Fly Me to the Moon: For ‘One More For My Baby: the Original Sinatra Songfic Challenge’

by Ian McDuff

For my own Sinatra Challenge. And, truly, for my LJ friends.

The stars were aligned.

In terms of scheduling – a vexed problem even during their so-called ‘hiatuses’ – the stars had aligned to leave the time free for two couples, and for the four of them in one place.

In terms of position, the ‘stars’ themselves – the four men behind the superstar images – were not so much aligned as reunited, the two couples settled in on the Big-Ass Couch in front of the Big-(Ass-)Screen-TV, and blessing the gods of cable for the opportunity to be together, the four of them, for a baseball game.

JC Chasez was not there: that popstar, that mythic persona, had stopped at the door. Josh, though, the real man who inhabited, sometimes uneasily, that crude and shadowy simulacrum of himself, was sprawled casually – yet, unthinkingly, gracefully and liquidly – across the arm of the Big-Ass Couch and down onto the cushions and up against the grateful solidity of his James. His James, not even Big Jim’s and Miz Diane’s boy (James) Lance Bass, assuredly not the public ‘Lance Bass,’ Lance-of-’N-Sync, popstar-astronaut-mogul Lance, Hollywood Lance of the clamorous world. Just James, just the man he’d blithely rechristened with the petit nom of James in their world-just-for-two; Josh’s James, the fixed point in his universe, with whom he could, and had chosen to, be simply Josh: the man Joshua who had emerged from the shy, uncertain adopted child, in defiance of a world that insisted on renaming him, whether by adoption or by fiat of the Mouse.

Josh covered his James, melded to him, annealed with him, with the deceptive lightness of moss on granite.

James was solid and warm and there, supporting him, bearing him up: incisive profile staring straight at the screen, hard-won rock-hewn body molded to the couch, a slight quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth. James, with a scorecard in one hand and a gold Cross mechanical pencil in the other, keen-eyed as he watched the play on the field, all concentrated attention, his razor-edged mind trained to the minutiæ of the National Pastime and honed with all the stats in the Baseball Encyclopedia. And yet, even in that instant, still enveloping his Josh in the warmth of his whole, radiating affection, and managing to hold scorecard and pencil at the ready even through the intertwining of their loose half-embrace.

Just four friends and the baseball game.

Granite lightly draped, festooned, with moss: that was Josh’s James, rock-steady, broad-shouldered and deep-chested. But the strongest boulder may lean against the toughest oak, in mutual support. On James’s right, their broad shoulders touching lightly like those of brothers calmly, confidently awaiting the clash of arms in a battle for their homes, for their hearths and household gods, Nicky lounged against the firm comfort of the couch, one large hand buried in Howie’s hair, the other idly brushing the delicate scrollwork of Howie’s ear.

A Nicky golden and calm as a day in Spring Training, a Nick sated as the winning pitcher after the final game of the Series, a Nick, Howie’s own Nick, comfortable as a manager with a ten-run lead going into his home eighth.

Nick. Solid as an oak of many winters beside a mighty boulder, deep-rooted, a refuge and a deep, peaceable shade for any wandering shepherd of Latium or any sylvan, rustic godling.

And compactly lain upon Nick’s mighty thighs, as Vertumnus or Silvanus or Lupercus might have slept upon the knees of an oak sacred to Father Jove, was his Howie. Berry-brown Howard, perfectly molded Howie D, Nick’s own sweet Howie, who had borne to them, openhanded as the Latin rustic demigods of tilth and wood, the food that was still within reach as they watched the game. Howie, who had fed them with bacalaítos fritos, pastelillos, and alcapurrias packed with leftover hashed pernil; who had brought them camarones al ajillo and even corned beef. (‘That the Irish side in you, cookin’, or the Puerto Rican,’ James had wondered the night before, over the phone. ‘Did I say I was bringing cabbage and potatoes,’ Howie had laughed, and James had laughed also, saying, ‘That means it’s your Momma’s version, and that means it’ll be good.’)

