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lunabee34 posted last month sometime. I've been telling myself forever that I would do it, but now that I have some time on my hands, I figure there's no excuse not to. Eventually I want to compile everything into a Sedaris-type book called Queer as a Football Bat. I'm going to try and post a new one daily, but we'll see how that goes. For now, I've decided to post the first two that I have finished. So here goes. If you're interested and you enjoy them, feel free to comment. If not, no worries.
Number One: Queer as a Football Bat
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, most of which I wouldn’t repeat to even a sailor. Usually, they refer to me being gay. You’d be surprised what small town minds can come up with when they don’t like something or some one. But before I came out officially in high school, the jokes were usually geared towards the fact that I was quite the little porker as a kid. I lived my whole life up until freshman year of high school wearing sweat pants from K-Mart or slacks specially ordered out of the Sears catalog because no place made jeans or pants in my size. Because I was so self-concious and shy about my size, I didn’t have many friends.
One friend I did have though, was Shawna. She was a couple years ahead of me in school, and her great-grandparents lived right down the street from me. When we first moved into the neighborhood, she was one of the first kids I met. I strolled down the street in my cherried plastic Playschool pedal car and introduced myself. Of course, I was five at the time, and shy, with a touch of a speech impediment. So instead of saying “My name is Bradley,” I wound up saying “My name is Badwee”. Despite the initial first impression, she found me fit enough to become friends with me. We’ve stayed friends since then, for all these years.
We were close enough that when my family went to Wacky Waters Waterpark, we would take her with us, and that when her family went to Mississippi Valley Fair, I would tag along. I must have been about ten years old when she and her grandparents planned a week-long trip to Branson, Missouri, for fishing and fun and asked if I wanted to come along. My folks said it was okay, so a couple weeks later we were all loaded up into the car for the thousand-hour car trip. It was probably more like a six-hour trip, but when you’re that young, and you’re stuck in the back seat of a Buick with luggage, pillows, blankets, coolers, a frisky puppy, and a best friend, it seems like it’s a little longer than it actually is.
Maybe the Branson life just isn’t for me, because I remember complaining a lot on the trip, and not having much fun. Me and Shawna bickered back and forth quite a bit, the motel we stayed at was pretty boring, and Branson didn’t have much to do for ten and thirteen year olds trying to relieve their boredom. Mostly, we watched movies and TV, played with Oscar, the puppy, and sat inside in the air conditioning. Possibly the last day of the trip, I went with Shawna and her grandpa out on the river to fish. I caught one tiny fish we had to throw back, and got sunburn bad enough to cry that night.
The one thing I remember most, though, was the impersonation show we went and saw. Being Branson, of course, all of the entertainers being impersonated were country western singers. There was Reba McIntire, Charles Daniel, Garth Brooks, and host of others. They seemed pretty good to me, and I really enjoyed the show. Later on, as we were driving back to the motel, Shawna’s grandparents asked me how I enjoyed it. I said “Pretty good,” but the only real comment I had that I didn’t like was that “Reba’s dress was ugly, though.”
On the drive back from Branson, Shawna leant me her copy of Prince’s Hits 1 on tape. I listened to the whole thing once, and then I found the song “Seven” and became hooked. I spent the whole drive back listening to the song, stopping the tape, rewinding it, and listening to it again. Much later, I found out that if the drive had been an hour longer, Shawna’s grandparents would have left me on the side of the highway because they were sick of hearing the clicking sounds of the buttons.
When we finally arrived home, they dropped me off at my house. I thanked them, as I had been told to do, and Shawna walked me to the door and helped me take my stuff inside – it’s amazing how much luggage a ten year old boy can have – and then they all went home.
Four years later, when I came out in high school, Shawna wasn’t the least bit surprised. With a look that screamed “So what, you want a cookie?” her exact words were “Yeah, and?” When I asked what she meant, she told me she had pretty much always known – that in fact, most everyone had. I was puzzled by this, and as an example she reminded me of our Branson trip from four summers earlier.
“As soon as we dropped you off and I got back in the car,” she explained, “Grandpa turned around, looked at me, and said ‘That boy is as queer as a football bat.’”
Number Two: The Curious Curio Cabinet Bible
One summer when I was about eight years old, I was walking by the ancient curio cabinet my mother has in the basement, and I noticed something I’d never really paid attention to before. Way in the back, behind the stuffed white rat, caked with dust and yellowed with age and nicotine residue, was a Bible. It was one of those fancy ones, with the gold-gilded pages and French scroll script on the cover. Knowing better than to take anything out of that cabinet, I inspected it through the glass. Funny that I’d never noticed it before. I wondered why it was there – ours was not a religious family.
