Talking 1:30 AM Baseball Blues

It was last year, a great time to be me. I’d weathered the storm of a lousy job and a horrible relationship and now, a new day was breaking. I’d just recently resumed my relationship with Audrey, the woman who would soon become my wife, and had entered a place in my life where I felt very comfortable and happy with myself. Not just the cerebral me, but the vain “Does this shirt look good on me” me. I had started becoming more and more conscious of my image, and I had even started wearing cologne. So when Audrey asked me to go out to a local gay bar with her and some of her friends, I felt nothing was wrong with agreeing to do so.
I had been inside of a few gay bars, but never for a substantial period of time, and I even worked at what many people considered a gay bar. So what went on in a gay bar was really no mystery to me, I’d heard the cliches.
We set out that night for Ladyfingers. I’d always heard of the place, but never entered. In fact, a lesbian couple who worked at Ladyfingers had bought my childhood home from my parents. My parents had never seen a gay couple before and found them amusing and a curiosity (my mother in particular, who would often say jokingly “One acts like the woman and the other acts like the man”). I was told that I was going to see a “drag king” show, and maybe have a few drinks. Audrey was worried that it would be too much for me to handle, but I felt fine about it. What was the worst thing that could happen?
Upon entering the tiny door on what appeared to be the service entrance of the building, I knew that I was in another world. I didn’t feel threatend, but I wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable, either. There were black lights everywhere, giving everything white in the room a sickening glow, in the corner by a few pool tables, there was a lesbian couple making out, and walking past me as I followed the procession of Audrey and her friends, there was a gay man leading another gay man through the room with a leash. We went downstairs to the performance area where the show was being held. Drag kings are the lesbian version of the drag queen; young, butch women lip synching rather poorly to bad 80s songs all while dressed like men. I supposed it floated everyone’s boat, but I didn’t see the big deal. A little while into the performances, I had to leave the smokey room for a breath of fresh air and to use the men’s room.
The men’s bathroom at any gay bar always has a reputation for being a seedy place. That’s why, at least in the few bars I’ve been to, they tend to be small, single occupant only rooms, and Ladyfingers’ was no different. I found my way to the back of the line and stood waiting for my turn. “The wait isn’t going to be that long” I thought.
They always say that you never buy alcohol so much as you rent it, and tonight was no different. The three or four liquor drinks I’d had at the bar combined with forgetting to eat dinner had left me with a tremendous buzz and a particularly painful urge to go, and with a line that was four deep, I began to become nervous about my chances to make it. The combination of being drunk and nervous left me with no other option. I began to talk to people around me.
Mark was standing beside me in line. I know his name was Mark because he introduced himself to me. Mark was a normal enough looking guy. He stood a few inches taller than me and was dressed nice, but not too nice. He looked like your typical just out of college guy you’d see at any bar. He had gotten my attention by asking if I knew who won the Steelers game that day. I told him the score with a sense of relief. I’d been in alien territory all night and now I had finally found someone besides Audrey that talked about something that I cared about. We made fun of the bad dance music that was being played and the long wait for the men’s room. That’s when Mark decided to change the subject.
“Do you want to do a line of coke in the bathroom with me?”
I was completely floored. I had no clue what to say. I’d never done cocaine before, but some part of it seemed so glamorous to me. I mean here was this guy, Mark, who was dressed nice and of all the people in line to the men’s rooms in all the gay bars in Asheville, was asking me to do coke. I felt flattered for a moment. At once, my common sense kicked in with a vengeance.
I don’t do coke! What the heck am I thinking? I said to myself. I don’t want to be a prude, but I can’t tell him yes. Maybe I should just make a joke out of it and it’ll be cool.
“No thanks dude, I’m not into that. I don’t do anything at all, in fact, I pass on grass all the time.” That was all I could muster. I felt about two feet tall. I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets and starred at the floor for the moment while hoping that I didn’t seem weird to Mark, who despite the fact that he had offered me cocaine, seemed like a perfectly reasonable, intelligent human being.
“It’s cool, man,” Mark said to me. “But don’t say that I never offered.” He shot me a smile to put me at ease.
I laughed and felt normal again. While waiting we talked about the Steelers suffering through a particularly terrible string of quarterbacks and how it just might be the year.
The line started moving again, and Mark was babbling something to me about American Idol. I was almost there; first Mark gets to go to the bathroom, then me, I thought. Then Mark turned to me.
“I just want to warn you, when I get in there, I have a 13 inch cock so it might take me a while.”
