The Sportin' Life

by Nancy Frederick

  “I love movies too. What’s the last great movie you rented?”

  I watched her lips move in slow motion as she uttered that simple phrase, words my ears strained to hear and understand. Instead my mind was seeing those lips on my lips, and then the sweet rosebud lips of an infant blowing baby bubbles and curled against her arm. I saw her in a kitchen filled with holiday preparations while children ran in and out requesting early samples of the feast. I saw her merry eyes as she gazed on them with pride and understanding. I saw myself seated at the table in the center of the room, and as she passed back and forth in her labors, she would stop to brush her fingers along my neck, to put a morsel into my mouth, to laugh as my hand swatted her on the ass.

  And Fred continued his own declaration, “But now my roaming days are gone.”

  “Well, I saw Midnight Run again the other night. Did you see that?” I hoped she had seen it because for the life of me I couldn’t recall a single scene, except for the fact that I remembered loving it.

  “Yeah I loved it, exciting, touching, funny, all at the same time. Great script.”

  “I’m putting all my eggs in one basket. I’m betting everything I’ve got on you.” Fred had made his commitment and I heard his voice singing but my mind was elsewhere.

  I saw us together as an old couple, sitting on a porch, rocking in rockers. I saw her hand, gnarled and blue veined, resting easily on my own. I saw a pitcher of lemonade next to a family album and heard the sounds of birds singing in the distance.

  I saw the days pass and the years blow away like wheat rippling in the fields of the heartland of this country. I saw the kisses and the shared moments of ecstasy, the battles and the reconciliations, the time and the moments, melting together in a timeless wonder of perfection and eternal peace. I saw the future and it overwhelmed me with joy, with the perfection of human life, as we all play out our little dramas through the years, years that are but a whisper in the eternal roar of time everlasting.

  And as Fred continued his song, its lyrics echoing in my head in sync with the rhythm of my own pounding heart, “I’m giving all my love to one baby—Lord help me if my baby don’t come through,” I stretched my hand out and pressed it against the soft sweet curve of her neck. Then I bent down to reach her mouth and kissed her.

  Lou

  Uncontrollable Impulses

  The day I ditched Tawny, Kevin did a disappearing act at my door while one of his hysterical, weepy females threw herself into a frenzy of despair on the front stoop. I observed the whole soap opera from my picture window, and assumed that after Kevin shrugged the girl off and drove away in his Jag that she would get the message and retreat to her cave to lick her wounds. Instead, she stood there at my door, becoming more and more hysterical, and I began to think that she would need a massive dose of Valium or something. Finally it seemed imperative to go out there and attempt to calm her down before one of the neighbors called the police.

  Holly—her name was Holly—collapsed in my arms like a rag doll, and I decided to bring her inside until she was in suitable condition to leave. Women. They’re so much more trouble than they’re worth that it almost makes sense why men turn gay. You hardly ever hear a heterosexual described as even cheerful, let alone gay, what with all these females crawling around trying to snake the life out of our very existence. As I thought about it, I almost changed sides and became a fan of my cousin Kevin. Maybe he has the right idea after all—use them up and dispose of them like those plastic razors that come in packages of twelve.

  If only I could do it with the aplomb that Kevin manages. He always convinces himself that his reasons are the best, that his actions are more than justified. Here, I knew that dumping Tawny was more than reasonable on my part, hell, it was dump her like ballast thrown overboard on a sinking ship or watch my bank account plummet faster than my erections. But I still felt regret, and more than that, fucking loneliness. It was nice to have somebody in my life, even if she was nothing more than an overpriced whore. Now the holidays were coming up and I would be alone as usual, unless you count Kevin, and I’ll be damned if I’ll count Kevin.

  Holly wept in my arms in long, rasping sighs, while I tried feebly to comfort her, all the while letting my mind ramble over my own circumstances. Eventually she calmed down and began quizzing me about Kevin’s motives. Could I explain the motives of Don Juan? I doubt that even Freud could get an easy handle on this one, but I tried.

