Now Batting for Boston: More Stories by J. G. Hayes

by J. G Hayes

  But that night there when we were playin’ them, that first place team, that Lenny’s team there—jeez, you should’a seen them. You play sports at all? They were like, it was amazing to watch them, they had it all going on, I mean we were okay but mostly hackers and kinda physical, but they’d like pass the puck like boom boom boom next guy boom and like before you knew it they’d scored, it was like they had it down, you wouldn’t even see the puck and boom it was in the net. Course Sully kinda sucked in the goal, we didn’t really have a goalie so we just stuck Sully in there cuz he’s so fuckin’ fat and he like was spillin’ outta that goal and you had to really aim it just right to get it by him and whenever a shot came near him he’d close his eyes and duck and go Jesus Christ! wicked loud, you could hear it all over the place.

  But they had like this one guy on the team—you ever … I mean, you ever have that experience, ESP or whatever they call it déjà vu, where like you look at someone and it’s like you’ve known them, even though you don’t and you know you’ve never seen them before? Something about them? You know what I mean at all? Because I don’t know, they had this guy on their team, he like played center, he was the like the brains of their team, he was the one who set everybody up, moved them around. Didn’t say anything really, just like bark out a name once in a while and jerk his head in a certain direction like and all his teammates would move. Tallish, maybe six foot, six one, dark hair, medium length, somewhat … wavy. Dark Irish lookin’. Kinda stern-looking face, quiet type but … like I say the brains kinda. So, we’re playin’ them, right, and like I say this was like this really physical league, oh but before that, so like we’re playin’ them and right before the game started you know we’re like checking out the competition and they’re looking at us and we’re looking at them and everybody’s kinda like goofin’ and tryin’ to pysch the other team out and everything, and I just happened to be looking at this team and I was squirting some water in my mouth and I happened to be looking at this guy for a second, that dark Irish guy and then he turned and looked at me across the floor there, and I had this like where do I know him from thing going on, and I’m thinkin’ maybe around town, but no cuz I asked Jackie I says does he look familiar to you at all cuz Jackie like knows everybody in town and he was like no, I never seen him before why, and I didn’t answer but then I knew he wasn’t from around town, and then I’m like is he on the Big Dig with me, but then no, I knew it wasn’t that, and then I kinda gave up cuz the game started and like five seconds into the game boom they slap one right at Sully and like I say thank God he’s so fuckin’ fat because it would’a been like ten-to-nothing in the first ten minutes, all you could hear was that dark Irish guy on the other team barkin’ out orders and Sully screamin’ Jesus Christ! every ten seconds when they took a slap shot at him. Yeah, they are plastic but lemme tell you those fuckin’ things sting, specially you catch one in the face.

  But like I say it was a pretty physical league even though it wasn’t supposed to be and as the game really got going we started hitting them a little and figgering out their moves, and so the game was like really gettin’ intense, but still it seemed like whenever I had a second to catch my breath I’d look at this guy and he was like lookin’ at me. But when me and him crossed paths, it was like no one gets near you in this league without hitting you a bit, taking like a hit at you, not a huge check but more like a good bump, and of course like I say your shins take a walloping with them sticks and all. You should’a seen my shins for like that whole spring, Denise used to say Oh honey all the time when she’d see my shins, but whenever me and this dark Irish guy came in close to each other we’d hit each other, but it was more like a lean, like a leaning into each other, and both of us trying to like lean harder and both of us like equally strong, but it’s like when we did that this ESP thing again like, like … it was weird, it was like we were twins or something and now we were reunited—no no, we didn’t look alike at all, are you listenin’ at all? Me with this fuckin’ red hair? I fuckin’ told you, he was dark Irish. I don’t mean like that I mean like when you read in the paper sometimes about twins being separated at birth and then they meet and there’s like this, this like energy or something when they touch each other, like psychicness or something. You know what I mean? And I’m like, where the fuck do I know this guy from? Even his smell smelled familiar. Not to be gross.

  Yeah, they did, they beat us, but it was like three-to-one or something like that, it was wicked close because they got their last goal with like five seconds left, and afterwards they were saying how it was like the best game they’d played in in like five years, and they couldn’t believe it because we were like a new team and—yeah, I got the only goal for us, how’d you know?—and they expected we’d be like this pushover team, and after the game this guy from the other team, the dark Irish guy there, was like leaning his chin on top of his hands which were resting on top of his stick, and I said to myself, I know that gesture too, I know that, I know that. I know it sounds weird. And he was like talking and smiling and being real friendly after the game with our guys, this thin-lipped very friendly smile and a nod of agreement at everything that was said which was like so different from how he was during the game, he was like so intense during the game you wouldn’t believe it. But then Phil my ride had to get going because of some reason I forget now, so we like took off, but I could hear Sully say you guys going to get a drink to the other team and they said yeah, we’re going here, we always go here, they named this place and said why don’t you come, but it was some place like in Lynn or something, they were all like from up by that way and then no one said nothing because no one really wanted to drive home all the way from Lynn after a few frosties, but all this time this dark Irish guy is like looking at me back and forth to see if I was gonna go I think, and I didn’t know what to do and Phil was in a rush C’mon, c’mon so we just left, but I think as I turned away, just like as I turned away he nodded at me, just like this one half little jerk of his head but I couldn’t be sure.

