The Last Predicta

American Cheerleader

7 American Cheerleader Trojans never dreamed the Helenesque pomp she pom-poms for, teasing the eagle mascot in his turtleneck fraught with thirst. (Through his beak, he eyes the jugs of Gatorade.) Neither did they think beyond the lust of lone Achilles, to the thousands spectating from ramparts, wailing, waving to their lovers on the killing field, infant in the crook of an arm. So this is life, Cassandra says. Cheerleading is nothing if not naked prophecy, platonic on those beds of turf unreal enough we imagine grayer grass on Elysium. The quarterback breaks the huddle, purples the pigskin with fear and fingerprints, while she calls behind the stone symmetry of linebackers declaring it good—her hepped-up chant channeling them to yellow we all see through the augur of instant replay. This, the greatest challenge to Western metaphysics, appears weekly in coliseums and the eyes of TVs walling a sports bar, at the end of cul-de-sacs elegiacally named: Fern Hollow, Quail Run. There, there. How could Greeks have known grief, too, flows from the embers of a simulcast, into living rooms cavernous, leatherclad, into the cheerleader commuting in pressed rayon? For every open space, the battle 8 and sheen of the cheer, window dressing we all peer at (and through) to catch sight of ourselves—the great unnumbered—awaiting one last pass of the Blue Angels, not some baggy blimp pimping the end. ...