Easter In October
Do not wear an Easter Bunny outfit nonchalantly, especially to a meaningless Indians game in early October. I can tell you about it.
I've never been too responsible in October in Cleveland: it's too beautiful. When we lived in Mississippi, October was just like April or July, but in Cleveland I tend to slouch in October--sleep late, take walks when I shouldn't, let my correspondence (legal and otherwise) lapse. You should be responsible when you're dressed up in public as the Easter Bunny. But somehow beer got involved, the media was present, and now I haven't left my room in three days.
Debby Fralick brought it into the office Thursday. She's usually good for chocolate and raffle tickets, but that day she had the costume (detachable head, footsies, burry tail--the whole bit) on her desk next to all the mailing labels. I still don't know why, something about her husband's buddy or something. And I wasn't excited about coffee or writing checks, so I asked her.
She said you could breathe in it. It didn't fit her. Bill came by and told us about his son then went to harass Marie. I told Debby I always wanted to be Santa Claus. My kid never got into Halloween. Gooden was too old. She disagreed. I said it as a joke, she dared me, and I felt like proving something.
My roommate Terry said they wouldn't let me in the gate. Bring some extra clothes. You won't see a thing with that head on; an Easter Bunny with its head off looks stupid. I bought a big bag of peanuts outside the Jake and they laughed at me at the gate. But they didn't frisk me. It was the end of the season. I could have brought a flask. Good thing I didn't.
Like a TV camera to college kids, the Easter Bunny electrifies little kids. It must have sucked being Elvis--no peace and an asshole at every turn. They were all over me. I dragged a little girl clutched to my furry leg to the door of the men's room. "The Easter Bunny's got to go talk to the Tooth Fairy, honey." I patted her little head and jerked my leg free. She ran back to her confused mother, who stood near a condiment dispenser smiling like a funeral director.
After two minutes spent freeing my member from the costume, I relaxed at the urinal. I was already sweating. Then I felt some nudging on my bushy tail. "Hey, the Easter Bunny knows judo, pervert." I turned my head, but the Easter Bunny's peripheral vision is strictly limited.
"Joey!" The urinating man next to me pulled his little kid away from me. "It's just my kid, weirdo." The guy looked into my goofy wide eyes like a true take-no-shit carnivore. I looked back at him through my huge stupid smile. Eh, what's up, doc?
"Relax, man. I'm with Make-A-Wish. Want a peanut, kiddo?" I lowered the bag for the kid. He smiled. The urinal flushed and the guy yanked the kid away from the treat. Peanuts spilled on the floor. They crunched and killed my padded feet as I walked out. Pissing was going to be hellish all night, I realized.
Terry's old man gets us the seats about five times a year: third row behind the Tribe dugout, on the aisle. Rich people. Usually we behave, but the season was ending and I was dressed up, so we unwinded some. The guy in front of me--I recognized him from AA a couple years back--gave me hell for not doffing my head for the National Anthem; I told him I was a Kennedy, Secret Service agents were monitoring our conversation, simmer. He did. Some people still respect authority. When we got our first beers, Terry, grinning like a fox, produced a crazy straw from his jean jacket; I stroked his cheek with my paw. Unfortunately, with the twistings of the straw and the Easter Bunny's big foamy teeth, I had to twist the Bunny's head awkwardly to slurp. For several innings I'm sure I looked a lot drunker than I was. Terry handled the guy in back of us who kept flicking my ears, trying to get me to take my head off because he couldn't see.
"Sir, I understand your predicament," Terry said, forcing some peanuts on the guy, "but this is all part of a special promotion. John Hart's idea, actually. Just keep your eye on the big screen and watch out for Jolbert Cabrera. And call Mr. Hart tomorrow morning, I'm sure he'll make it up to you." Rich folks live on perks, so they're expecially gullible about them.
The usher was never a problem; I pawed him a ten when we took our seats.
Wade Boggs always reminds me of my ex-wife. She too loves chicken and insatiable sex. At least she did. She just never allowed herself--or me--to have any fun outside of the bedroom (or the car, backyard, and my parents' house). That's what I told the judge, too. After her long litany of faults, neglect, and indiscretions, I simply said, "Your honor, she's no fun." The judge wasn't amused; she was another woman. I admit I was stupid there. Now it's just a long-distance hate-affair filled with lawyers' letters and answering machine recriminations--in short, a low maintenance way to displace most of my anger these days. I even drink less, which she never believes.
Anyway, watching Boggs foul off pitches with that labored, inside-out swing of his, stirred some nostalgia in me, and a little lust. I thought of an autumn roadtrip south. The leaves would soon be turning, and with the proper strategy subtly employed (a beach ball, a couple days' growth, Allman Brothers, Swedish meatballs, and a morning wake-up knock), I might get a satisfactory weekend welcome before she'd wise up. My kid would certainly be glad to see me. Boggs grounded into an inning-ending double play, and Terry was half a beer up on me.
By the fifth, or maybe the fourth--it was a sloppy game--the raisins started. Imagine the idiot's delight when he put two and two together: his big box of raisins and a drunk in an Easter Bunny costume sitting ten rows in front of him. Luckily, the Easter Bunny's head is pretty resilient; the barrage lasted a good fifteen minutes. Terry got a little upset and yelled some indecencies, but I didn't mind. From what I could tell, most of the pelting hit the jerk behind me, and it kept the parade of kids away from me for a while. I must have posed for fifty pictures that night and held hands with two dozen little kids.
