Things You Just Don’t Say

Five one-hundred word scenes about a major league veteran and a rookie in drag.

1.

Plane’s real dark, but there’s a tulle-full of glitter spilling into the aisle three rows ahead. A maddening kind of non-light. Keeping Sam Savett’s eyes open and peeled for the glimpse of something — anything — he’s not sure what.

It’s such a fine line between things you should and should not be thinking, such a fine line between silk and skin, such a fine, fine line, a fine, fine face.

At this altitude silence is loud, a deafening dull buzz, but quiet all the same; it doesn’t have to mean anything.

You don’t have to be getting any ideas.

2.

He was no problem child. Sometimes he took extra time putting away his cards — long staredowns with Bo Jackson. Dupes in his back pocket. Something about an action shot.

Kid stuff.

It’s not all carrying bags and scrubbing cleats. He’d worn the blonde wig and the high heels when he got hazed, so long ago and yesterday too — time, what a strange thing. A skimpy red dress, smacks that burn your thigh. Salacious comments, boxes to check.

Jock fun.

For three showers the water down the drain had shimmered iridescent. There must have been something about that glitter.

3.

This isn’t his first rookie in drag and it won’t be the last. So why won’t his mind stop racing? Sam wonders if old Nolan Ryan ever got tired of throwing that fast, if that kind of burden ever gets too heavy — gravity, entropy, all that jazz. After all, there are things you just don’t get over. Some of them flash bright like a neon sign, plastered on your forehead, oh, Sam can definitely think of a few guys who can fit that bill and foot it too.

But he’s not that kind of man.

He keeps himself honest.

4.

Stern talk with his dull reflection in the jet black plane window, abyssal inkiness framing white eyes.

What’s the matter with you?

Everything melts together in his head, spinning carrousel, spinning spinning curve. Wife at home, kids at school, tonight’s game, eleven years of pro ball. Wonder if the rookie would scrub your cleats… A power trip. Or maybe that’s what he tells himself it is.

He’s awake but only in name now. The world goes round and round, round and round the bases — he’s dizzy. There’s something crumbling somewhere on the earth below. Or here, in the skies above.

5.

Walking down the aisle, white fishnet crisscrossing hirsute legs a mile long. Complicated mini-dress, iridescent pink, chest hair spilling out the neckline. A pretty face, an awkward smile, watery blue eyes, delicately chiselled features. An elegance about him, a kind of dignity, a kind of bashful acceptance, all lean limbs and bright lips.

There’s a thousand rookies in a thousand costumes, there’s free sex all around this country for a ballplayer. There’s two baseball cities, there’s a pair of gleaming eyes in the dark; and there are things you just don’t say, obsessions you just don’t name.

God damn it.