FRESH YARN presents: Is Boss Hog Really the Boss?... by Scott Nankivel

FRESH YARN presents:

Is Boss Hog Really the Boss?
By Scott Nankivel

It was early spring and my Broadway Show bowling team, The Lion King, was pitted against You're a Good Man Charlie Brown. They'd just heard their show was going to close and "Lucy" was particularly bitter. After "Snoopy's" fourth consecutive gutter, Lucy told him to go fuck himself, at which point Snoopy grabbed his balls and said, "Bite me, bitch." Fairly poor bowling etiquette for the Peanuts gang, I thought. But, I could empathize with their fears of being jobless or, more pointedly, the fear of never fully realizing your dream. While they wanted to make a living at professional acting, I wanted to become a professional bowler.

When I was sixteen, I had taken a passionate interest in ladies bowling. It filled my mother with pride when I attended her Thursday night league. But I wasn't there out of admiration for my mom's talent; I showed up each week to see Jane Peterson's ass peek out from under her mini-skirt every time she released the ball. It was heaven-sent. Jane was a thirty-five-year-old divorcee who wore a brown tweed skirt and silk panties, which by the middle of the third game rode high into the luxurious crack of her ass and sent me racing into the men's room to unload my adolescent pressure cooker.

Soon I equated bowling with sex. By summer vacation, all I could think about was… "bowling." I desperately needed to get my hands on some bowling. Every hormone in my body pleaded with my mother until she finally agreed to pay my way through an eight week professional bowling camp. As it turned out, bowling camp was no place to get laid. So by the end of camp I actually learned how to bowl and my lust for Jane suddenly took a backseat to the dream of going "pro."

Professional bowling was not a dream shared by many kids in my high school. In fact, no one in my high school shared the dream nor in my small Midwestern city. So by the age of nineteen, the engine was revved and the car was headed away from my hometown of Barnsville, Iowa to the worn streets of New York City, were a kid could hold his head high and say, "Damn it, I bowl and I'm proud." A place where dreams are encouraged and developed. Dreaming in the Midwest was frowned upon, unless it was to be something sensible like a floor manager at Wal-Mart. (Because they wore name tags and ties. Any job with a name tag was respected, but if by the grace of God you had the good fortune to secure a name tag and a tie you were feared.) I wanted more. My plan was to take a year to develop my game, find a sponsor so I could hit the pro circuit and start making a living as a bowler.

Three years into my deteriorating dream and I had yet to secure a sponsor and my skills were slipping because the price of rolling 10 practice games a day was a burden on my pitiful bank account. So when my best friend Ned told me he knew someone who knew someone who had a friend who worked backstage for Phantom of the Opera and they needed a new member for their Broadway show bowling team to replace the old Phantom, I eagerly agreed. My talent was instantly envied and caught the eye of theatre producers who apparently coveted bowling trophies as well as Tonys. So over the next couple years I was ruthlessly bribed onto other teams to help them secure a first place trophy, which in turn helped defray the cost of my daily practice sessions. I was slowly getting back on track and determined to let nothing further delay my taking the PBA by storm.

I felt bad the night Charlie Brown and the gang had been given the pink slip, but that didn't stop me from kicking their ass. After all I was being paid, under the table, to kick their cartoon asses.

After two consecutive strikes in our final game, I was enjoying a roll of Cherry Lifesavers when suddenly, from four lanes away I saw a woman eyeing my roll. She was stunning and made me wonder if Victoria's Secret catalogue was now a Broadway show. I held the Lifesavers out to her with an "offering" gesture. Her eyes lit up, and I had my "in." It's mandatory to get the "in" before making a move because no woman is interested in someone like me entering her personal space without an invitation. The "in" is the unworthy man's ticket to socialize with the genetically blessed. And now, finally, after years of being cold-shouldered in high school by cheerleaders, adorable farm girls or exotic foreign exchange students, I was being allowed a visitor's pass into the secret order of beauty.

