And there he was.
In the flesh.
Bobby Di Cicco.
At the next table.
Okay, you’re the brains—what do we do now? Maybe we should just let him eat. Are you crazy? We’ll never have this chance again. Don’t call me crazy. Then get the ketchup off your chin—he’ll think you’re brain dead. I want to talk to him first. Smerko, I want to talk to him first—pleeeeease? Fine! Talk to him first! I hate it when you whine. What do we say to him? Should we tell him we’ve seen the movie twenty-three times? No! He’ll think we’re stalking him. What if he has us thrown out for assault? Would you settle down!
After about nineteen seconds, Travis put his hand over my mouth and said, “Stop talking. I’ll handle this.” Then he got up, grabbed my arm, and dragged me behind him—even though I’d suddenly lost the use of both my legs. Me the quarterback. Me the shortstop. Shaking like a fucking leaf just because I was about to meet the most important human being in the universe.
“Bobby?” said Travis. Di Cicco looked up from his New York sirloin with question marks in his eyeballs and replied, “Hey, man.” Holy shit. He even sounded like Bobby Di Cicco!
“Sorry to bother you—” Travis began. But by then Bobby had noticed me swaying and probably figured I was going to have a heart attack on his chives if he didn’t do something fast—so the next thing we knew he was up on his feet shaking our hands and thanking us for stopping by. (This isn’t happening.) Then Travis started asking him questions about movies and directors and other people I never heard of before, and pretty soon you’d have thought they were army buddies who were catching up on old times. (“Where do you get the balls?” I asked him later. “That was nothing,” he said, shrugging it off. “Now, Lauren Bacall—she was a tough room to play.”) We wrapped it up by doing our Tony Smerko imitations for him—and he even pretended we weren’t assholes. Oh, yeah. I squeaked three times. Travis didn’t squeak at all.
Once he’d autographed two packs of sugar for us with his actual hands, we paid the bill (who could eat?), then tumbled out of there like a couple of 4-year-olds with a new yo-yo and spent the next twenty-five minutes standing on the corner of 51st and Broadway, rehashing it from start to finish so we’d never forget a single word as long as we lived. And suddenly I was so fucking grateful for Brigadoon, I could have hugged the world. It was almost like being in love.
Neither one of us remembers much about the cab ride back to Grand Central. Times Square was all lit up, summer was around the corner, and we were just beginning the rest of our lives. But we didn’t care about any of it. We’d met Bobby Di Cicco. Eating steak. With mortals.
What do you do when you’ve peaked at 18?
Travis Puckett
Room 214
BECKLEY SCHOOL
TARRYTOWN, NEW YORK
THE PUCKETT/DUBOISE DEBATES
TRAVIS:
It was only dinner!
GORDO:
It was a date. Trust me in this arena. Whose idea was it?
TRAVIS:
His. We were down at the batting cage working on my stance again when—
GORDO:
Were his hands on your ass?
TRAVIS:
Well, yeah, but—
GORDO:
It was a date. Travis, I hate being the one to break this to you, but you’ve only got about twenty-four hours of sanity left. Use them well.
TRAVIS:
What was that supposed to mean?
Craig McKenna
Room 311
BECKLEY SCHOOL
TARRYTOWN, NEW YORK
I kissed him. I fucking kissed him. First our noses touched and then I kissed him.
I shouldn’t have smoked the joint. I knew that was a mistake! But what else can you do when you’re playing catch by a lake and it starts to pour? If there hadn’t been one of those metal arch things with the benches underneath, it never would have happened—we’d have jogged back to school, wet and unkissed. This was a conspiracy!
Say no to drugs. They’ll only ruin you. And I’m the proof: one toke and his eyes got bluer, two tokes and I’d have killed for his smile, three tokes and I couldn’t remember a time we didn’t know each other, four tokes and I would have woken up Brigadoon for him. My life is over.
Okay. Slow down. There’s probably a good explanation for this.
1. It was an accident.
How? You tripped over a rock and your mouth fell on his?
2. It’s only a phase.
Yeah. Like taking naked showers with him and tickling him every chance you get and telling him he needs work on his swing when all you really want to do is touch him.
3. You were stoned.
For the first fifteen minutes. What about the other three hours? At least he had the balls to kiss you back cold turkey.
4. He’s just a buddy.
Which is how come every third word out of your mouth is “Travis.” If they got rid of his name from the alphabet, you wouldn’t have a vocabulary left. Except for “ubiquitous.”
5. Maybe you’re just searching for a homoerotic substitute.
Maybe you just found one.
6. You were only curious.
Curious enough to do it again?
What’s the use? I kissed him! It’s like the atom bomb—it can’t be undone.
My father would kill me.
