When I was a boy, maybe five or six years old, some men from the public works department came to our street to do some work on the sewer lines that ran underneath our street. I wandered out to watch, attracted by the noisy equipment and the flashing lights and the brawny men in their sweat-stained wife-beater undershirts. I remember the big yellow truck, the sawhorses set up on either side of the manhole cover to keep drivers away, and the big, ferocious, red-headed Irishman who drove the truck. He looked Bunyonesque.
It was that guy, muscles bulging, who had grabbed a metal bar with a hook on one end, insterted it into the cast-iron manhole cover and yanked the thing off with a mighty grunt. It flipped over with a loud metallic clank on the asphalt. Suddenly, the street was alive with dozens of rapidly scurrying cockroaches – big, hairy, two-inch-long bugs – awakened from a midday nap on their cozy and cool manhole lid and rudely thrust into the bright light of the afternoon sun. It had seemed to me at that moment that my big, hairy-chested truck driver friend had yanked the cover off the gates of hell and these hideous black demons were running around looking for lost souls to suck or tiny boys to carry back into that yawning black hole in the middle of my street.
I had run screaming back into my house while the city boys howled with laughter. The memory of that scene gave me nightmares for years.
It occurred to me that everything I had learned about the LPGA in the last seventy-two hours closely resembled that awful childhood afternoon. Almost against my will, the façade had been jerked back to reveal a scurrying, buggy rot underneath. I had long known of Big Wyn’s reputation as a difficult woman. And nobody with any sense could possibly be shocked by the fact that there were lesbians playing on the Tour. Hell, there were probably some gay guys playing on the PGA Tour as well. So what?
But the “so what” was worse than that. Big Wyn was not just a difficult woman, but a manipulative one as well. And, perhaps, evil. Certainly, I had learned that she was not above, or beneath, using any tool to advance her already significant power. She seemed to be cruising through life, unconcerned about those she left behind in her wake, emotionally trashed or physically assaulted.
But why was I getting all upset? Like Sybil Montgomery said, it really wasn’t my problem, was it? Who had appointed me the keeper of the universal flame of truth, justice and the American way? Had anyone else – especially one of the people more directly involved – jumped aboard that noble white steed and ridden off to do battle with the dragon that was Big Wyn? No. So why should some mild-mannered golf reporter named Hacker get his BVDs in a wad? My job was just to write pithy summaries of games, and perhaps some insightful summaries of why someone won. That’s it. My job was not to rip the cover off the LPGA, nor to avenge the emotional damage done to someone like Carol Acorn, or the physical damage done to someone like Honie Carlton.
Unfortunately, my little self-directed talking-to didn’t work. I did care. And I knew that someone needed to take a running tilt at this particular windmill. Dammit, there are some windmills that need tilting at, and this was one of them.
I went back to my hotel room and stood at the window for a long time, looking out at nothing and thinking deep thoughts. My reporter’s instincts began to click and whir and grind into action. A plan began to take shape. I realized that I was operating with lots of rumor, innuendo, conjecture and the occasional bit of gossip. What I needed, I realized, were some hard facts and a little corroboration.
Something in my head whirred and clicked an idea into place. Aha! An idea!
I went to the telephone and started tracking down Danny Bell. Danny had been one of the many old newspaper friends who had “gone on to bigger and better things,” as we like to say. Working for a newspaper is never a get-rich proposition. One does it because one loves it. Because it makes you get out of bed in the morning and go to work. Because you love the professional cynics with whom you work. Because you love the quick pace, the ever-changing conditions, and the feeling of accomplishment when you see your own words in print. Because you love the game of it, the sticking of well-deserved pins in the inflated egos of some parts of society, and the revealing of secrets that others would rather leave untold. Because you know that in some small way, you have been part of a larger enterprise, something called the search for truth.
But you don’t do it because of the money. Because, God knows, the money is crap. And not everyone can get past that part of it. Danny Bell had loved being a newspaperman, but he needed more, He had a wife and kids. There are thousands of people like Danny who do it for a while, have a ball, and then “go on to other things.” Higher-paying jobs, more responsibilities, the “real world.”
