Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  “It’s the central fact of the decade. No male American has emerged unscathed. We lost so much, in so many ways.”

  “But does it show itself so dramatically?”

  “You saw for yourself, Cleo.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I didn’t make it do that. You made it do that.” He shot a hurt look. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention Iran. Iran would have completed the picture.”

  “But what about female Americans? We were around, too. What about the effect on us?”

  “It’s not mere happenstance that women made such great strides in the seventies. It’s because Vietnam and Watergate were so debilitating to the American male. You saw an opening and drove a terrific wedge right in. You found an enfeebled male population, and you saw an opening, and you came pouring through, wedgelike. A classic battlefield maneuver.”

  He turned to look at me full face.

  “We lost our manhood, our sense of pride and honor, our belief in God and Dick Nixon, our deepest dreams, hopes and ambitions. It’s no coincidence that God died in the late sixties, early seventies.”

  First Torkle and now this. Vietnam and Watergate. Was the male organ as sensitive and moody as Sanders made it out to be? I didn’t know which development surprised me more, Torkle or Watergate. I guess the first time is always the most memorable.

  “I was so ready,” he said.

  “Sanders, go to your room. There’s not much point continuing with this. Just go to your room. Where are your clothes?”

  “In the bathroom.”

  “Put on your clothes and go to your room, so I can get some rest.”

  “You look great in those flannels.”

  “Strictly for warmth.”

  “I know, but you look great. They’re a knockout. Fire-engine red. I get a Christmasy kind of feel. And with nothing up top. Sensational, Cleo.”

  “Go to your room, Sanders.”

  “I know, but wow.”

  “We’re not going into the old dressing-undressing routine. That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We’re both more or less in a state of undress, but you’re the only one who has to get dressed because you’re the only one leaving. And you will dress yourself, Sanders. I will not dress you or undress you, and you will not dress or undress me.”

  “I get the message. Loud and clear.”

  “Go to your room.”

  He turned to face the wall again, his back to me. He didn’t even bother swiveling his head to talk to me over his shoulder.

  “Cleo, I don’t have a room.”

  “Sanders.”

  “Hear me out now. Let me speak my piece. I thought this would be my room. When two people have a thing going, and one of them travels back and forth across the country, overshooting his target city time and again due to weather conditions, it’s only natural that he’d expect to bunk with the other person.”

  I was beginning to understand that bland people aren’t always shy people. A lesson in human relations. That was the key to Sanders Meade. Bland gall. He kind of sneaked it in. He was so mild-looking and even-toned that you didn’t realize what tremendously nervy things he was saying half the time.

  How could a man so touchy about the mere mention of an event like Watergate just assume he could walk into a hotel room and put on a kimono and spend the next eleven days in intimate contact with the occupant as she moved from city to city, hotel to hotel?

  “Call the gnarled man,” I told him.

  “Oh, great. So he’ll know I didn’t spend the night. So he’ll know I struck out.”

  “Who cares?”

  “I guess you’d have to be a man to understand. It’s all right. Doesn’t matter. No problem.”

  “He’s just a desk clerk.”

  “Sure, that’s all. Doesn’t count for anything. Just the man who let me into your room. Just the one person in the whole world who’ll know I didn’t score.”

  “I’ll write him a note saying you scored. You write it, I’ll sign it. Say anything you like. The bearer of this note is the most exciting sex find in years.’ Signed Cleo Birdwell. You’ve got a free hand, Sanders. Go ahead, come up with something.”

  “That’s a cruel choice of words under the circumstances.”

  “Which words?”

  “Never mind, Cleo. Doesn’t matter. I’ve been down that road before.”

  He went into the bathroom and dressed quickly. I sat in the original chair with my feet up on the bed, watching him as he picked up the phone and talked to the short, gnarled man. I thought he might disguise his voice, but I guess he realized he’d have to go to the desk anyway to register and get his key. He hung up.

  “Where’s your luggage?” I said.

