Our Red Hat

 

 

 

Hi, Bob.

Thanks for the meeting today.  You know I’m always glad to sit here with you and talk things out while we’re looking over Lake Michigan together, watching the waves come in and break on the shore over and over again, kind of like the way my thinking is going these days.  Where I can tell you, my professional therapist, what’s been bothering me, lately.  Sure beats the usual office and couch routine indoors, am I right or not?

Anyway I had to see you today because, this time around, it has to do with me in this different hat here than the Chicago Cubs hat that you wanted me to start wearing for our therapy together.  But, Bob, let me tell you first that this is not a Cincinnati Reds hat, even though it looks that way.  And that’s causing me hassles like you wouldn’t believe these days.

I’m telling you, Bob, I did the best I could to get out of what you called my basement rut.  Started climbing out of it more often, instead of spending most of my time staring into the computer screen at AI anime manga and that online magazine Japan Girl World.  You told me it looked like I was turning otaku, which at first to me sounded like some piece of sushi, but then you’re telling me it has to do with guys in Japan who stay indoors in front of the computer screen day and night like I was doing, alone with their AI anime manga and all that.  Well, Bob, I figured, if it was that bad, it was that bad, know what I mean?

This is all not to say that I think the Chicago Cubs therapy plan you put me on wasn’t working out or anything.  You know, you’re right, even though I go through my “severe ups and downs” like the team’s gone through over the years, I can still be in a beautiful place, like Wrigley Field.  Sitting out in the sun and looking at the ivy on the walls.  The fans all around me, with their clapping and shouting and singing.  Eating hot dogs and nachos.  And getting into the game on the field too, even if I don’t know much about baseball rules and keeping score and all that.

But I couldn’t be at Wrigley Field all of the time, could I?  Sure, your Chicago Cubs therapy was a good thing during the season, like I say, but it wasn’t like I could totally leave my basement or anything during the offseason.  Even if I did get into watching reruns of Cubs games and all that on the computer, I still wasn’t exactly ready to go to bars or coffeehouses or on dates yet … so yeah, I kind of slipped into the world of AI anime manga again and …

 … that’s where MetaShe comes in, which is why I had to visit with you today.

Now, I know you told me I also had to get out of myself, to start make friends with fans of the Cubs.  All well and good, Bob, but you ought to have heard them after they saw me switch from the Cubs hat to wearing this hat.  Saying stuff like:

“So why you got the Cincinnati Reds hat on in here now?”

So I tell them: “This is not a Reds hat.  It is the hat of a Japanese baseball team.  The Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”

But it’s like they never listen to me.  They just keep going on and on and on with the: “What are you thinking?  You going around wearing that hat?  Who do you think you are, Charlie Hustle?”

Well, I didn’t know who the hell this Charlie Hustle was, so I tell them: “Doesn’t sound like someone who ever played for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”

And they keep coming back with stuff like: “Lose the hat.  You look crazy in it.  You keep wearing it and you’ll end up in some Big Red rubber room.”

“How many times do I have to tell you,” I say. “Hiroshima Toyo Carp.”  And, Bob, it just goes on: blah and blah and more blah.   So, you tell me, what’s a guy to do?  I’m just plain getting sick and tired of listening to everyone and everybody saying I am now a Cincinnati Reds fan.

So look, I know it’s been a while since our last meeting out here … but it was just time we got together again, mainly because of MetaShe.  Yeah, a woman name of MetaShe is the real reason this all got started, with the new hat and everything.

I was completely taken in by her, Bob, when I first saw her dancing and singing on my screen.  Staring into the face of all that beauty … rising out of cloud banks while thunder bolts are wrapping around her, with sparkles of fire in these good-looking almond eyes and bursts of colored lights from off her rainbow-painted fingernails … you know how AI, they say, is taking over the world, well, you ought to see MetaShe, like, she’s way, way beyond even that.  She’s what you might call a Japanese metal music ballerina, more real than real to me.

Then, when I checked for more about her on the Web, I ended up finding out that she was from Hiroshima Japan, of all places.  Then I guess you can say I must have mashed it up with your Wrigley Field therapy when I started following the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

Now this Hiroshima Toyo Carp I’m telling you about, Bob, it’s a professional Japanese baseball franchise that plays in a small baseball field, what you call a bandbox, just like the Chicago Cubs.  I don’t know how they kept the Cincinnati Reds from getting on their case for … what do you call it, “trademark infringement”? … but in 1973, the Carp took on the exact look of the American team for their hats and uniforms when they were hauling in trophies as this dynasty called the Big Red Machine.  Maybe the Carp thought all that winning would rub off on their own team, if they wore their gear.  And I guess it did work for a while, but, after the Carp fell into last place in 1993, they were pretty much like Japan’s version of the Chicago Cubs, you know, up and down in the standings, mostly down.

