Love Letter

It was Valentine’s day. My heart was heavy and wet. I wanted to be home in bed, away from all the candy and flowers and soft pats on the back exchanged between lovers. But I needed food. The fluorescent gray grocery store light reflecting off the cheap red cellophane hearts stung my eyes. "Hey, Erik!"

It was Graham, my best friend, exactly like me except for the happy fulfilling marriage and real job. He was wearing his uniform; fleece, Dockers, and Red Sox cap. My mind wandered as he spoke to me of bouquets and restaurants and wives and children. I thought about how Graham always liked the Red Sox until I took him under my wing and made him love them. Now he can’t miss a pitch, never mind a game. He wears that hat 365 days a year. Seeing Graham and his hat of devotion reminded me of Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. I was sort of sad that I wasn’t as obsessive about the Red Sox as Hornby was about Arsenal, a British soccer team.

With Graham is Gus, who he carpools with. Gus and I have only met a few times, and I don’t remember his name. Our chance meeting is made all the more awkward by the intimacy of the day; two men holding flowers and candy for wives, trying not to pity me with my red basket filled with loneliness and convenience food. Gus turns to greet me and says, "Oh, yeah, the Red Sox guy." And then I know. I am. My heart breaks for them. The sox are my team, always have been. I love them. I have fallen in love with many, many women in my life. But -- like Hornby and Arsenal -- my true, everlasting love is the Boston Red Sox. My valentine.

I was born in New Britain, Connecticut, roughly the DMZ between Red Sox nation and the evil Yankee Empire. My Uncle Bob and my cousins are Yankee fans. My dad grew up rooting for the Bronx Bombers, but switched allegiances when he moved us to Massachusetts when I was 5, and later New Hampshire. This lack of loyalty foreshadowed his later infidelity, but we hardly knew it then.

These are not the words of Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch, as you might be expecting, but those of my favorite writer Andre Dubus in his short story "The Winter Father." It’s a story about divorce and the silence that comes from weekend visits and long car rides and restaurants. Then in the summer, at the beach, the three of them become a family again. The father can be a father, not just an entertainer, not just a driver. Hornby cites the story early on in Fever Pitch. Hornby’s obsession – his love affair -- begins the same way mine did.

This is exactly what I went through with my father, and still do. The warm times, the good times, are so rare. The times that I don’t feel weird and frightened. The times when the conversation flows freely. The times when my father and I talk baseball.

At the ballgame we high five each other and embrace and talk and enjoy. There is nothing ugly to dance around, nothing lurking under the bed. We just cheer and jeer. When we’re disappointed, it’s in the team, not each other. The rest of the time is strained silence, still. My stepmother, in one of her infrequent bouts of reconciliation, once commented on how strange it was to watch two men in the same room two feet away from each other never speak. Two men, father and son, sitting buried in a newspaper or book, hiding their eyes, waiting for the overture that will never come. Waiting for the other to trust when trust is gone forever.

Another weird connection that Hornby and I share is the Andre Dubus thing. Not only does Hornby cite Dubus, but also Dubus himself was also completely obsessed with the Red Sox. One of my all time favorite pieces of writing is Dubus’s essay about Opening Day, Brothers. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My first glimpse of Dubus’ writing came in 1993. I was barely surviving in Los Angeles singing in an ironic heavy metal band called Skunkhead. The L. A. Reader called us "Fat Balding Death-Metal," a label we were proud of. I was homeless and lonely, and my friends’ patience had run out long before my money did. I roamed the house, the neighborhood. I had no money at all, not even enough for the gas to go look for a job. I hated myself with a burning passion. My roommate Curtis, who was also the guitarist, came into my "room"—a half futon on the floor of his office. "Hey Burg, ever read Dubus?" I nodded. I hadn’t, of course. I never admit to not knowing something or not reading something. If I haven’t seen the movie, I can fake it. If I haven’t heard the band, I can pretend that I have. It’s all a big lie, and I’m good at it.

"Check this out," Curtis handed me The Times Are Never So Bad. It was exactly how I felt. I opened the book…short stories. The first was entitled "The Pretty Girl." Exactly why I felt it. I thought about Jessica in Boston, how she had no idea how beautiful she was until I pointed it out. Now all the boys knew, and I had to move 3,000 miles away to escape her flaunting that beauty. Lisa, Curtis’ girlfriend and our drummer, was from Haverhill, Massachusetts. So was Dubus. She had introduced him to Curtis, the southerner, and now Curtis was bringing him around full circle to another New Englander. Wonderful, I thought. Some lame "New England" writer. This’ll be about bird feeders or muskets or white church spires gleaming in the autumn sun. Actually, it started out to be about weightlifting and running, two subjects that are pretty low on the fat balding metal vocalist’s list of interests. Then, suddenly, this:

I was hooked. I’ve never read a better, simpler description of what it is to be a New Englander. I love Curtis for introducing me to Dubus, and I love Dubus for knowing that and sharing it.

In his essay, Brothers, Dubus talks about Opening Day at Fenway Park. I haven’t missed an Opening Day in years. Often it is bitterly cold, but the smell of spring is present. The season so full of promise! The air so crisp! The bunting! Oh, sweet Jesus, the bunting. At my wedding, I want bunting. It’s so regal, so dramatic, and so American. The rituals epitomize us, who we are, and who we have been. Throwing out the first pitch. Introducing the players one by one. The roar as the home team takes the field. The roar as the first pitch is taken for a called strike.

