Tommy the Bat
personal journal 03-17-2019
Batting cleanup, number 44, left fielder... Tommy the Bat
part one
One day of no particular note in the early 70s, as i was minding my own business, probably planning my next Woolworth's baseball card shoplifting excursion, my mom got my attention and told me that a new neighbor had moved in across the street, and they had a young boy about my age.
"why not go over there and say hi?" my mom prodded.
i've always been shy, and at that age it was at times disabling, despising rejection to such an extreme that it hamstrung most social interaction, including taking that kind of initiative to introduce myself to just another kid.
"yeah, okay." i said back. i had no intention of going over there unless threatened, and for me diversionary tactics have always come naturally.
just as i thought i had escaped any responsibility to socialize, there was a knock on the door, and i happened to be the closest one to it. i opened the door, and at some level i knew who it would be.
"Hi. my name's Tommy." the taller, broader, and much Blacker kid said with a very serious face and forced deep voice, trying not to look in my eyes. "We just moved in across the street and my dad said i have to come over and say hi."
what i would learn is that when Tommy's Dad told him to do something, he did it. and quickly. and when Tommy's Dad told me to do something. i did it. and quicker than Tommy. dude was intimidating. giant angry bearded Black man in a dashiki. a minister. a PhD in something or other, probably in hating my little white ass. i'm joking, but only a little. Tommy's Dad, though never warm to me, always made me welcome in his home. and truthfully i have nothing but love and respect for the man. Tommy worshipped him. we had that in common, a deep and abiding love and respect for our fathers, and lots of other stuff, it turned out.
when i first met my new neighbor, and soon to be close friend, i admit to being a bit in awe...i recognized the facade of faux maturity and confidence, but i still admired what it stood for...his desire to be that way. like his Dad, to be above fear, reproach, and comparison; an educated, intelligent, potent Black man in a white world. sounds overly dramatic but it's really true. when you strip it all down, Tommy's family was all about love, art, music, education, and indefatigable pride.
~on the whole Black n white thing...i grew up and lived in predominantly Black neighborhoods pretty much my whole life ('til i moved to Florida; land of sunshine, cool lizards, and white people that hate cold weather), and i have had untoward incidents occur that may or may not have been because i was the white boy. they may also have occurred because i was the only boy there to harass. or maybe it was because i was the closest pussy. who knows. what i learned is that Black guys hit hard. for real. what i also learned is that the two Black families in my neighborhood that i was closest to; Tommy's, and our around the corner or cut through the neighbor's hedge chums, Rusty and Steve's (and later, Phillip), were places of sanctuary; kindness, food, drink, laughter, learning, and intellect. my friends 'taught' me, though it's not really teaching when a thing is so fucking obvious, is that Black people are indeed beautiful. in every way imaginable and possible in a human being. and fuck you if you really believe a person is less because of any genetic disposition; Black, Asian, Latin, white, Arab, indigenous native, and every combination, solve for x. awright...now that we got that outta the way...
Tommy had two siblings; a youngest sister; cute and energetic and outspoken, and a middle brother; who was the perfect nerd. i don't say this with any critical thought or demeaning intent, he really was the stereotypical picture of the bookworm. he was proper and spoke simply and directly, holding his hands in front of him, and enunciated every syllable painstakingly. he often wore a dapper sleeveless sweater to match his highwater trousers and always wore thick lenses and thicker framed buddy holly glasses. and he was brilliant. Tommy used to go on and on about how smart his little brother was and how he would be a world changing scientist or some such. i really marveled at his embracing of his siblings and his parents. they were a tight group, and in a very real way i envied them. my house was not nearly as warm and home. his house always smelled of the ambrosia of honey roasted ham, and some exotic and probably forbidden by the man African perfume, and they had relics and paintings all around that celebrated African and Black culture and it was all very exciting and mysterious. i loved that house. oooh and the vibes...the real vibes. musical instrument vibes. his dad had two or three pro arrays there that just begged me to make 'em sing...or scream in pain, depending on your perspective. Tommy hated when i got that glassy 'i-wanna-touch-the-cool-stuff' look in my eyes.
could a guy be any more gloriously and righteously Black than Tommy's Dad? no. dude was/is an icon.
part two
Seventh grade. Parents are doing their 'educating the masses' thing, and i'm heading to an empty house from another day of academic mediocrity. My best guess regarding what was going through my head is that i was never, ever going to see a vagina in real life (a horrifying, yet somehow comforting thought, simultaneously), and that i would now happily bounce a tennis ball off the outside of the house for the next several hours in preparation for my career as a baseball player.