So, even though you and me, we bleed Cubby Blue … these days, I have this thing about the Hiroshima Toyo Carp I’m talking about.  And, that’s why I had to get away from these people and meet up with you here where we sit together, at Navy Pier.  About some Japanese metal ballerina I can’t keep from dancing my mind away.

Which brings me to the concert where I saw her last week, Bob.  At the House of Blues, you know, that place over by Marina Towers.  And let me tell you, does she have the fans or what: you should have heard them in there, roaring away in one, way insane voice when the show starts off, with a silhouette of MetaShe on a curtain that’s shining as white as new snow.  She’s waving her hands, she’s bending herself up and down at the waist, all in time with this massive full-metal music from her band playing somewhere offstage.

Then the curtain opens and there she is, bursting out on stage fast, like she’s riding on top of some wild explosion.  You should have seen her, Bob, her wearing a silver vest of spangled mirrors that’s catching splashes of coloured lights from off a spinning wheel on the ceiling of the stage.  She’s also got on this headband full of jewels and all these silver-black crepe ribbons tied into her black hair … and, I’m telling you, that ruby skirt of hers, it was just blazing away like some shimmering red cloud of sparks.

Then they show her band behind her, a bunch of guys in, you know, those weird Japanese masks, with the mouths wide open and the bulging eyes?  The metal music they were making, like you could almost see the notes splintering the air.  Swirls of drums and cymbals, the bass player strumming like mad.  Crowd chants of “MetaShe, MetaShe, MetaShe”.  Her knee-high, starry-purple platform boots doing snappy kicks on the stage, carrying her body in a spin across it.  Waves of hands from off the crowd shooting up into the horned finger salute toward her and the band.  People pounding their feet in a surge until it feels like shock waves off an earthquake that just hit below the floor, like that.

But you know what happens then, Bob? … you know what brought me to see you today? … what happens was, the drummer whaps the sticks on the skins to call the song to a halt, and that leaves MetaShe standing there, smiling, pumping her fists that are raised above the crowd.  She’s looking over the crowd, left and right, and then she comes to the center and there I am, in my red Hiroshima Toyo Carp hat and … she stops … and …

… our eyes meet.

 

            The baseball hat of my team.

            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.

            It really worked.

            No cheering, laughing, at a baseball game.

Beautiful.

            Tired, too many airports, strange city streets, dance, sing, scream now.

            And her voice cracked.  But 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.

****

Yeah, MegaShe, she’s really got to me now.  Ever since that night at the concert, after our eyes met like that, she’s been in my head, I mean, to the point where I’m actually hearing her.  It wasn’t like she was just looking at me, it was like she was saying something to me.

And what’s even weirder is that, it’s in Japanese, but also like, it’s in English:

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.

Letting me in on her secret life here, Bob:

Then my tan jacket with the crest of my school that has the crown of a queen on it, he took off; then he set free the knot in my tie and took off my favorite white shirt and he 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.

Like, who is this guy with her?

Next he put his fingers of his right hand down into the waist belt of my American-style jeans and then my jeans fell.  He knelt down and kissed 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.

Bob, this guy, you think he’s … no, it couldn’t be.

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.

Me?

And now, tonight in Chicago in the United States, I have found him.

*********

So that’s why I’m here to visit you, Bob.  Because, considering the recent turn of events and all of that between me and MetaShe, I have to ask you: do you do couples therapy?

**********

The design of the life-sized statue of comedian Bob Newhart, currently on display on Navy Pier in Chicago, is said to encourage guest participation by sitting down on a couch next to the famous TV psychologist Robert Hartley in bronze and interacting with it.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago, Newhart achieved fame with his comedy record The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart before turning to starring roles in two comedy sitcoms: The Bob Newhart Show that ran from 1972 to 1978, portraying the famous TV psychologist, and Newhart from 1982 to 1990, where he played a Vermont innkeeper.

In a unique and surprising ending to the Newhart show at the time, Bob was to wake up in bed with his wife from his earlier show and discover that his role as the innkeeper was a dream all along.  In other words, two televisional Bobs became as one.

And, of course, Newhart himself was an avid Chicago Cubs fan.  As he once put it: “Being a Cubs fan prepared you for life.  You knew you were ahead, but you knew you were going to blow it.”