Now Batting for Boston: More Stories by J. G. Hayes Read online

  Acclaim for

  Now Batting for Boston:

  More Stories by J. G. Hayes

  “Now Batting for Boston: More Stories by J. G. Hayes captures boyhood sexual awakening in all its confusing, frightening, and tender aspects. Hayes tells of boys in transition, coming to terms with unexpected attractions to other boys, against the backdrop of famously rough Irish immigrant South Boston, itself in transition to a gentrified neighborhood. Hayes’s characters—like a blunt blue-collar kid spinning his cautionary tale about coming to terms with who he is through a suicide attempt, and a sensitive young housepainter whose budding sexuality is inextricably tied to his creative yearnings to be an architect— will win the affections of many LGBT readers who know these stories in their hearts. Hayes frequently spins his tales beginning with an enticing mysteriousness that ends in surprising and gratifying ways. He embraces his Irish literary heritage in the rich detail and dialects that he employs, combining them with a cinematic quality that creates a uniquely American voice. In Now Batting for Boston Hayes is batting a thousand.”

  James A. Lopata Editor,

  In Newsweekly.

  New England’s largest gay,

  lesbian, bisexual, and transgender newspaper

  “Hayes’s stories show us a variety of perspectives in tension: between working-class ‘Southie’ and gentrified South Boston, between youth and maturity, between heterosexist assumptions about masculinity and gay male sensibility, between watching and being watched. While each story plays out these tensions differently, aligning its characters in sometimes unexpected ways, each story also brings along a thread from another—maybe a workman’s ladder, or a friend named Sully, or the color of blue eyes and skies—which weaves all of the stories, like the characters, together despite their differences. And in all of the stories we also see the hint of Possibilities’: the imagination which might just, now and then, take flight and escape expectations. Now Batting for Boston is a collection of stories that is, at heart, about the power of storytelling as a vehicle for hope and transformation.”

  Kathryn Conrad

  Author of Locked in the Family Cell:

  Gender, Sexuality, and Political

  Agency in Irish National Discourse

  NOTES FOR PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIANS

  AND LIBRARY USERS

  This book is published by Southern Tier Editions, Harrington Park Press®, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.

  CONSERVATION AND PRESERVATION NOTES

  All books published by The Haworth Press, Inc. and its imprints are printed on certified pH neutral, acid-free book grade paper. This paper meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Material, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

  Now Batting for Boston

  More Stories by J. G. Hayes

  HARRINGTON PARK PRESS

  Southern Tier Editions

  Gay Men’s Fiction

  Jay Quinn, Executive Editor

  Elf Child by David M. Pierce

  Huddle by Dan Boyle

  The Man Pilot by James W. Ridout IV

  Shadows of the Night: Queer Tales of the Uncanny and Unusual edited by Greg Herren

  Van Allen’s Ecstasy by Jim Tushinski

  Beyond the Wind by Rob N. Hood

  The Handsomest Man in the World by David Leddick

  The Song of a Manchild by Durrell Owens

  The Ice Sculptures: A Novel of Hollywood by Michael D. Craig

  Between the Palms: A Collection of Gay Travel Erotica edited by Michael T. Luongo

  Aura by Gary Glickman

  Love Under Foot: An Erotic Celebration of Feet edited by Greg Wharton and M. Christian

  The Tenth Man by E. William Podojil

  Upon a Midnight Clear: Queer Christmas Tales edited by Greg Herren

  Dryland’s End by Felice Picano

  Whose Eye Is on Which Sparrow? by Robert Taylor

  Deep Water: A Sailor’s Passage by E. M. Kahn

  The Boys in the Brownstone by Kevin Scott

  The Best of Both Worlds: Bisexual Erotica edited by Sage Vivant and M. Christian

  Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco, 1970-1982 by Jack Fritscher

  Confessions of a Male Nurse by Richard S. Ferri

  The Millionaire of Love by David Leddick

  Transgender Erotica: Trans Figures edited by M. Christian

  Skip Macalester by J. E. Robinson

  Chemistry by Lewis DeSimone

  Friends, Lovers, and Roses by Vernon Clay

  Beyond Machu by William Maltese

  Virginia Bedfellows by Gavin Morris

  Now Batting for Boston: More Stories by J, G. Hayes by J. G. Hayes

  Now Batting for Boston

  More Stories by J.G. Hayes

  J. G. Hayes

  Southern Tier Editions™

  Harrington Park Press®

  An Imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.

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  Published by

  Southern Tier Editions™, Harrington Park Press®, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.,

  10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580.

  © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover photos of the late Franky Hayes and his son, author J. G. Hayes, both at the age of eighteen.

