Running the Bases - Definitely Not a Book About Baseball

by Paul Kropp

  “How you doing with that Asian chick?” he asked idly.

  I tried to suppress a smile. “Coming along…sort of second base.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Okay, second base, hoping for third,” I said proudly.

  “You sly dog,” he said. “Still lying through your teeth and she’s falling for it, eh?” I said nothing.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. It’s amazing the crap that girls will fall for. I once told this girl that my dad was a commodore at the yacht club—can you believe that? She swallowed that one, hook, line and sinker. Kept bugging me for a sail on the old yacht, so finally I had to break it off.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had to do some studying up on Keats and Shelley to pull off my first-year thing. By the time I get to college, I’ll have half the first-year English course already finished.”

  “So what was she like? I’ve never been with an Asian girl.”

  Uh-oh, a direct question. Guys so rarely ask each other direct questions that I wasn’t quite ready for it. But the question brought an image of Rochelle into my mind, and then how I felt about Rochelle, and then a kind of heat that spread all over my face.

  “Jeez, you’re blushing, Al,” Jeremy observed. “Must be hot and heavy.”

  “Well, uh…” I cleared my throat. “She’s, uh…pretty special.”

  “Excuse me while I go barf,” Jeremy said, then burst into laughter. “Sounds like you’ve got it bad, my boy—baaad.”

  I could feel the heat in my cheeks and figured I was blushing even worse than before.

  “I tell you, Al, you’ve got to get over this romance crap. Yeah, I know, the first girl to give you a serious kiss, or maybe let you cop a feel, and all of a sudden you think you’re in love. But it’s not love, Al, it’s lust. Pure and simple lust.”

  I wanted to say no, no it isn’t, but I knew better. Guys don’t talk about falling in love. They hardly ever talk about anything important. They talk about sports or cars or school but never, ever about love. Breathe one word of it out loud and the laughter could be heard all over town.

  “Al, you gotta take my advice,” Jeremy went on. The second British beer makes him wax poetic or philosophical or both. “Girls like direct. You know what I mean? None of this beating around the bush stuff. You gotta be like Clint Eastwood and just go for it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. It seemed to me I had gotten this advice before, with fairly disastrous results.

  “It works, Al,” Jeremy said. “I mean, look at me. I’m a pretty ugly guy but I’m dynamite with women. So how come? Some days I ask myself that. Look at this face and this very much un-buff body.”

  I actually did look at Jeremy. As guys, we almost never looked at each other—it’s against the guy code of ethics. You look at a friend only when he’s been injured, so you can check out the bruises and scars, or when he’s done a truly disgusting fart or has a booger hanging from his nose, so you can make fun of him. But at that second I looked at Jeremy: the puffy face, the ten-pounds-overweight body, the lips that were always wet with spit. How could anybody find that attractive? I wondered.

  “You see,” Jeremy said. “Ugly. Verging on repulsive, if I do say so myself, but I still do just fine. It’s all in the moves, Al, and the confidence.”

  “Yeah, I guess it must be,” I said.

  “Trust me, Al. I know you’re going to pretend you’re a sensitive guy—jeez, you are a sensitive guy—but it’s not going to get you laid. You can play Mr. Nice Guy forever, but you’ll die a virgin.”

  I grunted agreement. It’s sometimes tough to get guy conversation down in writing because so much of it consists of grunts and laughter.

  “Hey,” Jeremy said, “I saw something good in some magazine the other day, something that might help you. It’s an acronym: KFUG.”

  “KFUG?”

  “Yeah, it stands for Kiss, Feel, Unbutton and Go for it. Girls like a guy with confidence, who shows that he’s in control. So remember, KFUG.”

  I had a hunch that Maggie would not approve of KFUG. I had a hunch that Maggie would not approve of my dissembling to Rochelle. Pretty good word, dissembling, which is poetic for lying but sounds so much nicer. Still, I knew Maggie wouldn’t like it much and might walk away from the whole project if she knew.

