Bishop and I were smoking a joint on the pitcher’s mound. We drew dicks with our fingers next our school’s logo. It was mid-March, around midnight. I stopped drawing dicks and looked up at the empty stands. Bishop joked about the look in my eyes as I looked up at the stands. He called me sentimental. I smiled and said something I felt was poetic but can’t remember if it was poetic which means it probably wasn’t poetic.

Bishop passed me the joint. I hit the joint then said something about doing more, getting creative with our destruction. Bishop asked what else can we do. I said let’s burn it all down. Bishop said let’s not. I passed the joint back to Bishop. He finished the joint and placed the roach next to him on the pitching rubber. I said yeah, that’s good, that’ll piss him off.

Bishop agreed and then said something about Kibler treating the mound like his baby. Kibler was our coach. Or, he was Bishop’s coach, not mine, not anymore. I said that Kibler treated the field more like his lover. Bishop agreed again. We tried to make each other laugh by describing various scenes in which the field was like Kibler’s lover. Kibler watering the grass with his jizz. Kibler jizzing on home-plate for that extra-white shine. Kibler jizzing into his wife while screaming out the name of the field. Husky Paaaaaark.

We laughed. We lit the other joint we’d brought. Bishop said oh fuck and then he pulled out a flask he’d forgotten about. We drank from the flask and passed the joint. I said something I felt was badass but can’t remember if it was badass which means it probably wasn’t badass. Bishop said Kibler is a little bitch anyway. I said something about Strachan and Moore, who were our other coaches, being bitches too. They were all bitches. Every coach we’d ever had was a bitch. I remember that.

Bishop and I finished the second joint. Bishop put the roach on the pitching rubber next to the other roach. We drew more dicks. I looked around the field and up at the empty stands again. I thought about how long I’d denied myself the pleasures of alcohol and weed and parties because of baseball and the bitches that called themselves coaches, or mentors.

I said fuck them all. Bishop said yes. I said baseball was my one thing. Bishop said I know. I said they ruined my one thing. Bishop said yeah. Then Bishop said shit man, I’m really going to miss seeing you play.

We walked off the field. We took a piss in the parking lot of our high-school. We drove to a house we thought was the most likely to have weed and alcohol. The house we went to had only beer and no weed. We left the house and talked about going to another house. We drove down streets we’d driven down one thousand times before. We got to another house. A few of our teammates were at the house. They were drinking alcohol and smoking weed.

Our teammates asked what we were up to and we told them. They laughed liked we’d laughed. Bishop said something about me and raised his drink to do a toast. We drank together like brothers. I felt sorry for the bitches and their little lives. I got drunk with my brothers and fell asleep on a couch. In the morning I had no hangover. I was eighteen years old and didn’t get hangovers yet.

I went to the fridge and drank some milk. I went swimming in a pool whose owners I’d never met. I dried off in the sun. Arizona in mid-March was nice. I texted Bishop and a few of my other teammates: Woke up in that house alone. They responded: Haha. Then I walked out of the house and felt like there were a lot of things left to do.