  “Look, honey, try not to drive yourself too crazy over my cousin Kevin. He’s just a chronic heartbreaker. There’s something wrong with him. He’s a ladies’ man, and believe me, I’ve seen lots of women in your shoes through the years. It’s just the way he operates. He’s not a nice guy.” I thought this speech would calm her down, but she stared at me in a wide-eyed, innocent way, like some kind of kindergartener trapped in a den of thieves.

  “No, I’m sure you’re wrong. Kevin is a wonderful person. Um…I don’t know your name…I’m Holly.”

  “Lou, my name is Lou, and believe me Holly, I’m more of an expert on Kevin than you’ll ever be.”

  Holly shook her head at me as if she were sure that I was the one who was out of it, and gradually her poise returned. I made us some coffee and we sat at my kitchen table, chatting about everything and nothing and avoiding the reason she was there in the first place.

  This was a sweet kid. I liked her a lot and I began to think about dating her. What the fuck? At least I knew that she’d be one woman that ol’ Kevin would never try to take away from me because he never returned to the ones he tossed aside, not with so much fresh territory out there to conquer. It could be great in fact, especially with Kevin living there in my house. I could have her spend lots of time with me at the house and he’d have to confront her over and over again. I’m sure he wouldn’t enjoy that at all, but it would certainly provide some amusement for me.

  I didn’t even have to ask for Holly’s number, because before she was ready to leave, she asked for mine and gave me hers, saying that we might need to be in touch, whatever that meant. Far be it from me to try to fathom the mind of a broad with a fucking broken heart, because even under happy emotional conditions, most of them can’t think all that straight.

  Within a few days, before I ever got around to calling her, she called me, and I thought that maybe she was going to ask me out to save me the trouble of making the first move. Instead she wanted to know about Kevin. How was he doing? Did the little cold he was getting get better or worse? Did he move into his house yet? Was he seeing anyone else?

  The last thing on earth I wanted to be was Kevin’s fucking press agent, but it seemed the best thing just to tell her the truth, “Listen, honey, Kevin’s always seeing someone, in fact he’s usually seeing two or three of them at once. It’s the way he operates. I know for sure there’s at least one girl he’s dating.”

  She sighed so deeply that I felt bad, but what could I do. The sooner she woke up to the hard reality about Kevin, the sooner she could forget him and the pain he caused her. But I realized that any thought of dating her would be crazy. I have enough trouble always comparing myself to Kevin without having to be with some woman who I knew for sure would be doing it.

  I decided to let it all pass, and except for the fact that Holly constantly called me for reports on Kevin, I never thought about her. At first I tried to be understanding and comforting and honest, but it quickly grew tiresome telling her to forget Kevin, that yes he was seeing someone. Once I tried to get rid of her for good by telling her that I was amazed but it looked like he was really serious about the current one and that I was pretty sure that he was going to marry her. I wasn’t being heartless—it was in Holly’s best interest to realize that Kevin was never coming back into her life. And it was in my interest to retire as press secretary to pathological studs.

  Of course nothing was farther from the truth. Kevin was seeing two other girls, and had ditched and replaced the one that followed Holly in a very few weeks. At least t
hat one didn’t turn up at my door, or I’d have had to open up some kind of halfway house for heartbroken broads and I’m not into cardiology.

  The news of Kevin’s impending marriage did seem to cool Holly down, and it seemed I had gotten rid of her at last. Kevin never knew a thing about her calls or our conversations, and I saw no reason to inform him of them because it would just give him more of a swelled head about his stud prowess.

  Just before Christmas, Holly called again. It had been several days since our last conversation, and she seemed to have drifted right back into her fuzzy state that refused to let go of Kevin and of me as her only link to him. So I decided to give her a Christmas present, one I hoped would cure her. When she asked me about Kevin and the marriage, I replied tragically, “Haven’t you heard? It was in all the papers.”

