see, now this is what i'm talkin about
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Part Four: Things That Didn’t Get Said Out Loud, or How To Realize Your Mistake
By Candle Beck
I miss you.
I miss the way your hands move when you play the guitar.
I miss the look on your face right before you tell us the punch-line of some dumb joke.
I miss how you write little mottos on the underside of your cap brim and mutter insults at the batters that you would never in a million years say off the mound.
I miss hearing about what your sisters are doing.
I miss talking to your mother on the phone and promising her that I’ll look out for you.
I miss looking out for you.
I miss how you look after a game, the way the brown infield dirt somehow migrates into your soft hair, tracks of sweat mapping roads through the dust shadowing your forehead and neck, the sunlight caught up in the creases of your face when you laugh, the smeared grass stains on your knees and the palms of your hands, the tips of your fingers rough and imprinted by the stitches of the ball, your body painted with bruises that you don’t feel, and as soon as the last out is recorded, the second the game ends, all you’re doing is waiting for the next time we get to play.
I miss how you sing along with the bad Muzak they play in supermarkets.
I miss the way you say my name in your sleep.
I miss that crooked thing that happens to your mouth when you’re staring out airplane windows, that far far away gaze of yours like you see something in the clouds and the laid-out curve of the earth that is hidden from everybody else.
I miss being proud of your curveball like it was my own.
I miss on the morning of the fifth day, my turn in the rotation, when we’re lying around in bed for a couple of hours before we get up and you make waffles or I make Cap’n Crunch, and you sling an arm over my stomach and prop your chin up on my chest, your hair falling down into your eyes, and you catch my sleepy gaze with your own, and tell me with total certainty, “You’re gonna pitch a perfect game today,” and I always roll my eyes and try to shove you off, but you won’t let me go, and I know you believe it, every time you say it, and on the night of the fifth day, after I haven’t pitched a perfect game, you whisper into the dark as we fall asleep, “You’ll pitch a perfect game next week,” and you believe that too, each and every time you say it.
I miss your goddamned stuffed animals and how you sprawl out over the whole bed, how your arms and legs get tossed over me and make up for the covers that you stole.
I miss staying up until two in the morning so you can watch Tom and Jerry before we go to sleep.
I miss how you never set your watch ahead when we go on road trips, always taking that extra blink of a second to add an hour or two or three whenever anyone asks you the time, and though the guys say it’s ‘cause you’re lazy, I get the feeling that you just like to have that one part of yourself still back in California, that single piece of your mind staying grounded to the Pacific Ocean, your heart remaining in the place where, once they found it, two centuries worth of pioneers stopped looking for anything else.
I miss the look on your face every time you come out of the ballpark tunnel and see the field all thrown open to you, and every single time you look about six years old, seeing a big league stadium for the first time.
I miss your never-ending stories and how you stutter when you’re drunk, or happy.
I miss the lines of your arms, the curve of your back, the knobby track of your spine, the shadowy indent of your collarbone, the clean fresh taste of your skin, the warm smooth plane of your chest, the careful sweet run of your jaw, the wide spread of your fingers, the places on your body that only I know about.
I miss the way the sun glints off your wet hair the same way it glints off the ocean, when you’re out there surfing at dawn and I’m standing on the shore, freezing cold and fall-down tired, the exhaustion making everything blurry and soft, watching you all alone out there in the middle of all that unreal silver and gold and blue, Santa Cruz at five o’clock in the morning when the sea is like glass.
I miss hearing you call reporters and coaches and Hall-of-Famers ‘dude’.
I miss your voice, all even and clean like California, no accent except what you picked up from the hippies and the stoners and the kids from the Valley who taught you how to surf.
I miss your insane fashion sense, the fact that you own orange paisley pants, the way you can throw on a shirt and a coat that would be some god-awful eyesore on anyone else, some tragic turn-your-eyes-away clash of patterns and colors, but on you it just looks right, clothes that make strangers grin at you on the street and holler “Lookin’ good, my man!” out of car windows.
I miss how you used to smile when you saw me.
I miss reaching out in the dark and finding you, feeling you turn towards me and pull me closer in your sleep, ‘cause you always seemed to know that that was all I needed to be safe. To be home.
I miss going to that bar on the Mission and playing pool with you and Hudson and Chavvy, and Huddy always stretches out his drawl real deep and low, bragging about how much of our money he’s gonna win, and Chavvy talks about Minnesota Fats and Paul Newman and spends half the night hitting on girls, and you just kinda smile all secretive and very quietly wipe the floor with all three of us, I bet you’ve won most of Huddy’s signing bonus at this point, and no one can ever see you coming, with your innocent blinking eyes and hustler’s heart.
I miss all the things I didn’t pay enough attention to, the things I thought I would have time to notice later, like the hollow wooden creak of your feet coming across my front porch, and how you like your eggs in the morning, and which of all your rabbits’ feet is the luckiest one, and the precise reverberation of that epic bear-yawn of yours when you slowly begin to drag yourself out of bed, stretching your arms all the way out and knocking the alarm clock off the bedside table, and the name of that store in the Haight where you bought the aviator sunglasses that make you look like a traffic cop or a rock star, and the exact location of that twisting scar on your arm that you claim you got in a knife fight, though your sister Sally told me it was just from diving too deep into the ocean, slicing open your skin on the slick green-black rocks.
I miss believing that I was a good man, a belief that got knocked out of me the second I left you alone in that hotel room, left you bent against the wall, looking demolished, and I knew it was my fault, I knew I had destroyed something pure, and I saw it the next day, in Beane’s office, when you told me you were only sorry that you hadn’t been enough for me, and I’m not a good man, I’ve never been a good man, I’ve ripped apart the one truly good thing that’s ever happened to me, I’m not a good man, you’re the good man, and I made you deny something that we should have been shouting from the rooftops together, something that I should have been the first to claim as my own, something that made me better than I’ve ever been.
I miss knowing something as well as I used to know you.
I miss seeing the game through your eyes, your good clear eyes, the honest joy you take in the world.
I miss your strength, the strength I never gave you enough credit for, the way you were always braver than me, brave enough to say out loud the words I couldn’t even admit to myself, strong enough to let me break your heart and then stand up in front of the whole world and save my life, even though I’m beginning to think that the life you saved, the life without you in it, isn’t one much worth living.
I miss looking for you whenever I want to see something beautiful.
I miss feeling right.
I miss you. I want you back.
my god. my god. what have i done?
To be continued . . . in part five.