  Locker rooms? Yeah they had locker rooms. They’d only open one of them so both teams shared it, and some of the guys would keep some of their stuff there maybe during a game, or change quick after a game but usually people didn’t shower after a game, I dunno some of the guys did, the place was a little dumpy and had that hockey locker smell if you know what I mean. Like moldy laundry from Alaska, it always reminds me of. Not the cleanest place I ever been in. So no, we’d usually take off right after a game, or maybe just change our shirts and towel off real quick, though once in a while someone would take a quick shower, not usually though. So we took off that night like I say right away. Phil had something, I forget now.

  I always wanted to play the saxophone. I know that sounds weird. I mean, I do play the saxophone and I played it then, but not too much because … well see, they put me in the technical school. I didn’t really wanna go but everyone called me Lughead, Lughead. Dennis McDaid started it, he was always makin’ up fuckin’ names for people and it just stuck, and I’m not sayin’ I’m Einstein or nothing but I didn’t want to go to the techy school, I wanted to play the saxophone but.

  Never-you-mind, Ma used to say when I was a kid and she’d see how bummed out I was, Lughead and Techy School and the teachers all dismissive-like. I know my boy, she used to say, and in time you can see through a brick wall. See right into your future. And someday you’ll meet somebody who can see that in you.

  I’d try to remember that over the years, like when I finally dropped out of high school and then the Marines and everything, tried to think she was right when it was Lughead, Lughead, what the fuck are you doing. Just cuz I liked to read comic books.

  So like I was sayin’, the saxophone. Sometimes when it was late but not too late, or if I was riled or something, I used to go out on the fire escape there just outside my bedroom in my old apartment on West Sixth Street and play my sax a little. Not too loud because Mr. McGreevey next door would like … what? No he wouldn’
t like call the cops or nothing, but he’d like slam down his window at exactly ten-thirty, like you could set fuckin’ Big Ben by when he would slam down the window, so I’d never play it after ten-thirty. But I’d go out there in my bare feet and no shirt on—I don’t know why, but I always had to have bare feet and no shirt on when I played out on the fire escape. Even sometimes when Denise was over, we’d be like—she was my girlfriend then—we’d be like, you know, all romantic or whatever and I’d just get up when we were done, pull on a pair of pants and lift up the window at the end of the bed and slide out to the fire escape and play my saxophone. Yeah, they were always pants when I played the saxophone, never shorts—I don’t know why—long pants and bare feet and no shirt on, what can I tell you I’m just weird. You must have weird things like that too and you don’t know why.

  This’ll sound weird too, but… oh, thanks, that’s nice of you to say … yeah, I guess everybody does a little …what was I saying? Oh yeah, this’ll sound a little weird, but it was like … no, we had a great sex life I guess. I mean, as compared to what, you know? What you see in the movies? But anyways, we’d be like close together, or watching a movie me and Denise , or lying in bed after we did it, and it was like, I had this weird thing. It was like, if I could just tell Denise that it bothered me, people calling me Lughead, then we’d always be together. If I could just tell her that, like … like confess it, you know, how much it kinda bothered me, it always bothered me growing up. I had this weird thing in my head that if I could tell her that, then we’d always be together, me and Denise. But see I was this certain me with her, you know? You know how like there’s different me’s that different people bring out in you? And I was this certain me with her, you know like a Saturday Night Me with her, picking her up in my black leather jacket and black shoes and nice gray turtleneck sweater and black dress pants a fresh haircut and big-ass pump from the gym and some nice cologne, and we’d be going out to dinner or down to one of them clubs in The Alley or down by Fanueil Hall there or whatever to be by ourselves or meet up with the others, and I was like holding the door and everything, and I was like twice as big as her, I was like this certain me with her … I know I’m not explaining it right … but it was like, I was like this—what’d you say, protector? Yeah—maybe a little, but that’s not exactly what I mean, it wasn’t all about that—I was like … like this certain me, and I could never seem to get out of that certain me when I was with her. But I knew that if I could say to her Denise, lookit, it really bothers me when people call me . . . see, I can’t even say it now, pretendin’ that I am! Isn’t that fuckin’ funny? I just can’t do it! But if I told her how much it bothered me that they called me Lughead—I mean, it bothered me, but it didn’t bother me that much, it wasn’t so much about that—but if I could’a just said to her that thing, confessed to her that thing, then I would’a been able to be a different me with her, not just the Saturday Night Me, and I knew if I could do that then we would’a been together forever and we would’a gotten married. And on the other hand, I knew that if I couldn’t say that to her, then we’d never get married, because I couldn’t get married to someone who I couldn’t be all of my me’s with, or at least, more than one me, more than my Saturday Night Me. Follow? Which is why I guess I felt lonely a lot when I was with her. Funny, huh? Feeling lonely when you’re with someone else, especially your main squeeze. So I never brought up the marriage thing, not even to like talk about it in the future as this like hypothetical thing we were looking at from a distance like, or whatever. No, she never did, she was so cool, she was way too cool to bring the subject up more than once. She’d just look at you, that kinda girl. Smart. But I know that’s why—well, I’m gettin’ ahead of myself here.