  So I kept my mouth shut. I got $75 from the bank, put it in an envelope and went to meet Maggie after school.

  “You’ve got the money?” she asked. That seemed a little crass, even to me, but I guess it’s the kind of question lawyers have to ask.

  “Here,” I said, handing her the envelope.

  “Thanks. Now I’ve got a little bad news on this set of instructions you asked for.”

  I noticed that she wasn’t wearing her glasses today, and something else was different, too. Her braces were gone.

  “Hey, you’ve got teeth,” I said.

  She shook her head. “So glad you noticed, Al. With subtlety like that, it’s amazing that you’re doing as well with Rochelle as you are.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s different,” I said.

  “Anyway, I had to get some help in writing this instruction set, so I got some of the girls together and had to pay for some coffee and dessert.”

  “How much?”

  “Thirty-two dollars and ten cents.”

  “Jeez, that’s a lot of coffee.”

  “It’s the lattes that really cost. Anyway, there’s an expense clause in your contract, so I’m just doing a pass-through on the cost.”

  “Where did you learn all this business talk?”

  “From my mother,” Maggie snapped, “when I still had one. Anyhow, are we going ahead or what?”

  “You didn’t tell them about our arrangement, did you?” I asked, suddenly panicked.

  “You pay me for confidentiality, as well as counsel. Trust me, Al.”

  Maggie was the second person to use the “trust me” phrase, but I figured I didn’t have much choice in the matter. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” says Jeremy’s father, which translates into something like “go for it” in the language of ordinary guys.

  “Okay, I’ll pay, but not until the next billing,” I said.

  “Fair enough.” Then Maggie slid me a plain brown envelope.

  PROJECT: ALAN

  Instruction set 3

  Congratulations, Alan, you are nearing your Ultimate Goal. Once again, the basic philosophy is to be patient. “Neither love nor sex can be rushed, both have their own time schedule,” to quote one of your team of advisers.

  We suspect that most of your information about sex comes from porn videos (you need not admit this publicly). Just to correct some pornography-based inaccuracies that may be cluttering your brain:

  Most women do not have breasts as large as those you have seen on video; nor do we ordinarily like them to be squeezed or pinched.

  Real women do not groan, pant or scream with desire while making love; Meg Ryan showed just how silly this concept is in When Harry Met Sally.

  Real women do not particularly idolize your private parts; in truth we are not anxious to touch them, massage them or pretend they are a lollipop; if we consent to do so, consider yourself very, very lucky.

  There is no magic button anywhere on the female anatomy that leads to instant seduction.

  Since we are correcting possible misconceptions, let us offer a remarkable concept: for girls, the most erogenous zone is the brain; all other parts of the body are far down the list. To seduce a girl’s brain, we recommend the following:

  Women love, in descending order, (1) love, (2) compliments, (3) little gifts and (4) chocolate.

  Always tell the girl how much you love her. This works even better if you really do love her.

  Regardless of point 2, tell the girl how beautiful/wonderful/unique she is. No matter how beautiful/wonderful/unique a girl may be (trust us, at least one of your advisers is all of these), she is deeply unsure of herself. Tell her how wonderful she is, again and again.


  Women are unimpressed with your family’s wealth, your car, your income potential and the pricey gifts you might want to give us. We do love little gifts. Keep the sportscar; buy chocolates once a week.

  As a man (almost), we suspect that you’d like a little technical advice on seduction. A complete run-down would require a book, but we will offer these five tips to help you along:

  Lips are a very sensitive area. Kiss a lot. Figure 30 minutes of kissing before you try anything else. That’s 30 minutes, not 30 seconds.

  After that, every girl is different. Some girls like to have their necks nuzzled; some hate it. Some girls like to have their breasts gently touched; some hate it. Look for signs of delight or irritation. If in doubt, ask.

  Girls take a long time. You may get sexually excited in ten seconds; we may take ten minutes, or ten hours. It all depends.

  As a general principle, gentle is better than rough.

