Read Online Lingerie For Felons by Ros Baxter - Free Book Online

sportsmen are like children. On speed. They wave their fame (and sometimes their penises) around in a most unseemly fashion.
    Three: what I really hate most of all about sports is the whole hero thing. This idea that they are so courageous . So heroic . That they have such huge hearts . Doctors in war zones are brave. Skinny catholic priests opening up halfway houses for junkies in the Bronx are heroic. Racehorses have huge hearts. Sports stars are just people. Skilled, genetically blessed, hard working people. But people nonetheless.
    So I have no idea how I ended up at Hoover Oval on the designated Saturday.
    But I did.
    Wayne was out front to meet me. No borrowed clothes this time. Just me. In blue jeans, Doc Martens, a Bob Marley t-shirt and a colourful poncho I’d bought from a market in Washington Heights. Before I could say ‘I hate sports, what are you doing inviting me here?’ he had broken into a huge grin, swept me up in his enormous bear-like arms and squeezed the protestations right out of me.
    â€˜Ah, Rocket,’ he almost yelled in my ear. ‘I am so glad you came.’
    And he looked so pleased, and so crinkly, and I so had not been hugged like that since I’d been three years old, that I just kind of smiled half-heartedly and followed him into the ground. I really needed to prepare myself for his charm onslaught, or I was never going to be able to say the things I needed to say to him.
    Once inside, he told me he’d brought me along to see him play something called rugby league. A team of ex-patriot Australians and New Zealanders played an amateur league each Saturday. His game didn’t start for an hour, and another game was on as we settled into the stands, so he said he’d talk me through it.
    Oh yay. Bring it on.
    Needless to say, I couldn’t follow a single word he said. It wasn’t just that his accent got thicker as he slipped into ‘footy’ speak, or that I was not terribly interested, it was also because the rules were utterly absurd. The game seemed to consist of a whole bunch of guys jumping on another guy every few yards and the ball changing hands every now and then. There appeared to be very little identifiable scoring.
    But they sure were having a great time. And the guys were gorgeous.
    Wayne kept calling people over to meet me. He’d start with ‘meet m’ mate Wozza’ — or Blue or Spanks or Fugly — and then describe the position they played, how good — or, more often, how crap — they were, and how they got their nickname. I’m not even going into Spanks.
    I guessed the average age of the players to be around 30. Wayne, at 28, was on the younger end. Apart from the weirdest and cruellest set of nicknames I had ever heard, the guys were really lovely. All big and shy and pleased I was there.
    They almost all said something along the lines of ‘Gee, you’ve done alright there, mate’ to Wayne, while looking me up and down in a way that was somehow less offensive than it should have been. And then they would motion over their woman friend, if they had one, and say something like ‘meet m’ wife/girlfriend Raelene/Kaelene/Gaylene’ while pushing her forward to participate in the conversation.
    â€˜So, what do all these guys do for work?’ I asked Wayne. Some wore shorts with a school-kid trim on them — stubbies , Wayne later explained. Others sported bad track-pants, like you used to have as a kid with elastic around the bottom. The rest wore bicycle shorts.
    â€˜Um…’ Wayne looked over at the group of guys standing closest. ‘Fugly’s a…um…corporate lawyer I think. And Ferret’s some global software negotiator thing that none of us understand. He only plays every third week. He’s based in Paris the other two weeks. Um…. Wozza does some finance thing in insurance…’
    I mentally pinched myself. Had I really assumed all