Eleven Years Ago Today: Super Bowl XXX

I don't remember much about the football game played on that Super Bowl Sunday in 1996 because I never saw it. What I'll never forget is the challenge I faced trying get the score. I wasn't at a Super Bowl party in the living room of a friend's house. Nor was I at a sports bar on the Upper West Side. I was at Splash, a gay dance club in Chelsea. (insert club beat here: nnnnChh nnnChhh nnnnChhhh nnnnnChhhh)

Football wasn't really my bag back then, but drinking on a Sunday (or any day for that matter) was. A friend and I had gone out for brunch in Chelsea at noon, and by 7 p.m. I was talked into a trip to Splash, a trashy boy nightclub that kept the lights low enough to hide the grime but not the desperation. For the first time in my life, I had chipped in half for a Super Bowl pool, the kind with $100 boxes. And though I was tipsy stumbling in the door of Splash, I wasn't too tipsy to forget that I had plunked down 50 beans, and our numbers were very good (2 and 7, I believe).

"What's the score??!" I asked the bartender who was dressed in nothing but a thong, socks, and shoes.

"Of what?" he asked.

"Of what?! The Super Bowl!" I was incredulous.

"Oh," he replied. "I don't know," and spun around to the other side of the bar. (It's square shaped).

Although it's more acceptable for straight girls to hang out in gay bars these days, back then I was one of a few, if that many, and entrance was difficult sometimes. And, it was a lonely place to be. Talk about being invisible. Before I knew it, Tuna was lost in the sauce, and I was fending for myself. I descended into the even darker and skankier downstairs, which had the bathrooms (co-ed, I might add, with t.v. screens over each urinal showing porn), a small gift shop, another lounge, and most importantly, the payphones. This was before cell phones. Yes, I'm that old.
I asked each dude I passed on my way to the phones about the score. I got blank stares from them all. It was a living nightmare. Kind of like that nightmare you have when you're trying to scoop up pasta shells from out of your bathtub and someone's knocking on the door. The more pasta shells you scoop up, the more pasta shells appear.

You've never had that one?

Anyway, I managed to get the score of the first half of the game by calling my mother collect. i didn't care who was ahead or behind or tied, just if the numbers matched ours. No dice. I managed to get the second half score from my friend with whom I shared the box bet via getting her mother on the phone in Atlanta, if I recall correctly. And to my delight and surprise? Matcha-roo! I WAS A THOUSAND BEANS RICHER! And hands down, the most excited girl in Splash that night. Err, real girl. As in no cock n' balls. I was running around like I had won a million dollars, telling strangers about my fortune. More blank stares. And for good reason: there was a Hot Ass Contest going on on stage.

The catch was that I had played the numbers way back in October at the bar in which my boyfriend owned, but by Christmas, we had split up. Oh, the holidays. This made winning the pool in his bar a tad wee bit awkward. When I went in to collect the cash, and he asked me how I was going to spend it, I said, "I think I'm going to Jamaica. Want to come with me?"

"No, thanks," he replied.

I went anyway, alone, and I had a great time. Though I think that a bushel of grass is too much grass for a 5 day 6 night stay, and a 5 day 6 night stay is too much time to be alone stoned in Jamaica. Just an FYI.

I guess the moral of this story is, if you find yourself in a gay bar that's not showing the game on Super Bowl Sunday and you have money riding on it, take your cell phone with you.

PS Is it me or is the NFL making some great strides in their attempt to capture a gay audience with Stevie Nicks during the pre-show and Prince at the half-time show?