After the raisin barrage (they kicked the guy out, but nobody came to sweep up the sticky mess around my rabbit's feet) the night got progressively worse. During a Devil Ray pitching change, a little boy walked up to me and shyly handed me a bag of carrots--what some people won't bring to a baseball game. "My mommy said a bunny rabbit should have some carrots." The kid looked scared, but I took the bag from him, stood up and bowed, lifted him high in the air (to universal cheers, even the guy behind me thought it was cute), made him smile, put him down, and patted his head. I hate carrots, though, so I put the biggest one in my beer and toasted the crowd as I sat down. Minutes later the kid's mother came by all mad. "I gave you those carrots as a prop, not to act like a drunken imbecile, mister." By then I couldn't see too well past my big teeth, so I didn't give a damn.
"I'm stewed already, lady. Don't exacerbate the situation." I pulled the carrot from my beer and made a show of licking it with my big furry mouth.
"You're a disgrace." She whacked my ears.
"Be careful! I'm from PETA." Just then Roberto Alomar's bat came whizzing by and almost killed an accountant down the row. I lost the woman in the ensuing minor melee. The bat boy exchanged a different bat with the proud bean-counter and Roberto hit the next pitch to the picnic area.
After the Indians were finally retired, Lisa Bercu and the Fox Sports Ohio camera showed up. I felt like a burning house. "Can we get an interview after the next half-inning?" At least she was polite. I tried to repay the gesture.
"I've been drinking, Lees. It's off-season for me. Catch up to me during Lent. I only do interviews then."
"Oh, come on. Just a 'what's up, doc? Go Tribe' for us, okay?"
"Lisa, please. I'm tight, but I'm not trite. Go away."
"Where's your sense of sport?"
I can't replicate the way she said that. I just looked up at her, twisted my wiry whiskers, and said, "It's under my costume." She left me then; she's smart. But the camera guy wasn't satisfied. He set up down the aisle by the railing. Who needs a sound bite when you've got the Easter Bunny drinking beer at a Tribe game? The camera stared at me.
Another little kid came by. He looked back at some adults across the aisle. They prodded him. "My daddy said the Easter Bunny shouldn't be drinking beer."
"It's not beer, sonny." I pushed the cup in his face. "It's ginger ale."
"It doesn't smell like ginger ale." This with no prompting from the adults.
"Tell your daddy he should mind his own business if you want to get chocolate next Easter." That sent him running.
Socially, my kid does all right: he doesn't irk adults, doesn't trade on his cuteness. And that's not all my doing. My ex doesn't coddle him either. We agree on some things. Indulge the child in your child, they say. I disagree. Childhood clings to you forever--look at me. The battle isn't keeping yourself childlike, it's growing out of it, away from it. And I'm not perfect, I admit.
Slider was the one who put me over the edge. If fans didn't boo, Ted Williams would have never spit; if people wouldn't have demanded so much, Dylan wouldn't have put out shit records; if the media didn't harass, Nixon would have been okay. Fame's enough, you shouldn't provoke the famous. Slider turned the Easter Bunny cantankerously rabid.
He stood on the Tribe's dugout for the seventh inning stretch, baiting me. Now I'll dance when I'm drunk--which I was, by then--but at my own discretion, and certainly not to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." What is it about an idiot in a costume that gives him free reign to incite a crowd to direct their mirth at another idiot in a costume? If it weren't for logistics, I'm sure the unnatural animal would have jumped down and hauled me out with him. Even Terry got into the frenzy. "Go groove with Slider, man." He was two beers ahead of me by then, given the complexities of drinking through a straw while wearing a bunny head.
"I'm not budging." I looked at the camera and waved my paw. Unfortunately, the costume prevented any discernible bird-flipping. Mobs and media. If the French Revolution had been televised, France would be only a memory. The game was out of hand, 7-2 or something, so I became the focus. Slider kept pointing, the crowd kept booing, and I kept stoic, but brewing. It was time for a leak, but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of walking out. Elvis had to stick around a few times just to hear that wonderful, "Elvis has left the building." Gods don't send postcards, and devils don't wave goodbye.
But I'm such a wimpy kid, still. The attention gained from not acknowledging attention wasn't enough. Half an inning later, with Slider still taunting me and the crowd growing even more hostile at my failure to yield to their dreams of vicarious idiocy, I broke down. But sometimes you have to swing on three and oh: it was that much of a gimme, that much of a natural, that much of an opportunity to totally transcend anybody's idea of a benign circus freak act.
Kenny Lofton stole second and third in the eighth, and in doing so he broke some kind of record. The crowd stood and cheered, Kenny yanked third base out of the ground and held it over his head, and even the camera turned from me to him.
Somehow I jumped over the railing and landed on my rabbit's feet without stumbling. I was halfway to third with the carrot stick outstretched before the crowd noticed me; their cheering changed from worship of Kenny to amazement at me. Toby Harrah was ignorant, Wade Boggs laughed when he saw me, and Kenny just froze with the base over his head. I slowed when I neared him and gently offered the carrot, one rabbit to another. The crowd loved it. And Kenny was smooth. He never lowered the base, he just smiled at me and opened his mouth wide. I placed the carrot in his mouth, he chomped down, I patted him on the head, and turned to bow to the crowd. The cop blindsided me, definite overkill.
After he bailed me out, Terry told me the booing was louder than the cheering. In the end, the people were on my side. But that part's all a daze.
And now it's three days later, Sunday evening. I've been out of bed only to attend to my body's needs. The pain's subsided, but the shaking continues. I'm hunched in a sort of upright fetal position, the better to slow the bed's spinning: my feet, knees, elbows, and face press into the mattress, my hands grip the blankets tightly around my neck, my head protrudes enough to hear the phone messages that are still coming in, though less frequently than the last two days. The world's tiring of me after so many highlight reels. My friends are all cards, but my ex's message is the most poignant: "I heard about you. Lance taped it off ESPN. You're regressing, which I thought was an impossibility." The last seconds of Sixty Minutes tick off, and I'm pulling my head in.
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