The Pressure - May 15, 2005
I have a problem with the fine print. I skim over the important details of life, a laziness that has often gotten me into trouble. I mean, who dates Tucker Max?
Don't get me wrong, I knew Tucker was in love with himself. That's rather obvious. What I didn't know, or what I skimmed over, was far more important to my health and sanity.
If I had paid any attention to the details, I would have known that malignant self-love can be a serious personality disorder with Sociopathic proclivities, that the owner of the disorder is irreversibly incapable of distinguishing inanimate objects from human beings. That to Tucker, 'Be nice to Bunny,' means the same thing as 'Be nice to lamp.'
He may be an awesome boy under all that mindfuck, but right now it doesn't matter. After two years of having a cute, blonde-haired blue-eyed leech stuck to my soul, I'm worn the fuck out.
I came to realize this when I moved into my new apartment. At first, it was delightful. There was no one there to tell me how stupid and incapable I was, only plain old peace and quiet. But it soon changed. There was vomiting, stomach aches, depression, etc. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, but it wasn't that at all. My face rotted. Every square inch of my skin was covered in some explosion. I looked like an Old Testament cautionary tale, because I was going through detox.
I thought, I can't possibly be detoxing. From what? Tucker? It's not possible.
But it was the intensity of the maelstrom that really freaked me out, much more so than the source. Pressure is a funny thing. You try to stomach it, sweat it out or avoid it. But the reality is this: whether you deal with it or not, it will deal with you.
____________
I was home from college for summer break. While out running with a good friend of mine, the Trainer of the Class-A baseball team from my hometown, I quizzed him about one of his players, who I'll call Steve because his real name is equally as innocuous.
Trainer: "His family is like, baseball royalty. His grandfather played, his father played and manages a ball club, both his brothers are stars. How could you not know this?"
I liked to watch baseball, but I didn't give a fuck about the details of it.
Me: "I don't know. Tell me more."
Trainer: "Yeah, there's a lot of pressure for him to make it. If he does that means that his whole family has played in the majors."
Me: "Jesus, what a head fuck. Poor guy."
Trainer: "Nah. He's fine. Honestly, I think the guy's too stupid to feel pressure."
Excellent.
When I said I didn't care about the details, I meant it. Sure, I felt for the guy, but what mattered most to me was that he was hot and stupid. I knew he was hot prior to the conversation, and now had confirmation of stupidity. I was all set.
I grew up in a town that had a Short Season Class-A baseball team in it, an affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. My sister was the PR Director and my parents were part of the booster club. The stadium the team played at was in a less than sanitary side of town where all the gun stores and cockfights were. The fans were unsanitary too, but that was the least of their problems. Young welfare mothers would go to the games and stalk the players. Some of them would bring their three-month-old babies, looking for child support from the guys they'd fucked the summer before. There was a guy with phony headphones and a hundred extra pounds on him who would scream obscenities through the games. And when security threw him out in the third inning, he would yell "But I'm an ordained minister!" Two elderly sisters with leprosy ran the booster club. Everyone called them "The Purple People," and no one but the nicest boys from the Midwest would accept the baked goods they made.
The Class-A boys were the ones either fresh out of high school or beat up from college, the bonus babies and the long shots. The caste system was cruel. The bonus babies would roll into town in their sports cars. The long shots needed rides from the Buffalo airport. The bonus babies partied, passed the same ten skanks back and forth and rarely worked at baseball. The long shots stayed in, busted their asses and got released halfway through the season. Baseball is a sad sport.
This Steve kid was neither a bonus baby nor a long shot. Everybody knew he had more leeway because of his family name, but no one was ever totally safe. This is what Trainer told me. My response was, "Whatever." All I cared about was the boy's rock-hard nineteen-year-old body.
Earlier in the year I had broken up with my first boyfriend and first love. After four years together, he admitted to me that he had cheated. This spawned my Ho Month. The next summer, this first love came to me once more and admitted that he didn't just "slip up." He had fucked a dozen other girls or so. I can't remember the exact number, because it's rather painful to think about. I'm so glad he got that off his chest.
I was hurt and angry. I wanted to get back at him; I wanted sexual catharsis. In short, I wanted to find the hottest, dumbest piece of ass in town, fuck it ragged and then walk. This is where Steve came in handy.
I began to plot. There are three bars in my hometown that the normal people go to. There are also a few bars for the minority sects, the KKK's, terrified gays, probable serial rapists, and one titty bar named "Monday's" where all the girls who got caught fucking themselves with frozen hot dogs and coke bottles in grammar school strip for money. One night, when I knew the team was in town, I went to all three normal people bars. Steve was at the last one.
Picking him up was easy. But Steve was nineteen or so, and stuck in a town full of club-footed freaks. I imagine sex had become either a thing of the past or a terrifying dance with lowered morals. When they were out drinking, the Players looked like those scared Wildebeests crossing the rivers on the Nature Channel, knowing well that the crocs were in the water. At any moment, one of them could go under. Just... hold... out... just... use... hand!
I don't remember much about him, for instance, what he looked like. I think he was cute, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I don't really care about the details.
I do remember that we full-on face fucked; made scandalous public displays of affection that would brand me as the town whore that week because half my graduating class was at the bar judging me out of sheer boredom. But the shitty thing about judgment is that while I can ignore it when it comes from outside sources, I can't ignore my own. I still judge myself, no matter how drunk I get.