  Never forget, girls like sex too. But we don’t like stupid, clueless men who think that slam-bam-thank-ya-ma’am sex is a guy’s reward for dinner out. We don’t owe you anything; if you can understand that, you may just reach your Ultimate Goal.

  19

  I Never Asked for Trouble

  MAY IS THE MONTH for lovers. May is the month when you can walk hand in hand through the rain-kissed air, the month when the spring flowers have finally come into bloom, the month when our hidden hearts beat in anticipation of everything to come.

  Or, as Jeremy said, May is the month to get laid.

  So there I was, on campus, walking Rochelle home from a Hugh Grant movie at the student centre. It was a perfect, perfect May night, with a hint of the just-set sun giving a glow to the sky above Crispin Hall, a handful of stars twinkling over our heads, and a crescent moon looking about as big and beautiful as any moon I’d ever seen. It was the kind of night that Keats or Shelley would have appreciated, the kind of night they must have captured in their poetry. At that very moment, in fact, I vowed to actually read some of it. Nights like this, moments like this, were the reasons why people wrote poetry.

  I had a beautiful girl beside me, holding my hand, a girl who thought I was bright, witty and sensitive. She also thought I was a first-year college student, but let’s ignore that for now. Let’s stick to an image of me, Alan, a mostly gawky-geeky teenager, holding the hand of this goddess under a night sky so romantic that, if life were a musical, I would probably burst out into song.

  Rochelle turned and looked into my eyes. “Alan,” she sighed.

  “Chelle,” I whispered back.

  We held hands, looking at each other, feeling the moment and our closeness. This must be falling in love, I said to myself. This is what all those songs are about. This is what I always wanted…

  I was leaning forward to kiss Rochelle when I heard the first voice.

  “Well, look at that. Ain’t that Al the pervert?”

  “And he’s holding hands with a real babe!”

  The second voice was vaguely familiar. I turned to look. It was Val Halvorsen.

  Just beside Val was Joey McGee, called McGoo by the kids at school because his face looked like some cartoon character’s. Next to McGoo was another member of the football squad whose name was Bob or Rob or Blob…something like that. Together, they made a very large trio—not so much from a musical, but from an opera. I mean, these guys were big.

  “Listen, guys…,” I began. I knew I had to say something. I knew that my perfect moment with Rochelle was over and that some kind of test had begun. They were pushing me into a fight—a fight I couldn’t possibly win—and I had to find some way out without sacrificing too much personal dignity in the process. “How about you go your way and we’ll go ours and—”

  “Sounds like Al is feeling a little nervous,” said McGoo.

  “He’s sure sweating like a pig,” added Blob.

  “This guy really is a pig,” Val joined in. “Just ask my sister.”

  “Hey, nobody needs this,” Rochelle said.

  “Uh-oh, looks like his girlfriend is getting a little mad,” McGoo said. “Better watch out for the chink.”

  Now that was getting over the top. I let go of Rochelle’s hands and stepped towards them. I had no idea how I was going to handle this, but I knew I didn’t want her getting hurt. Somehow I had to shut this down and shut them up.

  “Now I never asked for trouble from you guys—” I began again.

  “No, but you got trouble, meathead,” Val replied. He didn’t actually say “meathead”; his level of swearing was a couple notches up from that, referring both to sex and anatomy in ways that were not complimentary. But the words were the easy part. It was the shove that really got to me.

  I wasn’t quite ready for the shove. Val pushed me off balance and I went sailing backwards, falling for a second, then catching myself with one hand. I was back on my feet pretty quick.

  And then I lost it. I raced at Val, aiming my right fist at his jaw. He deflected it with his arm, as if my punch were about as dangerous as being attacked by a fly-swatter. Then somebody—McGoo or the Blob—punched me from the side and I saw stars, not the nice cartoon-style stars but those little sparks that shoot around your vision when you’ve taken a decent-sized hit.

