“So why you got the Cincinnati Reds hat on in
here now?”
“Not the Reds, it’s the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. It’s a Japanese baseball hat.”
“What are you thinking? You going around, wearing a Cincinnati Reds
cap? You forgetting now you always hated
Johnny Bench and Charlie Hustle?”
“Pete Rose never played for the Hiroshima Toyo
Carp.”
“Lose the hat. You look crazy in it. You’ll end up in some red rubber room in
Cincinnati. Everybody knows you bleed
Cubby Blue, but you start wearing that hat at Wrigley in the bleachers, and they’ll
have you bleeding over the wall and onto Waveland.”
“You ever think I might just like the idea of a
baseball team named after a fish?”
That said, he tugged the brim of the hat to just
over his eyes and stalked out of the sports bar. He was way tired of his Cubs fan buddies
needling him about how he always wore the Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat these days. Now, heavy in thought, he felt he must go to
the Chicago River and ruminate. In
Chicago, many big decisions are made on the banks of the river, so, if it was
good enough to ponder bad business deals or wretched divorces or bankruptcy
foreclosures, it was good enough for him to figure out a Japanese baseball team
he had never seen play live nor on television and the Japanese full-metal girl
who had launched him to another planet in the wilds of her universe.
It was a sunny, humid day in August: the Chicago
Cubs were 10 games out of first place, the Cincinnati Reds, a half-game. He walked through the heat and down iron steps
to the peaceful park on the riverbank and went to what looked like a
comfortable-enough iron bench. He sat
down in a slouch and yanked the hat off his head. He looked deeper into it. He followed the white curves in the stylized C
and into the eye at the center, losing himself in the pure redness of what
would be its pupil if it were a real eye.
Putting the hat back on, he pondered the venue of
the concert across the river, with its domed arch roof that looked like a
hooded turtle shell. Then, with his eyes
following the flow of the river, he surrendered his memory once again to the aura
of Meta Benzai:
To the heavy tolling of a sonorous bell, devoted
fans roaring in one thrusting voice as the silhouette of Meta Benzai shows
itself behind a white curtain, shows her waving her hands, bending herself up
and down at the waist to the music from the unseen band. The curtain parting, revealing the flashing
burst of Meta Benzai. Kinetic and
vibrant, her silvery vest of spangled mirrors catching splashes from a
spiraling colour wheel on the ceiling of the stage. Her bejeweled headband, the tufts of
silver-and-black crepe ribbons entwined in her black hair, the tiny mirrors on
her ruby skirt catching the stage lights so that they look like a whirring star
shooting off flaming pieces.
Her band exploding into sight. Pinpoints of guitar riffs hitting the air. Swirls of drum and cymbal, madly strummed
bass lines. The crowd chanting “Meta
Benzai, Meta Benzai, Meta Benzai”. Her
knee-high, starry-purple platform boots kicking her into crisp, hectic moves,
carrying her lithe body across the stage.
Waves of hands shooting up into the horned finger salute of metal music
lore toward her and her band. A
convulsive surge of crowd, pounding their feet down the floor until it feels
like shock waves creasing the earth below.
A final whap of sticks on drums calling the song
to a stop. Meta Benzai left to stand
there, smiling, pumping her fists raised to the crowd. Through the stage lights, her eyes roam the
arc of the venue around her. Until, in
the mark of a second, her eyes come to the hat:
Our
eyes meet.
The baseball hat of
the team of my sister.
Our eyes meet under
the brim of my hat.
Back
home. Back in Hiroshima. What is this place again? America, Chicago?
My hat from Japan I wore for her.
Why the hat on that man?
The hat worked.
Smile. Dance. No baseball. No father
and mother and friends at games. No, America, Chicago now.
Beautifully.
No cheering, laughing, with my Carp Girl
sister.
It really worked. My soul is killed.
Tired, too many airports, strange
city streets, dance, sing, scream now.
Her voice cracks. It never cracks,
not from her.
No friends from school now. No reading my book in bed. No sleeping in hotel rooms. Smile. Dance.
No baseball in Hiroshima. Keep up
the dancing. I learned: six years old:
dance and sing in Hiroshima.
Perfect. Perfect dance, perfect
sing. Not home now. In Hiroshima. After this Chicago, a place called Ohio. In America.
Not Hiroshima. Ohio America.
She must feel the hat.
