A few times a week my wife goes to palates (stay with me here). The other day she came home and had a particularly difficult instructor. This Portuguese fitness freak apparently called out to the class — as fitness instructors do — and said, “Do you feel the burn?”
Yes, they felt the burn.
She stared back at them, steely-eyed. “I feel nothing,” she said very simply in her Portuguese accent.
It’s been a running joke in our house for the last couple weeks, and periodically we will look at each other and quote her in our poorly imitated accents. But yesterday, I realized it’s more real than it is farce in that it may perfectly describe my relationship with this football team. Like the Portuguese palates instructor, I watch this Redskins team and I feel nothing. I am no longer surprised/angry/upset when RGIII throws another interception or the opponents receivers run routes guarded only by their shadow. Yesterday, I watched unblinkingly as the special teams fell to pieces so often that I actually looked up at the screen at one point during the game to see McCluster easily breezing by men in burgundy jerseys yet again, and wondered for a second if I was watching a replay of the previous punt return or a live play. It was live.
There is no more anger, and no more resentment. I’m too numb to bother with those emotions. Teams dish out forceful beatings and the Redskins attempt to endure said beatings for 60 minutes. I watch it all happen and then we all go home having wasted another perfectly good afternoon, still with the gnawing pains of helplessness lingering in our gut. It’s getting hard to hold onto even a morsel of hope that this team will ever be functional, let alone good. At this point I’d like to be able to watch one half of football without everyone around me visibly grimacing at the screen, and saying things like, “Oh man, I’m sorry…” It’s the pity that stings more than anything else.
It’s almost not worth mentioning the game yesterday, what with the much more entertaining circus that has come to town. To borrow a phrase from Tom Ley of Deadspin, the “garbage-fire” that is the 2013 Washington Redskins is reaching full tilt. Ley originally used that phrase to describe the hapless Bucs, and at the time I laughed with everyone else at the apt characterization. Now, with the Bucs standing at 4-9, and Mike Glennon playing better than RGIII, I can only hang my head in abject sadness. If the Bucs are a garbage fire, the Redskins are a crude oil fire sitting on top of the Gulf of Mexico; a categorized environmental hazard. And the blaze is roaring now, fueled by a growing number of anonymous reports and passive aggressive in-fighting that it’s become too tiresome to even keep pace. I’m sapped of energy. The fallout will be long and painful, but I’m not fit to finish watching this multi-billion dollar catastrophe bumble-fuck it’s way through the last three weeks. It’s too overwhelming to find just one or two targets to invest my anger, so instead I’ve opted to back away from the heat and the stench and just watch the fire consume everything around it, leaving nothing salvageable in its wake.
After the game I joined some friends at a 49ers bar. The place was packed to the gills with people in red jerseys. Still shamefully sporting a burgundy t-shirt, at first glance I looked like I might fit in. It was a tight game and the bar was raucous. Fans cheered , not just wildly, but in the throws of pure lunacy, strangely gyrating and screaming maniacally after every catch, even if it was a simple eight-yard slant pattern. After the 49ers game-winning interception, complete strangers embraced as if they had known each other all their lives.
In the center of it all I couldn’t have been more of an outsider. I thought about what it would be like to watch my team and be that happy; to feel genuine joy instead of just an empty helplessness. On the way into the bathroom, a 49ers fan, lubricated with booze and perhaps feeling the emotional strain of the game, noticed my shirt.
“A Redskins fan? What the fuck are you doing here?” he said, with a slight hint of aggression.
I looked at him and grinned and shook my head. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something back that would insight some violence; he could use my face as a tangible release for the roller coaster of emotions he’d just experienced in the Seahawks game. I couldn’t be bothered. The plus side of being a Redskins fan is nobody can hate you more than you already hate yourself.
“Dude must be fuckin lost,” the guy said to his buddy as he walked away.
He had no idea how right he was.
Burgundy and Bronze 