Sports in Hell (5 page)

In all seriousness, it's wonderful that caring, patient women like
these are willing to give these little furry creatures a home, because ferrets are just really, really unattractive. Two or three had absolutely no hair at all. They looked like Hebrew Nationals with feet. “Oh, those have adrenal cancer,” Rita said. “They'll all get adrenal cancer eventually. Ninety-nine percent end up like Buster here.”

Cool! How do I get one?

This was their seventh year doing the ferret legging at the festival. “At first we got so many complaints,” Marlene said. “It made it into the paper and people started calling us and writing us and writing the district attorney's office saying it was cruel to the ferrets. The DA called me and I had to explain to him, ‘Look, there's absolutely no cruelty in this at all. We only put them down for three minutes … They're therapy ferrets. They're used to it. Ninety percent of the time, they're trying to go up your pants leg anyway.” Hell, that makes them no different than, say, David Spade.

“So they don't scratch and fight and bite when they're down there?” I asked.

“No! Most won't,” she said.

Most?

“What do they eat?”

“Well, they're carnivores, so we give them meat-based ferret food.”

“What, exactly, will they do while in my pants?”

“Well, no matter where you put them, they want to dig. They're scratchers and diggers.”

Wonderful.

Just then a sweaty guy just slightly rounder than Bob's Big Boy spoke up. “I've had them accidentally down my pants, and right away, you want them out.”

Accidentally?
The mind reeled.

“Our goal is to get through the day without anybody getting stepped on, bit, lost, or stolen,” Marlene said.

She'd be wrong. She'd be very wrong.

•   •   •

I had one large, fortifying Guinness and one nutritious pasty and walked over to the 100-by-100-foot ferret legging square, where the fans were already six deep, gnawing on their meat pies, anxious to see ferrets dine on those dumb enough to volunteer. A group of thespians called the Sterling Sword Players were the hosts of the thing, since the ferret women are not exactly, you know,
show people
. Now, usually I'd stab two forks in my eyes before I'd watch a group called the Sterling Sword Players, but these people were actually funny. And the main host, a big, bearded mall marketer named Kevin Robertson, was even funnier. He was hollering, “Ferret legging in five minutes! Be afraid! Be very afraid!”

I asked him how he got started being a professional ferret legging MC.

“Three years ago,” he said between barks. “The director [of the festival] came up to us and said, ‘We're going to have ferret legging here and we'd like you to be the host.' And we all thought it was a band. We're thinking, ‘Ferret Legging? Cool name! Wonder what they play?' So the next day, up come these ladies with their cages full of ferrets. And we go, ‘Excuse me, who in the world are you?' And they say, ‘Oh, we're the ferret legging.' And we were just dumbfounded.”

One time, a man who was mostly tattoos showed up and Kevin chose him. On went the sweatpants. Down went the ferret. Start the clock. Very soon, the ferret was rising back up above the man's waistband, poking his head up and looking around like he was trying to decide what he'd wear that day. So Kevin took the mike over to Mr. Tattoo and said, “He's done that three or four times now. Can you tell us how he's managing to do that?”

“Oh, he must've climbed up my Jacob's Ladder,” Tattoo says.

Kevin replied, “What's a Jacob's Ladder?” Only as soon as he asked it, he wished he hadn't. Because the guy answered, “Oh, a Jacob's Ladder is the row of bars in my penis. I have them about every half-inch or so. He must've climbed up it.”

OK, ewwww.

I asked Kevin who usually volunteers for legging. “Drunk people,”
he said. “One year, a couple women put the ferrets down their tops,” he said. What's that called? Cleavage climbing?

When the square was packed to bursting, the three ferret wranglers entered like prizefighters, bearing six ferrets in handheld cages, plus an armful of sweatpants and blankets. Kevin started seeking volunteers. Amazingly, at least half the hands went up. He picked one guy, three women, and, as arranged, me. I was handed a pair of loose, gray sweatpants. Two guys held up a large blanket about neck-high around me to change behind, since everything has to come off—including underwear—and as I'm doing that, a thought occurs: five volunteers, six ferrets. What's the backup ferret for, in case there's accidentally some flesh left?

