Chapter 7:

Good Times With Sports

Letter From Yokohama


Bathroom time first, though! Lucille led the way, navigating through the crowd, the beat and colors rolling off of her. A gesture from Regina reminded Lucille that the first stop was actually paying off her tab. Money that probably could’ve gone to paying off her loans changed hands with the bartender, but loans didn’t exist at the moment. And they say everything in moderation, including moderation.

Bathroom time next, then! Lucille led the way, finally finding the hallway that led to the womens’ bathroom. Fortunately, she didn’t have to go all that bad, so she patiently waited, I know you need me, I can feel it, I’m a beast I’m an animal…wait, those were the just the lyrics of the song blasting through the club at the moment. Lucille rubbed her face and pinched the bridge of her nose, because fifteen drinks in quick succession don’t make their full power apparent right away. In terms of drunkenness, Lucille probably only felt up to drink ten at that moment, and that was enough to make the whole hallway spin.

But then she was in the bathroom. Talk about a Holy Land. There were only a couple of girls still ahead of her in the line, waiting for the two people to finish in the stalls. Another person currently washed their hands - good for them. It was important to stop the spread.

The two girls next to her were captivated by a social media post on one of their phones. “Steelers catching the Bengals?” one of them asked incredulously. “Not a chance Pickett does better than Burrow.”

Lucille rubbed her head, recognizing some of those words. “Pickett? Who’s that?”

The beauty of alcohol was that it enabled people to have random conversations with strangers in a dingy bathroom. “Kenny Pickett," the girl with the phone answered. "He’s the quarterback for the Steelers.”

That threw Lucille for a loop. “But…what happened to Big Ben?”

“Roethlisberger?” the girl asked. “He retired last year.”

Lucille brought her palms to her face and cupped her cheeks. “Retired…wow, that’s something. I remember watching him play as a kid. How about Philip Rivers? Did the San Diego Chargers win something for once?”

The girl laughed. “You should know the answer to that already - they’re the Chargers.”

The other girl spoke up. “They also moved to Los Angeles.”

Lucille scratched her head. “San Diego doesn’t have a team anymore?”

The girls shook their heads. “And neither does St. Louis.”

“...wow,” Lucille answered, not expecting two entire cities to lose their whole teams, not expecting two larger-than-life figures from her childhood to be gone from the league. It’s funny how it worked - Lucille hadn’t thought about them in forever, but at the current moment, they seemed so important to her. She scratched her head even harder. “What about Joe Flacco? He still terrorizing the league with his deep ball pass interference bullshit?”

“He’s washed,” the other girl answered. “Just a third-stringer.”

“Oh…that’s a little sad.” Lucille rubbed her chin. “How about Carson Palmer? He used to sling it for those Bengals teams.”

“...who?” the girl asked. “Burrow is the QB for the Bengals now.”

“...who?” Lucille could only answer in response. She rubbed her face. It was at this point that Lucille realized that she was dealing with kids in college. She was no longer in college. If anybody was washed, it was currently her at the moment.

Lucille tried to prevent her childhood from slipping away from her even more. “Okay, okay, what about Ochocinco? Does this Burrow guy throw to him?”

The two girls looked at each other. “Are you just making up names?”

“Making up…Chad Ochocinco! He’s the best ever! Well, maybe not as good as Megatron…you guys know who Megatron is, right?”

The girls shook their heads.

“Revis Island?”

Another shake of their heads.

Regina put her a calming hand on Lucille’s shoulder, but it barely made an impact. Lucille could physically feel the loss of innocence, the loss of childhood, right here in this very moment. She graduated from college, she would have to go to work, kids these days wouldn’t get to do donuts in a frozen parking lot, they would never watch the titans of her childhood play on the big screen. Time was slipping away. Life was slipping away. Lucille struggled to hang on.

“O-okay, I got one you know for sure,” she finally said, keeping herself upright by placing a hand on the bathroom wall. “Who’s better - Brady or Manning?”

One of the girls guffawed. “Dude, Mahomes is better than Manning. And Manning’s been retired for like five years now. Both Mannings are retired now. And Brady’s done, too.”

“Done? I’m not that out of the loop,” she added, perhaps a little forcefully. “I still know a little about the league. He won that ring a few years ago and I heard he’s gonna play for the Raiders.” She saw the empty looks on their faces. She thought her heart was going to explode. “What? Did something happen?”

Realizing Regina was her friend, the girls kept quiet, letting her do the honors. Lucille looked desperately at her, but Regina's impassive face revealed nothing.

She spoke slowly and deliberately. “My friend, Brady…Brady retired a few months ago. He’s out of the league, for good this time.”

Lucille stared blankly at her. Then, ever so slowly, with trembling fingers, she removed the Party Like It’s 2000 glasses from her face. The beat from outside the bathroom was barely audible, little more than a muffle; all the air had been drained away from the claustrophobic tight space of the bathroom.

Lucille spoke to no one in particular. “Anybody who does not recognize the name Adam ‘Pac-Man’ Jones…leave this bathroom immediately.”

