by Robert Castle © 2006
All rights reserved Wild Child Publishing
The White Sox were hanging on to a 3 - 2 lead against the Yankees, first and third, no outs, the crowd of forty-five thousand on its toes like hairs rising electric from the head. We were in the first base box seats. A man holding a port-a-camera emerged from the dugout and approached us on the gravel track. I casually said to Ellen, "It looks as if we'll be on the screen."
She glanced toward center and cried out, "Oh my God."
Ellen and I appeared gargantuan. I saw myself reaching for the ring in my pants packet. In the shade, we were easier to see on the screen. Then the screen went white, and dark letters individually formed my proposal: ELLEN, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
Fans had begun to clap as if the rest were a fait accompli. Ellen wouldn't look at me. I tried grabbing her hand. She broke into sobs. I asked what was wrong. Suddenly, she struck me across the side of the head. My eyes had momentarily been averted to the centerfield screen and didn't see the punch coming. I mouthed to the guy holding the camera: "Turn that fucking thing off!"
The stadium was silent. Then a singular cry carried over the diamond from the third base side of the upper deck.
"LOSER!"
Pockets of hooting and laughing followed. The relief pitcher hadn't completed his warm-ups.
"Four-eyed loser," someone yelled from the section beside ours.
"What's wrong? I thought you'd be thrilled."
"IDIOT."
"FOOL."
"DOUCHEBAG."
She said nothing.
The Yankee bench players were doubled over. After tossing the infield ball toward the dugout, the first baseman, Martinez, turned to see if he could locate us.
"I can't believe you're doing this," I said. "Let's go."
"I'm staying for the last innings."
"I'm not."
I didn't want to see the bitch again. As I strode up the aisle toward the exit, a new chant had begun.
"Nah nah nah na, nah nah nah na, hey hey hey, goo-ood-bye."
That evening the telephone didn't stop ringing. Friends and relatives had heard I'd been on television. Some thought I was making a movie. Others called after Ellen and I had appeared as the final story on the Ten O'Clock News.
"When are they getting married?" snickered the weatherwoman.
"In December," wiseguyed the sportsreader, "at Soldier Field when the Bears have an away game."
Another telephone caller suggested that I turn on ESPN.
"The White Sox had better luck than this gentleman," said a stoic woman sportscaster, after showing my proposal and the ensuing head bash and the exit chorus: "Nah nah nah na...."
At midnight, I received the third call of the evening from my parents.
They didn't have cable but it was on the local news in Nashville. My father was breathless. Someone had called them to say that I had appeared on CNN.
"Even they had it," I said listlessly.
My father had called earlier to say that the Yankees-White Sox game was nationally televised because of a rainout in Boston. Then my mother called, worried that I might be suicidal.
"Worse," my father said. "It was their 'Play of the Day.'"
This meant that they had shown Ellen's punch a second time in slow motion.
* * *
by Robert Castle © 2006
All rights reserved Wild Child Publishing
1.
Words collapse into movement.
Collisions of purpose.
Seashell mountains. Shallow sea on the brain. Bitter protozoan pools. Fractured lives.
Room for all. Nameless together. Shift together in namelessness. Drifting apart. Shifting plates atop mantle. Drifting amnesiac world that does not fit.
Sun's unfiltered poisonous rays. Crusts of algae scum. Slow amoebic waves. Bubbling magma of words. Pushing and scraping underneath. Movements across hemispheres. Past sediments in amnesiac trenches. Word movements across many hemispheres. Grunting. Eroding. Magma movements.
rub rub rub
Joints cracking. Stinking smoking choking movements.
Constant drift.
Not quite perfect fit beneath our surface. Why words collapse into amnesia.
Imperfection begets movement.
Blind purpose. Undertow. Blind to what moves us.
Imperfect feelings about ourselves. Consonant chaos. Drifting apart to assemble. Fifty million inches from now.
rub rub rub
Drifting together.
Don't crowd.
Can't stop us.
Sudden sparks of life. Possibility of purpose. Equatorial Eden of creeping feelings. Stimulating poisonous sun. Nameless in smoky hemispheres. Separate fools of land. On plates of imperfect consciousness. Hence the word movements to anywhere. Tectonic titans of rock are we.
rub rub rub
Leading to rubble.
Imperfection begets movement. Pushed by word magma. Drifting farther and farther apart. For a purpose.
To meet.
To come together.
Purpose of a surface existence. This movement of words.
To be one.
A plot of earth.
Maybe as we once were.
Before being moved by words. Always seeming to start over.
No one remembers.