Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  “Get paid in rupees,” he said. “And learn how to travel. Travel is not only the name of the game, it is the game itself.”

  “Never mind that. How did you find me. Uncle Billy?”

  “Villagers with lighted torches.”

  “Seriously.”

  “There is something unholy going on in that castle, Professor, and I think it’s our duty to investigate.”

  Glenway was tapping a cigarette on the top of his expensive cigarette case. He put the cigarette between his lips and reached for his lighter. It flared soundlessly.

  “All right,” Archie said. “It went like this. First I called Floss’s place, thinking you might still be staying there. No answer. Then I called New York City information and asked for your number. Unlisted, they said. Emergency, I cried. The operator turns me over to her supervisor. This Pearl Bailey voice comes on, saying, ‘It better be good.’ Emergency, I cried. Earthquake. Buildings crumbling all over Caracas. ‘Honey, there may be an earthquake over there, but it’s damn steady on this end. I need an emergency right here before I let you talk. We protect our unlisteds. The unlisted is a holy person. You’re gonna have to do better than an earthquake in Caracas.’ Then I called the Ranger offices. A cleaning lady answers the phone. I hear this Thelma Bitter voice. I tell her it’s urgent and she gives me the Garden president’s home number. Some guy named Sanders Meade. I call the number. I take the precaution of disguising my voice. A man answers, and it is obvious that he is disguising his voice. I ask for Sanders Meade. In a strangled voice that is supposed to sound like an old Irishman, he says he is the building’s handy man and he is just in the apartment to bleed the radiators. He says Sanders Meade is snowbound in Boulder, Colorado. Then I call Floss’s office on the odd chance someone will be there and know how to contact you. Another cleaning lady. Butterfly McQueen. She says why don’t I call Mr. Packer, and she’s nice enough to look up his home number for me. Of course. Green Bay Packer. And that’s where you were.”

  “And still am.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Never mind. Uncle Billy.”

  “Your Uncle Billy is depressed and lonely. He’s been staying in rooming houses along the Boston Post Road, living on Cracker Jacks and Spam. He is down to his last pair of aerated wing tips.”

  “Why did you call, Billy?”

  “I called because I’m going to be in the States in a week or so to play in one of those humongously vulgar tournament-of-champion events that the networks like to arrange. Any chance we can get together? I’d really like to see you, Cleo. If it’s mutual, say, ‘A box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer.’ Real fast.”

  I giggled.

  “You have to say it.”

  “A box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer,” I said.

  “The tennis is in Dallas-Fort Worth. The week of the second.”

  “Uncle Billy, that’s fantastic. We’ll be there on the third for an off-day after we play Detroit, and then on the fourth for a game. We don’t leave till the morning of the fifth.”

  “They play ice hockey in Dallas-Fort Worth?”

  “It’s a new franchise,” I told him. “The Painted Ponies. Horrible bunch of hockey players.” I couldn’t resist adding, even with Glen way only six feet away, “How are those great-looking shoulders of yours?”

  To which Archie replied, “Cecily darling, the fields are full of heather and the bells ring out: England, England, England!”

  I put down the phone, trying to stifle my laughter and thinking what a crazy, delightful guy is Archie Brewster, and a tennis legend to boot.

  Back to Glenway, who is still stretched the length of the pallet, his head thrown back sort of wantonly, as if he expected a slave to come along with a bunch of grapes. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that the pallet was wide enough for only one. I don’t imagine they sell double pallets in the hushed, padded, soft-sell kind of place where Glenway undoubtedly shops.

  I stayed where I was, cross-legged, and pulled and clawed at my T-shirt to get it over my head.

  “Love your teddy pants,” Glenway said.

  He was the first man ever to call them by name.

  “They’re a wintertime thing.”

  “Do you indulge your body?”

  “What do you mean—warm baths?”

  “Do you buy things for it? Do you pamper it?”