I went upstairs to ask my mother, and I found her on the sagging brown sectional in the living room, a smoldering cigarette dangling from her chapped lips as she skimmed the newspaper. Her ruby red nail polish glinted in the light from the picture window, and ash fell like snow on her denim jumper. As I sat in the blue corduroy recliner facing the couch, she stamped out the cigarette and lit another, pausing to take a swallow of her Diet Pepsi.
“Hey Mom, what’s with the Bible downstairs?” I asked, playing with the few strands of frayed fabric on the arm of the chair.
“What Bible?” She asked, not looking up from the paper.
“The one in the curio cabinet, behind Dad’s rat.”
“Oh. That’s the one the angel left,” she explained, still not taking her eyes away from the previous day’s events.
“Um, what?” I wondered. “Who’s Angel?”
“Angel who? No, I said the angel. From when the trailer burned down.” At this point, I was so confused, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to bother trying to understand.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know the story,” she insisted, taking a long pull of her Salem and another gulp from her soda.
“No I don’t. What story?”
“The one about the angel and the Bible.” At last, she favored me with a look. Noticing the confusion on my face, she rolled her eyes and put down the newspaper. “When you were only a few months old, you almost died in a fire in the trailer we were living in at the time.”
“Okay…” This was certainly news to me. I knew we’d had a trailer catch fire, but as far as I knew, we were all fine. “So, what happened?”
“I’m trying to tell you, hold your horses,” she scolded, stamping out the cigarette. “It was on a Saturday morning, and I was doing some cleaning before I had to go to work. You were taking a nap in the bedroom, and your brother was in the living room watching cartoons. Not thinking about it, I laid a bag of chips on the toaster so that I could clean off the counter. I went ahead and started cleaning up the living room, when someone started knocking on the door.” Mom paused a second and picked up the pack of cigarettes, opened it and glared at the empty box. The glare disappeared when she realized she had another pack laying on the end table beside the TV remote. She didn’t bother packing it like I’d seen other people do, she just pulled the plastic string off, pulled out the foil, and snaked one of her precious green-banded lights out. Lighting it with a cheap gas-station disposable, she inhaled slowly and held it for half a second, and happily exhaled the blue-grey smoke into the room.
“Anyway, I thought it would be your grandpa coming to baby-sit, so I opened the door without seeing who it was first. Turned out it was one of those damn Bible salesmen trying make a quota or something. I was nice and all about it; I let him go on talking about the ‘good book’ and blah blah blah, when suddenly he shouts at me ‘Get out of there, quick!’ I turned around, and saw that the trailer was full of smoke. Without thinking about it, I ran in and grabbed Brian off the couch where he was taking a nap. Wasn’t till I got outside that I remembered that you were sleeping in the crib in the bedroom, which was past the kitchen, where the smoke was coming from.”
“So you left me?” I asked, bewildered. I’d always suspected my older brother was the favorite, but I never knew it would come down to that.
“Relax, you’re fine,” she said with another roll of her eyes. “Anyway, before I could do or say anything, the Bible guy runs inside the trailer – by now there were flames coming out the windows – without me even saying anything about you. It’s like he knew you were in there or something. The fire department got there a couple minutes later, but they couldn’t get inside. It took them a good while to put the fire out, and by that time there wasn’t much left. But the man still hadn’t come out with you. I thought you were dead,” she explained, her voice flat and emotionless. “But when the firemen went inside to check to make sure it really was out, they hollered from the bedroom for me to come. I didn’t want to, afraid of what I’d see. But when I got there, there you were, smiling up at me, reaching out for me, happy as can be. You were fine, but the crib and the room had been scorched. When I went to pick you up, I found a white Bible beside you in the crib, dry as a bone and looking showroom new. That’s the Bible that’s downstairs in the curio cabinet next to the Dad’s rat. They never did find that guy or find out who he was or anything, so I figure it was angel. So that’s why the Bible’s in the curio cabinet.”
With that, she finished her cigarette, put it out, and picked up the paper again.
