completely lost interest in writing this. oops!

it had been a long week. i had been working a heavy caseload of work projects and my boss having a very slow nervous breakdown. he had been winding up for about 3 months and we had finally progressed from "let's talk about this at lunch" to "if i don't pick up this phone call at 11:40am, you'll probably leave me a voice mail threatening to kill yourself." It was my fault inasmuch as i enjoyed taking on issues and looney tunes friends. my arrogance demanded that people lay out their issues in front of me and then hear my solutions... that's how i start. then i realize when it's far too late that i'm not a trained professional and the person i've been listening to needs about a handful of lithium and a vicious beating to get them sorted out.

work was work. i was thankful that even when it was a shitty day i was consistently invigorated and willing to push through the day. hell, i'll even come in on the weekends! i don't have a life. i'll work a saturday if i get to wander in on my own time wearing shorts that are disintegrating every minute they're on, great! better to get out of the house and do something productive instead of my usual shopping jaunts or the more slovenly afternoons where i lay around in bed naked & read comic books. sometimes it's good. just not all of the time.

work was work but not when work started calling me. my perky young boss had been promoted up the chain & i reported into the VP again. being that i was a lone wolf & no one else did what i did, there wasn't a lot of urgency to find me a master. i did my shit & didn't need supervision unless it was negotiating a yearly pay increase or tell someone i was booking vacation time.

with sugar tits twink boss gone out of my life i was back into the big bosses life. when i started out at the company he was a manager & we got along just great. moreso because he left me alone and i did a good job. the aforementioned ego i cart around everywhere always lets me down eventually. in an inadvertent lunch invite [i saw him as i was going out for a walk & panicked when he asked what i was doing] landed me into his life.

i'm flypaper for the mentally ill [who am i to judge? i'm straight up INSANE], the emotionally wounded [i just want you to feel better], and hypochondriacs. the latter stems from my life long obsession with human biology and overwhelming shame of my numeric dyslexia that prevented me from being a nurse or ambulance attendant.... i have a burning fascination with learning and sharing body physiology stuff with anyone who'll listen. this encourages hypochondriacs to flock to me... and while i enjoy that initial nurse Nightingale shtick, it does wear thin after a while.

so, with this heady mix of emotionally disturbed psychos who think they have cancer any time they get a cold i find myself getting overwhelmed at times. and by "at times" i mean once a quarter i get sucked into some nutbars life and the only one to blame is me for getting wrist deep into things.

the now Big Boss had evolved from a constant lunch date [which made me INSANE as i use lunch breaks to go for a walk] to someone who would drop by my place to lay on my couch and cycle through crying then anger then angry crying. what am i supposed to do? tip the futon over and put the boots to him for making me mental? probably not.

nothing to do but listen and try not to look too glazed over when he brought up the same problem again and again and again...........

"unknown brother" - the black keys

baseball has been a late in life indulgence. i never gave a shit about it until i turned 30. that's a lot of time to turn your nose up at something.

being a hockey fanatic means i enjoy the creamy load of sporting events that's fast paced and involves fist fights. i don't get basketball... worse still is my understanding of football. why the fuck do they keep blowing the whistle? i don't even know.

all of this aside, baseball was something that i went to see live once every couple of years to service as a night out of Waterloo. always involving skipping off work early to beat traffic, stressing over getting to Toronto and the frantic search to stuff food into my mouth & make it to the game for the first pitch. more of a novelty and the motivating factor stemmed from having time to chat with my roommate and clap occasionally.

we had fantastic chats up in the cheap seats sans beer, the weed i smoked before leaving waterloo long disappated and sobriety bleeding through. way back when SARS devastated toronto's tourist industry Jays tickets were for the most part free save for a service fee. i was just getting over a cold & had a barky cough. nothing like SARS but it was beautiful to let loose a cough and have 4 rows of people around us scatter. marooned in our own oasis of seats we laid into graphic chats. i took the time to lovingly detail what being a domanatrix involves to my then roommate.
"so you're saying my biggest overhead is buying the outfits?"
"that and you'll have to get an arrangement with a hotel to trick out of it. it's more like a pay off. so i don't know how much that'd be."
"but i don't have sex with the guys?"
"no. you just beat the shit out of them. you'd love doing that. well, maybe you'd have to pee on them."
"nope."
"don't be a fucking baby. you're still not having sex with them & no need to take a bathroom break."
"i dunno. i don't think it's going to happen."
"what if i showed you some outfits?"
"i don't think i have the body for them."
[tit-face... she's beautiful & spent hours at the gym but still saw a fat kid in the mirror]
"that's the beauty of it! you get strapped into this PVC & leather get up and it does all the work for you! i know you can clip around in high heels and that's most of the battle. do you think you can balance on one leg?"
"what for?"
[pausing to watch a ball zing into the foul zone]
"get the guy to lay on the floor and have him suck on the heel of your boot."
"huh, i think i can balance long enough for that."
"i'm not telling you to be a dom, i'm just saying the option is always there."
"something to think about...."

many moons later i moved to Toronto. with my health in shambles and low on cash i would eat my $4 falafel and fantasize about when i'd be able to see a baseball game... a concert... buy new socks.... anything but have an $8 a day budget. the idea of seeing baseball became a type of pastoral myth of something that happened in the good old days and became layered with a lot of frills. beer. hotdogs. screaming at players knowing that Toronto has one of the worst/best fields for players hearing fans in the stands.

work came and i started building myself back up. i didn't have to be a shut in with fragile health problems erupting out of me every other week... and most important of all: there was no fucking excuse NOT to go to a game. if i can find a place using the TTC a brain damaged monkey could. there's not even a rush after work. you can take your sweet ass time to get some food & party favors down your gullet before leisurely stepping into a cab to get dropped off.

my homeboy moved to the city a few months after me. he's the slutty little sister i never wanted but learned to love. he's a tuffy twink who could hang with any straight dudes and give a handjob to a lithe 20 year old at the same time. being a flakey libra i love people who can balance two types of seeming extremes. just makes for a well-rounded partner in crime.

after twink face moved we both realized that instead of talking over baseball when it was on tv i was watching.
"at first i thought it was like when the dog stares at the tv when The Dog Whisperer is on... but i think you're actually following it."
"no way man, just waiting to see if the camera throws it to a hot chick in the stands."
this dismissive attitude would be followed minutes later with a question about what the commentators were saying. parsing through the lingo i would add it to the memory bank and then integrate it into curses i would hurl at the screen when someone fucked up. this usually followed the second bottle of prosecco that we split.

we made an agreement to catch a few games over the year and thus far we're doing well. 5 under our belts and 3 were staggeringly good. i didn't fully GET why they were so good other than it was a good opportunity to jump up and down.

at a slower game we found ourselves beached in a sparsely populated section sucking back over priced beers & floating in a haze of green. we leaned forward to peer over our fiefdom of the 200's and the straight view to the outfield. from behind it would look like a skinny guy took his fat frat boy buddy to a game and the shit that spewed out of our mouths would make your skin crawl.

Twink face is a good teacher and lovingly told me about players and why they deserved our ire. an ex-Toronto player loped out to the outfield and turned around to face the game. a guttural boo thundered out of TF and i screamed, "YOU'RE A FUCKING CANDYASS, RIOS!" if there's a god, our dulcet chimpanzee screams wafted down & hung over their heads like stink.

More beer and the luxury of relaxing with our arms stretched out in an empty space. as kind as i am, there's still a tiny part of me that's a raging asshole who wants to tell an opposing team player that i'm going to finger bang his wife tonight.

there's really no age cutoff to develop a taste for frivolous events. never going to get football tho. that's just stupid.