At the end of October, the historical novelist Celia Holland got Terry Bisson and me to accompany her and her son-in-law John to a Raiders game in Oakland.

In Celia’s wonderful novels, such as Varanger, we often read about Vikings and warriors. Not such a far stretch from the types we found at the Raiders’ stadium.

I’d been a little uneasy about going there. But I had enough sense to wear a black shirt. Just about everyone else was wearing a numbered Raiders football jersey, but they were all friendly enough to me. The very fact that I’d bought a ticket to the game meant that I was on the right side.

I was of course impressed by the Raiderette cheerleaders. They had a separate group for each side of the field, and now and then they’d come down near the endzones. I made a video of them too.

The area where Celia had gotten us tickets was in the bleachers near one of the endzones. It turned out this was in fact the most fan intense area of all—the so-called Black Hole. Guys were dressed like Death or like pirates. Two ladies in front of me were cheerfully sharing a plate of nachos, and when for some reason the public address announcer mentioned the Girl Scouts, one the women said to her friend, “Eff the Girl Scouts!” Her friend echoed the sentiment.

When the opposing team—the Minnesota Vikings—was on the point of scroing a touchdown against us, nearly everyone in the Black Hole stood up to scream curses and give our enemies the finger.

In the fourth quarter, security guards began coming down into the Black Hole to handcuff and lead away those of our company who were considered to be too drunk.

We lost the game, but at the end, there was a calm, mellow feeling of mutual empathy. Together we’d weathered the storm. Note that the “5150” on this lady’s jersey is by way of being a Raiders code number—it stands for the number of the California legal statute for “involuntary psychiatric hold” under which people can be imprisoned if they’re considered to have a mental disorder that makes them be a danger to themselves or to others. That’s the Black Hole spirit!

A suprisingly fun and upbeat day.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2011 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Rudy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.