  “I play hockey, Glenway. Whatever pampering I might do would be canceled out every time I got rubbed into the boards by some hulking kid trying to impress the coach with his bloodlust.”

  “Do you like to show your body?”

  “I sure don’t hate it,” I said.

  “I like to show mine. That’s why I keep fit. Diet’s so important.”

  He blew moody smoke into the air. His eyes narrowed and their clear light seemed to dim a little. A kind of drugged, half-sexy look moved across his face. Still reclining on an elbow, his head resting on his right hand, he handed me the cigarette to dash out in a nearby ashtray and then he pulled off the loincloth with his free hand to get completely naked.

  Always a big moment.

  His penis was brown. Sure, a lot of men have penises that are a shade darker than the rest of the body. But Glen way’s was surprising. It was quite, quite brown. I wouldn’t even say light to moderate brown. I would just say brown. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to comment or not. Maybe in some circles this darker color was considered outstanding, very much in demand, the “in” thing. If so, Glenway probably expected me to know that, and to show by some sign or other that I was awed or impressed.

  What could I do? Say, “Wow, it’s brown”?

  Also, there was some hair in the area. I’d half expected a totally shaved body. But while there was hair, there were also signs of snipping. I guess he wanted hair, but not too much, or hair of a certain kind—cropped hair.

  I wondered if this was some kind of tough homosexual thing. Cropped pubic hair. It’s very hard to tell about these things. Even walking on the street, you can’t tell the homosexuals from the people who beat up homosexuals. You used to be able to tell. I don’t know when it happened, this blending of looks, but I think our civilization made a tremendous shift in that moment.

  The way Glenway was looking at me, I realized it was my turn to finish undressing. To do this in a sitting position, I would have to uncross my legs and do a lot of maneuvering that would be anything but gracious and elegant, so I just stood up, sucked in my gut, and jiggled out of my teddy pants. Then I gathered up all my stuff and put it on the Formica cube where I’d been sitting. I realized I’d left my brandy glass on the floor. Bad girl. I picked it up and put it on top of the clothes.

  “Lord, you’re bruised,” Glenway said.

  He was staring at my thighs, hips etc. His voice was full of awe and reverence.

  “Hockey, Glenway. What’d you expect, a rose tattoo?”

  He spotted the big, fresh, purplish contusion on the inside of my right thigh.

  “Why do you play this game?”

  “Glenway, this seduction could lose its momentum if you don’t shut up.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. Actually he sort of tossed his head. Not too many men toss their heads. Traditionally women have been the head-tossers because it created an interesting effect with their hair swinging partway across the face. But I guess because of changing hairstyles as well as deeper social reasons, women don’t toss their heads anymore. This was the one thing Glenway did that missed being perfect, realized, and urbane. You need some hair flying to bring off a toss of the head, and you also need youth on your side.

  “Can we skip the foreplay?” he said.

  He was kneeling on the pallet with his pointy nipples and brown penis, extending a hand to me. I took it and then knelt facing him, inches away.

  “Foreplay is tedious and boring,” he said. “I don’t like to insist on
one method over another, but I think you’ll find the most efficient way to go about this is to put yourself in my hands, literally. I’ve had large and varied experience. What we’re after here is gratification. There’s no point surrounding our efforts with a lot of archaic busy work. I tell people if they really want gratification now, I can virtually guarantee it. But you have to want it.”

  It turns out that Glenway was talking about nothing but foreplay. It wasn’t foreplay to him because it wasn’t followed by anything. I guess he also considered intercourse tedious and boring. In other words, his penis stayed exactly where it was, a few inches away from me. I don’t want to go into a routine about cocks and pricks. Some men are sensitive and Tm not writing this memoir to offend. Besides, just getting a look at his brown penis was novelty enough.

  Glenway didn’t have much prowess, but he had plenty of expertise. They’re not the same. Expertise is specialized knowledge that you get from making yourself tremendously familiar with a thing. Prowess is the application of this knowledge in an erectile state. Prowess is skill, imagination, ability, durability.