Danny had gone to Detroit, tripled his salary when he began work for one of Detroit’s auto giants. He had switched over to something called “public affairs.” He wrote a little, attended lots of meetings, took people out to lunch, traveled some. He got paid big bucks for keeping his head down and staying out of trouble. That was the real world. But I needed him now, and after passing through several layers of operators, receptionists and secretaries, I finally got him on the telephone.
“Hacker my man!” he exclaimed. “How they hangin’?”
“Fine, Danny, fine” I assured him. “Keeping busy?”
“I’ve got a hellacious afternoon schedule,” he said. “I got one call to make and one memo to write. I tell you, it’s tough to come up with creative ways to keep from falling dead-ass asleep after lunch in this job!”
I laughed and asked about his wife and kids. In Boston, the Bell family had crammed itself into a tiny two-bedroom flat in Brookline. Now, they owned a spacious home in a nice Detroit suburb. Good schools for the kids, lots of friends and neighbors for the wife, probably belonged to a country club. The good life. It all likely made it worthwhile, in Danny’s mind, his having to abide all the bullshit. Probably.
“So to what can I attribute the pleasure of this call?” Danny asked.
“God, you’re starting to sound like someone in public affairs,” I chided him. “I need some background for a piece I’m doing on the LPGA. I know your company used to be a major sponsor of the tournament up there. What do you know about it?”
He blew out his breath in a rush. “The LPGA?” he mused, “Yeah, I remember something about that. I wasn’t directly involved in that program…it was more marketing’s game than mine. You’d probably get better information out of the marketing veep. He was in the day-to-day trenches.”
“Haven’t got the time,” I said. “Besides, I’m not so much looking for facts and figures as I am impressions. How they do business. Deep background stuff. You can be my anonymous but highly placed source.”
“Whoopee,” Danny said. “Make my friggin day! Okay, let me think. We sponsored the Ladies Michigan Open for what, about five years, I think. Research boys thought it was a good thing to put money into…they said that most major purchasing decisions, such as buying an automobile, are heavily influenced by women. And that sponsoring a women’s sporting event would help us, ummm, access that buying demographic. That’s how those weenies talk. Impressions per million eye parts and crap like that.”
I made a gagging sound in my throat.
“Yeah, me too,” Danny said. “But sometimes they’re right.”
“I always thought men bought the cars,” I said.
“Me, too,” he said. “But the research shows that as much as we like to think we’re making the decision after looking under the hood, kicking the tires and listening to the sound of a car door shutting, it’s the wife who says yea or nay. Same with most major purchase decisions.”
“So did it work?” I asked.
“Tournament sponsorship? Nah, not really. First of all, there wasn’t national TV coverage until the last year, and then only on cable. So that limited our exposure to all those eye parts pretty drastically. Even the sports writers like you refused to use our name in the stories about the tournament … it was always the ‘Ladies Michigan Open.’ Like we didn’t even exist. Didn’t do us diddly-squat in terms of selling cars, you ask me. I think the whole thing was basically an excuse for our publicity-mad president to have an excuse to go out and play golf and get photographed with glamorous women golfers.”
“Are there any?” I asked. Danny laughed. “So you didn’t renew the contract?”
“As I recall, there were some serious negotiations with the LPGA when it came time to renew,” he said. “And I seem to remember that one of the main reasons we decided to bail out was a whole series of heavy demands the tour laid on us.”
“Such as …?”
“Ummm, this is the deep background part, and it’s been a few years now, so don’t hold me to any high standards of accuracy, but I think they wanted a fleet of our top-line cars for the top brass and best players to use while they were in town. And some major new bucks to become one of the entire LPGA’s top sponsors. And … according to rumors that filtered up through the gossip grapevine … there was something about an under-the-table demand for some appearance money for some of the bigger names.”
“Appearance money?” I was surprised. “Nobody gets appearance money in this country. That only happens in Asia and sometimes in Europe. It’s downright un-American, like blackmail or something.”
“Yeah, something like that,” Danny said. “The number I heard was a cool hundred grand for each of five players, tax-free and silent. Our legal beagles about shit their pants when they heard about it. Said the IRS woulda clamped down so hard everyone’s dick woulda fallen off.”
“Did you ever hear who was supposed to get the cash?” I wondered.
“Not officially,” Danny said. “But one of the guys involved in the negotiations told me in the men’s room one afternoon that the LPGA had asked for a lump-sum payment and that the head honcho over there would parcel it out.”