That's when Marlene came marching at me with
two
cages.

“Wanna take a risk?” she asked, grinning.

I nearly revisited my pasty.

“This is Spazz and this is Patrick,” Marlene said, beaming. Spazz was all white and Patrick was a kind of sandy-white. They both looked nervous. That made three of us. “Spazz is an albino and Patrick is deaf.”

“But aren't albinos really bad at seeing?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

It's not comforting to know that soon deaf, blind carnivores will be in your pants, searching for meat-based ferret food.

I was made to face the crowd as it began counting down. My thoughts darkened
…What if the two ferrets get into some kind of argument and start fighting?…
nine, eight, seven!
…What if the blind one mistakes Coach Johnson for a scratching post?…
six, five, four!
… What if one ferret says to the other, “OK, let's eat one now and save the other for later?”…
three, two, one!…

I half expected Kevin to holler, “Ladies, drop your ferrets!” But Marlene just dropped them—wham—into my pants and tied up the waist of my sweatpants.

I'm trying to be honest in this book, even at great embarrassment to myself, and that is why I'm willing to tell you right now …

… I liked it.

It tickled! It was like dropping two Furbys down your pants. They both went for the right leg, foozled around some, then burrowed at my cuff until they escaped. Marlene kept picking them up and sticking them back in my pants. One time she dropped Patrick down, only he wouldn't go. He hung on to my waistband for dear life. Whatever was down there, he didn't want to go back. Then they'd both come scurrying out again. Finally, Marlene just came over and held my cuffs shut with each hand. A woman forcefully holding my pants shut? Sadly, not a first for me.

About halfway through the three minutes, one of them (it felt like Patrick) settled on a pattern of circling my left ankle, resting some, then circling again. Spazz (I'm guessing) climbed up my leg and settled in the crotch region and began, how shall we put it, nuzzling the walnuts. (Be a very good title for Ben Stiller's next movie, by the way:
Nuzzling the Walnuts
.) This was when the real drama began. Would he be satisfied with mere nuzzling? Or would he get curious as to taste and texture? My heart was in my throat. It was half thrilling, half terrifying, like getting a straight-razor shave from Naomi Campbell. Might turn out fine. Might turn out bloody.

But Spazz—lovely, sweet Spazz—remained tender to the end. I could see people charging for this.
Lap Dances! Peep Shows! Ferret Legging! $1 a minute!

Honestly, it felt ashamedly good, especially with 300 people watching. It felt good enough that in Arkansas, we'd have to marry. Put it this way, it kicks hell out of Kirkin' o' the Tartan.

With Spazz happy and Patrick happy and me happy, I finally had time to see what else was going on, and that's when I noticed that one of the women—a blonde in a ponytail—was hollering, “No! Stop it! Hey! It's
biting
me! No, really!” The crowd was applauding and laughing and cheering.

“No, he's chewing my leg!” she kept insisting while people kept hooting with delight. Finally, Rita's nineteen-year-old daughter, Meagan, ran over to see her. OK, the truth is, the reason Meagan had to run over to the poor woman is that I asked her to take pictures
of me. Ooops. By the time Meagan got her mother's attention and Rita ran over, the time was up. Rita yanked the woman's pants out of her hiking boots and the ferret bolted into the sunshine.

“Bad Spunkydoodle!” Rita scolded. The poor woman fell to the ground to see how much of her legs were left. “I don't know what happened,” Rita apologized. “She's done this three times before without a problem!” The woman was trying not to cry. People were not laughing much anymore. Rita added: “He's had his rabies shots, so don't worry.”

Sure! You'll walk with a limp from this day forward, but at least you don't have rabies!

