowl. I’d forgotten. Again. I glance at my watch. They’ll be blaring that damn TV for the football people soon. That’s all I need.

We are the secret society of America, those who conduct life beyond the reach of the gladiator rituals. Shhh. Don’t tell, but I had planned a serene afternoon, a little reading, a little writing, a nice hot bath to soothe my aching muscles after a week of sneezing and nose-running and antihistimine pills that had turned me into a zombie and which made me decline a dinner invitation from my friend Jan — “Not Super Bowl- related,” she said in her email, after describing the menu.

A dinner for the non-football people. People who preferred a bath. All I had done, after drawing the water, was to walk into the kitchen, naked and barefoot, to get a bottle of mineral water. I grabbed the cold glass bottle in the frig with one hand.

Time stood still and sped up all at once as the bottle exploded. Glass and bubbles were propelled all over the kitchen floor. I looked down in disbelief. Fuck. Then, I noticed that blood was running down my left leg. I didn’t really feel anything. I managed to get into the bathroom so I could bandage my knee. I found my slippers and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. By the time I was done, blood had soaked through the bandage.

And so I wait for stitches with beer commercials and sportcasters droning above me, unable to concentrate on the Sunday New York Times Magazine in my hand. Maybe I should watch. Shit, why should I? I don’t really care, let’s face it.

“Who’s in the Super Bowl tomorrow?” Steve had asked at our regular Saturday breakfast. My AA buddies, all gay men, most of us around for a decade or more. We get a big table in the back of a diner in Glendale.

“The Super Bowl is tomorrow?” Ted said, and everyone hooted and jeered. Especially Al, who fancies himself a sort of sports-oriented guy.

Ted poked his fork at the huevos rancheros on the thick plate in front of him. Nobody talked about the Big Game in the waves of our conversation. We glided from movies and TV to politics, and of course, gossip…who got laid, who is not talking, who relapsed. It’s like breakdancing, each one takes a turn at the center of the cardboard — a verbal flip or a flashy stunt, a crack, a confession, a lie. Like family. We’re saying: Look at me, look at me, I’m still here, love me.

Or maybe we’re saying: I’m still here, thank God, you are too. Thank God.

The Oscars are our Super Bowl. Much more important than football games or Presidential elections.

“What do you hear about the writer’s strike?” asked Paul, a school teacher.

Before I could answer, I felt the phone vibrating in my pocket. It was Sherry, one of my best girl friends. Also, my dentist. It had been a while. Sherry calls when she has something to ask me for, otherwise it’s email.

“Hi, what’s going on?” I ask, as I scooted my chair back from the table and moved towards the door.

“Is this a good time to talk?” she asks.

I squeeze past a clutch of people waiting by the cash register. A twenty-something hipster couple with tatts and a baby in a carriage smile sweetly as I pull on the heavy glass door and make it out to the street.

“Well, I’m with my buddies at breakfast, you know, my AA buddies from the meeting.”

The sky is a bit overcast, the air is moist. Will there be rain? We always need it, but I think, no, who wants rain?

“Oh, right, OK, well I’m between patients, but I can call back later.”
“No, forget it, this is fine, I’m outside now.”

“Well, I was thinking of you this week. I have these two lesbian friends, very wonderful people, financially together, very healthy. Anyway, they are looking for a donor, and I thought maybe you’d be interested.”

The air moved in circles and I looked up to see why.

“Are you there?” Sherry asked.

“Yes, I’m here…but… well…are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

“Uhhh. Well, you know, sperm donation, it’s routine. It’s not that big a deal. Is this a big deal?”

“Well, I dunno … I am a bit stunned. Not something I get every day … not during breakfast, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d pick up … whatever.”

Her voice is kind, but pushy, like a mother’s. She is a mother. Her grown daughter is a lawyer. Sherry’s a woman who loves so much, an activist who hasn’t stopped trying to change everyone’s world.

“Is it OK if I tell you more about these women?” she asks.

I breathe in sharply, keeping my breath safe, in case what she has to say takes it away from me. I take a breath to appreciate her big heart, how much she does for others. She wants to know too much, and she wants to tell too much. Like at her office. She gets you in the chair and she grills you, before she drills. You learn to breathe with Sherry.

“Wendy and Shawna, they are in their late 30’s and they own two businesses,” she said.

“And, their house in Echo Park is just great. So, they’ve been trying to find the right donor for a year, and so they are very, very open to…well…open to whatever.”

I see the tattooed family layered beyond my own image, reflected in the plate glass at the front of the restaurant. They move towards a booth in the recesses of the diner.

“What … what do you mean?” I say.

“Well, you could handle it anyway you wanted,” Sherry says. “ I mean, you could just be the donor and that’s the end of it, or you could play whatever role you might want to play in the life of the child, I guess that’s what I mean.”

I look up at the sky, which is now completely clouded over, and glance at the cars coming to a halt at the traffic light.

“I don’t know what to say, Sherry. Really, were you expecting a decision about something like this right now?”

“Oh, no, I just wanted to let you know.”

“Well, thanks. I guess. Anyway the barn door is open now. How about I call you in a few days?”

“Could we maybe talk tomorrow?” she said, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

I look down. My foot was tap, tap, tapping.

“Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, let’s make it sometime next week. Don’t push, OK.”

“OK, great. Well, that’s great…. So, how are you anyway.”

“Well, I’ve had a cold.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Well, listen, I have to go, I have a patient waiting. Call me?”

— o —

A few new people have come into the waiting room, but it is still not crowded. I glance down at my jeans, and notice a dark wet spot on my left knee. Damn, the blood is staining my jeans. Across the room, a baby is screaming, the parents unable to decide whether they are worried or embarrassed.

A new family arrives, an obese white woman in stretch fabric, a smaller, sullen black man with oversized glasses, and a little girl, maybe four. She looks like she could be their child, with pale skin, long curly hair. They sit right in front of me. The man walks over to the vending machines. “You’re getting coffee?” asks the woman, projecting her voice so he can hear. “Get her some juice,” she says. The man says nothing.

A tall Waspy guy is over at the admissions desk with perky woman dressed in a pair of embroidered slacks, her hair coiffed and tipped. A little boy in OshKosh overalls is pulling at her slacks with both hands, making a high pitched grunting noise. His face is red and splotchy.

“No I’ve never been at this hospital before,” the guy says to the clerk, behind the glass.

“How long will it take, says the woman, turning away from her child to speak into the little opening. “He only needs a shot.” She swats at the boy, who runs towards the seating area.
After a while, the three of them sit in chairs facing the TV. They have a remote control, and they turn up the sound. I hear the roar of the stadium crowd and the hawking metal of the announcer’s voice.

An orderly comes to the door and shouts out: “Ramirez….Jazmine Ramirez.” Six people stand up, three adults and three children of various ages. They all walk through the door. I wonder which one is sick.

I look down. My foot is tapping again. I decide to watch the game after all.