As i walk in the back door of the house, i aimlessly depress my left hand against the large glass pane to close the door. my arm moves normally, the door does not. I instinctively withdraw my hand in the suddenness of the glass shattering and see red droplets flaring outward. Looking down at my left hand, just above where thumb meets wrist, i see a fissure showing layers of color and texture, at it's base, glowing white. and then the real blood came. spurts in staccato, in excess of 2 feet (sounds crazy, i know, but the day my parents moved out of that house 7 years later, there was still blood... on the ceiling) turning the back entryway into a Jackson pollack study in crimson.
First order of business, of course, was to yell at my hand to stop (i went into shock, i guess, as i have few memories of coherent thoughts, just anger, then naked fear). Upon discovering the futility of this exercise, i wrapped my hand tightly in a light blue blouse of my mother's, walked into the dining room, and called my friend Brucie (king of frogs), who lived in excess of 30 miles away.
"I cut myself." I think i said to Brucie's younger sister Alisa, who promptly put her mom on the phone.
Their mom, Etta, who always treated me as her own child (which could not have been easy, as i drove that entire family nuts whenever i 'slept' over. i didn't sleep very much), told me that she couldn't help me, she was too far away. That i should hang up and call the police. Naturally, i hung up at that point and proceeded to wander outside, ending up at our next door neighbor's house around the corner (the dad used to gift me firecrackers and even the occasional m80, which i applied exclusively to aggressively disassembling my model tanks). I banged on the door for long enough to paint it red, distantly realizing that no one was coming, and then wandered off back around the corner, following the trail i created, across the street to Tommy's house.
I think by this time i had lost a lot of blood, and was descending further into shock (basically feels like watching stuff happen to your body from a distance) and my memories are correspondingly less acute. I remember Tommy's sister in the front yard, staring at me in fascination (or maybe horror), and her disappearing and reappearing with her mom (who was like Angela Davis, Shaka Khan and Shirley Chisolm rolled into one. Force of Nature, that beautiful woman). Next thing i remember is sitting in a police car with Tommy's mom, sister and a kind, young police officer.
"Is he gonna die?" little Carolyn asked the officer, as i watched from a distance far greater than the inside of a police cruiser.
"Nah," He say's. "You have to lose a whole lot of blood to die."
i remember staring out the window of the car and thinking, he has no idea how much blood i've lost.
next thing, i'm lying down on a hospital table, arm out on a separate table, or extension, with two young male doctors attending. I remember clearly that they were in high spirits, in conversation that a young adolescent in shock would have no appreciation of.
"I can't believe that garble garble gets to do the appendectomy and i'm stuck here sewing up an artery..." the bearded one said, cutting meat on my numb hand as i watched. he had glasses, light eyes, and curly, sand colored hair, and little regard for bedside manner, scarring, or nerve damage, as the still largely numb ugly x on my left hand insists.
i wondered from a million miles away how they could be so detached from a kid about to die.
"He's in shock." One of the doctors said to my parents, who had materialized at the head of my surgical platform.
I'm in shock, i thought. it felt like they were talking about someone else.
I think my parents might have bought me ice cream at the baskin robbins, afterward. no strawberry sauce please.
Tommy's sister Carolyn and Mom dematerialized from this memory when i was staring out the window of the police car. maybe i passed out, i don't know, but they saved me that day, beautiful family.
...Next, Tommy hits me in the neck with a baseball (by mistake), and school's me in the sweet science (on purpose, though not at the same time... that would just be ugly...)
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