After hearing the whole story, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t really understand what any of it meant. And I wasn’t all that sure it was actually true. Not that my mother’s a liar, she’s a perfectly lovely woman. But she couldn’t always be counted on to tell the whole truth in some situations. And of course there’s the fact that she’s one of those people who can say one thing at one time, and say completely the opposite at another time. So, even though I loved my mother, I’m not sure I ever took much of what she said to heart. Later that same year, she told me, “I never really wanted you; you were an accident. I don’t really know if I had to do it all over again, that I would still have you. Don’t get me wrong, I love you, but sometimes I hate you!”
lunabee34 posted last month sometime. I've been telling myself forever that I would do it, but now that I have some time on my hands, I figure there's no excuse not to. Eventually I want to compile everything into a Sedaris-type book called Queer as a Football Bat. I'm going to try and post a new one daily, but we'll see how that goes. For now, I've decided to post the first two that I have finished. So here goes. If you're interested and you enjoy them, feel free to comment. If not, no worries.Number One: Queer as a Football Bat
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, most of which I wouldn’t repeat to even a sailor. Usually, they refer to me being gay. You’d be surprised what small town minds can come up with when they don’t like something or some one. But before I came out officially in high school, the jokes were usually geared towards the fact that I was quite the little porker as a kid. I lived my whole life up until freshman year of high school wearing sweat pants from K-Mart or slacks specially ordered out of the Sears catalog because no place made jeans or pants in my size. Because I was so self-concious and shy about my size, I didn’t have many friends.
One friend I did have though, was Shawna. She was a couple years ahead of me in school, and her great-grandparents lived right down the street from me. When we first moved into the neighborhood, she was one of the first kids I met. I strolled down the street in my cherried plastic Playschool pedal car and introduced myself. Of course, I was five at the time, and shy, with a touch of a speech impediment. So instead of saying “My name is Bradley,” I wound up saying “My name is Badwee”. Despite the initial first impression, she found me fit enough to become friends with me. We’ve stayed friends since then, for all these years.
We were close enough that when my family went to Wacky Waters Waterpark, we would take her with us, and that when her family went to Mississippi Valley Fair, I would tag along. I must have been about ten years old when she and her grandparents planned a week-long trip to Branson, Missouri, for fishing and fun and asked if I wanted to come along. My folks said it was okay, so a couple weeks later we were all loaded up into the car for the thousand-hour car trip. It was probably more like a six-hour trip, but when you’re that young, and you’re stuck in the back seat of a Buick with luggage, pillows, blankets, coolers, a frisky puppy, and a best friend, it seems like it’s a little longer than it actually is.
Maybe the Branson life just isn’t for me, because I remember complaining a lot on the trip, and not having much fun. Me and Shawna bickered back and forth quite a bit, the motel we stayed at was pretty boring, and Branson didn’t have much to do for ten and thirteen year olds trying to relieve their boredom. Mostly, we watched movies and TV, played with Oscar, the puppy, and sat inside in the air conditioning. Possibly the last day of the trip, I went with Shawna and her grandpa out on the river to fish. I caught one tiny fish we had to throw back, and got sunburn bad enough to cry that night.
The one thing I remember most, though, was the impersonation show we went and saw. Being Branson, of course, all of the entertainers being impersonated were country western singers. There was Reba McIntire, Charles Daniel, Garth Brooks, and host of others. They seemed pretty good to me, and I really enjoyed the show. Later on, as we were driving back to the motel, Shawna’s grandparents asked me how I enjoyed it. I said “Pretty good,” but the only real comment I had that I didn’t like was that “Reba’s dress was ugly, though.”
On the drive back from Branson, Shawna leant me her copy of Prince’s Hits 1 on tape. I listened to the whole thing once, and then I found the song “Seven” and became hooked. I spent the whole drive back listening to the song, stopping the tape, rewinding it, and listening to it again. Much later, I found out that if the drive had been an hour longer, Shawna’s grandparents would have left me on the side of the highway because they were sick of hearing the clicking sounds of the buttons.
When we finally arrived home, they dropped me off at my house. I thanked them, as I had been told to do, and Shawna walked me to the door and helped me take my stuff inside – it’s amazing how much luggage a ten year old boy can have – and then they all went home.
Four years later, when I came out in high school, Shawna wasn’t the least bit surprised. With a look that screamed “So what, you want a cookie?” her exact words were “Yeah, and?” When I asked what she meant, she told me she had pretty much always known – that in fact, most everyone had. I was puzzled by this, and as an example she reminded me of our Branson trip from four summers earlier.
“As soon as we dropped you off and I got back in the car,” she explained, “Grandpa turned around, looked at me, and said ‘That boy is as queer as a football bat.’”
Number Two: The Curious Curio Cabinet Bible
One summer when I was about eight years old, I was walking by the ancient curio cabinet my mother has in the basement, and I noticed something I’d never really paid attention to before. Way in the back, behind the stuffed white rat, caked with dust and yellowed with age and nicotine residue, was a Bible. It was one of those fancy ones, with the gold-gilded pages and French scroll script on the cover. Knowing better than to take anything out of that cabinet, I inspected it through the glass. Funny that I’d never noticed it before. I wondered why it was there – ours was not a religious family.
