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My Super Bowl

 Every winter, I like to complain about the Super Bowl. This February, the event threatened to clash with my tickets for Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along"; my blood pressure climbed, and I recalled all the times in high school when I noticed the arts department playing second fiddle to "athletics and fitness." Then, I realized: false alarm.


I stay out of many political disputes, but the Super Bowl did make my blood boil this year. It did! A family member dismissed the artist Usher as "irrelevant." I bit my tongue--but I felt an urge to point out that Usher is phenomenally talented, and that his current Vegas residency is a subject of national news coverage. In my house, the children watch Usher videos as a kind of curriculum, and we're all especially fond of Usher's appearance on "Sesame Street."

It seems like marriage equality might have helped to remove football from my life, but I have married one of Earth's few Mahomes-loving gay men. My husband proudly shows me transcripts from his text-message game analyses. (An excerpt: "Fuck." "Fuck." "Oh, FUCK." "FUCK!!!") Marc also interrupts dinner to point out Travis Kelce on a buzzing TV screen; it's like a sighting of the Pope.

No one knows--presently--whether the Chiefs will be in this year's Super Bowl, but I've sort of concluded that they will be, in part because the event means that I get three or four hours of solitude, plus an excellent Kathy Bates film. (Even the Super Bowl has some perks.)

I can tell you Travis is not having his best year; it might be time to talk about retirement. And Patrick Mahomes likes to read to his children--or, at least, he likes to appear before a camera while reading to his children. I study the photos. I listen to the stories. I consider the Kathy Bates film library--so many titles, calling like Sirens, beckoning, beckoning to me.....
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