I'm So Flyered Up Right Now

To be read aloud.

by Patrick Rapa

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

[ sports analysis ]

I'm so Flyered up. I watch every game. And rewatch, sometimes. I seek out the highlight shows, absorb replays of replays of replays. I break the common-sense ban on high-fives and talking to the television. I lure friends to my house with beer and an air of normalness. I encourage them to get Flyered up, too. I insist that they pay attention, stifle idle chit-chat, concentrate on being Flyered up. I send e-mails, texts, instant messages; all are one word long. "Concentrate," they say. I do this during games, and not during games.

I'm so Flyered up that I carry an orange shirt with me wherever I go, reach into my bag to touch it during movies, and at restaurants. I draw the insignia in my notebook, on napkins, in the margins of $1 bills. I retrace it in a different color ink. I think about what jersey I would buy if I could.

I'm so Flyered up that it's all I can think about. I consume only orange foods: carrots, yams, blocks of cheddar cheese.

I'm so Flyered up I can see through walls, wither plastic, reduce cinder blocks to molten lava and make new sidewalks wherever I please.

I'm so Flyered up right now I want the people around me to partake, to make my affliction theirs on a social if not molecular level. "How Flyered up are you?" I ask. "You appear to be fairly Flyered up right now," I say. "I heard on NPR this morning that massive outbreaks are expected as the city gets swept up in this madness. Such is the nature of the Flyering up," I say. I recount the symptoms: dry mouth, sleep-eating, fatigue, hysterical flailing, shower blindness, weak stream.

"I believe that under that shirt you are wearing another one, an orange one, because you are so Flyered up right now," I say to co-workers. And, arms extended, I go rooting for the hidden shirt, hoping to reveal it to the cold fluorescent light, to prove that all of us are as Flyered up as one of us. Namely me.

I'm so Flyered up that I map out lines and match-ups. I ponder the philosophies and strategies, what if we overload it, what if we spread it out? What if this player gets injured, or that? What is the recovery time.

I'm so Flyered up right now I can barely contain the agony. Before Game 7, I paced, pondered old footage, read all relevant and irrelevant articles.

I'm so Flyered up right now that sleep comes infrequently, and unsatisfyingly.

I'm so Flyered up right now that what dreams I can manage are warped and winded. The moment I shut my eyes, I am hovering over the surface of the ice mere inches from the back end of the slow, lonely parade of a single zamboni. A giant sideways corkscrew barely contained within a metal frame churns steadily in opposition to the vehicle as a whole. Tiny fountains shoot up from the trailing plough, creating a fragile and fruitless weather phenomenon, a minuscule bank of fog that dissipates soon after it appears. Brushes and wheels, gears and levers, out of view from this perspective, are detectable only by the sounds they make and the work they do.

And I, tiny as a mosquito, trail steadily behind over a wet and clean sheet of ice, one not smooth nor glassy, but merely even in its roughness, the scar of the skate blade filled and frozen, reduced to a quickly drying divot.

I'm so Flyered up right now that I see signs all around me. I can make out the likeness of Kate Smith in my turkey meatball, Ron Hextall in my nine-grain bread. That rusted old Brillo pad looks like Scott Hartnell. That crack in the cobblestones resembles the black diamond slopes of Ian Laperriere's nose. That child in the stroller may well be Danny Briere. In a spoon I spy what must be the upside down reflection of a shadow of the ghost of the still-living Bernie Parent, but it disappears before I can be sure. In my bike chain I catch a whiff of the silver polish they use on the Stanley Cup.

I'm so Flyered up right now.

(pat@citypaper.net)