Watching Baseball with CL

[pantryslut]

With poker cancelled, my Wednesday night plans suddenly became rather clear.

CL isn’t a close friend, but he’s more than a professional (or former professional) acquaintance. We like each other. I used to have a little crush on him. We run into each other in weird places, like the farmer’s market, and not-so-weird places like Dore Alley.

We reconnected with CL this time because Steven answered his Craig’s List personals ad on Sunday. It was a hot ad; I would’ve answered it, too.

So, instead of hot sex, Steven got a baseball game. And I got to tag along.

CL has apparently been watching baseball incessantly over the past week or two, both A’s and Giants games because he’s a big sports slut (who knew?) and not very committed to any particular team (or sport). CL, it might go without saying, is single. He favors the A’s right now because their tickets are cheaper and easier to get.

He had two tickets to last night’s game, but was confident he could get a third. If all else failed (and it did), we could always buy a $2 day-of-game ticket.

CL is one of those people who always has a plan, and always has perfect confidence in his plan. And if his plan fails, well, he has a backup plan. His plans always seem to involve people he knows, insider tricks, some sort of greasing of the wheels of society. Last night, the plan was going to involve schmoozing some lackadaisical ushers he’s come to know recently so as to get better seats than our purchased tickets would indicate.

Except we couldn’t find the ushers. But no problem. He left Steven and I to stock up on $1 hot dogs while he found a decent section. And he did – about five minutes before the very stern usher showed up and started seriously patrolling our section. But that’s OK, we were already sitting down in an empty row with nothing to fear (unless one of us had to pee, I guess). Just to prove that CL has some sort of social skill that is rare and precious, he was able to leave his seat and return, late in the game, without being required to show his ticket to the strict ushers.

I love going to baseball with pervs, btw. There’s something dare I say affirming about it, like I can express all aspects of who I really am while sitting in the stands, cruising the crowd, speculating on the use and design of batter’s codpieces (so that baseball players wouldn’t have to wear cups all the time, only when at the plate), and so on.

We also spent a lot of time chatting about Ichiro. CL is a Chinese-American FTM, and so he gets a little cranky about some of the more, er, dismissive things said about the guy. (How can he be so good? He’s so little!”) But he also feels no compunction about changing the player’s last name to “Ichi Roll” and joking about netting a Japanese girlfriend from the crowd. It was Asian Heritage Night at the stadium, btw; I don’t know what difference that might have made, but there sure were plenty of Asian people in the crowd, most of them rooting for the little guy with the big record to break. A really cute boy, maybe six years old, right behind me, spent the whole night chattering in Japanese and English about his hero.

So, the A’s lost. Too bad. And Ichiro didn’t break his record; he only got one hit, and at his last at-bat in the 9th inning, he was hit by a pitch. “Chicken!” I yelled at the pitcher, and for some reason, this amused just about everybody in my section.

We sat in the second tier, right about smack behind home plate. Some guy in the section just to the left of me, drunk and intent on harassing Ichiro all night, caught not one but two foul balls. If G. had been with me, though, that second one would have been questionable.

Oh yeah, and while we were entering the stadium, CL spent a great deal of time on the phone with a friend of his from LA who is worried about being drafted if Shrub gets re-elected. We discussed getting married in Canada to a guy, in the US to a lesbian, and other draft-dodging options that might ease his paranoid mind – up to and including the administration of large sticks to the knee. Like I said, I love going to baseball games with perverts.

Baseball was just about the right speed for an outing this week. Not too energy-intensive, not requiring a great deal of focus or attention, but allowing for a modicum of yelling really loud at a bunch of people who can’t really her me anyway, plus a dose of fresh autumn air. Yeah. That’s about my speed right now.

(P.S. You may be wondering: how did I manage such a long update while at work? Everyone else is in a two-hour meeting.)

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

We run into each other in weird places, like the farmer’s market, and not-so-weird places like Dore Alley.

This is why I love the Bay Area.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I forgot to note that when we see him at the farmer's market, he's always working a booth -- we've run into him both at Ferry Plaza and at the Berkeley Farmer's market, behind the counter, pushing tomatoes and lemon cukes. Once, he was shirtless, which I thought was pretty daring for an FtM in "regular" public. But that's CL.