Revisited

Today I found a porno-magazine in the middle of the road. It was all alone on the asphalt. The pages were turning one over another, back and forth, exposing young girls and their breasts and asses and more. When my bike tire rolled over the magazine I thought I heard the crunching of dry leaves but as I looked down I saw her. I saw her two legs, pinned down by me now, spread eagled underneath the rubber of my tire. Held there, her legs disjointed, her smile gazing up at me, wet and pink, spread wide across her youthful face. She is clean and pristine and nice but undeniably dirty and corrupted on the page. She looked happy to me. She looks happy to me still. She looked ready to make someone else happy too. “This girl is a giver,” I thought. “Someone who really understands the meaning of altruism. A real tart of empathy.”

Suddenly, I’m passed it and before anything can register I’m hearing the leaves rustling again, pages turning quickly, full of nature and instincts and carnal matters. Did I just see that?

I did. Yes. Yes! And there it is again, and there again! It’s as if some little boys (maybe two or three, let lose from somewhere inside of me) are gathered greedily around it, the magazine, and are flipping glossy pages, silk slick first and then clammy with sweat against their blood-flushed fingers. The pages seem so dry though, so worn there in the road that one more turn by those invisible spit licked fingers might tear the pages, mutilating some poor girl’s body or face and bending staples out of this book’s binding.

I double back and there she is again, and again (or is it now her sister, or her lover?) They’re young and fresh and all different shades of the same well known (or well learned) pinkish hue. But I’m more struck by their faces- each is happy. Everyone is smiling up at me with perfect pearl teeth, high polished on the pages. “What’re you so happy about?” Even their looks of longing and hard-pressed, long waiting glimpses of anticipation seem more playful than anything else. There is nothing these girls are missing. Except, maybe, their clothing. But, I don’t think they even miss those all that much.

The pages keep turning at a heartbeat’s rate and I’m standing over them. My bike is in the grass and I’m in the middle of the road staring down at my feet and her face, and ass, and more, intently and not so unlike Mosses I’m on a mountaintop with God. After all, I’m staring down with my eyes averted from all the people walking past me, from all their disgust, from the drab sky and cold wind that was before in my eyes. But is this so much better or so much worse? I was content today, void of thoughts and feelings until these girls fell underfoot and under tire and flaunted their happy, content, fresh faces in my way. How can I feel sixteen and sexy and stupid all over again? And lost like John the Baptist awaiting god in wilderness untouched, uncontrolled, and all alone before all majesty, at once? How can I feel so old and stupid and decrepit too? These girls are running past me like all girls do, but flipping one by one past me, turning back flips and bending over, wide and low and long, across beds and barn doors and stable walls. They are taunting me and are unkind, and dance past my old, cold weathered stiff bones.

By the grace of God I’ll walk by all this and won’t take off my jacket and fold it over my lap today. Not today. I’m not all that young and uncontrollable and untouched. This isn’t freshman year again, not like every other day has been. I’ll walk by all of this today. Or, maybe I’ll roll it all up tight as her and stuff them in a black back pack. Maybe I’ll save it away not for pleasure, but as a tool, a reminder, a talisman of fall and sex and being young again, or never again, or always still.

Who knows really?


Caleb, 19

Baseball

Why do you have to love baseball? Because you just can’t help it! Because you love summer. Because it’s not a sport but it’s life, it’s a pulse, and it’s time. Because baseball can be everything. Baseball is real, and it’s real as you or me.


What is in baseball is what’s in all of use. Something that binds us, connects us, grounds us. Baseball is strong smells and textures and deep deep truths. The feel of the ball; the ridge of each stitch, the raw weave of the pants, and the childishness of the caps. Baseball isn’t a sport, it’s a game. Those aren’t athletes on the grass, they’re real people, the way it used to be. Baseball’s a game made to be played by drunks and overweight old men, and young kids. As easy as the dust gets caught in your nostrils, or the way the setting sun just stops when those painfully red rays hit the mound and you can see the smoky spirit of the game moving in the energy about everyone’s feet, baseball gets caught in your veins. It’s not sport, it’s a game, and it’s life.


What happened to the good old days, when porn was smut and liquor was good for you? Back when baseball was American pie and the mitts were big and bulky and always broken in? What happened to the afternoons of fathers and brothers? What happened to the days when kids looked up too drunks for all the right reasons? What happened to the days of Terrance Mann? You know? You know.

Baseball used to be played by gods, not titans. Real men, who were true Adonis’, with fat solid figures that’d dank deep of life. Today, you look across the polished diamonds, through jumbo eyes, and see Frankensteins. And, it’s not these monsters, these inhuman muscles and drug fueled creatures that are baseball. No, it’s the real guys, the guys like you and me. That’s what made baseball great, that’s what made it an American game, because those men that were out on the field weren’t much different from the two of us. So take back your Hercules’ and Goliaths, and give me those ghosts of Christmas present and young John the Baptists. Baseball was played by someone like your father, or your uncle, or your neighbor; someone who’d been in the same towns and parks and mini-marts and watched the same games as you. And, that’s what made them great; that’s what made them gods, and the game a game of legends. When those men stepped out onto the field, when they crossed the wild green grasses and kicked at the dry dirts there was an energy in the air like that from the dawn of time, and, pulled up from sleep baseball lived. Those men, those boys, those true articles would hit and run and throw and in there legs and arms and honest frames a game greater than good and evil was played by people more honest to life then any angel or demon. They played a real game: baseball.


I’m not a sports-man, but I am a man, and I can’t help but love baseball. Sometimes I’ll watch the games on tv, and if someone’s offering I’ll go to stadium with a fun group of people for a nice afternoon, but I can’t tear myself away from what used to be. Baseball is meant to be an honest game, that’s why we play it in summer, and why it has to be done outside, and even why the batting cages always hurt so damn much in the palm of my hands. I can’t honestly watch baseball without thinking about who should really be playing it; without thinking about all the old men who somebody should be looking up to, and about all the young guys who should be on the road, and all the dead guys that made so many opportunities possible for those creatures that get paid to play a sport and not a game.

Sometimes, in summer, when the sun is setting very late and night, and everyone winding down, I wish I could hear someone shouting in the orange light from the sun, and the kicked up dust. Before the streetlights turn on and everyone knows its night time and the fireflies come out, I like to listen for that honest sound of kids shouting and leather and wood and red string, because I swear to god I can hear everyone of those. And it makes me sad to think about it even now, because I know baseball is an honest game to be played at honest times by some honest people.


Like I said, I’m not a sports-man, and I’m not a Christian, but if you’ll look past both those you’ll see I can be honest too. And, if you remember, I mentioned young John the Baptist, which is another thing I can’t help but think about when I think of those kids playing baseball. I don’t know, something about a young kid, stuck in the wild, trying to prepare the word for what God’s told him will change everything, and being scared as hell of it just reminds me of childhood. And, I’ll tell you, though I’m not a sports-man, and I can’t see god, I’ll keep my eye on the ball, because I truly believe an honest game just might be able to save all of us.

-Caleb, right fielder. Deep, deep, right fielder.