Movin’ On

I don’t hate the Brewers. To me, they’re something like the accomplice held at gunpoint to drive the getaway car. I don’t really care about Prince Fielder and whatever they’re going through by losing him to the Tigers. I don’t care about Rickie Weeks’ crappy season, or John Axford closing games like someone committing suicide. I have no hate for them, I just don’t give a damn.

However, that preening fuck they have in left field, that heir to all the smugness and shadow truths of Albert Pujols, that guy with the dick on his face – I have stronger feelings about him. I fucking hate The Peen.

All the real hatred I have is reserved for the Owner In Absentia though. The classless, bullying greedhead who became the scuttling lickspittle of the Barons who call the shots in the game I love. Inheritor of prosperity, relentless questor for ways to heap even greater sums into the ledgers of those who jerk his strings, all the while blithely willing to suffer the hatred and scorn of millions of fans across the country. As much as I’d like to see The Peen sprawled on the turf, shattered testicles filling his pants with blood, it would make the scene complete to catch Allen Huber’s kneeling figure as it pulls erect in the glare of the lights, his fangs dripping from lapping his dinner, a raspy gasp escaping his lips as he turns, snaps his cape and assumes the form of a bat to fly back across Milwaukee to his nocturnal lair.

Except cameras can’t see vampires.

Fuck you, Bud. I will piss on your grave. This time it counts.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we’ll make something
But me myself I got nothing to prove

One day, while I was in the throes of divorce from my lovely first, I had a visitor in my office. I’d had a few more of these lately since the economy was starting to turn down, personal visits to sell me things I used to buy sight unseen from some kind of catalog. Lately it had been office supplies – how were we fixed for paper, pens, calendars, that kind of stuff and at the time the people doing the selling were the girls who now sell pharmaceutical supplies. Definitely the kind of person you’d take a meeting with if you had any time at all, and divorce gives you all kinds of time.

Her name was Sondra, and yeah, I’d like to know a lot more about the pricing you can give me on a case of this and a box of that while I took inventory of what she had to offer. Young, even younger than I was, with a nicely filled figure and a thick mane of raven hair framing what was either Black Irish or some Mediterranean features, soft yet sharp at the same time. We hadn’t gone more than a few minutes when our charms made that pleasant locking sensation and soon we set up a date.

I knocked at her apartment door, and she let me in. There had been a change of plans, and she was wondering if I’d like to stay in tonight. She’d fix me her “famous spaghetti with sweet sauce.” Yeah, ok. Staying in would be an excellent evening, I thought. Tonight will be a very good night.

One thing though – did I mind stopping by her parents’ apartment for just a minute? She needed to get something from her mother. Wouldn’t take a minute.

Her parents’ apartment? I wasn’t really used to parents living in apartments in Houston, but that was probably just my provincial background, still not caught up with reality. “Sure, no problem,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

“Oh, no, they live in the same complex, just a couple of buildings over.”

You got a fast car
And I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
We won’t have to drive too far
Just across the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living

You see my old man’s got a problem
He lives with the bottle that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
I say his body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did

We walked to the building, then up the stairs. She knocked on the door and her father answered, hugging her gregariously and letting us in.

The brief second I spent shaking his hand and fixing his eyes with The Stare of Manliness was enough for me to take in the silvered perm, capped teeth, the too-small linen shirt open to the waist, the gray curls of chest hair propping up the multiple gold chains in ellipses of clumsy ostentatiousness. He greeted me cordially and then called for Sondra’s mother, who appeared from a back room.

The resemblance to Sondra was striking. I always count this as useful because I like to get some idea of how the girl I’m interested in is going to age. Sondra’s mother still had the raven hair, but her features were not so much accented by but more a series of ledges that held the thick brushwork of what passed for makeup. Bright, oily, in many ways a cross between Babs Johnson and Marietta Fortune. She was not quite as tall as I was, but she outweighed me by easily more than a hundred pounds, contained in a shapeless muu-muu reminiscent of the Jungle Room in Graceland. She said hello, and then took her daughter into a back bedroom.