  Glenway used his hands to a terrific extent. His hands were the instruments of his expertise, you could say. They were certainly good-looking hands, long and white, with gleaming, well-shaped fingernails. He went right to work, fingering, feeling, thumbing, flicking, knuckling, fluttering. He worked silently, with total assurance. I was pretty impressed. No one had ever shown such expertise with my Latinate parts before, and I was kind of fascinated in a neutral way, just observing him in this whirlwind of creative foreplay, although this is exactly, of course, what he thought it wasn’t.

  Obviously he’d done this stuff four thousand times, and after a while it began to seem he was more or less performing a gall bladder operation for all the personal interest involved. His brown penis went nowhere, did nothing. About ten minutes into the routine, I tried to reciprocate and get involved and be a participant. Not efficient, according to Glenway.

  The music went into a lilting phase. I thought I heard a string.

  “Glenway, let me wrap my legs around your head. What do you say?”

  “That’s not in the catalog, Cleo.”

  “Well, that’s just it, you see. This isn’t an antiques catalog and I’m not an old highboy you’re restoring.”

  “You have to want gratification,” he said.

  “I want that shaved head, Glenway. That’s what I want. I want to rub against it.”

  He ceased all activity.

  “That’s not the way to accomplish what we both want to accomplish,” he said. “Hands are efficient. They are lovely tools when you examine them and study them. They set us apart from the lower forms. The current thinking is that sexuality comes from within. The mind is the sexiest part of us. Use your mind, Cleo. I’ll use my hands.”

  “How often do you masturbate, Glenway?”

  He let a weary note enter his voice.

  “Cleo, dear, all mammals masturbate.”

  “You just said our hands set us apart from the lower forms.”

  “The mammal isn’t a lower form. I meant tree slugs and carrots. It’s natural for the mammal to masturbate. Go to a zoo sometime.”

  “Whales? How could whales?”

  “A zoo, not an aquarium.”

  “I want your hands on my buttocks and your head in my crotch. Is that asking too much? This is sex we’re supposed to be having, Glenway.”

  “Hands are my thing. I do hands.”

  “I want to rub against your shaved head,” I said.

  This was a philosophical difference. I had nothing against the man personally and I believe it was mutual. We discussed it a while longer, Glenway on his knees with his cropped pubic hair and that dark penis of his wagging whenever he gestured vehemently in the course of his argument, and me on my back on the pallet with one knee raised and the other leg crossed over the raised knee.

  “You don’t want to do oral, you don’t want to do genital,” I said.

  “I am doing genital. I am doing your genital.”

  “You are doing manual. That’s all you are doing.”

  “It is manual-genital.”

  “There is no genital unless both genitals are involved.”

  “Manual-genital by definition is both manual and genital. Therefore I am doing genital.”

  “You are doing manual. I am doing nothing. It is not even manual-manual. It is not even pure manual. It is half-manual. It is manual-nothing.”

  “If it is manual-nothing, you may as well say it is nothing. By definition, something times nothing is nothing.”

  “I’m not saying it is nothing. You are bringing in arithmetic. I’m saying it is manual on one side, nothing on the other.”

  “There are someone’s genitals involved. By definition, what we are doing is at least partly genital.”

  “It is half-manual.”

  “It is half-genital.”

  “In Badger, Georgie Schlagel and I used to have fantastic manual sex. That was manual sex. We used to pull and grab and squeeze and rub like the future of the planet depended on it. He used to wiggle his finger inside me like a hummingbird’s wings and I’d practically rise up off the sofa and just hover in midair because the earth wasn’t good enough for this kind of pleasure—only the air was, the sky. Back in Badger, that was manual, Glen-way. I used to pull on Georgie’s prick morning, noon, and night until the kid was half-insane with wanting more and not being able to take any more. I used four speeds on him. By the time I was in passing gear, he had both legs up in the air and I had to move back out of the way so I wouldn’t get kicked in the head. I kept my hand in there, though, no matter how dangerous it got with the flailing and kicking. That was manual sex when it meant something, when it was daring and dangerous and you half believed it could make you crazy.”