After elbowing my way past four lanes of inferior bowlers, I finally reached her. Her name was Sophie. She was gorgeous and I was sweaty. Since moving to Manhattan I had hoped to meet a woman who I could find happiness with and would help ease the emotional strain of my career struggles. And in a perfect world she would have an irreverent personality that could rattle free the armor of my conservative, Midwestern ways, that still lingered with me, so that I might breathe a little more life into my soul -- but that would be gravy.

Sophie delicately took the roll of Lifesavers from my hand with the sexy grace a woman uses to turn the bathtub faucet off with her freshly manicured foot. She tore through the wrapping like it was Christmas morning and devoured not one but five Lifesavers. She sucked and swirled and chewed and sucked some more. Her eyes rolled up into her sockets like a diabetic who hadn't tasted sugar since Menudo broke up.

"Did you know there's a Goddess of Sweetness?" she slobbered.

"You mean someone other than you?" She laughed. I continued. "So, are you in Les Miserables?"

"Yeah, well no, this is the New York show; I just came back from touring it though. I'm a dancer."

"Oh, so there's a show in town and one that --"

"Whoops, my turn," she squealed with a mouth full of liquid Lifesaver and darted off toward the lane.

The way she moved to the ball rack and kicked her leg out on the release was all the proof I needed to believe she was telling the truth about being a dancer. I had to wonder if this was some cruel and twisted April Fool's trick played on me by Ned. No I concluded, Ned had neither the funds to hire an actress nor the energy for tomfoolery.

597 pins later, my evening was over and I had completed seven small conversations with Sophie, the exact number of Lifesavers in a half roll. I was lucky enough to keep her laughing for most of that time, which she seemed to appreciate. But just when I thought she was swept off her feet, she told me she was there to be set up with the legendary actor Tom Wopat, of Dukes of Hazzard fame. I couldn't recall whether he had played Bo Duke or Luke Duke, but it really didn't matter because their acting was equally brilliant. Just remembering the way they yelled, "Yee Haa," as the General flew over a creek from a broken bridge gave me chills. The way they jumped through the window of the General with their tight little jeans it's a wonder I'm not gay. Thank God for Daisy Duke, who slapped me back into heterosexuality every time a sliver of cheek poked out from underneath her signature jean shorts. I'm not sure how many Emmys the show won but I'm certain it wasn't enough.

I packed up my bowling ball and shoes and hung my head in defeat as I headed to the locker. I was hurt, but at the same time, realistic about my expectations when it came to competing with the Duke boy -- after all, he's just a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm. You just can't beat a Duke boy, even if he is a fifty-two-year-old has-been who has spent most of his time doing regional theatre with the guy who played "Schneider" on One Day at a Time. As I was about to walk out the door, I heard Sophie yelling the name "Allen" in my general direction. I looked around to see who she was yelling at but I was the only person in the area. I pointed to myself and she nodded and waved me over. She was standing with Tom Wopat, the very Duke boy himself.

Oh my God, I can't go over there, I'm out of my league. What does she want? Is she going to make me go head-to-head with the Duke boy? Maybe she can't decide who she wants, and she's going to ask us to fight for her. I can't compete with Uncle Jessie, much less one of his nephews. And why would I put my life in jeopardy to win this woman's heart, she doesn't even know my name? And why doesn't she know my name, it was on my bowling shirt all night -- I paid extra to have it embroidered on the pocket for that very reason. I think I'm going to puke.

It was too late for puking; she had run over and was now dragging me to the center of the ring. "I want you to meet my friend Tom," she said with a smile on her face that suggested she was going to have hot, passionate sex with him later that evening and just wanted to make sure I realized that she had used me for my Lifesavers and that no girl who was capable of sleeping with a Duke boy would ever be legitimately interested in a man like me. And funny how she was suddenly "friends" with the Duke boy who she'd met five minutes ago. Strangely enough, I wasn't jealous of him, but of her. I wanted to be old pals with the Duke boy, damn it. I thought, if I could convince the Duke boy to hang out in the bars with me on weekends, then there would be no end to the flow of women in my life. We would live like rock stars. Maybe, we would vacation together in Aspen. Imagine the damage I could do in Aspen with a Duke boy by my side.

