This weekend, I should be at Fenway Park.
Really… the three of us should be there, but we’re not.
My best friend in Chicago identifies as a Cubs fan. I’m sympathetic and ask a lot of questions.
Why does Ryan Dempster do that thing with his wrist?
What are the troughs in the men’s room like?
What would you do if you met Bartman?
When will the Cubs win a World Series?
I find teasing him cathartic.
As a girl with best friends that are men, you learn to develop a tough skin and the ability to think on your feet, lest you be buried by the sharp wit and intellect of those around you.
My humor is a crutch and I’m okay with that.
My other best friend lives in Boston and is a Red Sox fan. Our conversations about baseball tend to go a little bit deeper and since we share an alliance, the trips to Fenway are our favorite past time.
We’ve splashed in rain puddles while heckling Travis Snyder. We’ve had helmets of ice cream on warm days. We’ve labored over what T-shirt to buy, and swapped Varitek baseball cards.
Some think platonic relationships between men and women aren’t possible.
To those people I say, if a man can wrestle you to the ground of a rooftop deck over a bottle of wine, there’s no way he would ever sleep with you (nor would you want him to).
Chicago best-friend and Boston best-friend are actually close friends too, and the idea was to convene our annual meeting at Fenway for the Cubs and Red Sox meeting for the first time since 1918 at my beloved ballpark.
We’ve always joked that when the three of us get together, since it’s so rare, the world would end.
Seems fitting for rapture weekend.
Months earlier, I entered my email address into the Red Sox lottery for an opportunity to win the right to purchase the tickets, and somehow I was selected. I checked my work calendar and May seemed like the perfect time to blow some vacation days for a trip to Fenway.
Since money is tight, the Boston best friend offered his futon, which is one of my favorite things about visiting.
Climbing the insanely narrow staircase in his house, which I believe to be the very first constructed after landing at Plymouth Rock, with a giant suitcase is a welcome struggle. If I get a running start I can make it to the top of the stairs without falling over backwards.
Every morning he insists on folding the sheets and blanket and making the futon back into a sofa and I stand back and watch the master at work as he somehow fits all of the sheets and blankets back into the trunk that doubles as a coffee table.
The airfare seemed reasonable, and it seemed that the three of us were destined for the epic weekend we’d been dying for since last year’s visit: where we witnessed the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup on the Jumbotron at US Cellular Field.
But at some point, the plans fell apart.
The Red Sox ticket lottery didn’t go as expected. Though I waited in the virtual waiting room for hours, we never got tickets.
The flight prices spiked because of a rise in fuel costs, making a weekend trip seem impossible for my graduate school budget.
And perhaps the worst part, a friendship that once seemed impenetrable and solid on all fronts is on life-support for reasons that I don’t quit understand.
And then the plans were canceled.
So this weekend, I’ll miss the futon at the top of the narrow staircase, and the little cobblestone streets that I complain about every time I’ve had too much to drink.
And I’ll miss that moment when the Red Sox and Cubs line their respective dugouts in the park that feels like home to me, and I’ll wonder if things could be different or better.
I knew that I’d be disappointed when this weekend arrived, but I guess I underestimated how much it all—baseball, but mostly friendships—really do mean to me.