My jaw dropped. My mind raced. Holy shit, I can’t believe that someone is saying this to me. No one says something like that without it being a lead in to “Want to screw in the shitter,” do they? I’ve got to get out of here.
I forgot what I said, but I remember making an excuse for getting out the line, and finding Audrey to tell her that we were leaving. We paid the bar tab, and left for the car. I felt defeated by the evening. I knew what Mark was doing. I knew the deal, and Mark was just playing by one of the cruelest games there was.
When you are a single guy, you have a rule that states “If you’re not getting laid by 1:30 in the morning, you aren’t getting laid at all.” I’ve heard it a million times, and seen the effects of that rule. I’ve seen guys go home with girls they would have never given the time of day to at 8:00 P.M. at the end of a night. I’ve seen guys hook up with the same girls their buddies were making fun of earlier. It’s not a pretty rule, but being a single male in your twenties tends to not be a pretty time in your life.
On the way home I looked at my watch, it was 2 AM. instead of thinking about what a weird night it was; all I could think about was baseball and 6th grade, about how I could start something off full of promise, so self confident, and then all at once feel so small. How could I have gone from the confident cologne wearing Lothario at 9:00 PM to the spineless guy at 2 AM? Like most men do when faced with an emotional crisis, I thought of my father.
My father was a natural athlete. Before the pork and the port got a hold of him, he was widely known as the best baseball player in the city. When Cal Ripken Jr. played in town, people would mention he and my father in the same breath. “Ripken’s the best shortstop we’ve ever seen, but he can’t hit Bugg’s screwball” was commonly heard throughout town. So when I was born, there was a bit of anticipation as to what kind of athlete I would become.
Growing up in a small town such as Asheville, the question “Who’s your daddy?” wasn’t a rhetorical jibe that you were asked on the playground, it was something that when you provided the answer to whomever asked, it said something about you, about who you are, and who you were going to be. It was expected that I played baseball, and I was going to be good at it, it was in my genes.
Genes are a funny thing. They can dictate what you are going to look like, act like, and in some cases how you are able to hit a hanging curve ball, and it can be a beautiful thing. But my genes did not give me a penchant for Texas Leaguers and Three Seam Fastballs; instead my genes affected something else. My jeans. Or to be more specific; the waist size of said jeans. I played baseball like my father, and for a few years, I was rather good. People thought that I could turn into a decent player if I could ever learn to hit a curveball. People were excited about my playing. Little League coaches wanted me on their teams. But then puberty started, and while other children grew up, I grew out.
Within a summer I’d gained close to 30 lbs. I was no longer the spitting image of my father; stocky, strong, and chiseled out of soap. Instead, I was soft, blubbery, and my ability to turn a single into a double had gone the way of my ribs being in plain view. I was depressed and didn’t know what to do. My bravado was gone, and where as once I’d jokingly turn and tell a bleacher full of parents and little sisters to quiet down after I’d stolen third base, I now walked hunched over in the halls of my 6th grade school. Then I was a hotshot, now I was invisible. I wanted to hide. There was nowhere to turn. Everyone was judging me, and I could feel even my closest friends staring at me. Young boys jokingly grabbed my flabby breasts, and I hated gym class.
I used to look forward to gym class. My teacher, Mr. Nicholson remembered my father and always bragged about him to other students: “That’s Gary Bugg’s son.” I was picked first for everything. I imagine that young athletes on draft days of the major team sports feel the way that I used to; those feelings of knowing you were going to be picked, and that knowing that you were going to be the first to get the ball. It’s really an amazing feeling.
After the weight gain I loathed gym class. I was awkward in my new body, and didn’t know what to do anymore. What was once easy was now difficult. What my father could do with God given talent and I used to be able to do through sheer will power had left me, much like the gasps of air from my lungs after running a short distance. I hated myself, and I didn’t know what to do.
Luckily, I grew into my weight. By the time I had agreed to go to Ladyfingers with Audrey and her friends, I no longer carried the self consciousness that plagued my youth. I was comfortable in my own skin.
But that night had taken me right back to sixth grade. I was no longer the confident guy that met Audrey for drinks at 9 P.M. I was the scared 11 year old, being picked last and stuck in left field. Mark had talked to me. But I was that fat girl at the bar. I was Mark’s last ditch effort for a hook up. But the funny thing is, is that for one moment, I don’t know who I was more angry with; Mark for finding me temporarily attractive, me for finding myself so unattractive, or my dad for not teaching me how to hit a curveball.