This is not a joke. This is no laughing matter. It’s not intended to be funny or perhaps even humorous. I’m serious in everything that I’m saying right now. You need to believe me. This is not a joke. I wouldn’t tell a joke. I couldn’t do such a thing because I’m not funny. Humor evades me like the pitched baseball that evaded my bat when I played in the Little Leagues. For the Tigers. We lost every game, and it was all my fault. I was bad, even for a seven-year-old. I was the worst on the team. It keeps me up at night sometimes. My wife slams the door, and the sound ricochets across the room like the crash of a plastic, child-sized bat. I feel the tough soles of my shoes like the leather of my glove. I couldn’t catch. Sometimes I didn’t even want to anymore, y’know, because they were so hard on me. I was seven years old. My mom told me I could make the Big Leagues. At times I really wanted to believe her, y’know. Imagine I proved them all wrong. Imagine I not only caught the ball but became the catch. They’d love me. They’d admire me. They’d respect me more than they usually do, which would be nice. Bare minimum. I’ve always really liked baseball, but I just haven’t been good at it. I didn’t want to play any other sports. I didn’t then, and I don’t all these years later. Soccer? Strange. Basketball? Augmented and twisted. Bowling? A potential option, but I couldn’t be a bowler. I don’t own a bowler hat. Or the right shoes.
For a bit, I considered ballet, but didn’t know if I could take the pressure of it all. I was so lost. I still am. My wife says I couldn’t make the Big Leagues even if I tried. I love her, but she’s distant. She’s always in the window, always looking at her computer with a watery gaze yet untouchable emotion beyond her eyes. I fear and fear for her. I love her. I think she still thinks of Thomas — an old friend of mine — in ways that I don’t even wish to imagine. It upsets me, but I wish for her happiness. I wish for our happiness together, but her mind is so far in the distance, and mine is simply trailing, simply chasing behind. Thomas could catch a baseball. Thomas could pitch.
He was the captain of the Tigers Little League team. At times, I think I loved him too, in ways I shouldn’t have. He was so close, closer than any friend I’d had before. But I was seven and I didn’t know anything. He was eight and three-quarters; his birthday was at the end of the summer. Maybe that’s why he was so good at baseball. Because he was older. But as I got older, I never got any better at baseball, and I wished to be more like Thomas. I wished to spend more time with him, wished I could be with him always. Be him, be with him. Confusing. We’d talk of a future sometimes. He’d have a baseball field in the backyard. I’d have an apple tree.
We’d have wives, we’d have families, but it’d always be us. Always be Thomas and me, me and Thomas. Sometimes I think I still love him. Did I love him at all? I couldn’t admit it then, I struggle even now. But she wanted him more, though she claimed to want me. Wanted the fantasy of the baseball field and the apple tree, but with Thomas. It makes me sick. More sad than anything. I weep. Cry in the window. Clutch my heart like a baseball and drag the tears away on my shirt. But I write this to you, I write this to Thomas, in case you ever read this. I’d still love the dream we had. I still love you. I think about this often. This is not a joke. This is no laughing matter. It’s not intended to be funny or perhaps even humorous. I’m serious in everything I’m saying right now. I love you and I hope you see this soon.
