A Story About a Fan and a Vague Sense of Guilt

He was going to write something last week. He thought about it Friday morning as he was ploughing through very short stories by Jorge Louis Borges.

He wanted to write something personal but metaphorical.

It started with a sensation. The sticky feeling when he has been sitting in one place to long. As if, what has started out as sweat has begun to evaporate, leaving behind a thick mixture of salt and whatever else is in sweat and only half the water. The stuff that makes a toddler’s hair cling to its head when it gets up from a nap. Or what glues his t-shirt to his back when he deboards a plan after a long flight.

Next was a smell. It isn’t musky because musky reminds him of big male bulls and muscular, dark haired, shirtless men, driving muscle cars, and stopping in a dessert highway to help a beautiful glowing women with shimmering breasts underneath flowing summer dresses. It also isn’t musty because musty reminds him of basements and attics, old books that no one has read for years that might fall apart if he flips the pages too quickly. Closer to musty than musky though.

And the chair. The chair is a black leather recliner. No. A black fake leather recliner. The kind that is comfortable, but that your legs stick to in the summer, the kind you have to peal yourself off to get up. The kind that you imagine a man positioning at exactly the right spot in front of a widescreen television, exactly the right spotto get the most out of a surround sound system.

Which is exactly what this man, this sticky, musty, young man has done. This sticky, musty, young man, losing his red hair before his time. This graduate student, reading Borges (whom he likes, even though he is frustrated with the framing devices in the stories at first, whom he is not sure where to place in the western tradition of thought... “You are uncomfortable when you don’t have things figured out aren’t you?” she says more than asks). Perhaps a wifebeater, boxer shorts, and back socks pulled all the way up is too far, too cliché. But the man is certainly in his boxer shorts. Perhaps wearing an ironic t-shirt. And glasses. Retro glasses that a creepy man in an overcoat might wear, but that this graduate student wears like a hipster lead singer of an indie rock band who is overweight but still attractive because he is the lead singer. It’s not quite clear how the man, a graduate student, can afford even a fake black leather recliner, a widescreen television, and a surround sound system, but those details will come later.

But what is the man doing there? Why does the man stay in the chair so long? Why does the man struggle with the decision of getting up or staying in the chair? Something to do with baseball, he thinks. He likes the idea of writing about baseball, but can never think of a way to incorporate it into a something he is writing. Not that he is writing.

It’s the off-season. The man is a fan (from Japan or Kzakhstan?). The graduate student/fan is waiting for an announcement that he is not sure will ever come. But he waits, so that if it happens, whatever it is, he will know as soon as possible. (“There’s something wrong with you” she says as he checks for the twentieth time to see if the Hall of Fame announcement has been made, partly to see if Andre Dawson, a former Expo, has been elected, but mostly to see if Tim Raines, another former Expo has increased his vote total, making it more likely that he will one day enter the Hall, producing more memorabilia for him to collect).

It’s not the Hall of Fame announcement though. The fan is waiting for a trade. No. A free agent signing. A signing that has been rumoured on the websites he checks on a regular basis. A signing that may well rescue his team from the mediocrity it has suffered for the last five years. A signing, that for him, will be a turning point, not only for his team, but, he imagines, a symbolic turning point for his entire life. Of course, the fan doesn’t admit this extra symbolic significance of the signing. Not even to himself.

The player is a star player. Probably an outfielder. He played on the fan’s favourite team a long time ago. A small market team. And while this star outfielder was on the team, it miraculously won a World Series and competed for several years. Then the star player became a free agent, and the team did not even offer arbitration let alone make a competitive offer. The player left for a bigger market and more money. He first thinks of Ken Griffey Jr., and the way he left Seattle and then returned. Although Griffey was traded, and the Mariners hardly experienced the same kind of fall off this team did. Or Vladimir Guerrero, although the Expos with Guerrero hardly enjoyed the success this team did, and Guerrero never did return. Instead, the Expos left Montreal.

This team began losing it’s star players from its golden era, and began rebuilding. A veteran first baseman with declining numbers and fielding range, a loveable utility player, and an aging relief pitcher is all that remains of those competitive teams. Instead, there is a crop of young stars just starting to blossom, offering exciting possibilities. All they need is some star power, some big threat in the middle of the lineup. The Griffey/Guerrero player.

This player isn’t as likable as either Griffey or Guerrero. Before he left the team, he clashed with the manager, and was benched in September while the team was in a playoff race during the player's last season with the team. This, rationalizes the fan, is because the manager was a dick. And since that manager is no longer with the team, the player will be able to succeed. The fan overooks the fact that, while with the big market team, the player clashed with the manager there, the media, even another star player. At one point he even criticized the big market city and praised his old team's city because they knew how to treat a ballplayer. For the fan, this is simply confirmation that the player belongs on his favourite team. He just doesn’t fit anywhere else. And if it wasn’t for the dick manager the player would have stayed with the team.

But now everything is going to turn around. Everything will start again. A new golden age that will begin as soon as the signing is announced, the signing that has been rumoured for days. The player has hinted that he would love to come back, and the GM had, in a typically and understated manner, said he was looking at all available free agents, especially those with star power. Reporters have been predicting this signing since before the season ended. Twitter posts have speculated about the number of years and money involved, most of them predicting a finalized deal within the week.

So the fan sets up in front of the television, laptop beside him, turns on the sports network, and waits. (“What’s the difference if you find out now or two hours from now or even two weeks from now?” she asks). Of course, it extends longer than the couple of days everyone predicted. And the fan starts to wonder if it is really worth sitting there. He isn’t getting through the Borges as quickly as he should. He really isn’t doing anything but waiting, and it occurs to him, that he doesn’t really need to wait, here in front of the TV. That if he went about his day normally, it really wouldn’t make a difference one way or another. The signing will happen one way or another. The only difference is his current inactivity. Perhaps this occurs to him as he peals his legs off the chair and a quasi-musty smell wafts upward. It’s in thinking about this that we begin to see the symbolic meaning he has given to the signing.

Maybe at one point, because he is reading Borges, the fan tries to imagine that if he dreams it, or concentrates hard enough, it will happen, or he will slip into an alternate universe where it has already happened, where his life has turned around. Or even where the player never left in the first place.

But that seems too pretentious and doesn’t really go anywhere. In fact, none of it really goes anywhere. He still has to deal with the problems of the fan using the bathroom and sleeping and eating. Obviously the fan has to get up to do those things, and doesn’t that undermine the whole image of him feeling stuck in the chair and wondering whether to get up or not? Undermines the feeling of immobility while waiting for something to happen? If the fan gets up to pee and get food and sleep and go to class (since he is a graduate student) where he interacts with other people, he really isn’t immobile is he? He could pretend to be sick for his classes, but it doesn’t solve the other problems. The biggest of which is that the story doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

A week later he thinks of an ending. After drifting off to sleep, imagining a Borgesian alternate dimension, the fan wakes up to find the player has signed with another, mid-level team. It is a big letdown in the end. But by this point, the story seems to have no teeth. No excitement. Nothing. Certainly no reason to write it.

Finally, a vague sense of guilt prompts him to write about thinking about the story.