All winter when we see each other, the ones, we know who we are; we say "Six weeks ‘til pitchers and catchers report." Or "Two weeks, four days." The official first day of spring isn’t until March 20th, but the first inkling that spring is really coming, that winter won’t, can’t last forever, is spring training. Each year starting in early March when the equipment truck leaves Fenway for that long trip to Fort Myers, Florida, it begins. Every day there is a baseball story in the paper. And there will be until November. The rhythms have returned. On TV you see the players in the sun and know it will be sunny and warm like that here soon. And before you know it, it’s Opening Day.

A few years ago, Andre Dubus died suddenly of a heart attack in the late winter, during spring training. What an abominable twist of fate. It reminded me of the scene in Raymond Carver’s "My Father’s Life" where he recounts a poem he wrote while trying to relate to his dad.

That year, the year he died, I thought about Brothers as I walked into Fenway, and was dazzled by the green of the field, stunned again at how small it looks. The story is about Dubus’s annual trip to Opening Day with his best friends. It’s about how their lives moved and changed, and the way the annual spring ritual marked their lives. I knew that they were here with me in the park somewhere. I was under the stands, smoking, and suddenly my heart broke. Tears streamed down my face at the thought of how much they missed him, and at the thought of how wrong it was; there was no remembrance at Fenway Park, his church. Not a word. If Steven King died there would be a 21-gun salute and fighter jets. But for Dubus, nothing. Nothing but my small remembrance. My sobs next to the beer line.

That fall, I somehow heard about an event in Manchester celebrating the life of Andre Dubus. There was a panel at the front of the room, and on it were Philip Spitzer (Dubus’ first agent) and his brother Michael, the brothers from the story. His son, Andre Dubus III, still a struggling young writer whose life had yet to be changed by Oprah. Also, a few other very important people in Dubus’ life – his first publisher, his first editor. Each wept openly as he remembered this great writer, this great man. Everyone, everyone mentioned the Red Sox. The sox were an integral part of his life. Philip told us the way Dubus would answer the phone in December. Not hello, not merry Christmas. Two months, sixteen days ‘til pitchers and catchers. His son described the way Dubus watched the Sox. It could be 10-0 with two outs in the ninth. If somebody hit a bloop single to left, Dubus was on the edge of his seat. "That’s the way to get it started! We’re coming back!" It was like being invited to his funeral. I cried almost the whole time, and for some time after. I felt touched by God’s Grace, how sweet the sound. And where were all of these friends and family members that Opening Day while I was crying at Fenway Park? Laying Andre Dubus to rest. At his funeral. They buried him on Opening Day.

This also freaked me out. The other day, I am drawn to the newspaper. I turn to the business section, which I never read, and I see an article about the merger of the hated New York Yankees and Manchester United. It turns out that Manchester United are the Yankees of British Premier League soccer. And who are the Red Sox? Arsenal. The same Arsenal of Fever Pitch, of Nick Hornby. It is incredible. I actually swoon, almost stagger. It’s ridiculous. The connection with Dubus. The connection that each team allowed us to make with our fathers. And now this, a connection with the evil empire, the New York Yankees, winners of 26 world championships since we sold them Babe Ruth in 1920.

The fucking Yankees. That day in 1978 was the worst day of my life. The Sox had blown a 14 ½ game lead, but won 12 of their last 14 games to force a one game playoff. I was 13 years old and my life was falling apart. My parents hated each other and it was confusing and horrifying and I was fat and scared of everything. I refused to bathe or do homework in an attempt to control some aspect of my life. I believed in exactly one thing: the destiny of the 1978 Boston Red Sox. I sat there on the coffee table, inches from the screen, alone. It was a day game. Even after Bucky Dent’s stomach-turning bloop home run, I was sure we would come back. With 2 out in the ninth, down one with men at first and third, Yaz strode to the plate. Carl Yastrzemski would get a hit. A double would win the game. I was sure he’d hit it out. I prayed, and why wouldn’t God answer? Why would he want the Yankees to win? Star Wars was still in the theaters, and I saw it 22 times. There was no doubt that Yaz was Luke Skywalker and Steinbrenner was Darth Vader. On the second pitch-crack-I jumped up. It was the torpedo that destroyed the death star. I knew it was gone.

It wasn’t. Mighty Yastrzemski had popped up. The Empire won.

I have often told the tattoo people (and there are plenty of tattoo people) that there isn’t anything I could imagine wanting written on my body that I could conceivably look down at in ten years and think, "What a good idea!" Except. Except for one thing I’ve been playing with in my head for a few years. "RED SOX" in those weird letters across my chest.

Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I dare to think about the day. I fear the day we win it all. I pray for it, I lust after it. But will it be the same after drinking from the sweet cup of victory? Will it be the same after we end the drought that has parched us since the tainted 1918 championship? I know it will be better. It will be pure and good. It will be sexual and soft and warm and whole. I accept this host. I believe. Hornby describes the end of Arsenal’s 18-year drought this way:

Recently I saw a special on the rabid fans of the Buffalo Bills. Vincent Gallo was asked what he would do if the Bills ever won it all after so many heartbreaks. He replied, "I’m going to be there. I’ll be at that Super Bowl"- Here, his eyes mist over - "and when they win it; when they finally win it all…I won’t ever feel like a loser again." Amen.

Finally, this from Brothers:

A car took Andre Dubus’s legs, and his own heart betrayed him and attacked him and killed him. But they did not take the life he lived. Soccer and Baseball and books are what make our lives, not simply diversions from our real lives. I will be dead soon, and so will you. When I die, I will be proud of my love for the Boston Red Sox. I am happy that I got to see them play.

I cannot imagine committing to a woman for life, and I have hurt them the way you hurt me. I cannot imagine the responsibility of raising a child. But I will love you forever, my love, my angel, no matter how many times you bring me to the brink. No matter how many times you break my heart. You are my wife, my son. My life. I do. I will. ‘Til death do us part.