  “Luggage, right. Left it in the tub. Wait, I’ll get it.”

  He came out with two enormous suitcases equipped with straps, buckles, pouches, diagonal zippering, tiny combination locks, little skateboard wheels for easy gliding—everything but windows and a hood ornament.

  “Sanders, you’re not really going to follow me for the rest of the trip, are you? It’s not really all Buffalo, is it?”

  “You can relax,” he said. “I have to be in New York day after tomorrow. There’s a press conference at the Garden. They’re announcing my replacement as general manager.”

  “Who is he?”

  “It’s not who is he, Cleo. It’s what is he.”

  “All right, what is he?”

  “A Saudi.”

  “A sowdee? What’s a sowdee?”

  “A Saudi. A Saudi Arabian.”

  “The new Ranger general manager? How can he be a Saudi Arabian?”

  “Hughes Tool has some kind of gigantic, secret deal brewing with the Saudis. It’s an accommodation. The fellow is somebody’s son-in-law.”

  “Do Saudis play hockey?”

  “A lot of them are educated in the U.S.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “When I don’t know something, I say what I do know. Most people know the same things. It’s reassuring to hear these things repeated. My father taught me that. It’s like Afghans. Everybody knows the same thing about Afghans. They’re good horsemen.”

  “I thought they were little wool coverlets.”

  “Well, then, everybody knows the same thing about Kurds. They’re fiercely independent.”

  I was going to say I thought they were lumpy pieces of milk, but that would have encouraged him to keep going.

  “Well, how does Hughes Tool expect to get away with something like this?” I said.

  “They got away with me, didn’t they? They’ll do the same thing with this fellow. They’ll send him to ‘Boulder, Colorado.’ I’m absolutely certain he won’t be at the press conference. That’s why they want me there. Enough time has passed. It’s all right for me to appear now. I’ve blown over. They’ve gotten away with me.”

  He stood at the door, kind of sweeping his eyes slowly across the room, as if we’d spent about eleven months there in constant sexual wonder and exploration, and the sadness of leaving could be relieved only by this slow sweeping of the eyes that would take everything in and store it in his personal treasure house of memories.

  “Want me to move the bed back to the original position?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No trouble,” he said.

  “Go to your room, Sanders.”

  He nodded and left, guiding the giant suitcases on their little wheels.

  Two conversations in Badger.

  1. My mother sat on the porch, gliding. She didn’t usually sit on the glider. It was strange to see her there. A small thing, but strange, off-key, askew. Just that little element of motion made things kind of inappropriate and giddy. It was like seeing your mother dancing or wearing a sweat shirt. One of those slightly off-key moments when a mother or father seems to step out of the skin of strict parenthood. You see them as independent people, and this c
an be shocking. They aren’t supposed to be people. They’re supposed to stick to the rules.

  Anyway, we were alone on the porch and she was gliding. It was a hot, still night. I’d just come back from summer hockey school in Aspen, Colorado, and I was trying to figure out how to fix a zipper on my equipment bag. We listened to the insects. As we’ve seen earlier. Badger was very geared to smells, flowers, insects, trees, and holidays.

  “Thought about college, Cleo?”

  “Nope. That’s a long way off.”

  “That Schlagel boy. Your off-and-on friend.”

  “Georgie, we call him.”

  “Has he thought about college?”

  “He’s too dumb.”

  “We agree on something. What you need is a hairpin.”

  “Zippers are impossible. Who invented zippers?”

  “Baron von Zipper.”

  “That’s a daddy joke. You’ll have to do better.”

  “Daddy would have said Warren Gamaliel Zipper.”

  “That’s true. I forgot about old Warren Gamaliel everything.”

  “You’ve been spending a fair amount of time with young Mr. Schlagel.”

  Glide, glide, glide.

  “I’ve been back two days, Mom. How much time?”

  “If you think he’s too dumb to go to college, is he the right kind of company to be keeping?”