Her name was Marta Rowe, thirty-four, and her leg looked like it had been used to stir a pot of porcupines. There were at least fifteen to twenty big scratches, a bunch of gouges, and lots of purple welts. It looked like a baseball bat that had been used to hit purple rocks. “He was chewing my leg!” she said, still a little befoozled. “I kept telling the woman, ‘It's biting me!' but she didn't do anything! She didn't come over!”

Rita was still apologizing. “He's a rescue ferret, but he's very tame.”

(Uh-oh. I know one little carnivore who isn't moving up to “therapy ferret” anytime soon.)

Marta: “I kept trying to grab its mouth.”

And yet another ferret legger suddenly sees the wisdom of carrying a screwdriver.

By now the only other guy in the competition—a little mousy 5-8 guy with glasses—came over and chimed in with: “Mine was just curled up in the bottom of my pants the whole time. Nothing to it.” Same with the other two women. “I haven't had that much action in my pants in years,” gushed one of them. No problems at all. Maybe a love scratch or two. Only Marta Rowe got the full shark-of-the-land treatment.

Marlene said, “I think the problem was your pants were too snug. He wanted out.”

The human ferret buffet was there with her husband—a large
ex-linebacker type with a beer in his hand—and her two kids, who had an expression on their faces you only see at home seizures. Marlene took the four of them over to the first-aid station, which featured an ambulance with the back door open and three paramedics, all smoking in lawn chairs. Seriously. They even had smokers' wheezes. Not exactly who you want coming to your rescue.

I asked them to guess how Marta got the cuts and bruises.

The woman paramedic growled: “Sword fighting?”

No, I said.

The fat paramedic grunted: “Axe throwing?”

No, I said. Ferret legging.

The randomly toothed paramedic flipped his Marlboro onto the dirt and said, “Now, that's just dumb! Those are wild animals you're putting down there!”

My beloved Spazz? Wild? How dare he?

They put some antibacterial ointment on Marta's leg and sent her on her limping way. Marta told her husband she just wanted to sit somewhere, so he led her off toward some picnic tables over by the axe throwing.

I was going to warn them, but I decided to go back to Marlene and ask if I could borrow Spazz and try it again.

Hey, I said it'd been a long road trip.

I
f you were playing poker and were dealt a royal flush, would you fold it? Hell, yes, you would—if you were playing bull poker.

That's because in bull poker, the winner isn't decided by what kind of cards you have in your hand but what kind of grapes you have in your sack. In bull poker, four guys sit at a card table in the middle of a rodeo ring. A rank, 2,000-pound bull is released. When he and his horns charge the table, the last guy to leave his chair wins the pot. Like to see you bluff that.

When I heard about it, I knew two things: (1) I
had
to see this, and (2) I do not have those kinds of grapes. I don't care how much is in the pot, when that bull comes rip-snorting toward our Texas Hold 'Em, I'm off like a prom dress.

But then again, I'm not in Angola State Prison (Angola, Louisiana), which is one of the few places you can see bull poker these days, and I'm not doing a life sentence, which 85 percent of the fellas there are doing. So we humped our butts across the country to go to jail.

Two hours northwest of Baton Rouge, Angola is surrounded by alligators and bears and twenty-five miles of woods and rednecks on all sides. Most of the inmates are on full-ride scholarship—lifers—which explains why approximately 500 necks nearly snapped in half when TLC walked by the exercise yard in a tight “Wonder Woman” T-shirt and spray-on jeans.

Now, TLC is noticeable on Park Avenue, to say nothing of Angola prison. She's a kind of cross between Faith Hill and a young Cheryl Tiegs. A long time ago, she was Miss Teenage California, it just doesn't seem like it. About five-nine and built along the lines of Jessica Rabbit, she has Tahiti-blue eyes, California blond hair, and a swing on her back porch that would make the pope bite a hole in his hat. Not many women visit Angola, never mind a TLC, so you can imagine how many bench presses suddenly went unspotted.