****
He had collected and worn many baseball caps over
the years. His proudly weathered and
dust-encrusted 1984 Cubs hat that his mother sent him while he was living overseas
to remind him of home. Though he was a
Cubs fan, that battered black-and-white 1977 Chicago White Sox hat to honor a
team nicknamed the Hit Men for their strength in launching homers in blockbuster
flurries.
But nowadays, it was the Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat
and the Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat alone he was wearing all over the Windy City. To work, to movies, going to restaurants … and
even to Cubs and Sox games.
The Hiroshima Toyo Carp: a professional Japanese baseball
franchise that played in a small bandbox baseball field near the Peace Memorial
Park in the city. In 1973, they adopted
the look of the Cincinnati Reds for their hats and uniforms when the American
team was hauling in trophies as the Big Red Machine. The Carp had hoped that winning mystique
would rub off on their own team; it did work for a while, but, after the Carp
fell into last place in 1993, they pretty much ended up like his Chicago Cubs
for most of the years he had followed them—hapless
bottom feeders in the standings.
Before the concert, a fellow Meta Benzai fan had
sent him photos on the Internet showing her sister as a Carp Girl—one of many
young girl fans who followed an attraction to handsome athletic kids who were
playing with refreshing zeal in the recent youth movement. Decked out in Carp Girl cheerleader
wear—bright-white shirts and hats sporting cartoon symbols in red of a cheering
girl riding a Carp fish and raising her hand to urge the team on—the sister was
holding out an unfurled red banner that read, in bold-white lettering, CARP.
Later, he found out how Meta Benzai liked to
tease her sister by stealing her clothes and wearing them. So then, he saw her as a Carp Girl too. And that led to the idea of wearing the hat
to the concert, hoping to stand out from how the other fans honored her and her
band: tar-black fan T-shirts sporting photos and cartoons of her and her band,
fingerless black leather gloves, and silver-studded belts.
But, what with his friends heckling him in sports
bars and people coming up to him in the streets to call him out for being a
Cincinnati Reds fan, he was wondering as he stared into the river if the charm
of the Japanese metal band concert had worn off, and it was time to return to That
Old Cub Hat. It was like, Meta Benzai
had probably forgotten long ago during her tour about some fanboy wearing a
Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat in Chicago. Why
keep acting half insane over what might have been his imagination anyway, who
knew?
Then he was distracted from his obsessive
thoughts by a man who must have been quietly sitting all this time next to him. Suddenly, he needed to talk to a stranger,
like how a baseball player in a dugout would talk during a game to a nearby teammate
without looking at him:
“I’m about ready to start talking to myself here,
and I’m not really in the mood to listen to me go on until I’ll want to jump
into the Chicago River. I’m wondering,
could you give me a couple of minutes here?
It’s all about this hat … and no, it isn’t a Cincinnati Reds hat,
dammit, it’s the hat of a Japanese baseball team called the Hiroshima Toyo
Carp. See, I got to talk this out to
someone out of the blue, because I never mention it to people I know.
“It’s about how I bombed out with a girl. I wasn’t always a baseball fan; hell, during
baseball games at high school, I wouldn’t even be watching them play. I’d be looking at an All-American Asian girl,
name of Susan, some cheerleader. It was
like she had helium wings on her feet, dancing around the playing field and
flipping in the air and doing cartwheels. You see her, and you’d be seeing the most
beautiful cheerleader ever on Earth, I swear to the baseball gods.
“But I never asked her for a date or anything
because my friends were telling me she was out of my league. They kept saying, you’re just going to strike
out and make yourself nuts, know what I mean?
“So, one day, I’m in the hallways somewhere and I
hear this guy, some kind of star baseball player on the school team, talking to
his buddies. ‘I don’t know how I did
it,’ he’s saying, ‘You’d think you’d have to go from first to third base to get
to home with her, but man, with that Susan, I hit a bomb over the fence.’
“Most miserable day ever in high school. After hearing that guy bragging, I swear, I
walked all the way to the baseball field in the back of the school, sat down in
the stands, and just cried my eyes out. I
kid you not, crying … not for me, but for Susan.
“And ever since then, whenever I see a beautiful
woman I want to ask out for a date, I’m thinking, she’s out of my league.” He sighed so hard, it was as if he could blow
the Chicago River off its current.
“I don’t date,” he said.
Then he said: “Okay, so now you’re wondering: why
is this guy walking around wearing baseball hats after a mind fuck like that: he
shouldn’t be anywhere near the national pastime. Because, few days later, I’m sitting in the
cafeteria, and one of my friends comes running up to me, and he’s yelling, ‘The
Cubs, the Cubs, they were down by 12 and they came back to tie the game.’ I say, what?
