"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.