  “What about my finger?” he said.

  “It was all right.”

  “I take care of my hands. Hands are my thing.”

  “Glenway, I respect your expertise. It is sophisticated, all the stuff you do with your hands. But I don’t think it’s an end in itself.”

  “Nothing has been an end in itself since Garbo in Camille. You can’t expect to find ends in themselves in contemporary life. Everything is geared to means. We no longer recognize ends. We wouldn’t know an end if it rose up out of the East River and started eating the Queensboro Bridge.”

  “Well, we’re both stark naked, and we’re here, and we’re together. We’ve had an honorable difference of opinion and we still have mutual respect and so on. What do we do, Glen way, just get dressed and forget the whole thing?”

  “In my own way, I pursue a life of pleasure,” he said. “It is low-key, it is minimal, it is manual, but it is pleasure nonetheless. I say let’s fuck.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Let’s fuck and be done with it,” he said.

  “Genitals?”

  “If that’s the way it’s done, that’s what we’ll do. You’ll have to refresh my memory, Cleo. It’s been nearly three decades.”

  He was skittish at first, but after a while he let me touch and fondle him. Everything worked more or less the way it’s supposed to, except the pallet could have been softer and Glenway could have let me rub against his head.

  I guess he liked it, though, because he invited me to Shalizar to meet his mother.

  In Philadelphia the next day, I kept thinking about the shape of events. People talk about the shape of events. Political columnists and commentators, mostly.

  Things kept happening. It was hard for me to find a shape for them. It is still hard. Events and people keep crowding the page. It is like a two-dimensional Japanese subway.

  I thought this would be a little book of meditations. All along I’d planned to use Wadi Assad’s slim volumes as guides and inspirations. I didn’t exactly want to be pithy. I know I don’t have the discipline for that. But now and then I’d like to d
evelop a theme or find a shape for events. I didn’t think major thematic material would be this hard to turn up.

  When I was ten, I never went anywhere in Badger without my copy of The American Girl Book of Sports Stories. My mother used to ask me to find a theme in each story, and with a little prodding I could do it. Those stories had themes, every last one of them. The events were shaped.

  That was Badger. This was Philadelphia, and the Spectrum was full of white-eyed, shining savages.

  TWO

  Fifteen Days

  in the Land of the Lost

  8

  There is a short, gnarled man in every athlete’s life. It could be an uncle, a financial adviser, or just someone we run into on an elevator. Often these short, gnarled men smoke pipes, and they spend a lot of time blowing into the stem. Sometimes they have digestive problems and suck noisy little tablets. Their mission in life is to remind athletes that we are playing mere games, that our glories are fleeting, that one day (sooner than we think) we will have to enter the real world and learn all about real problems, real pressures, and real defeats. This is when they point their pipe stems at us. The problems will be adult problems. The defeats will make us curl up on the floor, moaning softly. We will not know what hit us.

  These short, gnarled men have never played hockey in Philadelphia.

  Some nights you come onto the ice and you can hear somebody in row 17 tell his brother-in-law they ought to leave after the second period because the parking garage charges by the hour and they can beat the crowd. There is a hollowness in the building.

  Other nights, for no special reason, the house is rocking and screaming, and the home team comes out like woodchoppers in some crazy German operetta. It’s as though all the rage and frustration of a whole city is being released in one place at one time. It’s mysterious, how this thing grips everyone, a secret electricity running through the night.

  The unwary visiting player comes hobbling out of the runway and gets hit with a nightmarish din that just about melts the teeth in his mouth. Of course every hockey instinct tells you to keep chewing your gum and not to lose that dead-level look in your eyes. If anything, you overreact and get even more glazed-eyed and poker-faced than usual.