Kiss Me, Straight by Michael P. Thomas

Author:Michael P. Thomas [Thomas, Michael P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Bobby and Jason were squeezing into a parking space on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive when I rode up to the softball fields in Golden Gate Park that afternoon, so I locked my bike to the backstop and strolled across the grass to meet them. Bobby buffeted the car in front and the car behind before he managed to get his Saab settled in the parking spot. He lived with his wealthy, older partner in Piedmont in the Oakland hills, and drove right past Jason’s Lake Merritt condo on his way to the park, so the two almost always arrived together.

“That’s why they call them bumpers,” Bobby called to me as he got out, then locked his door and came around to join me and Jason on the grass. One of the original organizers of the team about three years ago, Jason had a big canvas bag full of balls and metal bats that he lugged to every practice and every game, which allowed the rest of us to roll up basically empty-handed. I only had a half-empty messenger bag slung across my chest, which contained my glove, a water bottle, and my sunglasses, so I helped Bobby carry the most vital piece of equipment, the cooler full of beer he hefted out of his trunk.

There were a few natural athletes on our team, Jason among them, and most of the other teams in our league had a couple of jocks, too, but most of us viewed our twice-monthly softball games as little more than an excuse to spend an afternoon in the park looking at other guys in shorts and drinking beer. I usually spent half the game lolling around in right field laughing at Bobby, our first baseman, taunting and flirting with batter after batter, and the other half on the bench playing drinking games with Greg and Pimo, the burly baggage handler couple on our team. A husky, bearish black guy and a towering Samoan, they weren’t all that out at work; we rarely exchanged more than a friendly “hey” if our paths crossed at the airport or planeside during a hectic boarding process. At games, however, Pimo was a foul-mouthed crack-up, and Greg showed him every affection. And, in spite of the fact that I rarely excelled in any organized sporting atmosphere, even after several beers I was a reliable hitter, and had the highest number of RBIs in our little league. This according to Jason, who kept track of this sort of thing.

When our team was at-bat in the fourth inning, I was sitting in the shade on the bench, working my way through my third beer and recounting the events of the morning to Jason. I had to pretty much bring him up to date on Chris from scratch, as we hadn’t really talked about him before. So I told him gee, I had this new neighbor, and I thought he had a crush on me, but he just got out of a

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