There Sweet Howard rested, eyes all but closed, and anyone who didn’t know the truth would think he was asleep or at least oblivious to the ballgame, to Josh’s beloved Orioles. But Nick knew better, and could hear every word as Howie quietly, almost inaudibly, called the play-by-play. ‘Good at-bat, good plate discipline … and that one just misses. He’s worked the count full. Hentgen looks to first….’ At home, Nick usually dispensed with the sound when they watched his Rays, preferring to hear D’s sweet voice rather than listen to Paul-and-Charlie or Staats-and-Magrane.

Just four friends, far from the clutching, insistent world, watching the ballgame.

The Birds had been hot, coming off a good series at Texas for this first bout of inter-league play, this first ever meeting with the Houston club. But not tonight. Josh pouted only a little.

It was the Orioles’s sixth, and the ‘O’s had scored. ‘I’m so glad we called Matos up from the minors,’ Josh murmured.

‘He, Gibbons, and Roberts’re ’bout the only ones seem able to get a decent at-bat off that Miller feller,’ James agreed.

‘That too,’ Josh sighed, watching Matos saunter to the dug-out after stepping on the pay station.

James chuckled. ‘Oh-ho. Does my Joshy have a tiny crush?’

Josh ignored him, assuming an attitude of disdain. Idly, to no one in particular, he observed, ‘My, my. Either in the bottom of this inning or in the next inning at the latest, I do believe the Houston catcher is liable come up to bat.’ He paused meaningfully. ‘James, do you need to grab a drink or take a whizz now, so you don’t miss the bottom of the order?’

Quietly – sweetly – Howie snickered.

Just four pals and the ballgame.

Sure enough, in the seventh, the Astros catcher scored a run. Josh smirked up at James, who carefully refused to smile back, though his ‘I’m not smiling’ expression was quite as good as a grin. The TV crew did the usual close-ups.

‘Hmm,’ said Nick. ‘That’s your crush, huh, Lansten.’

‘Shut up, Hamhock.’

‘No, no, really, because I can totally see it.’

‘Look, I just admire him as a player. Degree in Gummint f’om Dartmouth, smart catcher, great defense –’

‘Uh-huh. I’m just sayin’. Trust you to go for the super-smart, brunet, Ivy League surfer-boy, Bassman. Bradley David “Wipeout” Ausmus.’

‘Are you saying James is crushing on a me-substitute?’

‘Hey, C-man, you notice he went for a catcher.’

‘I don’t know whether to be jealous or flattered,’ Josh laughed, as James resolutely ignored them both, through his blushes.

‘You be flattered, I’ll be jealous.’

‘What?’ James was startled out of his pretended heedlessness. After all, Nick had about as little in common with the Houston catcher as could well be conceived.

‘Hey, I said you had taste, J. L. He does look a little like D, after all, ’s all I’m sayin’. Brown-eyed boy….’

And helplessly, unable to resist, Josh started singing softly,

‘– D, my brown-eyed boy….
Do you remember whennnnn
We useta sing –’

And they all were equally impelled, resistance being futile, to start harmonizing:

Four good, slightly crazy friends, and the ballgame.

The Chasez Mind had not wandered, precisely; it was simply that he was trying not to accept the reality of the Birds’s losing, as they assuredly were.

‘You know what I wish all the teams would do?’

‘What’s that, hon?’

‘When there’s a homer, I wish everyone in the bigs did like the Rangers do. I mean, yeah. Because. Randy Newman, man. Cat can write.’ Anyone who could garner critical acclaim, have a few cult hits, and write Oscar-winning film scores was bound to be Josh’s hero. ‘The Natural. And it’s like, you know, whoosh, and the ball sails and it hangs there like a full moon and the actual stars burst like fireworks, the outbursting of a trodden star…. I think I read that somewhere? And the music is triumphal and it shimmers like stars and, yeah.’

‘Um. No. I don’t remember Beddoes….’

