In my lifetime, I might only get one chance to write this column. That’s why, even though I wrote about the Patriots in the last issue, and even though it’s now two weeks after the fact, I must write about the Patriots winning the Super Bowl.
    Don’t get me wrong—in the days after the game, I grew a bit weary of the incessant attention showered on the team. Newspaper headlines read: “Harvard researchers celebrate Super Bowl win, develop immortality potion.” Weathermen would say things like, “We’ve got a high-pressure system on its way. Say, speaking of high pressure, how about that Tom Brady...” Movie theaters replaced their regular shows with constant loops of The Patriot and Patriot Games. Raytheon floated a giant Kurt Warner balloon into the air and shot it down with Patriot missiles while Pearl Jam sang “I am a Patriot.” You get the idea. And while I don’t dispute the fact that the team’s clutch game-time heroics were unbelievable, I’m less amazed with what happened in New Orleans than I am with the earthquake of unadulterated euphoria that ripped through Boston after the clock ran out in the fourth quarter.
    I hadn’t planned on leaving my apartment. After all, it was a Sunday night and I was feeling a trifle under the weather. But the second the Patriots won I knew that it was my journalistic imperative to venture out, so that you, the reader, might vicariously experience the citywide exuberance and fear of having a half-naked guy fall out of a tree and land on your head. But more on the latter in a moment.
    I headed toward Faneuil Hall, which I assumed would be the epicenter of the excitement. On the way, it was apparent that a wormhole to a parallel universe had opened up. My first clue that something special was going on (other than the presence of throngs of screaming drunk people roaming the streets on a Sunday night) was the instant replacement of traditional Boston animosities with unconditional love. Example: Motorists regularly slowed down to high-five pedestrians. On a normal night, the only time a Boston driver slows down for a pedestrian is to ask “How much?” But a different kind of love was in the air. Spirits were high. I believe I even saw Chris Farley making out with a giant penguin.
    At Faneuil Hall the atmosphere was akin to what might happen if every resident of Massachusetts simultaneously won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes—and then had their checks delivered by Dennis Rodman, Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock. This was a party.
    For one thing, there was the shirtless guy in the tree. A bare-chested advocate of democracy, he stood in his deciduous pulpit and led the frenzied crowd in a chant of “U-S-A.” I joined the chant, because a victory for the New England Patriots over the St. Louis Rams was a victory for America. However, like everyone else, I was careful not to stand under the tree.
    After watching a fire truck arrive and remove Tarzan to a waiting paddy wagon (no doubt he was on his way to an overnight date with a large hairy man named Betty), my cadre and I grew thirsty. We began roaming around looking for a bar that was both open and had no line. The first establishment to meet this criteria was Mr. Dooley’s, which was quiet when we arrived. But it was the kind of quiet you see in a documentary about tornadoes, where some toothless prairie denizen is sitting on his porch saying “somethin’ jist don’t feel right” before a twister roars up and drops his RV into the hog trough. As an increasing torrent of customers poured in, the lone bartender glanced furtively at the door as if he were contemplating either bolting it or bolting out it.
He hung in there, bless him. I waited patiently to order my round of 10 Coors Lights, two ciders and one White Russian, but the swelling crowd ensured that even four-handed Hindu god Vishnu couldn’t have kept up. I was in no hurry, though—a random guy had already bought me a beer because I was wearing a Patriots shirt. This dumbfounded me. Along with giving birth, having a random guy at a bar buy me a drink was something that I’d always assumed I’d never experience because I am not a woman.
Then again, I didn’t think I’d ever take part in a Patriots Super Bowl victory celebration, either. Maybe I’d better start taking the Pill. *