‘The wind’s blowing out at Wrigley, and everyone is hitting bombs onto
Waveland and even Kenmore. You got to
see this.’
So we go to the television in the rec area and
there they are: hitting doubles, triples, I mean, that home run-hitter for the
Cubs, Kong, just kept launching bombs onto Waveland like he was up there
playing Wiffle ball.
“The Cubs went up 13, then 14, then it was 15 to
16 but the other team kept coming back; they were loading the bases and hitting
triples over and over again, then their own bombs. Twenty to 15, 25 to 15, 30 to 15: it was like
watching some sort of battle for the universe.
Then Kong hits two more bombs, both with the bases loaded: 36 to 35, 40
to 35, 45 to 35. Everybody is crowding
into the rec room and they are yelling and applauding. Maybe even Susan and her baseball player, who
knows, who cares?
“Okay, ninth inning, score 51 to 50 against the
Cubs…I mean, what, are we watching football now? A pitcher for the other team was actually
throwing strikes on a day when pitchers were nearly extinct, meaning that the
Cubs were eventually down to their final out.
They send some scrub to the plate.
The pitcher throws three straight balls, and we’re thinking, the scrub
is going to take ball four, which will bring Kong to the plate for another
bomber and this ballgame is over.”
He shook his head and threw his hands into the
air. “And you know what happens? The pitcher shoots over three straight
strikes. The scrub just stands there, looking at them. Never even made it to first base.”
He turned around to face the man on the bench next
to him. “The highest score in baseball history and the Cubs lose. And on that very date, I swore I would watch
baseball until I saw the Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds into the ground then go
to the World Series to break their hundred years curse.”
He snatched the hat off his head and shook it at
the man. “Not a goddamn Cincinnati Reds
hat,” he shouted. “It’s the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”
With a gaze fixed on the twin towering monuments
to sixties mod living called Marina City across the Chicago River, the short
man with thinned hair who wore a neat, permanently pressed grey business suit
sat on the bench with his left leg crossed over his right knee. He held a yellow pencil between his right and
left fingers, poised over a notebook, as if he were waiting to write down the
next words from the man wearing the Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat. Waiting and waiting.
“Holy Cow, it’s Chicago’s very own TV shrink,”
said the baseball fan. “Hi, Bob!”
The man on the bench was silent.
*****
I felt scared but I wanted him with me. He said he loved me and only me and wanted me
too. No parents at home this day, we are
left alone in my bedroom with the pink-and-white sheets on my bed. He kissed me on the lips: he took off the
girly baseball hat I had worn all day, kissing me. Then my tan jacket with the crest of my school
that has the crown of a queen on it, he took off; then he made free the knot in
my tie and took off my favorite white shirt and felt for the clasp on my back
from the bra and snapped it off. I was
showing then my breasts that he began to kiss: one then the other one. Next he put his fingers of his right hand down
into the waist belt of my American-style jeans then my jeans fell to the
floor. He was free to kneel down and
kiss me on my stomach then, sliding my American jeans down to around my ankles.
I stopped him there: I sat on my bed
with the pink-and-white sheets and took off the jeans from my ankles and then
took down my panties from my ankles. I
did a giggle to him and I said “you must remove your hat first”. He took off his uniform but not the hat. He was so hard, so hard in his athlete
muscles. I thought he would be hard for
both of us. Him naked, except the hat. I
laid my back on the bed with the pink-and-white sheets: He went on top of me
then with the muscles like cords of strong rope. Then he pressed himself into me and I could
feel his hard inside. We shook and shook
but his hat stayed on. Then he went deep
into me and I could feel the break and the wet of the blood that was red like the
red hat of our team. I was thinking: the
hat stayed on his head and now I will stain the pink-and-white sheets so I
cannot put them on my bed again and I also have stains on my belly between his
belly and his chest. Then he came away
from me and tipped his hat. I loved him so
much, but he was saying goodbye. My
baseball player who left to play for our rivals, the Lions.
*******
Carefully, he fit the red baseball hat onto the
head of the Bob Newhart statue. “Okay,
you cured me: it’s the Reds,” he said. “I guess you and me, we’re Cubs fans
forever, Bob.” Then, he checked his
watch. “8:15,” he said. “Time to head for home.”
For
Suzuka Nakamoto
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