Travis Puckett
Room 214
BECKLEY SCHOOL
TARRYTOWN, NEW YORK
It was right out of The Sound of Music. Rolf and Liesl in the rain. We even had a gazebo.
These are the facts: (1) I haven’t eaten in fourteen hours but I’m not hungry; (2) I can’t sleep because my bed’s turned into the loneliest place in the world; (3) I have bruises all over my body from bumping into three doors and a carpet-cleaner; and (4) I can’t remember what “fluctuate” means. Do people really survive this?
He didn’t just kiss me. He ran his fingers through my hair and he made little circles on my nose with his pinky and he tickled me under my arms, and when the sun came out we walked in the woods where nobody could see us and held hands. Then we found a tree—and for the next two hours we stretched out on some wet leaves with my head on his stomach, while I tried not to remember that in three weeks he’s going back to St. Louis. Not to mention September, when I’ll be at USC and he’ll be at Harvard. That’s 2,988.2 miles, zip code to zip code.
But I can handle this. A month ago I was just Travis Puckett without the “Smerko.” Now I’ve got Bobby Di Cicco’s autograph and Craig. And no matter what else happens, I’m keeping them both for the rest of my life.
My father would kill me.
1998
2
Travis
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
SEMESTER: Spring 1998
FROM: Travis Puckett
CLASS: American History 206
BUILDING/ROOM: VKC/223
BOOK PROPOSAL
“Alexander Hamilton and the Designated Hitter”
Issue: Once we’d won our independence from the Crown, how were we going to set up house?
Objective: Proving that baseball and the United States Constitution were founded on the same set of rules, as outlined in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton.
Argument: For some indefensible reason, George Washington had latched onto the witless notion of a British monarchy—a gentleman’s system of government that favored the elite and screwed the poor—leaving the unspoken question, “Then what the hell did we fight a revolution for?” The way he saw it, the elected president would serve as absolute ruler, with the legislative bodies beneath him hired, ostensibly, to straighten out paper clips and put people on hold. Naturally, it was to be a one-party system (after all, there was no point in defeating a self-defeating purpose), replete with patricians in wigs, belted earls, and wards in chancery. Left to his own devices, Washington was entirely capable
of turning the entire United States judiciary into a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
On a seemingly unrelated front, cricket was a gentleman’s game played in Great Britain by the aristocracy—until the working classes got their hands on it and made the contest more democratic. Calling their version “rounders,” “feeder,” and “base,” they brought it with them on the Mayflower in 1620 as evidence of their new moxie. Over the next century and a half, it was developed and refined across the colonies, so that by the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787—while the royalty in Philadelphia were going through the attic to find a workable Bill of Rights—the people had already figured one out on their own.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that conservative rich guy Thomas Jefferson (National League) and free-wheeling loudmouth Alexander Hamilton (American League) detested one another on sight, the Founding Fathers might never have stumbled upon the same secret the populace had discovered years earlier on a rounders field: the dynamic upon which to build a true democracy and, incidentally, a Boston Red Sox legacy as well.*
HAMILTON
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter is the obvious interest of a certain class of men to resist all changes…. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions—but they are the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. (Translation: Why don’t you go knit something, you old fart?)
JEFFERSON
Every political measure will forever have an intimate connection with the laws of the land, and he who knows nothing of these will always be perplexed. (Translation: Kiss my ass.)
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
TO: Andrea Fox, History Department
FROM: William Koutrelakos, Dean
DATE: April 6, 1998
RE: Prof. Travis Puckett
* * *
Andrea:
This man is a crackpot. Make sure he doesn’t carry any weapons and keep him away from the bell tower. Do you want us to be laughed out of the Pac 10?
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
TO: William Koutrelakos, Dean
FROM: Andrea Fox, History Department
DATE: April 6, 1998
RE: Prof. Travis Puckett
* * *
Dammit, Bill! We have a football team with the IQ of corn flakes flunking everything but American History. Doesn’t that tell you something?
I’ve already gotten a provisional “maybe” from Simon & Schuster and a “probably not, but who knows?” from HarperCollins. And that’s just based on the first hundred pages!
He only needs a $30,000 grant to finish the book by next spring. Who can it hurt?
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
TO: Andrea Fox, History Department
FROM: William Koutrelakos, Dean
DATE: April 7, 1998
RE: Prof. Travis Puckett
* * *
That’s what they said about uranium. And look how that turned out.
I’ll consider it. But no promises.
The kids actually take him seriously?
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
TO: William Koutrelakos, Dean
FROM: Andrea Fox, History Department
DATE: April 8, 1998
RE: Prof. Travis Puckett
* * *
Like he was a favorite frat brother. A weird one, granted—but that’s probably why they look out for him.
And stop calling him a crackpot. He’s as sane as you are.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF
Travis Puckett
How Not to Fall in Love with Your Dentist
Assume hypothetically that Dr. Goldberg retires and turns his practice over to Zack Nishimura, D.D.S.
