I try not to blame myself now; how could I though, really? I was just a child then, and so much is different when your entire world consists of choices that seem to make no sense in retrospect. People sometimes ask me about it. Some of them think I'm making it up; as if I would need a reason to stand where I stand on it now... but that seems silly to me. Other people I'm sure think it's a ridiculous reason to follow something, based on an opinion that was made irrationally when I was probably six years old, but at this point, I'm beyond caring.
I just want to see them win.
My father was never a football fanatic; he rooted for no one, and confessed to me on several occasions that all of the rules were unclear to him. I would ask him the standard questions; whats a running back?; who is Brett Favre?; why'd the refs take the ball away from that team, Dad?; sometimes he would answer and other times he would just say "you'll see."
And then I saw them for the first time.
I tell people these days that it was the helmets that sucked me into rooting for them. The more I watch them now, I know it was the stripes. I was in love with them instantly.
The stripes and the way the players made a mad dash for the endzone, the black lines patterned around the bright gleaming orange coating of the helmet. The orange shoulders of the jersey, the white lettering. Even the name of them was something I could barely understand: Bengals. My father told me that it was another word for a tiger.
"It's like a tiger, only bigger."
"And meaner?" I must've asked.
"Of course," he said warmly.
"They look so cool!"
"I know," he said. "They are cool."
And my love grew. There were many Saturday mornings where I stood trembling with excited trepidation, waiting for my father to pick me up. In school I drew pictures at recess of over-striped half-man-half-bengal hybrids. I knew no one's name, I knew no rules of the sport, I knew absolutley nothing expect that they were the coolest looking team in the NFL. Of course, I was just a child then, and what I mistook for real and immediate love was in reality a shortlived obsession; it had been nothing more than a one night stand.
Soon I had entirely forgotten that the Cincinnati Bengals existed. My older brother played baseball, and soccer, and my father -- with his ferocious appetite for Mets baseball -- cared very little for other sports. For years he tried to create both of his sons into Mets-fan clones, as he sat eagerly during their games with a low dose of patience and a high probability that he would burst into curses any moment. But it never took, at least not for me. I just wasn't a 'sport' guy, I guess.
I went to middle school, and high school, where my disinterest for football was only further solidified by the jocked out devonwood kids who played it; boys who sneered and then drove off to practice in BMWs that their parents bought them; or sat together in the cafeteria slinging jello around the room with plastic spoons. It seemed like a club, and any time I approached the idea of becoming interested in it, I realized with fleeting apprehension that I knew absolutley nothing.
When I moved to England after high school, Soccer became the visor through which I looked out at the world. For years, I found that to love a sport, or a team, the way my father had loved the Mets was not only possible, but incredibly easy. I forgot entirely about petty American athletics; about basketball or baseball; about football. The Bengals had ceased to exist to me, now mereley a messily scribbled love letter from far in the past. Returning home after almost thirty six months away, it became even worse.
Very few bars show European or British soccer games, and when they do air the times are very strange and inconvenient. I couldn't ever make the games, and so I missed everything. Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to slip out of my soccer affair, eventually giving up all hope the way a boy does when he finds that the girl he's been chasing is already taken.
But like all lost loves that eventually find each other after years of hardship and turmoil, again I would eventually find myself face to face with my first real-romance.
We met in a bar called the Crazy Horse Cafe, where a friend of mine and I cradled pints of brown ale while we waited for the game to start. I asked who was playing, and was surprised to find myself smiling when he said, "the Bengals vs the Browns". I remembered the stripes, and the blur of the mad dash, asking my father pathetic questions about a sport we didn't care about. My friend looked at me for a moment.
"What the hell you smiling for?"
"The Bengals, man."
"Oh you're a football guy now," he laughed. "I would Love to see this."
I tapped my foot uncontrollably as the announcers began the pre-game statistics, clicking my teeth like a nervous widow about to meet a blind date with a familiar last name. And then they were there.
I gazed with amazement as they lined up for the snap, a blur of orange and black lines that shot off in every direction in unison, as if they were controlled by a hive mind. I fidgetted in my seat the way a first dater does as the conversation gets interesting, while on the screen Carson Palmer completed a 60 yard pass to Chris Henry for a touchdown in the 8th minute.
I ordered another round as the second quarter started; that point in the date where you contemplate asking her if she wants to go watch a movie, or go for a walk. I bit my lips and sipped my beer politely as Jonathon Joseph and Pacman Jones crushed the Browns quarterback with a force so ruthless it seemed to be a hatred innate inside of them. The free safety Crocker was like a godless meat-grinder; latching onto the oppositions offensive recievers and ripping them to the floor of the earth mercilessly.
I tapped the table anxiously -- like waiting for a check when you know that outside you're going to get a kiss -- as the second half started with reciever Andre Caldwell graciously avoiding every obstacle, dodging evasively as he hopped over bodies and ducked under others to complete a 95 yard punt return. When Cedric Benson was given a left sided dump-pass from a desperate Palmer, I knew I was taking my date home with me; and the moment he found a hole in the defensive line and weaved his way into the secondary, smashing them back over the line of the endzone, I was lost in a sea of sheets with a beautiful blonde.
I smiled as the bar burst into festival of curses and applause.
Ochocinco's reception for 33 yards felt as good as the first caress of a new-lovers neck; the way he snuck past the defensive back into the safe zone of out-of-bounds was the softest hand wrapped up tight in mine. As Leon Hall stripped the football off of the running back and brought it to the 21st yard line, I found myself confessing the secrets of my heart to the last girl I ever expected, lost in a daze of stripes and mad dashing all over the field.
I was in love.
After the game ended, I looked at my friend, and hiding my lips I nodded and grinned.
"See what you've been missing?" he said. He patted me on the shoulder. "It's been waiting for you all along."
I finished my beer, mustering my courage. I glanced up at the television, the Bengals celebrating their victory. My reverie was shortlived and obvious.
I looked football in the face and asked it to marry me.
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