“Who was that?”
“That big broad…what’s her name? Stilwell…Wynnona Stilwell. She was handling all the negotiations. Balls of brass, that one,” Danny laughed. “She was going to parcel the cash out to the best five players as an extra incentive to come to Michigan to play. Then she wanted us to lean on the network to make sure they got plenty of air time as well. Did you ever? Our people took great pleasure in telling her to go jump, let me tell you.”
“Very interesting,” I said. “I wonder if other sponsors got the same kind of…er…opportunity to invest in the LPGA?”
“Oh, hell, I imagine so,” Danny said. “Stuff like that is rampant in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe what our sponsorship deal in fooball covers. Booze…bimbos…skybox seats…weekends in Vegas. The accountants and the lawyers figure out how much they can disguise as legitimate business expense, and the marketing guys use it to entertain people. Be a pretty good story if you wanted to rip the cover off that can of worms,” he said.
“You want to be the source?” I asked.
“And get fired and probably sent to jail?” he said drily. “I think not.”
“OK, I’ll stick with golf,” I said.
“Yeah, you and our fearless leader,” Danny said. He was referring to his company’s celebrity-like CEO who had turned the company around from loss to profit and made himself famous along the way by starring in most of the company’s TV commercials. “Playing in pro-ams was one of his favorite things,” Danny continued, “And many of us suspected it was the only reason why we invested in the LPGA sponsorship. But, now that I’m thinking about that whole scene, I seem to recall that the last year, he came away ticked off because his pro wouldn’t talk to him the entire round. He came back and said he’d never met such a bitch in his entire life. You know, come to think of it, it was that Stilwell woman he was playing with that year. Huh! Never thought of that before. It fits, though.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She has a reputation for being difficult at times.”
“Well,” Danny said, “Difficult is one thing. Pissing off a major sponsor and losing funding from a corporation with pretty deep pockets is something else. Stupid, I’d say.”
I thanked Danny for the information and promised to call him next time I was in Detroit. The shadows of the afternoon had given way to the curtain of dusk. I began to think about dinner, where and with whom. As if in answer, there was a knock at my door.
I opened it to find Sybil Montgomery standing there, smiling at me brightly. Her hair was brushed back from her face which carried the sheen of newly applied makeup. She had a big bottle of champagne in one hand and two crystal glasses in the other.
“I believe the sun has officially descended over the yardarm,” she pronounced.
“And?” I blocked the door, keeping her standing out in the hall.
“And I thought we should get together and celebrate the end of a nice day and having met one another.”
“And?”
“And I thought it important to prove to you that not all female professional golfers are … er … anti-man.”
“Well,” I said. “Since this is a scientific inquiry, please come in.” I stepped out of the way and bowed her into my room.
Later, after room service had brought dinner, after we had polished off the champagne, and after we had talked and talked, sitting together out on the tiny patio that was barely wide enough to sit on without scraping knees … after we had watched the twilight deepen from shades of pink and orange into blues and purples and finally into black…after we had listened to the city sounds dwindle and fade and give way to the night sounds of insects and birds and the soft rustling of the palms on the evening breeze … after I had reached out to hold her slender but strong hand in mine in the quiet of the evening, sharing the feeling of connection with the cosmos around us …
After all of that, we rose as one and went inside. And performed the next part of our scientific experiment. We shed our clothes silently in the cool darkness of the room leaving the door to the patio open, so that the sounds of the night could come inside with us. We were silent as we explored each other’s body, luminescent in the near darkness, passing hands softly into those fiery secret places, reveling in the tactile sensations that were heightened by the soft caress of the cool air flowing gently into the room.
And then we added our own sounds to the night world as we began our rhythmic pleasures. Slowly, oh so slowly, then faster and faster, our bodies moved together and our breaths, intermingled, came faster. Soft stolen cries rent the air. Until we both reached the final exhalation, the gentle death, and we sank slowly and gratefully back to earth together, joined, warmed, deepened, released, sated.
It was, for me, a necessary thing. A reaffirmation of the good that is in life. A reminder that all of creation is not bad or evil or wicked. I felt, in those moments before sleep overtook me, reconnected with humanity, with pleasure, with fun. I slept, I am sure, with a smile on my face.