‘Sayers. Ol’ Dorothy L. used a lot of Beddoes for chapter epigraphs,’ James rumbled. ‘You’ll’ve seen it in one of my Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, Josh. Th’ quote. From Death’s Jest-Book, probably.’¹

Josh may not have heard him: he’d managed to give himself an idea, and was muttering under his breath. ‘Mundane, sublunary … celestial….’ It didn’t suffice to keep him from watching, with a wince, the three final outs.

Just four ’bout-half-crazy friends, watching the ballgame.

‘Sorry about your team, man.’ Nick was sincere.

‘Hey, tomorrow, right? Nothing fatal about splitting a series on the road.’

‘At least we live in a great time for baseball, though.’ Nick still sounded sincere. James winced, and even Howie shifted uneasily in Nicky’s lap. ‘What?’

‘Nicky. Lord, tell me you ain’t serious.’

‘Why not? I mean, man. Records shattering like, like bats. Clemens closing in on 300. A team for everybody, somewhere. Great new stadiums, ’cause, say what you wanna, that was a cool park there –’

‘– Humph,’ said Josh. If it wasn’t Camden Yards, it wasn’t a ballpark, as far as he was concerned. Oh, maybe Comiskey or Wrigley, but, still.

‘– And y’ got to admit, okay, maybe we’re not playing so hot, but Tropicana is a great park, my Rays have a great home park….’

Howie sat up and looked at him with loving concern. ‘Nicky. Baby. It’s a knock-off. They stole the façade from Ebbets Field, for Heaven’s sake.’

‘Ah,’ James said. ‘Old Ebbets Field. Now, those, those were the glory days for baseball, even – despite – when the Bums departed and we lost Ebbets.’

‘St Louis Browns,’ Josh snorted.

‘Okay, but – even with the tragedy of Brooklyn’s losing the Dodgers … the Fifties, the Browns moving to Balto for you and becoming the Orioles. The Giants leaving New York, too, and the Braves going to Milwaukee from Boston. That was still the Golden Age, darlin’.’

‘Jackie,’ Howie said. ‘Jackie paved the way, and Larry Doby in the AL. And then it could all happen. Willie Mays, my God, and Satchel finally getting to play in the bigs.’

‘Put a lot of other black ballplayers out of business, though,’ Josh said, ‘when, you know, the Negro Leagues folded. The Monarchs, man. Not everybody was a Satchel Paige.’

‘But,’ James said, ‘it made baseball a truly national pastime. And – Mays. Aaron. The Newk. And the whole standard went up: when they dropped the color bar, it raised the bar for performance.’

Nick was wishing he hadn’t gotten them started. He hadn’t intended to, that was for sure. Four guys and baseball.

‘The best players in the history of the game,’ Howie said. Before Josh could say anything, he forestalled him: ‘Sure, there have been great ones, maybe greater in some ways, since. Ripken. Palmer. I know, C. But even then you Orioles had Brooksie and Boog, and had Hoyt Wilhelm no-hit the Yankees in ’58, which is the last time anyone did.’

‘That’s right,’ James mused. ‘Virgil Trucks’s no-hitter was in, what, ’52, wasn’t it.’

‘And, truly, all that talent at once, from the ’40s through the ’60s. DiMag’ had to quit, but, Madre de Dios, there was The Duke, and Lemon and Feller and Slaughter and Nelly Fox; and Mantle, and Mays, and Ted Williams….’

‘Musial,’ James intoned, reverently.

‘When the Dodgers moved to LA and Willie came up,’ Howie said.

‘And Durocher moving Spring Training to the desert like Veeck had when the majors started to integrate –’

‘And all the Vegas headliners coming out to watch, ’mano.’

Nick saw an opening for a change of subject, before the obsession got out of hand. ‘What, Sinatra and the Rat Pack and them?’

‘Verdad. Sinatra and all the rest. Baseball was it, in those days, mi espositito. Nowadays, it’s the NBA playoffs where you see Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson and all, but, then? It was all ¡Viva Las Vegas y viva beisbol!’

Nick grinned. ‘Oh, I can so totally see you guys as a part of that, you’d’ve lived back then. Howie woulda been, I dunno, the screen star Latin Lover, or maybe some Latin band leader like, um.’

