There’s a sport out there for everybody, Chip Bailey’s gym teacher used to say. These were reassuring words for a second-grader who hadn’t shown much promise in dodging balls or climbing rope, but as Chip had progressed through elementary and then middle school, his hopes of finding the right sport had flatlined. His lack of athletic ability was made all the more pronounced by his name. Little league coaches would get understandably excited when they learned they had drawn a kid named Chip Bailey for their team, but then Chip would show up on the first day of practice, paunchy and with poor balance, and the looks of disappointment would be palpable.
After exhausting any hope of being good at a normal sport like baseball or football, Chip had tried a myriad of less common sports in high school, first getting cut from the bowling club, next from the cheer squad. He got too winded for rowing, he was too uncoordinated for fencing, and he proved to be inexplicably afraid of the shuttlecock when he tried badminton. Even the winter sports were a no-go. He had tried to make it as the third man on a four-man bobsled team, which seemingly would have involved him just crouching down in a tight space, but his natural imbalance kept causing the sled to lilt to the right.
If only they could all see him now, all of the doubters. The bobsled captain, his classmates and coaches—how he would have loved to see the looks on their faces when they learned that he, Chip Bailey, had finally found the sport he had been born to play, having received an invitation to compete at the World Championship of Horseplay, held at the indoor pool at the Super 8 in Branson, Missouri.
He had stumbled upon the sport of horseplay by accident. Or, more accurately, it had stumbled on him. He had been stretched out on a lounge chair at the public pool, about to doze off with a newspaper covering his face, when some teenagers tripped over him while chasing after a beach ball. The lifeguard had kicked them all out of the facility, Chip included, despite Chip’s repeated insistence that he didn’t even know these kids. Once they were all outside the chain-link fence that bordered the pool, the teenagers had resorted to punching each other in the arm for entertainment. One of them eventually punched Chip, who instinctively punched the teen right back in the shoulder with a ferocity that caused the rest of the teens to jump back. Before he could even register what he was doing, Chip had one of the other teens in a headlock and was giving him a fierce noogie. “Dude,” the first teen said, jaw agape. “You’re really good at this!”
Nobody had ever told Chip that he was good at anything. His entire life, Chip had been told he was unathletic, mechanically uninclined, academically dim, and a miserable artist. His grandma used to have a habit of throwing his crayon drawings in the trash—not the recycling bin, where society might be in danger, as she would say, of their coming back in another form—but the actual trash. So imagine the power these simple words had. A new spirit, an entity that can only be described as the spirit of horseplay, entered Chip, seizing hold of his nerve endings, and, with much the same natural grace that a young Tiger Woods must have shown upon swinging a seven-iron for the very first time, Chip scaled the chain-link fence and hopped nimbly back into the pool area.
Immediately, the lifeguard blew his whistle, jumping off his stand and yelling, “No horseplay! No horseplay!” But Chip proceeded to lead the lifeguard on a frantic chase, kicking over patrons’ sodas and nachos, much to the delight of the frenzied teens, who were rattling the chain-link fence from the outside. “Go, dude, go!” they shouted. “You’re awesome, bro!” Finally, the lifeguard caught Chip on the diving board. With Chip’s back to the edge of the board and the guard inching ever closer, the game appeared to be up, but Chip shocked everyone by kicking the lifeguard in the groin, throwing up his arms in victory, and back-flipping into the blue water. “Oh, man!” the teens yelled, beside themselves with joy. “Right in the go-nards!” And so, a star had been born.
Chip’s rise through the ranks of horseplay was not without its hurdles. For one thing, it was tough for a newcomer to establish himself because one could never be sure when or where a game of horseplay might break out. Besides the ever-popular pools, horseplay could occur in the ball pit at Chuck-E-Cheeze, in the back pew of a church, or at the table during family dinner time. Bouts of horseplay could even spontaneously spring up in venues devoted to an entirely different sport, one example being when a couple of shirtless guys run out onto the slippery tarp during a rain delay at a baseball game. The impromptu nature of the sport meant that you had to be always at the ready. There was no such thing as an off-season in horseplay.
