The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“I party like a rock star, look like a movie star, play like an all star, fuck like a porn star. Baby I’m a superstar.”

A slow, bemused smile creeps across Dupers’ face as he lifts his head from that day’s copy of the Los Angeles Times and glances over at me as I sing along and bop my head in time to the Pitbull song blasting straight into my cranium via the Ipod buds shoved tightly into my ears. Fifteen minutes until the scheduled start of practice and the team bus hasn’t even left the hotel; the most unlikely of suspects is running behind schedule and the natives are getting extremely restless. It’s been a half an hour now; thirty minutes of begging the driver to at least let the bus idle in order to make use of the air conditioning and listening to the guys’ bitching and moaning and surmising about what could be taking Boy Wonder so long and watching Coach Bylsma -or Disco Dan as we all affectionately call him- pacing in front of the open door with his arms crossed over his chest and his mouth set in a firm, agitated line.

Things have been relatively calm and stress free with our new leader at the helm; he runs a tight ship and while he doesn’t take any shit (from anyone, regardless of years in the league or star power) or tolerate any laziness, he doesn’t ride our asses constantly about chatting or joking around while we’re out on the ice (as long as our hockey is first and foremost) and he doesn’t have that same condescending and disgusted air about him that Therrien had polluted our locker room with. And while it’s too early to tell how Disco Dan is going to affect our play in the long run, employee morale has skyrocketed; it’s been rescued from the brink of being flushed straight down and john and we all look forward to coming to the rink now. And we’re starting to win; we’re eager to impress our new coach and to make him and the rest of Pens management, ownership -and our fans- proud of us. The confidence has returned and the tension in the locker room has almost completely dissipated; guys are no longer at each other’s throats and the gossiping and bickering is now nearly nonexistent.

“Always posted at the bar, always with a couple of broads, maybe I’m just that raw. Dawg check your resume, I hit something every day. Ask about me ‘n they say: ‘that chico he run MIA,” I continue, and Dupers chuckles, hooks his index finger around the wire of the right ear bud and gives it a firm tug.

“I swear to God that song was written just for you,” he declares. “Il vous convient parfaitement.”

“My girl likes that song,” I grin, and I wait until Pitbull leads way into old school Metallica before I press the pause button, switch the classic iPod into the hold position and then pluck out the remaining ear bud. “She says it reminds her of me. And she likes me to do the whole ‘fuck like a porn star part’ when we’re…”

“Why does that not surprise me?” he grimaces, as I snatch the ear bud from his hand and wrapping the wires around the music player, slip it into the pocket of my Pens windbreaker. “Something tells me the two of you get up to some seriously dirty, kinky shit. Pauvre petite; you’ve corrupted her.”

“Regardless of what you or anyone else thinks, she’s not as innocent and sweet as she seems. She’s a wild child, Dupers. Elle est une renarde; un sexe total chaton dans son lit. She knows things and asks me to do things that I’ve never, ever had a woman bring up during sex before.”

“Guess Sid is more hardcore and perverted than anyone gives him credit for. Guess she had a really good teacher before you came along.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I growl. “Que voulez-vous dire? Qu’elle est une sorte de pute? That she’s some kind of slut that’s slept with a lot of guys or…”

“Detendez-vous…” Dupers holds his hands up in both surrender and a plea for calm. “You know damn well that that isn’t what I mean. I’d never say something like that about Emma-Leigh. And I certainly don’t think that about her. I was just trying to make a joke. About how Sid…”

“’Cause she’s only been with three guys her entire life,” I angrily inform him, leaving the fourth person -the perverted uncle who deserves to be somewhere rotting in a shallow grave instead of going on with his life as if there’s nothing at all wrong with raping little girls. “Three. And she’s almost twenty. I don’t think three guys is a huge amount, do you? Especially when she married the third one and the tally stops there. There’s girls younger than her that sleep with that in the span of a month. Hell, in the span of a week.”