  But I was gonna say, I’d go out on the balcony sometimes and play my saxophone. Oh anything, not like real songs really, just like, like how I was feeling like. Kinda slow and mellow stuff mostly, and I never knew what, because it seemed whatever I was feelin’, it just came out when I’d put that tube up to my mouth. It’d all come out like. But it was one of these nights one time, hot wicked hot, and I think the McGreeveys was all away because it was like after ten-thirty, but it was so hot everyone like had their windows shut and the AC on or if they didn’t, they had their windows open but they were still up because it was too hot to sleep, you know what I mean? Crickets going crazy—yeah, we got crickets in Southie—fans whirring, you could hear little-kid-screen-door-slamming three blocks over, one of them summer nights. Not a sea breeze at all, and usually we get the sea breeze in Southie. And like five houses down from me— this was over on West Sixth, I had this little apartment then over on West Sixth Street—no, my place was kinda a shithole but I didn’t mind, I really liked it believe it or not it was wicked cheap. All alone, no one ever bothered me, kinda dark and small with a pointy ceiling from the roof. They couldn’t rent it out because the trains went right by all day and half the night and the bed rattling, this one kitchen shelf rattling but not the others which was weird, and every time someone would visit they’d say how come that shelf ’s empty and I’d go like watch this, and I’d put this candy dish Ma gave me as a house gift with after-dinner mints in it but they were like dusty and stale now, and we wouldn’t have to wait long, the train would come by and that dish would rattle like mental, rattle all the way to the end of the shelf and I’d have to catch it so it wouldn’t smash off the end like.

  So anyways. But you know I used to lie there and sometimes I’d be all bummed out, like Lughead, Lughead! I’d hear in my head, like jeering or whatever, but then I’d roll to the end of my bed and look out the window and wait for the subway to go zooming by, and it was like the faces would all fly by me, wicked fast but I’d see them all just for a second like they were freeze-frames or whatever you call it, and I’d tell myself, now all them people are going somewhere. They are doing something with their lives, even if they’re just riding the subway. And so one night I figured instead of feeling sorry for myself I would get up and ride the subway, and when I did I seen this ad on the top there of the subway where they have like ads, and they had a little postcard you could take if you wanted to, and it was for this trade college and you could learn stuff, so that’s how I started going to school to be a pipe fitter and got in the union and got a good job and all. You know what I mean?

  But like I was saying—no, I don’t go off on tangents! You make me go off on tangents with all your questions, you’re like Sherlock Holmes with all your fuckin’ questions—so I’m out on my fire escape this one hot summers night, and for some reason Denise wasn’t over, she didn’t come over every night, mostly just weekends and one night during the week she’d come over—and I’m playing my saxophone and being really mellow, and all of a sudden this light comes on in a window up on like someone’s third floor like five houses down, and no I’m not no Peeping Tom or nothing but my eye just like went there, you know what I mean? and there’s like no shades in this window, and I see this figure move across the window, like wicked blurry, and then this other figure or maybe the same figure, and like … I dunno, it was like this funny feelin’ came over me, like I was a fly in the wall and no one could see me watchin’ them, like this burnin’ inside me or something. and then they come together, and there’s this guy and a girl, it might’a been one of the Halloran boys, that used to be their house there but I didn’t know anymore, and like, Jesus Christ I said to myself, they started like ripping, ripping each other’s clothes off, like they were going off! ! And like my heart started thumping crazy and I got like this ping thing in my stomach, like a ball in my stomach was spinning and squirting out all this hot liquid, and this note on my saxophone came out like all screwy cuz I was just blowing a note then, and like at first the girl was like pushing the boy back a little, and they were both laughing, but then when he’d back off she would like start being really coy with him, she’d like take a piece of her hair, she had like medium brown hair, she’d take a piece of her hair and like shove it in his m
outh, or like take her finger and stick it in her mouth and wet it and then run that wet finger down his body, and he had his shirt off white skin glaring from the electric bulb over them but she was still wearing like this black slip thing or something, like one of them Victoria’s Secret things you know, and then he’d try and take it off her and she’d laugh and push him away again, but like then she’d start up again with him after she pushed him away.