As loosely organized as the sport was, it maintained popularity, perhaps even benefitting from its underground status. Much like skateboarders who flocked to urban sculpture parks where skating was expressly forbidden, horseplayers seemed to be drawn to the very spots where “NO HORSEPLAY” was prominently displayed on a set of rules. In fact, the one thing guaranteed to mark a space as a permanent horseplay arena was to add a certain adverb to the rule; a sign reading “ABSOLUTELY NO HORSEPLAY” all but promised that horseplay, and much of it, would most certainly occur.
One of the things Chip enjoyed most about the sport was its inherently level playing field. Horseplay was strictly an amateur game. Elite horseplayers shared the field with first-timers, or “ponies,” as veterans sometimes called them. The sport was devised in such a way that, though such a thing was rare, a pony might even emerge the champion of a match on their very first try. Of course, it was hard to say in any tangible way how one went about actually winning horseplay. When the game was over, everyone just kind of knew it was done.
Chip scanned the pool area of the Super 8, sizing up his competition. All of the big horseplayers were there: Tom “Foolery” O’Hara, Donald “Goose” Richardson, and, of course, Horseplay Jones. Truly, he would be facing elite competition, but he wouldn’t change his approach just because this was the World Championship. He was just going to play it like he always did, one wedgie at a time.
The glass door from the lobby let in a whoosh of cold air. The hotel’s night manager appeared, hands on the hips of his sport coat. “Hey!” he yelled. “What the hell is going on in here?”
There it was. The cue to begin. Mayhem ensued, as it always did at the beginning of horseplay. Bodies jumped into the pool, some diving headfirst into the shallow end, others getting a running start before springing into the over-chlorinated water, wild splashes abounding. Chip knew to keep his distance. Best to stand back and let the overeager novices knock each other out of the competition before risking himself to join the fray. This was a tactic he had learned from playing the party game where everyone tries to pop the balloons tied to each other’s ankles, as well as from watching the Hunger Games movies.
He was standing at the edge of the pool, looking for an opening to jump in, when he sensed someone sneaking behind him. Chip tried to whirl around into a ready position, but it was too late; Tom “Foolery” O’Hara gave Chip a heave, sending him flying backward into the pool. Chip surfaced, spitting out water. Unbelievable. It was one thing to get pushed into the pool; it was another to have it done while you were still dressed. That was probably the oldest trick in the horseplay book, and Chip had still been wearing his t-shirt. Tom Foolery jumped into the water and started dog-paddling toward Chip, no doubt planning a classic finishing move, the hands-on-shoulders dunk. What Foolery didn’t know was that Chip’s apparent weakness was actually his advantage. The wet shirt. Chip had it off in a flash, twisting it like a soaked towel. Foolery turned to flee, but Chip let fly with a series of unrelenting shirt snaps, thwack-thwack-thwacking an imaginary bullseye on Foolery’s bare back. “Stop it! Youch!” Tom yelled, but Chip continued, even as Foolery attempted to climb out of the pool. Chip gave Foolery one last decisive snap, this time in the butt, prompting Foolery to scamper for the pool area’s emergency exit with both hands protecting his rear. Chip allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation, albeit only briefly, as he had no doubt that the next challenge was already at hand.
He was right. Donald “Goose” Richardson was tracking toward him, the movement barely visible in Chip’s periphery. Chip flanked right, but his feet lost track of the bottom of the pool, which had sloped more sharply than Chip was ready for. He was in horseplay’s version of no-man’s land: the dreaded deep end. And the Goose was coming for him.
Chip cycled his feet, treading water. He tossed away the twisted t-shirt. It might have been useful in fending off whatever the Goose was planning, but it was generally frowned upon to use the same method of attack twice in a row in horseplay. Technically, repetition was permitted, but it was akin to bunting for a single in the seventh inning of a potential no-hitter; it just wasn’t sporting.
The Goose stood at the tip of the shallow end. Through the waving water, Chip saw the Goose’s foot feel out the slope. He could see the gears turning in the Goose’s bumpy forehead, calculating who had better odds if he were to pursue Chip out to deep water. The Goose kicked off, advancing.