“I was not saying anything vulgar or disrespectful about your wife,” Dupers insists. “I’d never do something like that. I was just trying to crack a joke about Sid and how he may seem all ‘boy next door, apple pie, walk old ladies across the street’ but he probably has some totally dirty and kinky side to him. ‘Cause if Em’s like that with you…well it’s obvious she learned that kind of thing from someone, right?”

“She probably learned it from reading those stupid fucking Cosmo magazines. Or watching porn. There are some women that are turned on by that shit, you know. Who the fuck knows where she learned it from. But I doubt it was from Sid. Guy’s as fucking granola and vanilla as you can get. She probably schooled him.”

“I think you’re totally underestimating him,” my friend -hell, my mentor when it comes to anything to do with marriage and family- says, and folding his newspaper in half, tucks it into the mesh compartment attached to the back of the seat in front of him. “And whether you like it or not, she was with him before you. And it’s obvious they had sex considering she’d gotten pregnant. I know it burns your ass to think about the two of them together like that, but…”

“It doesn’t burn my ass,” I mutter, and removing my cell phone from the side pocket of my cargo pants, check for any missed calls or text and voice messages. “Why would it burn my ass? She had a life before me. It’s none of my business what she did before we hooked up. Doesn’t matter to me that she was fucking Sid or that she was…”

“Vous etes plein de merde!” Dupers chuckles. “It obviously matters of you wouldn’t be all fucking pissy about it; you wouldn’t be acting like some kind of spoiled, bitchy little brat. Whether we have the stones to admit it or not, it bothers guys, Max. It bothers us when we think about all the other men the women we love have been with. Same way it burns women’s asses to think about all the girls we’ve been with before them. And in your case…well in your case I’m surprised poor little Emma-Leigh doesn’t suffer from night terrors. Or that she didn’t thoroughly disinfect you before she even put out.”

“Tu es un connard,” I grumble, and use the back of my hand to slap his ball clap clear off of his head. “I was never THAT bad.”

“You know how you have to get all those shots and inoculations and shit to go over to some of the overseas places?” he asks, as he leans into the aisle to retrieve his hat. “You know, so you don’t come down with all kinds of fucked up things like malaria and dysentery and SARS and the bubonic plague and all of that? Well she should have had her ass poked several thousand times before she ever embarked on her first…adventure.”

“I’ve poked her ass several times, I’ll have you know…” a grin tugs at the corners of my mouth as I encounter a text message sent twenty minutes ago from my wife; a very lengthy and descriptive passage about what she’s planning on doing to me the second I walk through the door when I get back from the road trip.

“Information beaucoup trops,” Dupers scowls, as I compose a message that includes promises about fulfilling a particular dirty dream of hers involving a bottle of maple syrup and how I can’t wait to talk to her after the game. I use the word ‘talk’ very loosely; the only talking we’re going to be doing is me telling her how to position the web camera and then giving her detailed information everything I’m imagining I’m doing to her. “Some things I just do not need to know,” he declares, and then sighs heavily and peers out the window. “Que dans l’enfer qui se passe? Where the fuck is Sid? Is he even alive? Do we know for a fact that he’s even in the hotel? That he’s safe and sound and not dead in an alley somewhere? Or with some fan girl that’s shackled him to her bed?”

“Sid with a girl,” Geno pipes up from where he sits next to Tanger directly across the aisle from Dupers and me, his eyes riveted on the BlackBerry clutched in his monstrous hands. “From Pittsburgh. Came last night. Saw him go in room. With her.”

*******

Silence descends on the entire bus for the first time in twenty minutes and every head swivels around and every pair of eyes focus on the Russian as he calmly continues either composing a text message to his girlfriend Oksana, or playing some kind of video game. Guys are waiting with baited breath for him to continue; we’re not used to hearing any kind of personal information about Boy Wonder and even the smallest morsels of gossip are golden. Everyone had wondered what was up yesterday afternoon when Sid had uncharacteristically played his ‘team captain card’

“Who was the girl?” Gogo asks, as he kneels in his seat, facing the back of the bus as he peers down at Geno. “What did she look like?”