  The room was painted green, and I remember there was this calendar on the wall behind them, and once in a while they’d disappear outta my sight line and I’d be staring at this calendar going like C’mon, c’mon where the fuck are yous?, and I couldn’t see the picture it had on it but it looked like a beach scene, and I remember thinkin’ how weird it was that when I woke up that morning I had no idea I’d be spending the night staring at this calendar, like getting to know exactly what this calendar in a bedroom down the street looked like. Cuz I mean I couldn’t look away, it was like … my eyes were like glued there, you know? I think anybody’s would’a but maybe not, I felt a little guilty but it felt so good I wasn’t even thinking about that til later. And I kept playing my saxophone, but now like I was playing to how they were acting, my music was like all slow and kinda funky and … and hot like, and then all of a sudden the guy comes back into my sight, and he leaves the room, he like opens this door and leaves the room and he’s like totally naked, and then while he’s gone I see the girl again, and she’s naked too but while he was gone she sticks her face in real close to the calendar, and then I see it isn’t a calendar at all but a mirror, it’s like this mirror with a picture or something on the top of it like, and I can see her from the back as she leans in and like, oh man, it was like, it was like I was turning on fire inside me or something, it was like this volcano started up inside me, and I don’t think, I mean, I know I’d never been so turned on before, it was like Whoa! And—what, did I get wood? Of course I got fuckin’ wood, what are you kiddin’ me? A fuckin’ dead man would’a got wood looking at that, it was like it was fuckin’ painful, the wood I got then, it was like there was no intermediate time, like one second it was like just there all soft and shit and forgotten, and like one second later boing like cement and I thought of those car commercials for fast cars where they go from like zero to sixty in one second, like no in-between time. You know what I mean? But like I couldn’t do nothin’ with it because it was in my pants, and I had to keep playin’, it was like the best I’d ever played that night somehow, like all spontaneous and shit but the best I ever played, it was like I was their soundtrack, you know? And so this girl is like leaning into the mirror and she’s like got this beautiful body, flawless, like all smooth and soft, and she’s doing something in the mirror, and then I just shift a little over and I can see she’s like putting on lipstick, and then she’s like doing that thing women do after they put on lipstick, like puckering her lips like mmp mmmp—you know what I mean? And I felt my dick just like leap up when she did that, not just at what she was doing but like what was gonna happen. You know? And then like the guy comes back and he’s got a glass of water, and he walks down the hall and into the room and he’s got like major wood too, his dick’s like swinging back and forth and pointing up as he’s walking—I dunno, maybe they were like twenty, twenty-three, something like that, a couple of years younger than me at the time I guess—well yeah, he had a nice body too I guess, you know he looked fit, strong, whatever—and then he sees the girl putting the lipstick on in the mirror, and he grabs her again, and they start laughing and kind of almost like wrestling a little, and then the girl like takes the lipstick and slashes at the guy, and he backs up but she gets him and puts this big streak like on his arm laughin’ and he like looks down at it and laughin’ too and trying to rub it off, and then she starts again and pretty soon they’re like each grabbing the lipstick away from each other and when they get it, like mark the other one’s body with it, and then they kinda slow down a little and stand still and the guy’s got the lipstick now and he’s like outlining her nipples with it, he’s like holding onto one of her breasts with one hand and like making a big red circle around her nipple with the lipstick with the other hand, and she’s like looking down and laughing, and then she looks up at him with these big eyes, and then she takes the lipstick from him and they’re both standing really still and she outlines his nipples with it, these big red bulls-eyes, and I’m going wild watching this and I’m still blowing to the music, like the three of us are in each other’s heads and I’m the guy and I’m the girl and I’m myself and I’m the summer night and I’m the first time someone gets laid and the first time a kid beats off and the first wet dream and the hot summer’s night and everything all unspooling like this ribbon of this this, like … wildness. You know what I mean? And then they come together and start rubbing their bodies against each other, like sliding their bodies up and down back and forth and then they pull back and see how they’ve smeared each other’s lipstick like, and then the fire inside me just like blows up and something’s comin’ and I feel like I’m going to faint and for the first time in my life I shoot off without even touching it, it’s like blinding it’s so intense and I hit this high note on my sax and everything goes black and for one second, like just one second I go to this unbelievable place where like everything meets, the center of the fuckin’ universe or something and there’s no way I can describe it, but I felt like Superman when he was flying and all my life, this is the place I’d wanted to go to with my music. Even Mr. McGreevey didn’t complain.