Red on Crimson

THERE ARE FEW moral lessons to be learned from everyday life People are born, they die. Often they hurt each other. Sometimes they kill each other, on purpose or by accident.

Every so often, the awful absurdities of human behavior force themselves on us, defying all attempts at distanced rationalization. Saturday's Game was one of these times, as example of how surreal life can become when we ingest too much alcohol and succumb to the madness that goes by the name of school spirit.

Saturday was the last time I will help tear down a goalpost, and I will never look at a football game the same way again.

* * *

I enjoy tearing down a goalpost as much as the next guy, and remember fondly the dismantling and the sinking in the Charles of the open end uprights at last year's Game. So, as the seconds ticked off late in the fourth quarter. I made my way down the stairs of Section 24 to the endzone. Egged on by healthy doses of rum and bourbon, I gradually let my sophomoric muse--so prized by aging and increasingly senile Yale and Harvard alums--take control.

Some of the same faces were there Saturday. I high-fived a Harvard comrade as large chunks of loose turf flew over my head. Two feet away, on oafish prep was scuffling with the Yale security guards, who had begun to realize the fertility of their presence.

"You going up on the post?" a classmate asked, placing a manly slap on my shoulder.

"Naw, I'll just pull, thanks," I answered.

"Well I'm going to fucking rip that fucker down and we'll carry it all the way to the Charles."

I laughed, shaking with a day long buzz.

By t-minus-five seconds, the crowds pressing behind us became too much to bear, and we surged towards the object of our frenzied lust.

I did not get there in time, and instead watched from below as the crossbar teetered over my head.

Give me a step-up," a determined celebrator demanded.

Two guys and I obliged, giving him the honor of being the first man up.

There was a crack, cheers, motion, somewhere in the midst, a crack, a different type of crack, and an almost drowned-out cry. The corner of the post was cased down inches from my back, and, as I turned to stand clear, a girl by there, prone--dead or alive I didn't know--but red, very red, and everything about her matched the colored grass we were standing on.

The blood flooded from her skull, streaming down through her hair, her face, onto her shirt, and dripped off the hands of the friends who held her, scared that the metal beam would swing through again.

For many seconds, the hundreds of men of Harvard did not notice her, as they broke off peice after piece of the Yale goal-post, only feet away from the now completely unrecongnizable body and three friends who held on to her for fear that she would fall apart if they so much as moved.

I could not look further, and turned away to quell the nausea. I looked again, a last time, at the body and the friends. Now a circle of vultures had formed a about the still bleeding victim, horrified at the sight, but relishing it enough to stay and see the blood-letting continue.

I stumbled up the stairs, bumping into those on the way down. One made a jab at my face, hitting my glasses.

As our small group hurried to leave the scene of the crime, for which I was partly responsible, I passed blissfully unaware celebrators with whom I had raised glasses on high 10 minutes before.

"I'm really sorry you lost your coat," a friend said as I passed her.

"There's a girl down there who's going to die," I said, though probably incomprehensibly.

"Yes I understand," she said politely, "You could check the lost-and-found. Maybe they have it."

"She was hit by the crossbar. She's bleeding all..." I left her there.

We tumbled, half ran past the Crimson 'H' sweaters, the Vuarnaise sunglasses, the tweed jackets, the finished Bloody Marys. Every innocent, smiling, yammering face was evil, responsible for this idiocy, a part of this mass subjgation of reason, this mass return to the cradle for otherwise rational Blue and Crimson graduates.

To my right, I saw a Yale undergrad slip, laughing, from the top of the Yale Bowl. He tumbled, head-over-heels, down the step grass incline, plummeting ever closer to the brick barrier that was the mantle of one portal.

The passersby gasped and turned just in time to see the student saved, just three feet from destruction.

One portal down, five Yale students turned as obviously intersected man, who teetered stop the she ten foot brick wall that surrounds the stadium. He poured beer on one, a cup on another. We left him there. He may have killed himself for all I know.

As we exited the gate, I saw a woman, a Yale-alum, slumped against a tree, just as I had left her three hours earlier. She may have died as well I'll ask the group of cops who stood, ignoring her, 15 fee away.

The ambulance carrying the unconscious body of Margaret M. Cimino '87 whizzed by. In almost slow motion, two red shirted Harvard students ran after her through the parking lot. Their hands were stained with blood, and, as they ran, some dripped on the ground and the parked cars.

As we slowly made our way to the cars, spectators of both sides recounted tales of unsurpassed debauch, of unrivaled craziness, and bragged of unmatched coolness.

I kicked one of them in the shins.

In the parking lot, a yellow school bus carrying students slowly pulled out. Through an open window, a Yale fan yelled at a friend and me, "Next year you and me, one-on-one. You suck. You one of them. You Harvard. I'm gonna get you next year."

We just stared at him.