  It only took one more hit to send me to the ground. This punch was to my stomach, and a little follow-through by Val pushed me down to the grass beside the walkway. Now I had shooting stars in my eyes, a burning pain in my gut and a little grass in my mouth.

  I rolled to one side, trying to find a way to get up, when I heard a loud crack followed by a scream.

  “She kicked me!” McGoo cried, falling beside me on the grass.

  I looked up to see Rochelle stepping towards Val. The big guy was falling back, terrified, as she lunged at his throat.

  “Gaah,” he screamed.

  Then she swung around like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sending a kick right into his groin.

  Val bent over, holding his most delicate parts with both hands. “I give, I give!” he screamed.

  McGoo was moaning on the ground.

  And the Blob was running away as fast as his fat legs would carry him.

  “How did you do that?” I asked as Rochelle extended a hand to lift me up.

  “Karate,” she replied, just a little out of breath, “five years, brown belt.”

  “Wow,” I said, truly impressed.

  “I really don’t like being called a chink,” Rochelle told the moaning McGoo. “My family is from Singapore, not the mainland.”

  Rochelle and I held hands as we left the two fallen guys. We talked briefly about laying charges and whether Rochelle might end up in more trouble than the guys would. In the end, it seemed best to forget about the whole thing. Still, there was a question hanging in the air.

  “So what does the blond guy have against you?” Rochelle asked.

  “Well, I, uh, I went out with his sister…”

  “Another ex-girlfriend?” she laughed.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You really are experienced,” she said appreciatively.

  I smiled. I still had the taste of freshly mown grass in my mouth, but the stars in my eyes at this moment were only because of the smile on Rochelle’s face. Those stars began to shine a little brighter when Rochelle suggested we go back to her place so I could get cleaned up.

  When we reached Rochelle’s house, she took me up to the bathroom—a real girly bathroom with more hairdryers and shampoos than I had ever seen collected in one place in my entire life. I stared at myself in the mirror. I had dirt on my chin, a cut on my mouth and a kind of grass moustache over my upper lip. A little soap and water took care of the dirt and grass. The cut required a little more attention.

  “Sit on the edge of the tub,” Rochelle told me.

  I did as she ordered.

  Rochelle went into the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of disinfectant. She put a small amount on a cloth, then bent towards me.

  “This might
hurt.”

  “I’ll be strong.”

  She smiled and touched the cloth to my cut lip. There was a brief flash of pain, but that wasn’t my biggest sensation. What I felt the most was how erotic this was: a beautiful girl, bending over, touching my lips. It made no sense, of course. I had been insulted and beaten up, rescued and cleaned up…and now I was feeling horny.

  “Maybe you should rest a little before we go out,” Rochelle said.

  “I’m fine, really, uh…”

  “My room is just down the hall,” she whispered.

  “Oh, like, rest awhile. Well, yeah.”

  So I followed Rochelle down the hall until we reached the door to her bedroom. It was very, very cool. The bed and dresser were super modern, with wonky curves and handles; the walls were covered in French impressionist prints; the little stereo was a perfect silver Nakamichi; the computer was a slim Sony Vaio. The entire room was neat as a pin—except for a few dozen shoes scattered on the floor. Rochelle had to kick them aside as we came in.

  I sat down on the bed, my heart beating like crazy. I hadn’t been hurt very badly in the fight, but I felt I might have a coronary any second.

  “I’ll get another pillow so you can lean back,” she said.

  “Mmm,” I said, as her hair brushed against my cheek.

  “How do you feel?” she asked as I settled. Now I was lying on the bed and Rochelle was sitting on the edge, her body pressed right into me.

  “Oh, I’m, uh…” At this point, speech was starting to be too much for me. A lot of blood was getting pumped into my body, but it wasn’t going to my brain.

  She brushed her hand against my forehead. “You feel a bit warm,” she said.

  “Mmm,” I repeated.

  “But look down here,” she said with a smile. “There seems to be a sign of life.”

  And indeed there was.

  “Let me see if I can help with that,” Rochelle whispered, and then she pressed her lips against mine.