COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #5

HARD TO WRITE ABOUT SUCH INFLEXIBLE SOFTNESS. A SUSPENDED STORY, UNRESOLVED

A ballplayer's impotence was to be kept secret, off the record. All the sports writers were in the know, but their sportsmanship of fair play kept their computers silent on this embarrassing subject. The ballplayer was well liked and respected. No journalist would break this benevolent conspiracy of silence about the ballplayer's chronic curse: the inability to get it up, not just keep it up, despite women's frantic but silkily sexy maneuvers to remedy his stubborn condition. Even women who were sex therapists tried their hand, but still, the ballplayer's shrunken bat never attained the requisite size to hit a line drive.

Medical science was put to the test--or testicle. Nothing worked. The ballplayer was a good fielder, a good hitter, a valuable member of a competing team. But gossip columns were silent about this eligible bachelor's non-linkage with the prominent or not name of any girlfriend.

An aspiring young sportswriter was about to be fired for writing not only dull but uninteresting articles covering the local team that the impotent ballplayer happened to be on. This desperate sportswriter's only chance of saving his job was to betray the unlucky ballplayer's sacred secret, thus breaking the code of silence that his colleague journalists had loyally held to. All the other journalists would jump in once the iron curtain was broken, like a snapped condom that allows sperm to rush through unhesitatingly, in a merry stampede that tramples the holding-back philosophy in riotous frenzy to give the sweet id something to pin a celebration on.

The ballplayer's shame would become common knowledge not just to the baseball community but to the vulgar celebrity world beyond, giving the public a new victim to play with while dangling merciful compassion before the bloodshot squints of his eyes.

The young sportswriter about to be fired would suffer contempt for breaking rank with his colleagues, but not ostracized from the hard-won journalistic profession. He and his wife were poor and expecting twins. Losing his job would be a sheer drop into poverty, as well as ambition assassination. His editor had dangled temptation that had irresistibility prominently embossed on it.

This story's writer ran out of potency to forge an ending. His typing fingers are all mushy soft, in low-pressured droop. He couldn't keep it up. But unlike the ballplayer, at least he was able stiffly to start what failed to be sustained to a spell-binding orgiastic length that keeps children hammered out with the bat to counter the spin the world puts on every wickedly pitched ball from its bag of mixed tricks. That's how the spinning world turns, challenging men's bats to keep it afloat with children batted out hard in collision with battered wombs.

Marvin Cohen is the author of several books including Baseball The Beautiful (1974) and a former creative writing teacher at the New School. Marvin plays first base for Softball For The Love Of It.