Last Saturday, I left my house around 8 a.m. and headed out to Randall’s Island to watch some queer softball games. I got there around 9:20, to find a game already in progress. I mention this not so much for you all to go “wow, June, way to sacrifice couch time for your art”—well, maybe just a little bit—but more to say that YOIKS, those softball players are keen.
It’s June, the time of year when every queer person has a calendar as full as a Kardashian’s. Personally, I was in bed at 10:30 the night before, but I know that pretty much every single one of the members of Resting Pitch Face I hung out with were out celebrating Pride month, teammates’ birthdays, and the general joy of being young and healthy in the big city until the wee small hours. One woman told me she’d had two hours’ sleep the night before, and I’m pretty sure she was rounding up. (She still played really well.)
Since I think of all the people who receive this newsletter as friends, here I will admit that this was my first time watching dyke softball. (Technically, RPF play in the women+ division of the Big Apple Softball League, which means that all but cis men are eligible and welcome.) I am embarrassed by this till-now open space on my lesbian bingo card, so let me run through my excuses right quick:
I absolutely loved the softball vibe, which was incredibly social and supportive. As Alina, the woman who’d invited me to the game, told me, and several of her team mates repeated, it’s an amazing way to make queer adult friends, something that can be really hard for anyone not into getting sweaty and running around a field every weekend. And in the great divide so aptly described by Dahlia Lithwick as the cleavage between Chaos Muppets and Order Muppets, the people wearing Resting Pitch Face T-shirts were definitely fellow Order Muppets—at least while they were on the field.
This might have been my first exposure to actual softball, but I have read a ton of dyke softball history and so was aware that many leagues spent a lot of time debating how competitive they should be. The Pitches were definitely there to win, but with a very considerate streak. Their first two games of the day (of three!) were against a new team to the league that hasn’t had much success yet. RPF wanted the W, but once that outcome was assured, they eased off on the throttle so that the other side would still have fun. I heard a couple of variations on "If it could be a double, keep it to a single. We want them to have a good time." (At the same time, though, some runners had a hard time hitting the brakes once the ball was in play. Competitive people are competitive.) There were no punches pulled in the third game, against the league’s best team, though, and it was good to see the level of play rise with the competition.
So, at the risk of sounding like an unfrozen cavewoman suddenly realizing that there’s life beyond the cave mouth: 10/10, would recommend if you don’t hate sun.
RECOMMENDATIONS: Since I got into audiobooks, I’ve spent less time listening to BBC Sounds, but this week I came across a fabulous radio show that I whole-heartedly recommend: Mrs. Sidhu Investigates, a comedy-mystery series featuring Meera Syal as the titular caterer, the sharpest and stealthiest sleuth since Miss Marple, if Miss Marple were a Punjabi-speaking widow from Slough. I have been a massive fan of Meera Syal’s since she played a lesbian journalist in one of my favorite movies, 1987’s Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, but she’s also a fantastic writer. Her books Anita and Me and Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee are amazing, and I’m not just saying that because we’re almost exactly the same age, so the childhood and adolescence she describes in those books were very similar to mine, albeit with more chapatis. (She also wrote the screenplay for Gurinder Chadha’s 1993 movie Bhaji on the Beach, which contains one of my favorite evocations of the way emigrants freeze the place they left as soon as they get off the plane in their new home country. That’s why everyone still eats fish fingers and Heinz Salad Cream in my version of Britain.)
LISTEN TO ME: On Working Overtime, Isaac Butler and I talked about the limits of “write 500 words a day” writing advice, and for Working I spoke with my former Seal Press boss Barbara Wilson about the early days of feminist publishing and her new novels featuring a familiar character, globe-trotting translator-investigator Cassandra Reilly.
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