Tag: baseball

Like a Prayer

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, and I am up early. I actually was awake and out of bed before Sparky came looking for breakfast. I feel great this morning, which is awesome. I don’t know how the day is going to play out, but let’s see how it all develops, shall we? Yesterday was lovely. I had some groceries delivered and spent most of the day cleaning and organizing and yes, thinking. Sparky wanted to sleep in my lap while Paul was off doing things, so I did that for about an hour or so, or at least until he decided taking up the entire couch was more suited to his nap needs. I did finally send out that newsletter I’d been working on forever; if you’d like to read my measured response to that horror of an op-ed in the New York Times, you can click right here, if you’d like. No pressure!

The Saints lost their preseason game (we didn’t watch; the games don’t matter so I don’t really get into games that are basically practice skirmishes), but these games don’t matter. I had the LSU-Florida game from 2007 on Youtube while I was doing things–prepping for the season–and then Paul came home. I grilled burgers for dinner, and we watched another episode of Furious, which is incredibly well written and acted; Emmy Rossum is fantastic (and always underrated) and it’s walking an interesting line about abuse that I won’t spoil by talking about. Is anyone else watching?

In other sad news, beloved longtime LSU baseball coach Skip Bertman died; Coach Bertman won five College World Series at LSU and built the baseball juggernaut that is the LSU program. I wouldn’t be such a fan of the baseball team were it not for Coach Bertman, and I remember so many great games and finishes while he was guiding the ship. My heart goes out to his friends and family, and I imagine he’s getting a statue on campus at some point. He also kept going to the games after retiring, too–they’d always show him in the stands during the games. It’s going to be weird not having him there anymore.

My birthday looms this week, too; I have taken Thursday and Friday off for a nice long weekend for it. I don’t remember turning sixty, probably because we were still in the throes of the pandemic, and I was buried in work and responsibilities and didn’t notice or make much of it. It’s astonishing to me that I made it this far, frankly; it’s not like the cards weren’t stacked against me. I’m also not one of those “how did the time go by so fast” people, either. It did not go by fast. High school seems like it was in another era completely–and it was very definitely in a different century, wasn’t it? I also like saying things like “well, you know I was born sixteen years after the war ended” or “Kennedy was president when I was born, and I remember Johnson being president, and when Eisenhower died” and seeing the looks on people’s faces. (You also have to remember that I’m at minimum twenty years older at least than everyone at work, besides one person.) Yikes, indeed. I am going to write a newsletter for my birthday–I’m already working on it–that will reflect on me making it to sixty-five somehow (stubbornness, most likely) and so on. We’re going to get a pizza from That’s Amore in Metairie, and we’re going to see the Spider-Man movie, and potentially a Costco run. That sounds good, doesn’t it?

Today I am going to read, and there’s a very short essay I have to get written today as well. I am making Swedish meatballs for dinner tonight (with egg noodles), and hope to get to the floors today, too.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning before work.

Underground wrestler Cason of Thunders Arena. He looks like a lot of fun, doesn’t he?

The Sweetest Taboo

Last night Paul and I had dinner at Galatoire’s.

Galatoire’s is a New Orleans institution; like Antoine’s and Arnaud’s and Commander’s Palace, it is one of those places you simply have to experience. This wasn’t my first time at Galatoire’s, but it was my first time there in a while. Galatoire’s was immortalized by Marda Burton and Dr. Kenneth Holditch in their book Galatoire’s: Biography of a Bistro, and Stella famously took Blanche there for dinner the night of the poker game in A Streetcar Named Desire. I don’t think I’ve ever been into Galatoire’s and left without feeling, at best, tipsy; at worse, staggeringly drunk. Last night I merely had a Bloody Mary and a glass of white wine; fortunately Paul and I had about a six-block walk to the car in the infernal heat of a late June evening, so I was completely sober by the time we got to the car.

We were at a dinner party in honor of author Lou Berney, whose last novel The Long and Faraway Gone is one of the best crime novels I’ve ever read, and whose next novel, November Road, drops in October (we were able to score ARC’s at the dinner). I’ve known Lou since Bouchercon in Raleigh, when he and I graced the stage on a panel with Lori Roy and Liz Milliron, moderated by the incomparable Katrina Niidas Holm. (Lori and Lou went on to win Edgars the following spring; coincidence? I THINK NOT.) It was a lovely evening, despite the extreme heat (and don’t laugh; it is unusually hot, even for New Orleans, this June; this is August weather).

Did I mention I got an ARC of Lou’s new book?

Today’s short story, the next one up in Promises in Every Star and Other Stories, is, of all things, a story about a baseball player, “Phenom.”

The arms around me hit a grand slam tonight.

 It didn’t matter; we lost the game anyway. But I didn’t care. I’ve never really cared much about baseball. In fact, I’d never been to a game until our local team signed Billy Chastain. As soon as I saw him being interviewed on the local news, I knew I was going to start going to games. It’s not that I don’t like baseball, I just never cared enough to go. But all it took was one look at Billy Chastain, and I was sold.

The interview had been one of those special pieces. He’d been a high school star, played in college a couple of years, and then one year in the minors, where he’d been a force to be reckoned with; with an amazing batting average and some outstanding play at third base, he’d been called up to the majors for this new season, and everyone was talking about him.  I just stared at the television screen.

Sure, he was young, but he was also composed, well spoken, and seemed mature for his age. He was also drop dead gorgeous. He had thick bluish-black hair, olive skin, and the most amazing green eyes. They showed clips of him fielding and batting—and then came the part that I wished I’d recorded: they showed him lifting weights. In the earlier shots, it was apparent he had a nice build; he seemed tall and lanky, almost a little raw-boned; but once they cut to the shots of him in the weight room, I was sold. His body was ripped as he moved from machine to machine in his white muscle shirt and long shorts, his dark hair damp with sweat. As his workout progressed and his muscles became more and more pumped, more and more defined, I could feel my cock starting to stir in my pants. And then they closed the segment with a shot of him pulling the tank top over his head and wiping his damp face with it. I gasped. His hairless torso slick with sweat, his abs were perfect, his pecs round and beautiful, and the most amazing half-dollar sized nipples which I wanted to get my lips around.

I bought tickets and started going to every home game.

Our team sucked, to be frank, and it was soon apparent that there was no World Series or even division pennant in our future that year. But Billy was a great player and everyone was talking about him. He was leading the division in hits and had one of the highest batting averages in all of baseball. He made the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline PHENOM, his beautiful face smiling out at people on newsstands all over the country. There were several shots of him inside without a shirt on; shots I had scanned into my computer, enlarged and printed out for framing. I made sure my seats were always behind third base, so I could get as great a view of him as humanly possible, in his tight white pants that showed every curve and muscle of his legs—and the amazing round hard ass I thought about when I closed my eyes and masturbated. Every so often he would look up into the stands and smile, saluting us with a wave.

I wrote “Phenom” for the Alyson erotica anthology Fast Balls; I was asked by the editor to write a story.

I’m not a big baseball fan; my parents forced me to play when I was a kid and yes, the experience was incredibly traumatic. I do love going to games and watching in person; but watching on television isn’t something I’ve ever really enjoyed a lot. So, writing a baseball story was a bit of a challenge for me.

Then I remembered, when I was a teenager in high school, following the Kansas City Royals, and a Sports Illustrated cover with young star Clint Hurdle with the word PHENOM on it…and I thought, you know, I can write about a player instead of the game, and that was my starting point: a hot young baseball star turns up in a gay bar after a game and a fanboy’s dream comes true.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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