While face-fucking, I developed a conscience. I remembered what Trainer had said, that he was a nice boy with a lot of pressure on him, and he suddenly became very human. Though he didn't seem stressed in the least, he did seem childlike and vulnerable, and here I was using him for my own cathartic purposes. When it came time to fuck a hot piece of ass in his sexual prime, I went home by myself. Motherfucking conscience.
Steve got out of the car we were in and I didn't. And as someone, I can't remember who, hit the gas and drove away, I could hear Steve pleading "But you're smart and stuff." This still makes me laugh. He is obviously a discerning young man.
_____________
A couple years later, I was working my really improbable Creative Director job for the NFL Marketing Agency. The one I didn't deserve. I had kept in touch through the years with the Trainer for the Class-A team; we had even run a marathon together. He was now working Class-AA, a big promotion. We were both in Florida, me on business, the Trainer for Spring Training in Lakeland, so he invited me there for a visit. While riding around in the fancy convertible my company stupidly let me drive places, he asked, "You wanna go see Steve?"
Me: "Steve who?"
Trainer: "Steve who you almost fucked."
Me: "Ahhhhh...yes, that Steve. Sure. Why not."
Trainer: "Let's go."
We pulled up to a quaint tract house with a dirty sports car parked outside. Steve and another guy, a pitcher, were inside playing video games on what looked like a set piece for Three's Company. It was kind of good to see him, and I don't know why, like pleasant déjà vu, or hearing a song you haven't heard in a while but liked at some point.
We drank wine and talked about baseball, and Steve seemed as unaffected as ever. The boys were in double A at that time, I think. Some guy knocked on the front door, and Steve went out front into the yard with the guy for a couple minutes.
The Pitcher had just gotten back from the Olympics in Sydney. He showed us his gold medal and described in fascinating detail the hotness of Mia Hamm. I can't remember what the two boys or the gold medal looked like, but I still remember that Mia Hamm has dick-sucking lips. So I guess the details are easy for me if they involve hot women. It's important to have priorities.
Steve came back from whatever he was doing on his front lawn, and sat down on an easy chair in the corner. He had a telephone in his hand, which he wouldn't put down though he wasn't using it and no one was calling. He leaned back into the chair, and then fell forward, his head touching his knees. It was a rather odd thing to do, but whatever. He wasn't particularly normal to begin with. The Trainer and I kept questioning the Pitcher about Mia Hamm.
Every so often, Steve, who's head began to toss around like a bobble toy, would yell out "Bitch!," or "Handle it!," or "S'aaaaall good!" We would be chatting...
Me: "So tell me about her ass..."
Pitcher: "Yeah. Well, its pretty much perf..."
Steve: "HANDLE IT!"
Me: "Huh?"
Pitcher: "Wha? Handle what? Her ass?"
Nothing. More bobbling of the head.
We kept on with the Mia Hamm/baseball conversation. Steve kept interrupting, each time louder, and more slurred. His chin would be on his neck, and then whip into the back of the chair. The rest of his body was almost dead.
The phone rang. Steve stabbed the talk button with the forefinger of his free hand, and it somehow worked. He yelled "HANDLE IT!" into the phone and hung up.
Pitcher: "Who was that?"
Steve: "S'aaaaall good..."
The phone rang again. Steve stabbed and hit the talk button again, yelled into the receiver, and on the other end of the line was a worried male voice. Pitcher apparently recognized the voice and lunged for the phone, but Steve hung up before he could intervene.
Pitcher: "STEVE! That was your dad!"
Pitcher ripped the phone away, and when it rang again, he paced the room. He ripped at the hair on his scalp and said, "Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit..." Eventually, he answered. "Hello, sir. How are you? No no, Steve's had a few beers, and he's not feeling good..."
While Pitcher was talking to his father, Steve crawled out of the chair and hit the floor mouthing "handle it... handle it... handle it..." over and over.
Trainer and I dragged him into the nearest bedroom. We somehow got him into bed, where he began to sweat like a slave in July. Within minutes his shirt and the sheets beneath him were soaked with sweat, his hair drenched and stuck to his forehead. His eyes were slightly open, and all that we could between the lids was white. They were rolled into his skull.
Trainer took his pulse, which was mercifully still going. While he poked and prodded the body, I called Poison Control, but they couldn't really do anything because I didn't know what drug he was on. Pitcher stuck his head in from the other room, held a hand over the receiver and whispered "G... H... B..."
Trainer seemed instantly annoyed. He rifled through his pockets, found his cell and called the team doctor.
Team Dr.: "Not again."
Trainer: "Yep."
Team Dr.: "Ahhh, just let him sweat it off."
Trainer stayed in the room and tended to the body. I waited outside with the Pitcher, a little dumbfounded because it was my first overdose.
Me: "Is he, um, going to be... okay?"
Pitcher: "Yeah."
Me: "He's not going to die is he?"
Pitcher: "Nah."
Me: "How do you know that?"
Pitcher: "Happened last night. This shit happens three days a week."
Me: "What? Three days a week?"
Pitcher: "At least."
Poor kid. Guess he wasn't as unaffected as he seemed. I think he was released soon after. Baseball is a sad sport, really.
Posted by at 12:08 AM
Print Friendly · Digg it · del.icio.us · StumbleUpon · Netscape
Comment Policy:
Anonymous comments are allowed. All anonymous comments and comments from those not registered with TypeKey are moderated. They WILL NOT appear until they are read and approved by a moderator.
It is strongly encouraged that you sign up and login with a TypeKey account. Once you do that, your comments will be immediately posted.
