The Ferrari in the Bedroom (18 page)

Al, a short broad-shouldered specimen wearing a dirty T-shirt, flips a bat toward Mike. Mike, slightly taller but narrower, has slit eyes and a Band-aid covering a cut on his right cheekbone. Mike catches the bat adeptly at the trademark; holds it upright while the others look on silently, sidling back and forth unconcernedly. Do not be fooled. They are deeply involved and already fear is beginning to strike deep in the vitals of at least three of the onlookers.

Al’s hand grasps the bat tightly above Mike’s. Hand by hand they work their way up the bat toward the narrow taped handle. Finally the top is reached. Al’s hand is the last around the handle. There is a momentary pause. Mike barks:
“CHICKEN CLAWS”
Al spits into the dust.

Al: “How come you didn’t holler that before, you son of a bitch?”

Mike’s hand has formed a claw and is grasping the very tip of the bat, just above Al’s in a chicken-clawed grasp.

“You didn’t say we couldn’t have Chicken Claws,” Mike
grunts. These two have been choosing up for years. Their battles as to who gets the first choice have see-sawed back and forth over dozens of playgrounds.

“Okay, Mike,” Al concedes reluctantly. The bat is tossed into the dust next to First Base and now the two turn to face the others, who shift from foot to foot, awaiting the blow.

“Okay. I’ll take Gus.”

Gus, at twelve, is six feet three. He weighs seventy-six pounds. He will never be a chooser but he will always, throughout life, be the first chosen. His natural fielding ability and his sullen competence at the plate are a by-word among his peers. He will never get the Prom Queen but will invariably nail at least three of her attendants. Gus will do all right. Gus picks up his glove and moves back of Mike. Already the team is being formed.

Al looks at the assemblage narrowly and finally barks:

“Stan.”

Stan is almost in the same class as Gus, but not quite. His speed is legendary. He is a maniacal in-fighter and while not outstandingly gifted, his single-minded perseverance and the fact that his father owns a large chain of hardware stores will always stand him in good stead. Stan already, at the age of twelve, is a latent Vice President.

“Awright,” Mike counters. Without hesitation he hisses:

“Dumpy.”

Dumpy has always been chosen immediately after Stan, and occasionally even ahead of him. His nickname is derived from his family name of Dumplemeyer. He is not dumpy, being heavily muscled, narrow of waist and long of arm. However, he is somewhat dim-witted. In spite of excellent coordination he has a marked tendency to throw to the wrong base and was even known once to fall asleep in the outfield, with disastrous results. Dumpy will go through
life continually impressing people with his promise, which never materializes. But that is enough in the Corporate world since Parkinson’s Law of ineptitude will push him steadily upward. His fine profile; the way a blazer hangs on his frame will be enough for Dumpy. Weep no tears for old Dumplemeyer. He once in a great while hits a hell of a long ball.

Al glances back at his team. Stan, his only declared ally, picks his nose casually, waiting for the action to begin. Al examines the remaining six.

Al: “Lemme see. Okay. C’mon over here, Cliff.”

Cliff is a special case, a true in-and-outer but in a sinister way. He has Mother trouble. Cliff’s mother rides on his back like a winged vulture, constantly calling him home at crucial moments in ball games. While actually playing, he has a high level of competence, but his mother’s watchword is “You’ll get hurt playing with that hard ball!” Cliff will ultimately be somebody’s bookkeeper. He will marry a large overbearing lady who will bear him many children. He will be a good bookkeeper but will be inclined to be plagued by psychosomatic colds, which his wife will blame on his alleged refusal to “wear rubbers and eat decent.” Al would not have chosen Cliff had he not been getting down near the bottom of the barrel.

Mike carefully unpeels a wad of Fleers bubblegum before making his choice. It is getting more difficult man by man. He pauses silently, causing the remaining five to twitch visibly.

“Aw … right. Make it Jeff.”

Jeff, at twelve, five-foot-three, weighs two hundred and thirty-six. Slow of foot, dull of mind, Jeff is a natural catcher. Jeff ultimately makes every team he goes out for, just barely. His bulk carries him through. Kids bounce off him like
hailstones. However, in spite of his size he is a notably poor hitter, and his position in life is strictly Defensive. It is almost impossible to reach the plate when Jeff is squatting like a rubber Buddha with an inhumanly low center of gravity. Throughout life he will be known as “good old Jeff” and will be sent continually for more beer at parties and will be useful for pushing the car and all the other basic tasks that man falls heir to. Jeff is a born Pfc., which he will later be, and will spend a lot of time on Guard duty and washing trucks in the Motor Pool. He will eventually become Assistant Night Foreman in the Shipping Department of Amalgamated.

Al, who obviously is disappointed at not getting Jeff, the best of a bad lot, looks the field over casually. The rest of the choices are really academic.

“Okay. I’ll take Murphy.”

