Semi-Tough (21 page)

It was
T.J.
Lambert who had slipped up on our blind side and cut one that would have even made Donna Lou stagger, even though she's used to it. He cut one that surely must have been the color of a Hawaiian sunset.

And I've got to say that even though the young Scotch and the anti-God cigarettes had me on third-and-long, I was utterly shocked
—
shocked all to shit
—
at who
T.J.
had with him.

T.J.
had with him none other than Dreamer Tatum and Boyce Cayce of the dog-ass Jets.

"Lookie here at a couple of tootie fruities I done found me," said
T.J.
pointing at Dreamer and Boyce.

"I found 'em over at Tommy's puttin' some cheeseburgers in their bellies after they been to a movie,"
T.J.
said. "I told 'em I thought I knew where they could lick theyselves some wool, so here we are. By God, there's some here, too, ain't they?"

T.J.
had already put away about forty-five beers, I estimated.

Me and Shake stood up and shook hands with Dreamer and Boyce and exchanged hidys.

Dreamer was wearing a leather and velvet suit and high-heeled, candy-striped shoes, and a ruffled shirt with a stand-up collar on it that came halfway up the back of his head.

Dreamer has a big old thick head of spook hair, a mustache, a thin beard that goes all the way around his
face. And he was wearing dark glasses.

Dreamer was also wearing a joint in his hand, and he was semi-stoned.

"I like your style, Billy," said Dreamer, soft and cool. "This here's some kind of mess, baby."

Then he looked around the yard and said to himself, "Tell this nigger somethin'
about
it."

I didn't think Boyce Cayce was drunk or stoned either one. In fact, he was drinking a Coke in a bottle, and he looked sort of unimpressed with the party as he stood there in his knit shirt and his pants which had cu
f
fs on them. Well, that's what I thought at first, until I realized that Boyce Cayce's bottle of Coke also had a good deal of Jack Daniels in it.

Boyce Cayce was just so drunk he couldn't say much. He's from Georgia, anyhow.

There wasn't much we could chat about, except the fact that we sure hoped Commissioner Cameron wasn't at the party somewhere to see us all together.

Commissioner Cameron doesn't care so much about what we do as long as nobody can see it.

It's sort of against the rules for studs from opposing teams to get together the evening before a ball game. The theory behind the rule is that studs might get together and decide what the score of the game ought to be. And then somebody will call up a fellow like Uncle Kenneth, let's say, and bet four or five large on it, and then the game will happen to turn out like the studs talked about it beforehand.

At least Commissioner Cameron says this is what people in public will think if they see some studs together in a public place before a game.

But what people think is not so accurate. I want to go on record as saying that I have never known of a fixed game, although I have heard rumors.

For instance Boyce Cayce is supposed to have set a record of going half a season once without completing a screen pass, but I think that's when he had a sore shoulder. With the Rams.

And I can remember hearing about all the heat Boyce received when he was with the Oilers that time they made the playoffs and got beat in sudden death by the Chiefs.

Boyce got criticized for electing to kick rather than receive after he won the coin flip. It's who scores first in sudden death, of course. And then he got even more blame for missing three straight open receivers when it would have moved the Oilers into field goal range.

And even though a sports writer on the sideline claimed he overheard Boyce say something incriminating after the loss, that's just the writer's word against Boyce's, as far as I'm concerned. The writer claimed he heard Boyce say, "Hey, ho, who won the dough, eh, gang?"

You can just take all this for whatever you think gossip is worth. Personally, I've never known a ball player to lay down unless he was tired. I look at it this way, anyhow. If eight out of every ten NFL games are honest, that's a hell of a lot better percentage than you can get in that pro fucking basketball.

Who I worry about, mainly, in pro football are the zebras. The officials. They do a good job, by and large, but they could call holding on any play, and occasionally they sure choose some funny times. Once last season, for example, we had defensive holding strapped on us after Dallas missed a field goal. How can you defensive hold on a field goal?

They called it on
T.J.
Lambert and he turned so hot he almost got himself banned from the sport for life. He picked up the official who threw the flag, dangled him by his ankles, and said, "I'm gonna shake this fuckin' zebra til the fix money comes out his wop neck."

Well, anyhow. There we all were at Elroy's party, sort of embarrassed to be in each other's company.

Barbara Jane and Cissy noticed we had some strange company, so they quit dancing and came over and put their clothes on quickly and sat down on the grass.

Barb recognized Dreamer and Boyce immediately and straightened up somewhat. It was a little awkward, however, when I introduced them to Cissy Walford and she said, "Aren't you the dog-asses?"

Dreamer couldn't talk much for gazing around at several of Elroy's hostesses who were still dancing naked. Neither could Boyce Cayce.

T.J.
cut one again that was absolute thunder, and in fact, it put him to sleep, sprawled out on the lawn, it was such a good one.

Boyce Cayce said, "He don't do that when he's rushin' the passer, does he?"

Shake and Dreamer, after a while, did a little playful sparring with each other about the game.

"You gonna play the wide field, Dreamer?" Shake asked him. "Even when old Eighty-eight's into the side line?"

Dreamer smiled and said, "I think I'll just be right around the football, baby. Wherever that is."

Shake said, "I'm feelin' fast, Dreamer. Feelin' fast."

And Dreamer said, "Runnin' fast ain't catchin' nothin', is it, baby?"

Shake said, "Catching a ball is where I'm at, though."

Dreamer said, "Catchin' a ball is who catches it first. Ain't that right now, baby?"