Assume that Zack is 28—with a killer grin and twinkly brown eyes and Gap slim-fits with the seam that goes right up the crack in his ass.
Assume that you remember your name when he asks you what it is.
Assume that while he’s checking your teeth and winking at you, you don’t moan.
Assume that his last words to you are, “See you in six months. Looking forward to it.”
Don’t brood. He probably says that to everyone.
Don’t speculate. Even straight men wear Gap slim-fits with the seam up their cracks. Sometimes.
Don’t drive your friends crazy with this. (Except Gordo.)
Don’t invent a pain in your upper left molar just so you can go back to see him again.
When you go back to see him again for the pain in your upper left molar, don’t overdo the groaning unless you want him to think you need a root canal.
After you’ve survived the root canal, don’t make things worse by paying for an entirely unnecessary staged reading of a lousy play you wrote in college just so you can invite him to it.
When he shows up at the staged reading, don’t be surprised if he introduces you to his fiancée. What the hell did you expect?!
Consider telling him the truth. But not while he’s holding a drill.
Then disregard rules 1–8. Carpe diem.
The only practical reason for living by the beach in Santa Monica is the view from the balcony when your heart’s been shattered. As you watch the angry surf pounding the foamy sand in the orange-and-pink glow of sunset, it’s a lot easier to think about drowning yourself.
Oh, Zack.
I suppose there were subtle hints right from the start: the engagement ring, the wedding invitation, and the thirty-eight pictures of the same woman plastered across his office. But Ryan was misleading too—and look how that turned out.
* * *
TRAVIS PUCKETT’S BOYFRIEND CHECKLIST
Name: Ryan
Duration: 7 weeks
Occupation: Bartender
Where we met: West Hollywood
BEGINNER LEVEL
Can say “I love you”
Isn’t hiding another boyfriend
Thinks kissing is sexy
Has a glowy smile
Is at least marginally sensitive
Will probably remember my name the next morning
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL
Can say “I love you” without my saying it first
___ Likes me enough to tell me I’m special
Trusts me enough to tell me I’m wrong
___ Always lets me pick the first fortune cookie
___ Teases me when I need it but knows when to stop
___ Pursues making me laugh as a hobby
___ Pretends to like the same things I do even when he doesn’t
___ Misses me when we’re apart
Isn’t afraid to fight with me
___ Allows me to drive him crazy
___ Would rather do nothing with me than something by himself
___ Can fall asleep in my lap while I work—and still call it a date
TOP-OF-THE-LINE LEVEL
___ Can say “I love you” with his eyes
___ Never lies (except to spare my feelings)
___ Doesn’t worry about losing me because he knows he can’t
___ Forgets there was a time when we didn’t know each other
___ Kisses me for no good reason
___ Celebrates my faults
___ Sighs when I hold him
___ Knows all the lyrics to Flora, The Red Menace (optional)
Strong Points:
I could definitely spend the rest of my life with him.
Shortcomings:
He killed his last boyfriend (acquitted: involuntary manslaughter).
Comments:
The knockout blonde he kept having lunch with wasn’t his lover—she was his attorney. Serves me right for spying on him.
* * *
I should have known it was going to be an uphill battle right from Gate 3: Adolescence. First there was a Craig, then there was a kiss, then there was a goodbye, then there were the letters, then he stopped writing to me, and then there was Cardinal Rule Number 1: Never Fall in Love When You’re 17. Not unless you want to spend your entire freshman year at USC learning how to sleep by yourself again. If it hadn’t been for Adam-Down-the-Hall-with-the-Sky-Blue-Eyes, I might have been playing Camille until I was a junior. As it was, I managed to hit the dirt running: before I’d even hung up my Camelot and Fade Out, Fade In posters, I’d inadvertently discovered (through some carefully orchestrated eavesdropping at the Coliseum urinal) that he was a wannabe actor from Chicago. So I wrote my one and only play—a shamefully melodramatic character study about seven ballplayers stuck in the Cubs dugout at Wrigley Field during a rain delay—solely as an excuse to (a) cast him, and (b) meet him. He didn’t get the part (much to his boyfriend’s disappointment), but at least I had half a dozen other men in jockstraps to choose from. That was my preliminary encounter with Puckett’s Curse: I wound up with the only all-heterosexual all-male cast in the history of World Theatre. And from there, it really turned ugly.
Gregory. We met at my Harvey Milk vigil in November. I was 18, he was 33—an ex-Marine who still wore a high-and-tight, with a chiseled body that didn’t know when to quit. How did I get so lucky? Especially when he confessed that he was God’s disciple of truth, sent down to earth to find twelve apostles who’d be willing to follow him. (Into what? Sharon Tate’s living room?)