The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [38]
A few trainers resided with us at the team hotel, stationed there in case of emergencies like mine. They provided me with enough Imodium to pave a driveway, but it had no effect. After chugging the bottle, I informed them my situation wasn’t improving, and they said I’d have to hold strong until the next day when I could see the team doctor.
“I have to come into camp and see him?”
“Yes.”
“What if I crap my pants in the van before I get to camp?”
“We don’t recommend you do that.”
“But it’s like clockwork, every seven minutes Godzilla attacks my ass and—”
“You’re going to have to come in. There’s nothing else we can do for you. You’ll have to hold it. Sorry.”
“How am I going to sleep tonight?”
“It should calm down once it expels everything out of your system. Just make sure you keep drinking water.”
“But what if it doesn’t calm down?”
“It should. Keep taking your meds; keep drinking water.”
I kept drinking fluids like the trainers told me to, but things didn’t slow up. The fluid only served to turn solid expulsions into watery ones. When Larry came in later that night, he asked what was wrong with me. I told him I contracted an extremely rare, highly contagious disease and stage one was explosive diarrhea.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you did [spit],” Larry said.
I was lying on the mattress in the living room/kitchenette like our last conversation. This time I was wearing only a bath towel. My hair was wet and matted to my head, still wet from my last trip to the shower/toilet. I didn’t bother to change back into a full outfit in between trips because I’d only take it off again the next time the horses rounded the track. I used the towel as a kilt and covered my shoulders with a blanket.
Larry was again standing in the doorway, fellow hotel-room-bound players walking by and peeking in. I knew more of them by this point in the camp, some waved, others flicked me off—both can mean hello in the world of minor league baseball.
“No. I’m serious,” I said. “In stage two, your wiener swells and gets all lumpy, like a chewed wad of bubble gum dipped in nerds. In stage three, it falls off. Like in those pictures they showed us at the drugs, sex, and conduct meeting.” It was one of several mandatory meetings we have in spring training and by far the most memorable. Because Professional Baseball is one of those job titles that attracts women of a certain make, ones we commonly refer to as beef or cleat chasers, the opportunity to get into some sexually related trouble is much higher. You don’t know where some of these eager ladies have been. Since men are visually stimulated, the speaker used some of the nastiest visuals imaginable. If you weren’t sick before you entered the lecture, you would be once you left. Hell, you might join a monastery.
“Good thing you don’t use it for anything [spit],” Larry said.
“That may be true, but I’d still like to keep it around for sentimental reasons. We’ve had a lot of good times together.”
“Jesus-age, man, this place smells like a sewer.” Larry let the door shut as he walked around the room trying to find a spot that didn’t reek. There wasn’t one.
“You’re one to talk. I endure this from you on a regular basis.”
“Mine smells more like jerky; yours is straight asshole.”
“I can’t help it, I got food poisoning or a virus or a curse or something. I might crap a plague of locusts next, at the rate I’m going.”
“Well what am I going to do? What if I gotta shit too? [spit]”
“I don’t think there’s even any toilet paper left.”
“I’ll just go down to the one in the lobby then, I guess.”
“I hope you blow up that toilet like you do here. Don’t flush it. Leave it for some poor sap to stumble on. You’re good at that.”
“At least I’m consistent [spit].”
My stomach started to rumble. “Here we go again; it’s like clockwork man.” I got up and scampered into the bathroom with my legs pressed together, slamming the door behind me. If you were standing outside, you would have heard the toilet seat of my throne come up, me sit