  She warmed up to the potential doom as a soap opera watcher relishes a televised crisis. “Heard what?”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t read it.” I decided to draw it out a little, so as not to shock her all at once, just like a caring physician would.

  “Read what?” Holly was sounding more than just curious, more than just concerned.

  I put on my best bedside manner, the one I had perfected and then abandoned as a resident. “Now just take it easy a minute and sit down.” I could hear the silent acquiescence in her voice. “Kevin is dead.” Here I paused to allow her to react.

  “What?” Total disbelief and alarm echoed in that one word.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t read it. Sherry, the one he was going to marry, she killed him. It seems she found out that he was seeing another girl all along and that he was never sincere about his proposal.”

  “I can’t believe this, Lou. What a tragedy.”

  I could tell that she was trying to maintain her calm, but my keen physician’s awareness told me something else—she was feeling better. The news of Kevin’s death had somehow calmed her down and restored her equanimity. At that point I decided to wrap my present with silver paper. “Yeah it was awful. She poisoned him, you know. Incredibly painful death.”

  “My God! It’s just unbelievable. What about the funeral?”

  Oh-oh. I had to think fast or sure enough this broad would be planning memorial services. “He was cremated, you know. Ashes shipped back East to family. Whole thing’s over, but it sure took its toll on us all.”

  What the fuck! I had missed my chance. Why didn’t I get to scatter the ashes. Think of all the places I could put them. How about my rose bushes? I’m sure that they could do a lot better with ol’ Kevin juicing them up. Or I could send a quantity of his ashes to each of the women he ever dated. Nah, I’d probably have to buy so many tiny containers that all the septuagenarians would drop dead from the extra weight of carrying around their various medicines in prescription bottles when the pharmacies were sold out of pill boxes. And think of the postage. No, I’d just take his remains to a bowling alley in the valley and distribute them throughout the ashtrays.

  Holly remained silent for a long pause, in which I had time to dispose of Kevin’s ashes appropriately in my fantasies. Eventually we hung up, my mood improved, and Holly on the road to recovery. I had done one good healing for the day and that didn’t even count the broads sitting in attendance in my office, waiting for me to plumb their depths.

  Kevin’s death convinced Holly to forget him or at least she realized that there was no more reason for her to call me, since I never heard from her again. My plan had succeeded, and although it was a great relief not to be bothered by her, the absence of her calls reminded me that I had no woman in my life, at least not my personal life.

  Christmas passed in kind of a depressing way, and I even missed Kevin, who by that time had moved into his house. The new year was approaching gloomily and I was disgusted to have nobody with whom to share it. Even an overpriced whore is better than no one on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want Tawny back, although I was sure that she was retrievable if I were willing to offer up some kind of expensive present as a sign of my remorse. Instead, I began thinking about taking a trip over the New Year holiday to a glitzy location where I could score at least in a temporary way with some of the partying broads out looking for action.

  Before I could book anything, Kevin called and suggested I join him at one of those singles networking things, so I decided to stay in L.A. after all. Leave it to Kevin to know of such goings on. Here, I’ve been in Los Angeles for a dozen years or more and I never heard about singles networking, and Kevin barely arrives and lo and behold he’s on all sorts of mailing lists for singles. This is what they mean by a Christmas Miracle.

  It seemed like a good idea to gather a bunch of single people together in a fancy location over New Years. Everyone would be there for the same purpose and the likelihood of scoring increased. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that scoring wasn’t my real goal. The singles scene had done a number on me. I was tired of meeting beauty queens and treating them to trips and surgeries for nothing. I was tired of paying for sex, because that’s all it was. At least if you married the fucking broad, you’d still be paying for sex, but you’d have someone to take your shirts to the laundry and to use as a tax deduction.

