When Baseball Just Isn't Enough

The sun had gone down by the time we had emerged from the Fort McHenry Tunnel near downtown Baltimore. The tape had finished; now came the inevitable lull as each of us mulled over our thoughts and wondered if we had any deep enough to kick off a conversation.

What topics are deep enough to sustain a group of friends spending the eighth consecutive hour in a Honda Accord travelling at high speed down the Atlantic coast? The weather? Please. Baseball? Overdone. Classes? Yuck.

Sean cleared his throat. "So," he asked, "what do you think of Harvard women?"

The Harvard-William and Mary football game in Williamsburg, Virginia, was our ultimate destination. Tarek, Sean, and I were reporting on the game; Amanda was shooting the pictures. But somewhere along the way--I think Trenton, N.J.--the means became more important than the end. What can you talk about when you're in a small, enclosed space with lots of time to kill? Only one thing (okay, three): other people. Relationships. Romance.

There were three males and just one female in the car, but Amanda willingly played Elaine to our Jerry, George and Kramer as we discussed, well, life. Women. Men. Women and men. Men and women.

As we struggled through these interpersonal problem sets, the four of us slowly began to open up to each other. We had worked together at The Crimson for the better part of a year but we had always hid ourselves under our work to some extent. That weekend, there was nowhere to run--especially when we drove through the Bronx. And we wanted to know all about our traveling companions. Specifically, the dirt.

"Listen, John, I've heard some stories..."

"WHAT? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...that's not what happened...no...geez, this is like `Rashomon.'"

"How long ago was this, Sean?"

"So, Amanda, what's the deal with..."

We covered all the bases. And as the shields fell, we learned about the not-so-romantic moments. How Tarek had once gone eight days without evacuating his bowels ("butt yoga," he called it). That Sean had once dated Miss Teen Kansas. That I won't have milk on my cereal. That Amanda's boxer shorts glowed in the dark.

We also had the perfect soundtrack for our reminiscing: the Seventies. We had Saturday Night Fever (mine) and the soundtrack to "Reservoir Dogs" (also mine). We had Tarek's Tracy Chapman. We had Amanda's "mushy tape," the stuff our high-school dances were made of. Most alarmingly, we had Sean's prized cassette of Swedish supergroup ABBA's Voulez-Vous.

"I think the whole world went bad when ABBA broke up," Sean said, then paused. "The Reagan Revolution came along soon afterwards."

We howled the blues with Chapman and hollered in falsetto with the Bee Gees. We found out that Kathy Ireland and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, went to Sean's high school, and we found out that Amanda thinks Cary Elwes is the hottest guy ever. Tarek and I rhapsodized about the pre-Guns `n' Roses Stephanie Seymour. We discussed what we find attractive in other people--besides nice eyes.

To paraphrase "Reservoir Dogs," we were stuck in the middle with each other.

Sean's conversation-stopper--"what do you think about Harvard women?"--was a running joke by the time we hit Baltimore. He had a whole tongue-in-cheek spiel to go with it:

"All they care about is sex," he mock whined. "I want to find someone who will love me for my personality, not my body. I mean, they are so shallow."

It was good for a smile, and it led us into other stories as the car briefly transformed into a soul-baring Gen Ed 105 section while we sped down Interstate 95 towards Washington. We talked about our love lives and/or the lack thereof, Dunster formals, and Ted Rose, author of the notorious Artifical Turf Headline: "Key to the Game: The Grass (Not That Grass)."

"Who's this Ted guy?" Sean asked amidst the laughter.

Sean talked about how he had interviewed Elvira: "So I interviewed her for the school paper--it was a reunion, and I asked her if she had implants."

"You just asked?"

"Well, she was talking about how you had to be so glamorous in Hollywood, and the question seemed natural...she said 'Yes, of course.'" He paused. "Kathy Ireland didn't come back for the reunion, though."

While ruminating on the spiritual ramifications of interviewing Kathy Ireland, Sean almost got us killed when he missed a turn and tried to get to an expressway on-ramp from the left lane of a four-lane road, nearly taking us through the sign on the shoulder. That set us talking about Clinton's new health plan.

Two years ago, Amanda's predecessor in the photo department told her never to go on a road trip with the sports staff. "They're all geeks, they play stupid music and they never know where they're going," she was told.

Yet in the end, Amanda was the one who pitched this piece to the magazine.

"It's about relationships," she explained.

[Editor's note: All four people mentioned in this story categorically deny any of these conversations took place.]