The person washing her hands left first. Then the girl with the phone and her friend followed her out the door as well. The stalls flushed and then emptied without their former occupants even stopping at the sink first before leaving. Only Lucille and Regina remained in the tiny space as the large door shut behind the last person.

The second the door closed, Lucille let out a long sigh. Then she wound up and kicked the door to one of the stalls with everything she had in her.

“WHAT THE FUCK!”

“Hey, c’mon,” Regina called out as Lucille kicked the stall a few more times. Fortunately, before any property damage could be done, the sudden explosion of motion and emotion created a sudden commotion in Lucille’s stomach. Drinks one through five rushed to the surface; she hastily slipped inside the stall and tossed her cookies, inadvertent tears dripping down into the toilet alongside them.

When drink five finally came out, Lucille wiped her mouth and sat down next to the toilet on the floor. The door to the stall remained closed, so she spoke to Regina through it. “Brady was supposed to play forever…for ten years, at least!”

“He got old,” Regina simply said on the other side of the door, her voice slightly muffled.

“We got old!” Lucille made the all-too-familiar motion of hugging her knees. “When did we get old? How did that happen?”

“It’s called growing up,” Regina said, the hint of an edge appearing in her voice. “C’mon, let’s get out of here-”

Drinks six through eight now made their triumphant return into the toilet. Lucille spat out a few times then collapsed backwards, resting against the side of the stall.

“It’s not fair…I’m an adult here…I had to be born here…”

“For God’s sake, grow up!” Regina yelled. Sharp noise echoed around the stall as she banged her fist on the door. “Your Japan-anime-manga dreamworld isn’t real! You’re twenty-two, grow up!”

“Of course it’s not real, that’s the problem,” Lucille answered. The lone lightbulb in the bathroom swirled above her; the entire world seemed to spin. “I realized today that it’s not real. It’s just an idealized version in my head. Just a dreamworld. Japan’s not this super-duper amazing country. It’s just a country, like any other, and it has to deal with some of the same problems we do. It even has its own problems. And sure, it looks cool and all…but simply moving there, or even having been born there in the first place, wouldn’t solve the issues in my life.”

Heat rushed to her face; her stomach jumped around. “My issue would follow me wherever I go. I wouldn’t magically feel better about myself just by moving to Japan. I’d always feel like something is missing, no matter where I am. But you know what?”

She slammed her own hand on the floor, sending up a splash of water. “It’s not my fault! Why did we have to be born in a time like this? Why couldn’t we have been born twenty or forty years earlier? Why did we have to be born at the end of the world? It’s this time period, Regina. When we were born, the game was already rigged from the start. Our only chance of being happy is just tricking ourselves into feeling that way. Making up dreamworlds.”

With all that bitterness rising up in her, she had to direct it somewhere. “And don’t go telling me about growing up. You haven’t grown up at all. You have your own dreamworld, too.”

“And what dreamworld is that?” Regina asked impatiently.

“Every single day for the past four years, you got high. Twice a day, most of the time. That’s your dreamworld. You’re more disconnected from reality than I am.” Lucille crossed her arms. “That, and your memories of high school. You always say ‘oh, we have good things here, too’ but that’s because you actively ignore the bad. High school isn’t some magical Holy Land, either. Remember when you got egged? Remember when the Reginamobile got keyed?”

No sound came through the door for a long while. “I don’t actively ignore that,” Regina finally answered, her voice far more quiet than usual.

“Yes you do! You get high and escape to your dreamworld and think about the good old days while completely ignoring the life in front of you. The difference between you and me is that I’m going to die after living an unsatisfied life, while you’re going to die after not living at all.”

“I’m living,” Regina corrected sharply.

“Then name a single thing you did these past four years that didn’t involve a television. Name a single thing.”

Half of Lucille’s pants were soaked from the puddle on the floor now, but she was too far gone to even notice. She waited for Regina’s answer, but the only sound in that bathroom for the next minute was just the droning of the lightbulb.

“...you know what the real difference between you and me is?” Regina asked. She now sounded exhausted. “It’s that I don’t go making people feel bad to make myself feel better. You don’t keep feeling shitty to yourself, you spread it around. Not tipping people, snapping at me. You use people as a whipping boy. Maybe you should try keeping your self-hatred to yourself next time. We don't all feel that way and you shouldn't try to make us feel like you do.”

“The only reason you don’t hate yourself is because you don’t feel anything.”

“Well, I hate you.”

Lucille frowned. Even more heat rushed to her face. “So that’s how it is, huh? That’s how it always is…” She sniffled and rubbed her eyes. “I won’t ever be able to afford a house…I won’t ever be able to afford having kids…I won’t ever be able to write like Annie Dillard…and Shinkai can’t just make a straight slice of life movie, he always has to include some fantasy shit in it…”

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” The door to the bathroom opened; Regina’s voice sounded distant now. “Get yourself home tonight. I’m gonna go burn.”

The door closed. Lucille’s face boiled so hot that drinks nine and ten came rushing out, adding to the mixture on the floor. She kept sniffling and wiped her face. She knew she had to get up eventually, but she just wanted to wipe her eyes a little longer first.

“God, I really am the worst…I’m just like the Chargers.”

Vforest
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