  Cover design by Lora Wiggins.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hayes, J. G. (Joseph George), 1965-

  Now batting for Boston : more stories by J.G. Hayes /J.G. Hayes, p. ; cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56023-522-4

  ISBN-10: 1-56023-522-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. South Boston (Boston, Mass.)—Fiction. 2. Irish American families—Fiction. 3. Working class families — Fiction. 4. Catholics—Fiction. 5. Gay youth—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A93N69 2005

  813’.6—dc22 2005001147

  To Vonn, and Davey, and my mother

  CONTENTS

  Preface ix

  Acknowledgments xi

  Now Batting For Boston … 1

  Once on Christmas Eve 14

  There Is a Balm in Gilead 17

  You’re Always Happy When You’re Rich 36

  Lughead 75

  The Golden Apples of the Sun 105

  The West Broadway Academy of Martial Arts 120

  Terry-Love: One Good Thing 138

  Table of Contents

  PreFace

  Acknowledgments

  Now Batting For Boston …

  Once on Christmas Eve

  There Is a Balm in Gilead

  You’re Always Happy When You’re Rich

  Lughead

  The Golden Apples of the Sun

  The West Bro
adway Academy of Martial Arts

  Terry-Love: One Good Thing

  PreFace

  One reviewer of my book This Thing Called Courage: South Boston Stories (2002) called the collection “often bleak but always moving.” That “B” word gave me pause, for ostensibly if there were one thing I should like to impart to readers, it is hope. Going through the stories after that assessment, I did find that many of the characters suffered untimely demises, and I wondered if I had unintentionally added to the still prevalent bromide, if they’re gay they have to die. My conclusion is that this was coincidental: In a five-year period, over 350 young men had died in South Boston due to a variety of causes—alcohol and drug overdose, violence, and suicide. To have portrayed otherwise in my stories would have been a disservice to the reality of an often bleak situation. Above and beyond telling stories that I felt needed to be told, my intention, if I am pressed to confess to one, would have been to highlight the ill effects of the violence caused by homophobia, whether it comes from family, peers, church, school, media, advertising, or consumerist/corporate culture. Although these new stories were written at the same time as the tales in the previous collection, some, hopefully, are less bleak. In many ways, we author our own futures, regardless of whether we know it; if we have learned one thing, it is how to survive. Perhaps now it’s time to live. Here’s to getting the guy in the end, especially if we find the one we have been searching for all along is a recovered, empowered self.

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to express his appreciation to all who made this second collection of short stories possible. So many people are involved in this process that some are inevitably unmentioned; I would like to acknowledge these people first. Numerous people, from Wales to New South Wales, from South Africa to South Boston, wrote to me following the publication of This Thing Called Courage: South Boston Stones, and their words of encouragement will never be forgotten. Among this group I would like to acknowledge Bron Bateman, Tom O’Leary, Grady Harp, Jim Cooper, Jonathan Cassie, Jamie O’Neill (of brilliant At Swim Two Boys fame), and especially W. Perry Barton, whose initial contact has led to a deep and abiding friendship and a source of continual support. Paul and Warren of We Think the World of You bookstore, and John Mitzel of Calamus Books have been unflagging supporters of my work, as have been Jay Quinn, Bill Palmer, and Bill Cohen; my appreciation cannot be adequately expressed in words. The Honorable Dermot Meagher has been a one-man publicity department, as well as a source of encouragement, love, and friendship. Tom Lee, Vonn Moore, and Dave Sullivan contributed in ways too numerous to mention, but suffice it to say that on many occasions the writing process would have slid to a halt were it not for them. That goes as well for my family, and also, especially, to Davey in Ann Arbor. I am in the unfamiliar position of being rendered wordless at how much your support and love have meant to me. Ditto for the Great Creator, the source of all big C and little c creation.

  Now Batting For Boston …

  When what was left of my father slid back from World War II, his mangled body and frazzled mind lay wrapped in gauze below decks on a vast Navy hospital ship. The USS Salem steamed ponderously from New Guinea to San Francisco Bay, protected by a veritable barnyard of watchful mother hens with attitude: destroyers, battleships, antiaircraft cruisers, and PT boats. The voyage took forty-two queasy days. My father was labeled 100 percent disabled because of what had happened to him.

  Dad, what happened to you? What happened to you over there in the war?

  On the trip home, Dad said later, so many men on his ship ended their physical suffering, or forestalled post-traumatic stress syndrome, by jumping to their screaming deaths into the Pacific, that all still-living patients were shot up with morphine so they’d sleep until they reached America. Presumably, everything would be okay once they reached home.

  I got hurt.

  When he reached California, my father had two years in a VA hospital bed to contemplate what he would do with his life, now that his life as he had known it seemed over.

  He was twenty years old.

