Apartment 643 (part 3)

So I was telling you about my roommate Slater in Hickory, and then got sidetracked by the story of me and Joyce and the Parrots’ Labor Day cookout. (That turned out okay, once Joyce calmed down from her jealousass reaction to some of the other girlfriends there. I just let her go on until she stopped ranting about how I was attracted to a chick I happened to know was a lesbian. One of the many things Dad taught me was not to argue with a chick when she’s being irrational. Remember that growing up we were two men to five women in the house.)

So back to Slater, the 19 year old 1^st baseman with a very bright future in pro ball…and zero social skills thanks to the way his crazy and super controlling mother brought him up. Once we got Slater away from his mother, we on the ‘Dads felt it was our duty to make him into a normal ball player…so we pranked the shit out of him.

And I was put in charge of getting him laid.

Just when I was trying to get things going between him and a chick who used to hang out at the ballpark with her friend, the kid fuckin ran away as fast as he could. And he was the fastest guy on the team. I was super frustrated with him when I got back to Apartment 643, and decided I had to do something drastic.

So I gave him his first bowl of ice cream. (That’s how controlling his mother was. He’d never had ice cream. He’d never even heard of vanilla.)

The two chicks we’d been talking to were named Spring and Summer.  I know, I know…hilarious, right? But especially Summer is a popular girl’s name in the South.  It just so happened that both Spring and Summer lived in Hickory, liked baseball, had a thing for baseball players, and were friends. Summer was real blonde and real curvy and we got a little thing going a few days after I arrived in North Carolina. (It was Summer who started calling me Heartthrob. Then the guys on the team picked it up; it would have been way too gay for a bunch of minor league ballplayers to come up with that name on their own lol.) Spring was less the cheerleader type, with very big mysterious brown eyes and a very sexy voice. (The answer to the question you’re all fixin to ask is: No.) She was just as Southern and nice as Summer, but a little less lively.

She also told Summer that she thought Slater had a cute butt while he was running away. That was way more information than I needed to hear, but at least it told me that Spring was interested in Slater.

So I decided that the night after I gave him his first ice cream was gonna be the night for Slater. I rushed through my shower again so I could walk out with him after the game, and Summer and Spring were waiting for us. To get him to stop and talk to them, I put my arm around his shoulders. I was hoping it looked all buddy-buddy to the girls, but I really had him a headlock. I wasn’t going to let him get away another time.

So Summer and I were carrying on most of the conversation, while Spring kept trying to make eye contact with Slater. He wasn’t getting it and I couldn’t get him to say anything. At least I was strong enough to keep a hold on him. Finally Summer said the four of us should go somewhere we could hang out.

Then it came to me.

“Why don’t we head over to Udderly Delicious?” We’d just played an afternoon game, so I knew they’d still be open..and, yeah, I’d already staked out the best places to get ice cream in Hickory lol. I pulled Slater’s head in even closer and whispered “ice cream” in his ear.

“Ice cream??”

That changed the whole game. He stopped struggling against me and, before I let him go, I could feel that his heart had started pounding. I’m not kidding. I was starting to worry whether the kid would be able to stand ice cream twice in 24 hours.

So Summer and Spring got into their car, and Slater came along and got into mine, and we drove over to Udderly Delicious over in Viewmont. (Y’all probably don’t know Hickory. Udderly Delicious is about 10 minutes from the ballpark and 5 from where apartment 643 was.)

Udderly Delicious isn’t exactly the nicest place to hang out, but they have tables, chairs…and they make a sundae using a warm Moon Pie, vanilla ice cream, hot fudge…and both marshmallow and whipped cream. It makes a very nourishing dinner after a tough ballgame lol.

When he saw the store, Slater almost passed out. I reckon he didn’t know that there was that much ice cream in the world, let alone in one place. Y’all gotta remember that he didn’t know anything about cones or milkshakes or sundaes. All he knew was neapolitan ice cream in one of the bowls from the dishes I had in Murfreesboro.

Summer and Spring got there a few minutes after we did, and we went up to the counter to order. They ordered cones, I asked for my Moo-oon Pie Sundae, and Slater just stood there and stared at the ice cream in the cases.

Summer, Spring and the nice chick behind the counter just stared at Slater.

“He’s…new to ice cream,” I explained.

“He could use some fattening up,” said the chick behind the counter. “I’ll get him something special.”

Since the point of the night was to get Slater something else he’d like, I told her to go ahead and surprise him.

First she got the girls their cones, then she went to work on my sundae. Once she was done with that, she put together a Mudslide Sundae for Slater – a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of chocolate, hot fudge, hot caramel, whipped cream…and the one thing his mother might approve of since it was fruit: a cherry on top.

Now remember…all he knew before that was neapolitan ice cream. I was afraid to even give him chocolate syrup the night before. I wasn’t sure how smart his having both hot fudge and hot caramel at the same time was going to be.

The kid was literally shaking as he watched his sundae being made. I reckoned I needed to put my arm around his shoulders again in case he had a heart attack or something.

“It looks like she’s putting hot stuff on the ice cream. Won’t that make it melt?”

“That’s the point,” said Spring, trying to get up close to him. “It makes it all hot, ooey and gooey.”

Anyone listening would have figured out she wasn’t talking about ice cream. That’s anyone except Slater. Yeah, he was drooling…but not at anything a chick was saying to him.

“What’s that fluffy stuff on top?”

The girls thought he was kidding. I told them he wasn’t: since he barely knew what milk was (his mother had convinced him he was lactose intolerant), how the heck was he going to know about cream?

“Just eat it, man,” I said when we’d sat down. I was fixin to get started on my own big bowl of ice cream and Moon Pie.

I probably ignored Summer some so I could eat my sundae (remember I don’t think you should mix ice cream and sex…both are too important), but Slater was a whole different story. I don’t think an earthquake would have distracted him from his first encounter with hot caramel and whipped cream.

It didn’t take too long for him to finish his sundae. He got hot fudge sauce all over his shirt…and face. The girls had only gotten cones, so they were done before we were. That worked out: Spring took advantage of it, got some extra napkins, and reached over the table to clean Slater up. He almost jumped six feet in the air when she touched him the first time, then he decided he liked it.

I was feeling pretty good with my Moo-oon Pie Sundae in me, but, after he’d caught his breath, I could tell Slater was feeling even better than I was. I couldn’t believe it, but the way I could tell was by how he was looking at Spring. Summer and I almost burst out laughing when we saw the change. If I was going to get him laid, now was my chance.