P.N.ZOYTLOW

For those who have never been in Fargo, North Dakota nor have attended a Roller Derby, the combination of the two must have a synergy filled with  promise and spectacle.  Fargo on a Saturday night (for this is when the Roller Derby appeared) offers the usual tired diversions on the town or the option or simply staying home to endure the lackluster offerings of television or yet another rented film.

So it was that weeks before the scheduled Saturday in November word spread that the first-ever (in the memory of most) genuine all-female Roller Derby event would take place in a downtown sports facility.  The “girls” of Fargo-Moorhead would stand against those of Winnipeg, the considerably larger and reputedly sophisticated Canadian metropolis to the North. Hardly an inconsequential event, this. Although Canadians are not seen as problematical like so many other foreigners, they remain plainly not-one-of us.

The Roller Derby as sport began in the late nineteenth century and took two forms, both on oval tracks: the faster banked track and the flat-track which (given the forces of gravity and centrifugalism) lacks the speed. Today, most would have an impression of roller derby based on films such as Kansas City Bomber (1971), heavily dependent on the body of the then relative newcomer to Hollywood, Raquel Welch. More recently a film called Whip It (2009) helped developed an interest in the sport. The Fargo-Moorhead skaters benefitted from (and encouraged) the view that a roller derby bout was an intimidating event in which angry, competitive she-devils delighted in colliding with or tripping up their opponents. Although it was not their spoken intent to maim the Canadians, everyone understood that this was not a genteel sport such as lawn bowling or golf. No, Roller Derby was first cousin to the baleful likes of hockey.

PNZ was further moved to attend by the proliferation of posters advertising the event. There she was, a regular Roller Derby Queen, muscular and tattooed of thigh, and with suitably Nordic braids emerging from under a blue helmet. And the look on her face as she leaned into a turn, arms extended for balance: scowling determination, yes; malice, maybe.  Nor was a hint of cleavage absent. Apparently many others, despairing of nothing else to do on a Saturday, were similarly inspired by an event that promised sex, speed, aggression and the pathos of wincing pain.  Arriving thirty minutes early, PNZ found the ticket line nearly two city blocks long and, once inside the building, a further serpentine of the curious stretching along a number of interior hallways. PNZ spent nearly as long in this line as he had so see a cadaver (of Oetzi, see FR # 8). As in that report, waiting in line took up far too much of the alloted research time, but it had its rewards. In both cases the long lines were made up of those who wished to see something that few had seen before.  In each case, it was more than simple curiosity. While one crowd looked forward to a more than five thousand year corpse and possible homicide victim, the Fargo crowd hoped to witness what insults to mind and body the Roller Derby girls might inflict on each other. PNZ was ever hopeful that significant social truths lay all about him, waiting to provide him the longed-for chance for publishable fame in some branch of the social sciences.   Brow furrowed, he scrutinized the crowd around him and concluded that they averaged about 30 years of age, wore mainly dark colors,  and perhaps 40% showed some obesity, thus confirming all the recent dire research about the expanding girth of Americans.

Despite rumors that there were no seats left and that hundreds would be expelled into the night, PNZ successfully paid the $12 admission and climbed the steep stairs to find a seat overlooking the action. He stood on the first landing and despaired for at first no empty seat was obvious. Spotting one some distance above, he signaled to the persons on either side who confirmed that the seat was available. The bout was a quarter of an hour underway by the time he was seated, but given PNZ’s nearly total unfamiliarity with the proceedings this hardly mattered. Above the din of the crowd, he asked the large woman to his right what he had missed. She shrugged; two national anthems was the answer, for she was not certain either with what she was seeing on the concrete oval below.  “It’s kinda slow,” she volunteered. To his left, another broad-beamed neighbor offered a program which had a condensed version of the rules, none of which could be absorbed in time to make sense out of much of anything–in fact, the program described the rules as “a bit overwhelming to the unfamiliar eye.” Clearly, two groups or seven women were skating, rather slowly, around the oval. At times, although there was some forward motion, the entire group seemed to come to a stop. This was normal. Sustained fast skating is impossible on a flat track. That much must have been known to this crowd of nearly 1800 “unfamiliar eyes.”

Wedged into his seat high above the action PNZ tried to pay attention. Despite the often plodding pace that characterized most of the bout, there were occasional departures as when a relatively sylphlike “jammer” passed the beefier “blockers” to score points despite the wary postures of the latter. Auto racing came to mind in that the tedium could be broken only by a daring plunge past other drivers or (better yet?) by a dangerous move which resulted in a collision or spin out of the track. Inescapable was the impression that the Fargo crowd saw this parallel quickly and cheered loudly if (a) a jammer made a dash past others and (still better) knocked down another who then slid and tumbled about until she could regain her feet. However, the (best yet!) was when a collision or miscalculation caused a girl to careen past the boundaries of the track into that part or the crowd in the “suicide seats.” PNZ observed one such tumble into the suicide seating area. The people seated there on the ground, mostly young men, had little warning as a large blocker lost control and skated directly into them, falling on and among them. The crowd rose as one and yelped. Now this was Roller Derby!  Now we were getting somewhere!  Woo-hoo! PNZ was not surprised at this reaction. Not only had Girls Roller Derby developed something of the panache of women’s “professional” wrestling with all its hair pulling and so on, but the printed program contained a warning about the danger of sitting in the suicide seats:

“Sit at your own risk! Be prepared, you might end up with a skater in your lap tonight…Paramedics are on hand in case any injuries should occur. Don’t worry though, the bruises you incur from a derby girl in your lap will be a great conversation started anywhere you go!”  Of course, by sitting there you did absolve the Fargo-Moorhead Derby Girls from “any and all responsibilities for any injuries…”  No mention of death, at least, but the attempt to evoke an ambience of peril and pain was promoted throughout the event. For example,  most players choose a pseudonym, printed on the backs of their jerseys; thus playing for Fargo-Moorhead were the likes of Athena Barbitol, Donna SoreAss, Maulflower, and Shock Therapy.  The Winnipeg team featured Sourpuss Slasher, Killendula, Countess Bashory, and Gunna Die to name a few. After the bout (as stated in the program) at least some of these girls would be at a nearby bar where all spectators were invited to “meet the skaters…at your own risk.”

Plenty of hype and all in good fun. For PNZ,  too much of that fun had been forced, especially by the annoying duo (“personalities”) who stood on a stage, microphones in hand, bellowing intended witticisms in non-stop fashion. None of it was interesting or clever to PNZ who was quite simply beyond enjoying himself and only twenty minutes after taking his seat.

Always mindful of the strict requirements of his discipline, PNZ was watching the clock and felt relief as the 75 minutes of observation time came to an end. Though 15 of those minutes were assigned to the experience of standing in line, the rest had taken place in the sports center.  He squeezed himself out of his seat, bid his neighbors good evening and descended towards the large exit that in Roman times would have been called the vomitorium.  It was half-time. On the floor, three young women dressed in black and twirling long pink boas strutted and then inexplicably lay on the very concrete that scant moments earlier had seen the dueling Sourpuss Slasher and Maulflower maneuver around each other. These were the Saloon Girls, apparently a fledgling group of three burlesque dancers. Halftime entertainment, an afterthought.

The Fargo-Moorhead Girls beat Winnipeg 101-55. PNZ, home long before the bout ended, assumed that the crowd was pleased. The Roller Derby had arrived. Nothing else like it on a November Saturday night in Fargo.