The Future
It's a long time from the mattress you tugged down to the
floor the night you won the World Series. But not long if
you close your eyes and remember, which is hard in the future.
It is hard because you are on television and this is the future
and this is celebrity boxing. Except it is the future and
celebrity boxing has become normal, accepted programming on
sports and network television. There is good celebrity boxing
and there is bad celebrity boxing now and Kelly knows he is
on the bad side of the new reality.
Kelly shudders off camera and wishes he'd gone for the robe
and shorts instead of the tights and ball cap he's planning
on throwing into the crowd. All of the sudden he realizes
he should keep the ball cap because there is not much more
than that really. This is the kind of celebrity boxing that
bears no mention on television unless something truly, awfully,
embarrassingly dramatic happens…celebrities beating each
other up does not pass for news anymore. That's what he is
counting on anyway… Kelly hopes for a boring fight with
little fanfare, a check that doesn't bounce, and the possibility
of golf in the near future. But it is the future after all
and not the past and you can't go back:
back to when you pulled the mattress onto the floor and the
girl with it. And you undressed and redressed her so many
times you lost count and you never did it the same way twice.
Player? Rake? Bullshit. You loved every one of them. Explained
the game to them on the floor with the mattress in a hotel
room. The best hotel room. Gave them the best night of their
life, and you too… You just got to keep doing it.
You could find the hotel again and maybe that girl, maybe
tug that mattress onto the floor again, but you wouldn't rent
the XXX movies anymore. Those days are over: $14.95 a throw;
they're over.
yeah, the mattress on the bed the night of the World Series
and you are awake long after she is asleep tracing lines across
her hips which are not perfect but beautiful, and her breasts
that have ugly scars on the bottom but you look straight at
them and by doing so, make them attractive… you're not
perfect either and you know it…you rub the inside of
your leg where you took a cleat five hours ago… you are
still alive, you whisper in her ear and she moans…my
tongue on your back proves it…
Kelly waits for his name to be announced, thinks maybe he
has made a mistake entering to Take Me Out To the Ballgame,
bows his head and tries to screw up the courage to look hardened,
and never resigned.
Nickels and
M-Do are still
trying to decide who fits where.