They laughed together, sort of. And Barbara Jane changed the conversation.

She said, "Dreamer, why don't you scoop up one of these little dandies around here and take her out to Disneyland and show her some of the rides?"

I said there was one called Linda he might be interested in. I said she was probably busy right now, but she seemed like the type who never particularly got tired, and she surely did think highly of athletes.

Boyce Cayce wiped his mouth off and said:

"I see one over there playin' a zone but I think I can hit her in the seams."

I frankly don't want to say much about what happened next.

All I will reveal is that Elroy and Linda came back outdoors and Elroy brought one of his footballs he had stuffed with dope. At first, we all just pitched it back and forth, sitting there on the lawn.

Then it was that crazy Elroy who got the brilliant idea
that we ought to divide up sides and play a game of two
-
below touch.

Since
T.J.
Lambert was asleep from his All-Pro fart, Elroy said the sides could be perfectly even. Me and Shake on one team, he said, and Dreamer and Boyce on the other. Giants against the Jets. Barbara Jane and Cissy on our side, and Linda the Stew along with some little old nameless debutante on the other. Two fags on our side. Two fags on their side. Elroy on our side, since he was a Giant fan. And Nancy the Nurse on their side.

Nancy the Nurse had reappeared from somewhere and she agreed to take part in the game if we would promise to wake up
T.J.
later so he could go up to that marble bathtub with her.

Most everybody at the party gathered around to watch the game, but before it started, Elroy announced that it was "the first annual pre-Super Bowl drunk-stoned two
-
below game, bringing together the gentlemanly, suave New York Giants and the fuck-head New York Jets."

Well, we played for a while. But it wasn't much of a contest since we let the fags be the passers and the receivers while me and Shake and Dreamer and Boyce just groveled around on the ground, play-blocking and falling down a lot, and ruining our clothes, and laughing and grunting and piling on each other while the fags tried in earnest to injure the girls.

We made up some truly brilliant plays, though.

One of them was Tits Go Long.

Another one was Piss to Daylight. That was for Nancy.

I think the Jets won, if you're truly interested in the outcome.

It was mainly because Linda the Stew occupied the better part of our defense
—
like me and Shake and Elroy
—
when she ran a pass route. We sure did commit some interference.

The party, by the way, is still in progress for some, even as I'm still sitting here in the living room of our palatial suite on Super Bowl morning looking at what's now left of my various remedies for headaches and remorse.

We all came home after the Super Bowl touch game, which sort of straightened out our heads. I guess I've slept about two hours.

I hope
T.J.
got home. We made Nancy the Nurse promise to see that he got here after he woke up and went and pissed on her all he could in the marble bathtub. When
T.J.
doesn't get home until daylight, Donna Lou has a tendency to worry. Of course, that's if Donna Lou's home by then.

Boyce Cayce left the party with a fairly shopworn debutante who said she lived in the Valley and would have enough money pretty soon to go straight and open up her own beauty parlor.

Dreamer Tatum left with Linda the Stew, as you might have suspected. Linda was very excited about it. She said that if she lived to be thirty or even thirty-five, she would probably never have another night when she got to have it popped in her by a famous recording artist and a famous cornerback.

Elroy told Dreamer, "You better be an All-Pro in the rack, son, because you done got hold of yourself a po-ran-ah fish."

I hope filthy little Linda has worn Dreamer's ass full out by now. I really hope so.

And I guess with that thought in mind, this is as good a time as any to say that the hour of truth has finally arrived for Billy Clyde.

It's time for me to cut the bullshit and go get ready to do the thing I've been talking about all week, which is knock the dicks off the dog-ass Jets.

Yes, sir, it's time for old Billy Clyde to go get taped and go eat the team breakfast and ride out to the Los Angeles Coliseum on this beautiful Sunday in January and hook it up with my New York Giant pals and kick the pure zebra shit out of those rotten, low-life, low-rent, dog-ass motherfuckers.

Pardon the language but my game-face is some kind of
on
.

You won't be hearing from me tonight. Or even tomorrow morning. Or even for a few days, maybe even a week or two.

Win or lose in a few more hours (and I shouldn't even question it), old Billy Clyde tonight, when he's beat up and sore and whip-dog tired and mentally wrung out from the game, is gonna get himself ass-deep in so much young Scotch that this palatial suite of ours better be able to float.

Win or lose (and I don't know why I keep saying that), this is the end of the season and that means me and Shake are going off on our annual round trip to Dissipate City.

Our actual plans are as follows:

Marvin (Shake) Tiller has to fly back to New York early Monday morning to be on a couple of TV shows that night. He says he's got some other business around town that'll take him two or three more days, although I can't imagine what it is. Anyhow, Shake's going back Monday for TV, mainly, and Cissy Walford says she'll fly back with him because she needs to see her parents for a few hours to let them know she's alive and not pregnant.

I'm staying here while Shake and Cissy do all that.

I'm staying here to do nothing for two or three days but drink and sleep and maybe do me a Linda and a Sandi. Barbara Jane is staying out here, too, mainly on business but partly to keep me company, if I want any.

What will happen toward the end of the week is that all four of us are going to meet in a place where me and Shake and Barbara Jane have been going every year for about the last three years at the end of the season.

Every year the three of us
—
plus the young wool of my choice
—
wind up at this place in the Hawaiian Islands. For about two or three weeks over there we just lay in the sun and eat and sleep and drink and smoke and fuck and moan a lot.

There is nothing like it after a hard season.