Our Different Beat

In college I golfed 4 or 5 times a week, which helped me cope with my bad grades and downward spiral into drugs and alcohol and friendlessness and financial woes. Well, it probably didn’t help with the financial woes. But I definitely did less damage to my liver while I was golfing, and there was one guy who talked to me. His name was Pete, and while I don’t generally name people on this blog, Pete was 92 years old at the time, and that time was 1992. If Pete’s still alive, I’m sure he’s stopped checking email.

But, Pete, if you do happen to be ego-surfing and come across this post, I have no qualms in sharing with the world that you were an old dirty bastard.

You didn’t seem so filthy when we first met, me standing on hole #10, cause I always liked starting on the back 9, which had a wide open fairway and allowed me to become known by Carla, the club Pro’s daughter as ‘that weird kid who always giggles when he asks if he can do the back nine.’ You remember Carla, Pete, because after I found out how depraved you were, I shared my fascination with her with you, and found out that you shared it, too, and we were like best friends from that day onward, even though you never got my name right and in fact thought that I was a girl the first few times we played. I stopped wearing shorts on the golf course during those days, cause you just freaked me the hell out, old man. I still don’t believe you that girls in your day went natural in Nebraska, though I’ve no doubt you were a hirsute fetishist. But Pete, I’m telling you, I wasn’t a girl.

I was laughing at you because you always used a Big Bertha driver on every single shot until you reached the green, because you were so damned little and weak. You laughed, too, until you heard what I was actually saying, and that’s the first time you took a swing at me with that Big Bertha. Thank god your vision was so bad, cause you were like 20 feet away when you swung. Still, you thought you had hit me, and apologized until you were weeping, and that was just flat out bizarre. I never knew much about old people, cause most of the old people in my life had died long ago. I didn’t know how much they were given to tears. You taught me that, Pete, but I’m not sure if I should thank you for that lesson, because it kind of affears me.

And that’s when Carla drove by with the club car and asked us if we wanted something to drink, and when she drove off, I gazed after her longingly, and shared my secret with you: that I only golfed because I wanted the chance to say hi to that girl. And while I was telling you this, I saw your lips moving, and I stepped closer because it seemed like you were saying something. And you were. And it was about Carla. And young or old, it was about the filthiest thing I ever heard a man say.

The noble thing to do would have been to knock you on your ass, but the last time I tried to stand up for the honor of a girl, I got my own ass beat, and that’s how I learned that girls can stand up for themselves much better than guys can stand up for them. At least as far as I was concerned.

So I smiled, instead. And you tried to encourage me to talk with her, and you even gave me a few sample pick-up lines, most of which are now outlawed due to recent ‘violence against animals’ legislation. Still, you didn’t give up on me, even though I had no self-esteem in those days. You told me I was amusing and a good conversationalist and not too terribly funny looking for a girl. I was so lonely back then that I damn near fell in love with you, old man.