Poor little Murphy, who really believes he can play baseball. Throughout life he will relentlessly pursue a variety of sports, attacking them with a dedicated frenzied total ineptitude. He will ultimately take lessons in golf, tennis, fencing, skiing, and whatever happens to be In at the moment. He also will be the only one of the crowd who will go to “swinging singles” weekends in the Catskills, will haunt Singles’ bars on the East Side and will finally resort to Computer Dating. Murphy will paste Playboy bunny insignias on the windshield of his Pontiac GTO and will not have a serious involvement with a female till late in his 37th year. He will spend a lot of time and money buying ski sweaters, sun goggles, Arnold Palmer putters and books entitled
The Sensuous Man,
or
How To Make Love
(with four LPs and associated diagrams).

There are now three left. Without hesitation Mike, with a note of conciliation in his voice, lays out a proposal to Al. It
is a chilling one but totally realistic. Ball games are to be won. Mike intends to win. There is no time for sentiment when the Great Chicken-Clawed Chooser is making his rounds. Like Death, he plays no favorites and Democracy means nothing to him. Who knows where he will strike?

“Look, Al, I’ll take Howie if you’ll take Marty and Clarence.”

Al is visibly outraged. “Marty
and
Clarence! Fer Chrissake! This has happened to me three weeks in a row. I’ll tell ya what. I’ll take Marty and Clarence if you let us bat first.”

This trio; Howie, Marty and Clarence, are virtually indistinguishable one from the other. Thin, weedy, bespectacled-at the age of twelve all three are noticeably balding. Howie scurries happily to Mike’s side, nuzzling up to him contentedly. Totally lacking in coordination, his attempts at fielding have produced results so comical that he has taken refuge in a sense of humor, believing that if he can keep those around him laughing they will not realize that he is truly one of the Untouchables. His sallow skin, his weak watery eyes, his prominent teeth have made him the obvious butt of many of coarse jest. Howie will fantasize throughout his life that he is well-liked, since everyone laughs at his gags, but he secretly fears that no one has even noticed that he has left the room. He is right. However, if he gets a good agent he could go all the way. Nightclubs, movies, the works, at which point he will have a golf tournament named after him–“The Howie Desert Invitational” and guys like Jack Nicklaus will pretend that they’re his friend. It will be plenty enough for Howie.

Marty and Clarence, while they may appear alike to the observer, are vastly different. Marty, by his thirteenth year, will no longer have much to do with anything that smacks of Sport. His complete inability to get anywhere near a
rolling or bouncing ball and his abject fear of failure will lead him to becoming a zealous member of the Biology Club and the Hi-Y. He will later, as an adult, make vague statements that he believes contact sports are barbarous, but he won’t really believe it since he will go through life as a silent fan, watching football players on television tubes, following Tom Seaver on Sunday afternoons, quietly regretting his incompetence. He will hurt no one.

Clarence, at twelve, still believes he has talent, because he did once, early last summer, actually snag a flyball. But the awful truth is beginning to dawn. Intensely intelligent, with an incredible ego, Clarence has been told from childhood that there are no such things as untalented children.
There are just those whose real talents have never been brought out. He is finding otherwise and takes the pill bitterly. Already he is forming an intense hatred of Gus and his easy grace; of Mike and his level, lethal swing; of Al and his inhuman fastball. It is hatred tinged with intense envy. He will later become a novelist or playwright, and all through college will loudly entertain the fiction that all athletes are “jocks” and not worthy of the slightest fleeting thought from one of the truly important people on the campus, that little happy band of scribblers on the
Literary Quarterly
and who dominate the Yearbook or the Humor Magazine with their brilliant wit. Later, after he has become rich and famous, he will seek the company of resoundingly successful jocks, at last being allowed into their Olympian presence. As Mailer courts middleweight boxers and Plimpton fawns on hulking linebackers, so will Clarence.

The players scatter to their positions. Marty suffers the ultimate humiliation, being assigned to Right Field to lurk patiently amid the tall grass where balls are seldom hit. The game begins, a languorous Saturday afternoon competition played out amid the rusting beer cans and Coke bottles of kiddom. Has Gloria Steinem ever been part of a package deal with Howie and Clarence? I doubt it. Has Germaine Greer faced Al’s whistling slider and the scorn of Mike’s curled lip? I doubt it. These are things that only the male ex-kid can well and truly understand.

The Great Chicken-Clawed Chooser knows. He cannot be fooled nor escaped. Some got it and some ain’t. There’s no way to tell a woman how it feels to stand in the presence of the Great Chooser and see his claws work inexorably up the bat, and there is no escape in the brilliant light of Truth. You can either go to your left, or you can’t.

News item:

I read the caption under the photo a couple of times to let the thought really sink in. The accompanying photo showed the good Father in full regalia, seated solemnly in his “foreign car,” fittingly, a Fiat. A drive-in confessional, I thought. Well, it had to happen. The car has long ago ceased to be a status symbol, and in fact
not
owning a car has become some sort of distinction in this age of total wheels. I skimmed through the Sports page on my way back to the cross-word puzzle when ’way down near the back of the paper, amid the ads for trusses and $2.00 tax accountants, I saw this small item:

Holy cow, I thought, quoting the great Phil Rizzuto, that’s going to make one hell of a find for some lucky anthropologist a couple of thousand years from now. We’re getting back to the style of the ancient Pharaohs, who are always tucked away fully-equipped with their favorite barge and maybe even a concubine or two.