"Tom this is Allen, Allen this is Tom."

Every day that I hack my way through this turbulent world I come upon awkward moments but nothing more jarring than being introduced by the wrong name. I couldn't possibly tell him my name was really Scott, because that would lead him to believe she didn't care enough about me to even remember my name, which could really decrease my chances of being invited to Aspen. But then again, what would happen if I was out with friends one night in the same bar he was and I said, "Hey, there's my old pal Tom," and all my friends would say, "Yeah right, like you know one of the Duke boys," and when I got his attention he would yell across the bar to me, "Hey, Allen!"

Before either one of us could say anything out loud, Sophie presented Tom with a series of intellectually probing questions: "Was it difficult getting in and out of the General?" "Did you sleep with Daisy?" "Was Boss Hog really the boss?" Not wanting to put my old pal Tom through the agony of answering -- even though these were the questions I had waited all my life to have answered -- I quickly searched my brain for a witty retort that would let him off the hook. But having been drained of my entire comedic arsenal earlier in the evening, I went for the easy punchline, in hopes of winning one or both of them over.

"You were on Dukes of Hazzard?"

They both enjoyed a good laugh, and my confidence swelled with the idea that I may have won them both over with a mere, sophomoric joke that sixty years ago would have easily had me ejected from my seat at the Algonquin Round Table. But luckily I was in the company of a celebrity, drunk on gin and an anonymous beauty, drunk on celebrity.

The power of the Duke boy's laughter shook the universe of the bowling alley to its foundation, making Sophie instantly shift her focus from him to me. My self-assurance rocketed, my joke tank was replenished and my smile broke free as if I were posing for the cover of Bowlers International. And the intimidating presence of a man who would some year grace the cover of Bowlers International was more than the Duke boy could compete with. After five minutes he stumbled away in a defeated stupor and the beauty queen remained with me. I was filled with a mix of emotions: exhilaration at defeating the Duke boy for the hand of a glorious woman, guilt that it was his laughter that empowered me to defeat him, and finally sadness in knowing that we would never be buddies and never troll the lounge of an Aspen ski lodge for Daisy Dukes.

But for now I had hooked my own Daisy Duke. A Daisy Duke that reached far beyond the Ozark Mountains to the fashion lined streets of the East Side. She was a woman of distinct sophistication that seemed to be ripped hot off the presses of Vogue. Her body, silhouetted in the light of the Coke machine, rippled and curved liked a pin-up girl that hung, still wet, from the canvas of Vargas. Her body moved the way Marilyn Monroe spoke.

We stood in the wake of the Duke boy for another moment; she shifted from heel to heel while I crafted a subtle way to ask her for her number. But before I could make an ass of myself, she took the reins and asked if I would call her sometime. Which seemed to me an even more outrageous question than, "Was Boss Hog really the boss?" Would I call her? I wanted to ask her if she thought there was a guy in here who wouldn't call her -- forgetting that we were surrounded by Broadway chorus boys -- but instead I feigned indifference, as if this type of thing happens to me everyday, and said, "Oh, um, ahh, yeah, sure, me? Are you sure… okay, cool, right on."

She wrote her number on a stray piece of envelope, and before I could finish my pathetic response, had stuffed it securely behind the embroidered name on my pocket. She patted the pocket safely shut, letting her finger linger over the letters like they were Braille. "Call me, Scott," she said with a slight tone of desperation, as if there was a chance in hell I wouldn't. Or maybe her desperation was embarrassment, having just realized that my name was Scott, not Allen. Her finger moved down my belly ending with a poke as she slowly pulled away backwards, turned and left me in my waking dream.

The scrap of envelope came to bed with me that night. I endlessly analyzed every curve of her penmanship, which was nearly illegible. She had the handwriting of a third grader, a broken cursive style that had no consistency of form. One "O" looked completely different from the next and each number "4" had its own distinct tail, which made me wonder how many versions of "4" she had in her. The paper smelled as if it had mixed with many combinations of perfume living at the bottom of her designer purse -- "Prada," a name my pitiful bank account would soon come to know.