  “He’s a hockey nut. There aren’t that many in Badger. We talk hockey. The kid knows everything. He knows players’ stats that have been dead twenty years.”

  “Lovely syntax. Stats. Is that a word I’ve heard before?”

  “Come on, about eight hundred times. Kenny keeps stats on UFOs “

  “Do you know Georgie’s father?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “The absolute antithesis.”

  “The what?”

  “Antithesis.”

  “Is that from the Latin, I bet?”

  “That’s from the Greek.”

  “It means you don’t think he’s such a swell guy.”

  “I haven’t seen the Forrester boy lately. Or Bobby Eichenlaub.”

  “I get the idea. You’re banning Georgie for life.”

  “I’ll settle for twenty years if you agree to stop biting that metal. It makes my teeth shiver.”

  “Is it because his father’s a sex therapist?”

  “The man doesn’t practice in Badger. Let’s be thankful for small favors.”

  Glide.

  “Michigan Tech has a pretty good hockey program,” I said.

  “I thought you weren’t thinking about college.”

  “I’ve been thinking hockeywise. Wait, I know I’m not supposed to say that. In hockey terms. There’s North Dakota, too. And Minnesota-Duluth.”

  “You’ll go to a good college. You’ll play hockey, but you’ll do it at a good school.”

  “How do you know those aren’t good schools?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll make it our business to find out.”

  “They don’t sound very good, do they?”

  “Not very.”

  “They sound awful,” I said.

  Glide, glide.

  “Have you met Georgie’s mother?”

  “Nobody’s met Georgie’s mother. She goes to the garage and drinks. She sits in the Ford wagon inside the garage, drinking Seagram’s V.O.”

  “Does he seem upset by this? What are you saying, Dorothy? Of course he’s upset.”

  “He doesn’t talk about her much,” I said.

  “Well, maybe you ought to ask him to dinner. We’ll ban him for life the day after he comes to dinner.”

  Insects.

  “Did you ever wear a sweat shirt. Mom?”

  “Why would I wear a sweat shirt?”

  “I don’t know, to paint the kitchen stool, maybe.”

  “No, I don’t think I’ve ever worn a sweat shirt.”

  “Don’t, okay?”

  2. My father was sitting out back one day in an ancient wooden armchair that had sunk about four inches into the ground. The chair was just a bunch of wide slats nailed together. It was such a familiar part of the backyard that no one ever noticed how ugly it was until my father sat in it, which happened pretty often in the warmer weather.

  Our old dog Bowzer was curled up at his feet. I was kind of wandering through the house and around the yard, totally infested with spring fever and feeling a terrible, grand longing for something—a huge, sad, fragrant ache—when my father caught me during one of the outdoor segments of my meanderings and motioned me over, pointing to the grass near the old chair, where I sat crosslegged in the sun, squinting up at him.

  He went into a lengthy business with his pipe and his pouch of Prince Albert, with Prince Albert’s picture on it.

  “I think it’s time we had ourselves a talk. Father and son.”

  “Father and son?”

  “Man to man.”

  “You already have a son. Kenneth Bird well. You can visit him in his room. I think the hours are tacked up on his door.”

  “Kenny and I have talked about this as a matter of fact. I checked it out with him beforehand. He’s all in favor.”

  “In favor of what?”

  “Us having this talk.”

  “If he’s in favor, I think I’ll get up and leave if you don’t mind. Mom needs me in the kitchen.”

  “Your mother’s in Wellsville.”

  “They must have kitchens there.”

  “I didn’t know I was raising a family of wiseacres. My own fault. I’ll have to start a new regime. No jokes until the sun is over the yardarm.”

  “What’s the yardarm?”

  “Nautical. Ask your mother.”

  He seemed to like to puff on an empty pipe.

  “So what is it Kenny’s so eager for us to talk about?”

  “Take it easy now. Let me plug this stuff in here. You can’t have a real conversation until the pipe’s lit. This is the first law of real conversations.”

  Sweet breezes blowing through the trees. I waited, squinting up at him.

