The bout

The first reason for my NJ visit was to see the last Nightmares bout of the season, against the Hell Razors. These are my girls, even though we're not all close, we're a team, a collective, and a lovelier funnier more insane group of ladies I've yet to encounter. I'm not an o.g. Nightmare, but I'd say I came in during the second wave, and I skated last year and this year, so I'm still old enough that I can agree when my o.g. teammates say, 'ya know, it's not like before, with the old Nightmares...' 

And it's not - there are new Nightmares. Still though, we've built our mythology up, and the mythology goes like this: the Nightmares are better than other teams because we skate as a team and we stick together. Somehow, everyone agrees that this has nothing at all to do with practice. The Nightmares don't practice as a team. Before every bout, Von Fury reminds us: 'you know, the Nightmares don't practice, and we always skate better, cuz we don't fuckin' need to practice'. Or words to that effect. And it's easy to think that's bullshit, and it's VERY easy to get pissed off by this attitude, if you happen not to be a Nightmare, but oddly there is something to it. I know this to be true because for this bout, a couple of subs from Jersey City skated with the Nightmares, and one of them said to the team manager, 'I love skating with you guys, now I understand why you're so adamant to stay together as a team!' So, there it is. Luck, magic, regional personality... we got something.

This made it kind of a hard bout to just be watching, for me. I haven't skated derby in five months now, and I still wanted to be out there with them, cuz damn it feels good to be a ganster. But what's done is done, what's herniated cannot be unherniated, and it was awesome to be there to see everyone. 

The bout was fraught. Apparently in the last couple of months there's been huge animosity growing between the Nightmares and the Hell Razors. I don't know what went on, but you could definitely feel the tension. The bout started and ten minutes in, the Nightmares were leading by 20 points. The Hell Razors called a time-out, which seemed to last forever. It turns out they wanted call the game because the EMT's didn't show up. So we all waited 15 minutes for EMT's, which kind of threw the night off kilter. On the one hand, yeah, you want EMT's there; on the other, don't leave your audience hanging not knowing what's going on. 

Play resumed and everyone was skating really, really hard. And really, really dirty. There were so many minors and so many jammerless jams because of fouls, it was nuts. The Hell Razors won by 15 points (I think), so there was no joy in Mudville for the Nightmares, but there didn't seem to be any joy from anyone, really. No joy from JC that their rivals had finally gone down, and no particular joy from the H.R. 

Overall, it was fun to watch my girls skating, those on my team and those not. It was hard to watch, too; it was the kind of thing you watch intently so as not to miss anything, and the points were kept low, so it was edge of your seat stuff. 

The cheering and yelling... I told myself I wouldn't, on account of my sore throat, but I couldn't help it. I never can. I yelled and screamed. My throat suffered.