  He went over the options in his head:

  He could spend the rest of his life in VA hospitals (this was the course his doctors recommended); or he could return to civilian life, living on the small but lifelong pension 100 percent disabled veterans were entitled to; but what then? The Depression had hit when he was in the sixth grade, and his spouseless mother had yanked him out of school, he being the oldest, to support the rest of the family by mopping floors nights at the Waldorf Diner. He had no education, no skills. The GI Bill provided education for returning vets, but his lingering malaria and dengue fever gave him all the physical symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome, making daily interactions difficult.

  He was not encouraged to further his education. Those were not times when those perceived to be other-abled were welcomed—or in most cases even allowed—to dip into the largesse of post-World War II American society and its institutions.

  But how, Dad? How? Do you got any medals? Were you a hero? Did you shoot anybody?

  Baseball was no longer an option for my father. Until the war, it had been the only one. In fact, Dad had been signed to a minor league contract by the Boston Braves, which seemed at the time not only the culmination of a lifelong dream, but a ticket to Life itself, in all its shining promise. But two months after being signed he was drafted into the Army, and fourteen months after that he—or more accurately someone who had once been him—was on his way home on a hospital ship, his body burned and filleted with knife wounds, his nervous system shredded by malaria, dengue fever, and trauma.

  When he was able to sit up in a wheelchair, my father would ask the pretty nurse to push him to the fourth-floor window of the VA hospital in San Francisco. There he would sit for hours and gaze at Life beyond the hospital grounds. Life with all its postwar rush, its hope of forgetfulness and reward, its promise of prosperity. Life seemed a river that did not stop at that particular VA hospital. And my father would sit there and gaze at it rushing by.

  A hero? Naw, I wasn’t no hero. How did I get hurt? Well… maybe when you kids are older—

  It was the lights that finally got to him, he would tell us later. The lights of San Francisco at night. They reminded him of the Christmases he’d never known as a child, but had always dreamed of. Somewhere out there amid all that light, he thought, there was Something for him. Someone, maybe. So he abandoned the life of the hospital pensioner, although most said he shouldn’t. In fact he was discharged AMA. Against Medical Advice. He left on Christmas Eve, when the city of San Francisco seemed ablaze with light.

  And so my father returned at last to South Boston, with its odd gravitational pull, which, if it doesn’t get the body, always seems to get the mind. He found pity there in his hometown, and sympathy, and free drinks at the Disabled American Veterans post, but little else. The baseball fields of his youth seemed like graveyards now, overflowing with all his rotting dreams, and these fields he’d avoid if he could, or hobble by quickly with his head down if he couldn’t. His life felt empty. Something (possibly all things) was missing. And so he found himself one night at the Shrine to Saint Anthony, behind the gothic neighborhood church that once had been his own.

  Dad, c’mon. We’re older now. You can tell us. What happened to you?

  There were two things they’d said about Franky Hayes in his prewar youth: that he was one of the nicest-looking guys in Southie, and that he was its greatest ballplayer. Scarred, limping, spastic and shattered, he would not parade these two ghosts in front of his old twelve o’clock-Mass congregation. There were already enough unseen spirits—the hundreds who wouldn’t be coming home. But just outside this church, to the rear, tucked in a half-forgotten, tree-shrouded corner, was a shrine to Saint Anthony. A six-foot marble statue of the saint, holding the infant Jesus, sat in the midst of roses and lilies lovingly tended twice weekly by rosary-garbling ancient women. You could almost shovel the anguish there, Dad said; the ai
r was that thick with it, the hope, the faith, the joy of a prayer answered, the grief of WE-REGRET-TO-INFORM-YOU telegrams carefully peeled open with callused hands and dirty fingernails under the sympathetic scent of lilies and roses. And there, one desperate midnight, my father presented his petition to the patron saint of lost things.

  We were the first battalion on New Guinea. The machine-gun nests were killing us; we were dropping like flies. Jimmy Kiley was right next to me when … never mind. It was our job to find out the location of those nests, and radio them back to the battleships.

  My father, other-abled and shattered as he was, dared to pray for a helper that night at the shrine—a mate, someone he could share his life with. He vowed that should his prayer be answered, this woman would not be old before her time. She would be his queen, and, disabled as he was, he would treat her with all the love, help, and devotion he could.

  Within a month my father met my mother, on a blind date that both of them tried to wrangle out of at the last minute. They eloped within two months, my suburban mother guessing, rightly, that this still handsome but uneducated, unskilled fast-talker would never be good enough for her upward-bound middle-class family. Within a year she was back at her family’s suburban domicile, under virtual house arrest, with a golden-haired, brown-eyed daughter. Her parents tried to get the marriage annulled. Somehow my father got hold of a priest’s cassock and collar. He dressed his best friend Pinky McGill in them, then sent him to my mother’s people’s God-fearing house, where the most casual utterance of any priest was thought to have fallen from the lips of The Almighty Himself.