  Kevin and I decided to meet at Cutters in Santa Monica so that we each could have the use of our cars if necessary. Kevin said that many of the women doubled up when they came to those thinks so that if they met someone, they’d be free to go off with him, and therefore it was better all around if each guy had a car. That’s what I like—women ready, willing, and able, although I didn’t get the impression that these broads were out there in search of a good fuck. They were more the respectable types you had to buy dinner for before the Crazy Glue came out from between their knees. Well, so fucking what? I want a woman to have dinner with, not just to fuck, so why not?

  I was impressed by Cutters and the open, Atrium style of the place. The outdoor patio was nice, and luckily it was a pretty night so it made it even more romantic. After checking out the place and the broads, I was glad that I had made the effort to buy a new suit and get elevator shoes. What the fuck—they only added two inches, but two inches plus is better than two inches minus.

  Kevin and I stood around drinking Heinekens out of the bottle like good New Yorkers while everybody else guzzled spritzers and Coronas. Some of the broads were getting a head start on the evening by drinking champagne, a drink I never grew to like—just reminds me of ginger ale with vinegar in it. We shared our beers and a rare spirit of camaraderie as we examined the women spread out before us like a banquet of goodies. Kevin is some trip. Listening to him check out and inventory the pluses and minuses of these unknown women in a few glances is amazing, and I have to say I felt like one of Jesus’ disciples. What the fuck—if I am going to learn anything at all about the mating game, there isn’t a better teacher anywhere.

  A few women came up to us to talk, ostensibly to ask for our business cards so that they could win the little ice breaker game that is part of the evening. The idea is you pull a business card out of a hat and match it with one of the owner’s. Of course Kevin and I had refused to contribute our cards to the pool, mainly because Kevin insisted that the women in these events were too aggressive, and he didn’t want to have to fend off undesirable ones all night long. Poor Kevin. What a disagreeable task. I could see him with his shield, like some sort of Roman soldier, defending himself vainly against the onslaught of these numerous undesirable, overly aggressive women, who would fling themselves unmercifully at him.

  In the meanwhile, I had the benefit of being in the shadow of Kevin’s magnetic field, so while all these dames were coming over to talk to him, many of them wound up talking to me, and I have to admit that some of them were pretty nice. Some were pretty attractive too, and I was enjoying myself. Kevin managed always to keep the action and the conversation moving, and in fact, he kept us moving as well, so that we never had to focus too long on any one female or group. With his social graces,
they ought to give him a fucking embassy to run.

  Kevin went off briefly to dance with one girl—she asked him—naturally—leaving me on my own. I scanned the room and was amazed to spot Tawny standing alone on the other side of the floor. It seemed unfriendly not to speak, particularly as it was clear she had spotted me in the same instance. I had to admit that she looked good, and not at all the worse for wear.

  “Hi, Tawny, how’s it going?” I asked casually, feeling very little at all.

  “Hello, Lou,” she said with such a degree of ice that I thought her breath had caused frostbite on my ear. This was an interesting development. Who would have thought that this little chippee would have had the presence of mind to freeze me? It looked like an interesting challenge, and I toyed with the idea of charming her with my best Kevin imitation until she defrosted and then pushing her into a closet somewhere for a quick fuck. But my good nature got the best of me—after all it seemed unfair to fuck with her head, particularly since that was the least desirable part of her body.

  I had an inspiration instead. Kevin left his dancing partner and walked toward Tawny and me and I decided to introduce them and watch the action. It seemed like the best reward of all—getting the two people you disliked most in all the world together. The introductions took, and I just stood back and watched Tawny melt under the spell of Kevin’s effusive charm. And she was no slouch either. Who knew that she could keep up her end of a conversation and still be able to smile? I listed to the banter, never bothering to share in the conversation and totally aware that neither of them felt the slightest fucking obligation to include me. When I sidled off to check out the room, it was barely noticed.

  I walked off, chuckling happily to myself, wondering just how many grand it would cost him to break her heart. The room looked brighter and the faces merrier after that incident, and my own spirit was elevated to match the energy of the group. Many women began to look better and better to me, and I decided to set a goal for myself of four women. I wanted to collect four numbers that night, numbers that I could call and be welcomed.