  “Or Kenny and I think you ought to be fully prepared. You’re going to be dealing with bigger boys as time passes and your hockey skills develop. You’ll be hearing all sorts of language.

  Rough language. That’s the nature of these things. Men talk that way to men. It’s the language of men. Your brother and I think you ought to be ready. Simple as that.”

  We were sitting at angles to each other. I could easily see past him to the back of the house, and he sat facing the lilac bush and the old swing and a couple of stacks of firewood. My brother was up in his room. I saw him standing at the window, right above the back porch, gazing down at us. An evilly sly look on his face.

  “Dad, I think I’ve already heard pretty much what there is to hear.”

  “Kenny said you’d say that. Local slang is pretty tame, Cleo.” Puff, puff. “Take my word for it. I’ve done a bit of roaming in the gloaming in my day. Three years in the service of Uncle Sam can teach a young man a thing or two about the world. I’ve heard some doozies. I don’t mind saying my ears have been properly scorched.”

  “Well, I’m not going in the army.”

  “Sooner or later, you’ll hear an expression like ‘fuck a rubber duck,’ for example.”

  My hair practically stood on end.

  “This is routine stuff,” he said. “It’s the language of men. You may as well get prepared. Fuck a rubber duck. ‘Take a flying fuck at the moon.’ These are old standards.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. This was my father. I just couldn’t believe he was using that word. It was the shock of my life. It was inconceivable. Tom Spencer Birdwell. The nicest, kindest man around. Everyone said so. My dad Tom. Our dog Bowzer. Daddy sitting in the big, old wooden chair in the backyard. Giving off the pleasant, fatherly smell of pipe tobacco. Prince Albert. The dog at his feet, pawing sleepily at flies buz
zing nearby.

  “There’s also ‘Drop your cocks and grab your socks.’ That’s nautical, like yardarm. But you can hear it in other branches of the service, too. Drop your cocks and grab your socks.”

  I looked up at Kenny. He was standing there with his arms bent, flapping them like a chicken. Grinning from ear to ear. I wanted to kill him. Outright maim and kill him.

  “Then there’s ‘motherfucker,’” my father said. “This is a whole new development that seems to be catching on. Last time I was in Pittsburgh, I heard ‘cocksucking motherfucker.’ Language changes constantly, Cleo. It’s a living, vibrant thing. This is what gives American English its special vitality. The way words change and evolve. We used to say ‘snafu’ when I was in the service. ‘Situation normal, all fucked up.’ Now they say ‘unbe-fucking-lievable.’ I heard a soldier say that to another soldier on a street in Columbus when we went to visit Mother McCormack.”

  My whole world was crumbling. I was in a state of total, speechless shock. My hair was absolutely standing on end. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing from the mouth of my own father. I’d never even seen him wearing a sweat shirt and here he was using these ultraforbidden words right to my face.

  I knew the words, sure. But hearing them from my own father was just so totally strange and overwhelming I wanted to bite through the roof of my mouth.

  It wasn’t Badger. It was some strange, dark place without a name.

  “‘Baby, let me bang your box.’ Used to hear that in jukeboxes in one of the bars near the base. ‘How ‘bout getting us some poon-tang, fellas?’ That’s Southern. Poontang. Names for the female member are kind of interesting, regionally.”

  He sat there relighting his pipe, gazing out over the lilac bush. Flurries of wind moved through the maples. The air was incredibly sweet smelling. In my head, I was screaming. Shut up, shut up, you crazy person! But I was too shocked to say anything. I just sat on the grass, squinting.

  He’d even brought Mother McCormack into it. The nicest, whitest-haired old lady in the world. Why drag her name in with all these incredible, regional swear words?

  “Sooner or later, you’ll hear somebody talking about the blowjob he got the night before. This is an old word that sort of refuses to die. It was in use when I was a boy and it’s still in use, I gather. It’s a word that always seems out of date, but somehow never totally disappears. Blowjob. A classic example of longevity.”