“Was it Carlisle?” Mark Eaton inquires, as he leans over the back of our teammate’s seat. Eats never usually gets involved with the locker room gossip; he’s quiet and unassuming and he’s happily married with an incredible wife and two beautiful baby girls at home and has always seemed ‘above it all’ when it’s come to the rest of us sharing perverted stories and ripping one another to shit. “Did Mother Teresa finally put out?”

“Hey!” assistant coach Mike Yeo bellows from the front of the bus, effectively bringing all chattering and questions to a grinding halt as we all wait to be reamed out for having the nerve to talk about the ‘golden child’ behind his back. After all, gossiping about Sid’s private life or Sid in general is just as unforgivable and blasphemous as it is to slander the church. And we all collectively hold our breath -and each silently plan to bitch about this moment the second all coaching staff is out of ear shot- as his eyes sweep up and down the aisles.

“Enough of that!” he orders, and we’re all about to issue a collective groan and utter a couple of ‘this is fucking bullshit’ when a grin suddenly stretches from one side of Mike’s face to the other. “It’s Virgin Mary!” he informs us. “Get it right!”

All the guys have a hearty chuckle at that; save for Tanger who is so wrapped up in his book -a weathered and tattered copy of ‘The Expectant Father’ that Flower had tosses his way the second we’d all found out Peyton had a bun (or a croissant if you want to keep with the French theme) in the oven. The guy hasn’t stopped reading the goddamn thing; he indulges in it while he’s sitting at his stall before practices and games and even during intermissions and even escorts him it to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yesterday he’d been reading it while walking down the street and we’d all been so annoyed that we never warned him about a parking meter directly into his path until he collided -exceptionally hard- with it.

“Would you pay attention here?” I reach across the aisle to slap the book out of my friend’s hands. “There’s something important going on. Quelque chose de la vie et la mort. You’ve got another six and a half months to prepare yourself for when Peyton is ready to hatch. Can’t you leave your bible alone for five minutes?”

“Ce point est important,” he informs me. “More important than whatever is going on with Sid. Trust me Max, this whole baby thing? C’est putain de terrifiant/i]. You’ll be shitting your pants when it finally happens to you. And you’ll be thanking your lucky stars that I’ve hung onto the book just so you can use it.”

“By the time I’m ready to use it, there’ll have been at least five other editions printed,” I retort.

“So was it Carlisle?” Flower -who’s leaning into the aisle at the front of the bus and feeding his face with a putrid looking chicken salad sandwich he’d purchased at a vending machine in the hotel lobby- is attempting to pry information out Geno.

“I say too much,” the Russian says, and mimics zipping his lips closed.

“You can’t just tell us that he took a girl into his room and not follow up!” Gogo exclaims. “You can’t just toss that out there and not expect us to ask questions?”

“No one’s business,” Geno gives a shrug of indifference.

“Yes or no,” Eats prods. “All you gotta do is say yes or no. Or nod or shake your head. It’s not that hard. Was it Carlisle or not?”

Geno gives a slight shake of his head.

“Did you recognize her?” Gogo presses. “Have you ever seen her before? You said she was from Pitt so she’s obviously not some random off the street. How do you know she’s from the ‘Burgh? Do you know who she is Geno? Do we all know who she is?”

“This is like an episode of the fucking Twilight Zone,” I declare. “Are we honestly talking about Sid flying someone from the Burgh to LA to hook up with? Did he really sneak some woman into his room on company time? First he’s late coming down to the bus, now we’re finding all this out. What next? Are we going to wake up tomorrow to five feet of snow on the ground?”

“What in the hell are you doing, Staalsy?” Orpik asks from behind Dupers and me, and we both lift our asses up out of our seats and look back in time to see the kid from Thunder Bay popping open the window, sticking his head out and glancing left and right before casting his gaze up towards the brilliant blue sky.

