‘Twas the night of Super Bowl Sunday and I prepared myself to infiltrate the event at Trinity Bar down on Orange Street. I knew that upon entering the scene, I’d be surrounded by beer-holding, wing-dipping, true American patriots with nostrils trained to detect an impostor from a mile away (though, being European, I’m not sure how far that actually is). The mission was to fit in. My outfit had to be inconspicuous enough that I didn’t look like I was trying too hard (which sadly ruled out face paint), but still representing American pride: I laid out a pair of dark washed jeans, a white top and a red zip-up on my unmade bed.
My identity crisis traces back to a young age: there was no doubt about my Italianness, but America had wrapped its fingers around the creases of my brain so early in my life that I could not discern it as a non-identity: from the ages of three to seventeen, I spoke English nine to five and Italian for the rest of the day; at ten, I became friends with Embassy and FAO kids, and in high school, I traveled to American military bases with my cheer team (a sport my Italian peers had only ever known through Disney Channel) and inhaled the occasional Subway footlong delicacy in between basketball games. This confusion has only been enforced by living in the United States and unconsciously blending in because of the thinness of my accent and the general consensus amongst my friends that I’m the most “American” international student they know.
This made my mission to infiltrate the Super Bowl a crucial step to proving the validity of my Americanness. It was a very important night. But not for the same reason that it was important to my friend Nick, who lost $800 betting on the Patriots. For shame, Nick.
Upon entering the establishment and meeting my American friends at their table, I schemed my next move. It was too early to go for the menu: last year, some people found it “disruptive” that I kept crossing in front of the TV for a slice of pizza, which deeply offended my skinny ego. I noted the mistake: paying too much attention to the food and not enough to the game. So maybe I could comment on the action on the television? Although that would ruin my cover immediately, since I don’t know the first thing about American football (in Italy, soccer is religion). Instead, I took note of my surroundings, observing what was quintessential to the Superbowl experience and mimicking it to the best of my immigrant ability.
The first obstacle was conversation—I had to speak like I was American. My friends explained the basic rules of the game, which I was able to understand, but one question plagued my mind: who the fuck is Tom Brady? From context clues, I was able to discern that he was, at one point, a football player. However, as his name dripped like melted gold off everyone’s tongues, I began to wonder if Tom Brady was somehow even slightly related to Jesus Christ.
Contrary to their piousness, I also noticed that Americans become quite gluttonous during the game. The “Superbowl Special” menu offered about thirty different kinds of wings in what seemed like infinite serving sizes—eight-piece, twenty-piece, jumbo size, family size, industrial size, commonwealth size (viva Puerto Rico), and finally, the Presidential special of 38,000 wings, the size of Trump’s mentions in the Epstein files. I went with the family size, so Nick could eat some food one last time before his impending bankruptcy.
A few minutes later, the ads started to roll. I wondered how many Americans could have treated their illnesses with the money that a single company spent on a five-second screen slot, a fraction of time that someone could use to sneeze, or yawn, or simply look in another direction and completely miss the spot. A few untreated dead patients later, a real estate agency’s ad read: “America could use a neighbor just like you!”, which I thought was funny, because personally I don’t like it when my neighbors try to take ownership of my house.
When Bad Bunny entered the arena for his performance, I worried that someone would ask the bartender to switch the channel to the Turning Point All-American Halftime Show. Not for political reasons: it’s just that I understand Spanish much better than whatever Lee Brice was trying to say in his thick southern accent. I think it was something along the lines of kissing his fish and riding his truck. I hoped that the fish and the truck had given him consent, but by the look of his skinny leather pants I concluded that the answer was probably no.
I also noted how, in Nick’s defense, everyone turns into a gambling addict during the Super Bowl. In my country, you go to jail for this kind of behavior, but there are a lot of things that seem to become magically legal in America. When the bouncer came around with a raffle box, offering us the chance to enter and win a flat screen TV, I saw my in: when he turned around, I slotted five different slips of paper into the slot with my name on them, rigging the voting system. I was feeling more American by the second.
As the heated match came to an end I realized that everyone was sitting in front of a TV to watch a game that was already written in destiny: I could see Tom Brady, the Jesus descendant, showing me the light to the entrance of the bar. I followed it and headed out because, even as everyone stayed put in front of the TVs, drooling bubbles of beer hypnotized by the screens, the game had been over for at least an hour.
Cutting into the East Coast wind on my way home, I checked the weather back in Rome. A calm ten degrees Celsius.
I thought of the pines in my backyard, and that the cherry trees were only weeks away from blossoming, and of the way that, when the petals would fall in early April, they would pave the path to my front door in a pink carpet, and my dogs would play in the shadow of the freshly shed branches. But I wouldn’t be there to see it. I missed this and I missed everything else about Italy. So why was it so important for me to belong in America?
It is because I live with my head on the East Coast, but the rest of my body stretches across the Atlantic Ocean to Rome, where my feet are rooted deep into the soil where the cherry trees grow.
I write in English, think in Italian, and exist uncomfortably in between. It’s a question of understanding who I am, every bit of experience that has formed the person I’ve become today—a life created by pieces of two different puzzles that still seem to fit, even if forced together at times.
