Grown men with bodies far from athletic will be wearing jerseys
in the bleachers, screaming down at the ice at volumes so intense you won’t be
able to discern their individual words or even their intent, just an underlying
sense of rage and indignation, blanketed by a desperation to assert some sort
of masculine control over their world.
The only women will be bloated and bleak faced aging harridans in puffy
coats, clutching steaming cups of coffee, staring out at the ice with a
distance and detachment that comes with having accepted an abysmally dull life
as their calling. These two groups will
make up the crowd. These two groups and
you.
So when you ask the bleak faced woman next to you “Where’s
all this enthusiasm come from?” it shouldn’t shock you when the entire crowd
turns around as a single organism, whipping their heads in unison, possessed of
a singular will.
They won’t respond to your question by attempting to share
their interest, or seeing your neutral, if somewhat dickish, question as an
opportunity to prove that hockey fans aren’t a collective of violent
half-wits. No, they’ll respond to it by
surging towards you in a human wave, towards and past, above, below, enveloping
you in their grasp. The movement will
paralyze you, the clutch of humanity will grip you like quicksand and your
instinct to go limp will kick in as the crowd, an enormous singular entity of
animal logic rather than a collective of individuals, takes hold of you and the
first blows fall upon your flesh.
Fist by fist they’ll hammer your skin and bones, tearing at
your body. There will be no apparent
order, no terms of engagement. Men and
women will strike you collectively, tearing at your body and eroding your will
until you, weeping, are moved out of the stadium upon the hands of the crowd,
still acting as one creature. It won’t
be until after you’ve passed the nacho and hot dog repository, the skate rental
kiosk and the massive steel doors meant to keep in the cold that the mass of
the crowd will dissipate and a single entity will emerge: a lone boot that collides
with your ribs as you lay upon the concrete.
The glob of spit that follows, striking your face, will be a part of
that entity as well.
“Fuck you, Bruins rule!” the voice of the crowd will rise in
chorus and chime at you. You, on the
pavement, will have no words, no further questions, no breath, though you will
have a newfound understanding of the appeal of hockey.
Congratulations on Getting Roughed Up at a Hockey Game!