“I’m checking to see if the sky is falling,” he replies. “’Cause for Sid to be both late and sneaking a girl in…hey…wait a second…I would have sworn I just saw a pig fly by.”

“Probably one of your ex girlfriends,” Dupers casually remarks, and we all laugh at Staalsy’s expense while he grumbles about having ‘better taste than that’ as he slips back into his seat.

Speculation is now running rampant through the bus; everyone is surmising about who Sid’s mystery lady is and when in the hell he’d ever grown the balls to actually have a booty call accompany him on a road trip. And we’re knee deep in theories and gossip when he finally comes running towards the bus; blushing furiously as Disco Dan gives him a ‘if looks could kill’ glare and a massive tongue lashing before he hurries through the door and up the steps. We all shut up immediately; we’re not sure if his flushed face and his breathless state are courtesy of being reamed out, or if his appearance -and the fact his clothes and his hair are dishevelled- can be attributed to his ‘lady friend’. Every guy on the bus recognizes the grin that’s plastered across the face; it’s a grin that’s been worn by every single one of us on several occasions and easily testifies to the fact that you’ve ever just got finished having your brains fucked out or you’ve at least been on the receiving end of one hell of a blow job.

“Who’s the girl Sid?!” Cookie yells from the very back of the bus. “Inquiring minds want to know!”

Sid’s cheeks and the tips of his ears grow impossibly redder as he slips into the empty seat alongside of Flower. “Just someone I met,” he answers simply, and gives a shrug.

“It wasn’t Carlisle?” Eats inquires, and then nearly falls on his ass in the middle of the aisle when the bus driver stomps on the gas and peels out of the parking lot.

“Who was it?!” Staalsy bellows. “Who’s the lucky lady?! If it wasn’t Carlisle…”

“We broke up,” Sid explains. “About a week ago.”

“You just couldn’t tough out the blue balls anymore, huh? You just couldn’t handle having to take so many cold showers!” I chime in, and then glance down at my BlackBerry as it vibrates against my hand signalling an incoming text message. And I feel my own cheeks flushing -and a familiar stirring in the pit of my stomach- when I read my wife’s play by play of how she’s currently enjoying a hot chocolate with whipped cream and how she ‘loves sweet, delicious, white, sticky stuff’ and that she’s dying because she misses my ‘sweet, delicious, white, sticky stuff’. I clear my throat noisily, shift uncomfortably in my seat and then scratch at the back of my neck as I attempt to come up with some sort of response.

“It’s just someone I met back in the ‘Burgh,” Sid is explaining. “She’s never had a vacation so I told her to come on out to LA for a couple of days. No big deal guys.”

“It is a big deal!” Staalsy objects. “You handing in your beginners permit for a full out big boy license is a big deal!”

“So is it like a legit thing?” Eats inquires. “Are you guys legit together or are you just fuck buddies or…?”

“We’re working on things,” our team captain replies. “We’re at a weird stage in this right now.”

“But you’re fucking her, right?” Cookie presses. “’Cause no guy has that look on their face unless…”

“We’re…” Sid’s searching for a politically correct response. “…intimate,” he confirms. “Who knows what comes next though. I’m not sure if anything will. I mean, I want it to. She’s beautiful and smart and mature and she’s great to be around and doesn’t give a shit who I am or how much money I make.”

“But…” Flower presses.

“But she doesn’t know if she wants to get involved me ‘cause she says I’m too young for her,” Sid grumbles. “I don’t think six years is too old. Do you? Do you think it’s a big deal? Six years isn’t much, right?”

“She’s a regular old Mrs Robinson!” Gogo exclaims. “You’ve got yourself a cougar on your hands, Kid!”

I can’t help but laugh along to the good natured ribbing that our team captain is currently taking.

And I also can’t help but feel relieved that he’s quite possibly moving on with his life.

That my marriage just may be completely safe.