‘Xavier Cugat or Desi Arnaz?’

Nick smiled and nodded: C could always be counted on to furnish that sort of knowledge. ‘Yeah. And you two….’

James snorted. ‘As Rat Packers? Raaaaaaight. Justin’d’ve fit in, and Joe would’ve been the leader even over Sinatra, and Chris could’ve been the resident comic. But I cain’t see me in that bunch, and Josh couldn’t keep those hours, with Sinatra and Lawford and Sammy Davis and all. Best as I can tell, them boys didn’t sleep.’

Howie looked at them, with his head cocked to one side. ‘No, no. Josh would have been a veteran of the Swing Era, now gone solo, singing and writing hits. He would have been the one to write “Fly Me to the Moon” for Sinatra, and it would only be about now, after we were all dead, that it came out that he secretly wrote it about his lifelong secret lover, the All-American hero of the Mercury Program, astronaut and Marine Major J. Lance Bass of Mississippi.’

Nick looked scandalized. ‘Howie!’

‘Oh, Lordy, Nicky, I don’t mind: y’all’re ’bout near the only three people – and I include J, Joe, Chris, Aidge, Bri, and Kevin when I say “only three” – that I don’t mind hearing a few gentle space jokes from.’

And of course, in the meantime, the switch had been hit, the trigger pulled, and Josh was singing to himself.

They couldn’t help but join in.

‘I wish you coulda,’ Nick said. ‘I mean, sure, I have faith you will, yet. But. I wish you’d gotten to go when you wanted to. I know it was your dream, and, like, it’s a way cool dream to have. I wonder…. I mean, can I ask? Just. What’s it like to float, to be weightless and stuff?’

Josh smiled. ‘I asked that same question when we got together in Houston. And he showed me.’ He and James exchanged smiles.

Nick was almost bouncing Howie off his lap. ‘That is so cool, Sashay! What, did he manage to get them to let you do the, um, center few? Or that airplane thingy?’

‘We never left the ground,’ Josh said, this time with a full-on, eye-crinkling JC grin. ‘“In other words,”’ he sang, ‘“baby, kiss me….”’

Nick didn’t quite get it for a moment, and Howie seized that moment, with a kiss that started with tenderness and ended with a flushed, shallowly-breathing Nick slumped against the couch.

‘Mmmm,’ Howie said. ‘Like floating on air.’

Nick just nodded, speechlessly. Whatever he was going to say once he could speak again was cut off by the ringing of James’s cell.

‘LANCE!’ They could all hear Joey through the phone: Joey and a lot of background noise. ‘Hey, paisan’, we’re all over at the Old Fart’s! Kel took Bri to see the Baldwin-laws, so we’re doing the Bonding Thing, man! Me and J and AJ! We’re thinking food and a movie – grab those Streeter Boys you two hang out with and get over here to Casa Kirkpatrick!’

And that was that. Even among friends, even if Joey was thinking pizza-and-DVDs rather than pile-into-a-car-eat-somewhere-and-hit-a-premiere, this was it. Back to earth. No longer just four guys who’d gotten together to watch the ballgame. Now they were back to their workaday popstar selves. Josh would have to become JC again, and Nick was already turning into (drumroll) Nick! Carter! And James was Lance again, with a sudden and business-like snap as the mask clicked into place; and Howie was going to have to go back to being Sweet D, Howie D, the Afterthought Boy, the Forgotten Member of Backstreet, the one who was so obscure that he needed the extra initial to be remembered and recognized.

Lance sighed. ‘It’s always re-entry that sucks the most and is the most dangerous. Back to the same, dull ground.’

JC – still just recognizably, vestigially, his Josh, for a few last seconds – leaned over and kissed him lightly. ‘But all we have to do, to play among the stars again, is so simple. You can always fly me to the moon, babe. In other words, just hold my hand, and kiss me.’

‘In other words,’ Howie said, looking Nick in the eye. ‘In other words: I. Love. You.’

END