“So today I’m working the spring training crowd. Giving them my everything, because I’m their clown. Their green, good-natured clown and I jump when they pull the strings. Later, I stopped for a smoke in what I thought was a deserted side of the ballpark. But a pretty teenage girl wandered past me, waving politely and giving me that look that only teenage girls can give. ‘Don’t you ever get to take off the costume?’ she asked me with a grin. I just nodded and sighed and watched her walk away. Sure, I could have told her how my mother ignored medical convention and drank straight vodka throughout her pregnancy. Or how my father skipped town at the first sight of my green, furry hands as they clutched at my rattle. Or how I still feel the verbal slings and barbs of the children in the schoolyard as I stumbled in my size 15EEE sneakers. But really, what’s the point?”
* * * * * * * *
“Had another meeting with Remy this morning. He seemed really jazzed about some of my ideas when I mentioned them to him last night, but over coffee this morning? Zilch. Guy just sat there smoking his cigs and drinking his coffee and looking at his watch like he had a bus to catch. I showed him some preliminary sketches for the Wally cartoon he said he’d help me pitch to NESN, but he didn’t like any of my story ideas. ‘Ya got anything that doesn’t involve hookers?’ he kept asking me, like he knows what the public wants. I just grumbled and told him I’d keep working on stuff. I appreciate all his help, but I swear, if he f–ks me out of this payday, the man is dead to me.”
* * * * * * * *
“Well, I met a live one last night at the local watering hole. Lips out to here, ass like a goddam Graff Zeppelin. Big enough to hold a fifteen-course meal as my Uncle Tony would say. Had a good roll in the hay, but then she wakes up with this attitude, claiming I told her I’d introduce her to Varitek and threatening to go to the authorities. I called DeMarlo and he showed up with some of his ‘magic chloroform juice’ and we were able to put her lights out but good. Dropped her off at a Home Depot parking lot down in West Palm and signed her stomach, ‘Thanks for the good time, Julian T.’ to throw the dogs off the trail.”
* * * * * * * *
“It’s official: the cock tattoo was a bad idea.”