Her father went into the kitchen, leaving me in the living room, feeling what I know now to be as if I were a character in a David Lynch film. The furnishings were decent but cheap, probably not rented but that same kind of temporary distressed functionality. My wandering eyes then noticed the large painting that hung behind the couch. Almost tall enough to reach the ceiling, it was a painting of her parents, posed a few years and pounds ago.

Nude.

On velvet.

Houston Astros vs. Milwaukee Brewers
Friday, September 28, 7:10 PM CT, Miller Park

Edgar Gonzalez, 2-1, 3.94 vs. Yovani Gallardo, 16-8, 3.59
Promotions – Subway Coupon, Rally Stache (WTF?)

Houston Astros vs. Milwaukee Brewers
Saturday, September 29, 6:10 PM CT, Miller Park

Dallas Keuchel, 3-7, 4.66 vs. Marco Estrada, 4-7, 3.87
Promotions – Fan Appreciation Night, 2013 Magnetic Schedule

Houston Astros vs. Milwaukee Brewers
Sunday, September 30, 1:10 PM CT, Miller Park

Jordan Lyles, 4-12, 5.44 vs. Mike Fiers, 9-9, 3.55
Promotions – 2013 Magnetic Schedule

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way

I remember we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

Sondra and her mother came back into the living room and I didn’t let on that I’d seen anything odd at all. I mean, it was definitely weird, but I wasn’t planning on sleeping with anyone but Sondra that night and I’d seen enough to know that this wasn’t going to be any kind of long-term relationship. We said our goodbyes and were gone – the whole thing didn’t take five minutes.

Back at her place, she started to make dinner while I made small talk and hovered in the kitchen. The place was dark, leaving me to guess if this was her mood lighting or some trick of concealment. I watched her while she cooked, all the time wondering what the hell was ‘sweet sauce’ and whether I needed to go get some wine. Maybe a lot of wine. She mixed some things in a pot and heated it, but she wouldn’t tell me what was going into this concoction. The pasta boiled, and then she pronounced that dinner was ready.

She opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a bottle of Riunite, pouring generous glassfuls. My high school was filled with hundreds of nights of Yago Sangria, TJ Swann Easy Days or Mellow Nights, Boone’s Farm and eventually MD 20/20, but since I’d graduated from college and gone out into the world that stuff was long gone. I was a neophyte, but I was already snob enough to choke back a little when I took a drink and feigned appreciation.

I watched as she ladled a mass of spaghetti and pasta water onto my plate, then spooned the sauce on top. The two didn’t mix; instead the oily sauce sat on top, small blobs forming red islands in the gauzy water like some failed science experiment. The first bite was even more shocking – it tasted like tepid ketchup with water and overcooked noodles, which was then washed down with just-above-freezing Riunite.

It’s a good thing that most women have no idea how powerful they are.

I don’t remember how much I choked down. I know it wasn’t a lot. Afterward in the darkness, we wrestled on the couch. Despite vigorous and lengthy maneuvers, navigating the vagaries of pantyhose gave her virtue the toehold it needed to prevail and eventually the evening ended. I was out on my own, out on the streets, dazed, unkempt, unsatisfied and back on the prowl.

You got a fast car
And we go cruising to entertain ourselves
You still ain’t got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You’ll find work and I’ll get promoted
We’ll move out of the shelter
Buy a big house and live in the suburbs

You got a fast car
And I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I’d always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain’t going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

***

This is my last preview of the season, last preview of the team in the NL. Thanks to those of you who read them, I hope they gave you some kind of chills and thrills as I clumsily tried to use the platform to point out something or other that I thought was important, or at least noticeable. It’s going to be a weird Void, but hopefully the bounce back up will start next season. I hope you’ll all be here for it.

She shows a scar where her face met his ring
She remembers the pain but she forgot his name
ah, it’s alright it really didn’t mean a thing

ahh… then she remembers what she said