I went upstairs to ask my mother, and I found her on the sagging brown sectional in the living room, a smoldering cigarette dangling from her chapped lips as she skimmed the newspaper. Her ruby red nail polish glinted in the light from the picture window, and ash fell like snow on her denim jumper. As I sat in the blue corduroy recliner facing the couch, she stamped out the cigarette and lit another, pausing to take a swallow of her Diet Pepsi.
“Hey Mom, what’s with the Bible downstairs?” I asked, playing with the few strands of frayed fabric on the arm of the chair.
“What Bible?” She asked, not looking up from the paper.
“The one in the curio cabinet, behind Dad’s rat.”
“Oh. That’s the one the angel left,” she explained, still not taking her eyes away from the previous day’s events.
“Um, what?” I wondered. “Who’s Angel?”
“Angel who? No, I said the angel. From when the trailer burned down.” At this point, I was so confused, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to bother trying to understand.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know the story,” she insisted, taking a long pull of her Salem and another gulp from her soda.
“No I don’t. What story?”
“The one about the angel and the Bible.” At last, she favored me with a look. Noticing the confusion on my face, she rolled her eyes and put down the newspaper. “When you were only a few months old, you almost died in a fire in the trailer we were living in at the time.”
“Okay…” This was certainly news to me. I knew we’d had a trailer catch fire, but as far as I knew, we were all fine. “So, what happened?”
“I’m trying to tell you, hold your horses,” she scolded, stamping out the cigarette. “It was on a Saturday morning, and I was doing some cleaning before I had to go to work. You were taking a nap in the bedroom, and your brother was in the living room watching cartoons. Not thinking about it, I laid a bag of chips on the toaster so that I could clean off the counter. I went ahead and started cleaning up the living room, when someone started knocking on the door.” Mom paused a second and picked up the pack of cigarettes, opened it and glared at the empty box. The glare disappeared when she realized she had another pack laying on the end table beside the TV remote. She didn’t bother packing it like I’d seen other people do, she just pulled the plastic string off, pulled out the foil, and snaked one of her precious green-banded lights out. Lighting it with a cheap gas-station disposable, she inhaled slowly and held it for half a second, and happily exhaled the blue-grey smoke into the room.
“Anyway, I thought it would be your grandpa coming to baby-sit, so I opened the door without seeing who it was first. Turned out it was one of those damn Bible salesmen trying make a quota or something. I was nice and all about it; I let him go on talking about the ‘good book’ and blah blah blah, when suddenly he shouts at me ‘Get out of there, quick!’ I turned around, and saw that the trailer was full of smoke. Without thinking about it, I ran in and grabbed Brian off the couch where he was taking a nap. Wasn’t till I got outside that I remembered that you were sleeping in the crib in the bedroom, which was past the kitchen, where the smoke was coming from.”
“So you left me?” I asked, bewildered. I’d always suspected my older brother was the favorite, but I never knew it would come down to that.
“Relax, you’re fine,” she said with another roll of her eyes. “Anyway, before I could do or say anything, the Bible guy runs inside the trailer – by now there were flames coming out the windows – without me even saying anything about you. It’s like he knew you were in there or something. The fire department got there a couple minutes later, but they couldn’t get inside. It took them a good while to put the fire out, and by that time there wasn’t much left. But the man still hadn’t come out with you. I thought you were dead,” she explained, her voice flat and emotionless. “But when the firemen went inside to check to make sure it really was out, they hollered from the bedroom for me to come. I didn’t want to, afraid of what I’d see. But when I got there, there you were, smiling up at me, reaching out for me, happy as can be. You were fine, but the crib and the room had been scorched. When I went to pick you up, I found a white Bible beside you in the crib, dry as a bone and looking showroom new. That’s the Bible that’s downstairs in the curio cabinet next to the Dad’s rat. They never did find that guy or find out who he was or anything, so I figure it was angel. So that’s why the Bible’s in the curio cabinet.”
With that, she finished her cigarette, put it out, and picked up the paper again.
After hearing the whole story, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t really understand what any of it meant. And I wasn’t all that sure it was actually true. Not that my mother’s a liar, she’s a perfectly lovely woman. But she couldn’t always be counted on to tell the whole truth in some situations. And of course there’s the fact that she’s one of those people who can say one thing at one time, and say completely the opposite at another time. So, even though I loved my mother, I’m not sure I ever took much of what she said to heart. Later that same year, she told me, “I never really wanted you; you were an accident. I don’t really know if I had to do it all over again, that I would still have you. Don’t get me wrong, I love you, but sometimes I hate you!”
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Very well-written, but that doesn't surprise me at all.
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:)
*is glad you weren't burned up*
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