Chip backstroked until his hand slapped the edge of the pool. The Goose, sensing Chip’s panic, swam full speed ahead, arms outstretched. Not sure what was coming, Chip invoked the one defensive maneuver guaranteed to buy him a couple of seconds; flattening his palm, he turned it perpendicular to his face and pressed it between his own eyes.
The Goose was forced to abide by another unwritten rule of horseplay. Whenever a player resorted to this move, the opponent was required to act like they were attempting to poke the defender in the eyes, an action always blocked by the perfectly-placed guarding hand. Adherence to this pattern was especially important when the defending player said “Nyuck nyuck nyuck,” or something to that effect.
With the Goose’s index and middle fingers momentarily locked around Chip’s palm, Chip seized the advantage by grabbing Goose’s wrist with his free hand. He did a quick pivot, attempting to throw the Goose over his shoulder. This might have worked in shallow water, but without a foothold, all it did was allow the Goose to latch himself onto Chip’s back. The Goose reached around Chip’s arms and, in one of his signature moves, clamped onto both of Chip’s nipples with his thumb and forefinger.
“Tittie twister, tittie twister, tittie twister, tittie twister…”
With each uttering of that ominous phrase, Chip felt his titties being twisted a little tighter, the left one rotating clockwise and the right one counter-clockwise. Soon, both areolas had gone a full turn and a quarter.
For most horseplayers, this would have been doom. Chip, on the other hand, had spent a good portion of the last few months steeling himself for just this sort of attack. He had fallen in with a group of sado-masochists he had met on the Internet, whose sexual appetites weren’t all that appealing but whose fierce nipple-play, clamps and all, had allowed him to build up a tolerance that the Goose never could have anticipated.
With the Goose stuck on his back like a giant leech, Chip inched his way along with the wall, feeling the tile with his palm. When he found what he was looking for, he spun around, using the nearby ladder for leverage as he pressed the Goose’s back against the side wall of the pool.
“Tittie twister, tittie twister,” the Goose huffed through labored breaths, although it was clear his heart wasn’t into the twisting anymore.
Chip started a chant of his own. “Pressure point, pressure point, pressure point!” He could only imagine the horror gradually dawning on Goose as he realized the incoming water from the pool’s filter system was being sprayed directly onto that not-so-sweet spot just to the side of the gap between his third and fourth thoracic vertebrae.
The Goose struggled, but in his weakened state Chip was able to keep him perfectly pinned against the water inlet. This may not have really been all that painful, but, as anyone who has even been held down by someone pressing a finger into their neck or back while repeating the words “pressure point” knows, the psychological trauma can be unbearable.
“Uncle! Uncle! I’m saying uncle, what the hell’s wrong with you?” the Goose yelled.
“No backsies?” asked Chip.
“Damn,” the Goose muttered under his breath. “Yeah, fine,” he grudgingly conceded. “No backsies.” Chip pushed out into the open water, allowing the Goose to climb up the ladder and disappear into the lobby, where he would no doubt tend to his wounded pride.
Chip surveyed the pool area. The crowd of horseplayers had been seriously thinned out. Outside the water, huffing and sweating bodies were splayed out across the deck, bemoaning their wedgies, noogies, and waterlogged noses. One poor sap was forlornly rubbing his gut, after an opponent had pressed his lips to it and, in a particularly undignified but remarkably effective maneuver, made a series of kissing, buzzing, and farting noises on his stomach as though it were the belly of an infant. In fact, Chip realized, the only players left besides himself were the esteemed Horseplay Jones and a couple of upstart ponies.
At the moment, Horseplay Jones was stalking those two no-names, water spraying out of his nostrils as he chased them around the shallow end. Horseplay Jones, it had to be said, struck an imposing figure. With wide-set eyes and a mane of tangled hair that fell down his back, Horseplay even kind of looked like a horse. The ponies he was chasing, a brother-and-sister team wearing matching yellow t-shirts that said “Just Horsing Around,” couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old. Horseplay caught up to them and grabbed them both by the necks of their respective t-shirts, hoisting them with ease and letting them wildly dangle their legs before tossing them out of the pool like they were two undersized bags of yard waste.
Horseplay turned to look at Chip. Chip swallowed, but returned Horseplay’s stone-faced gaze, the final two warriors sizing each other up, half in hatred, half in mutual respect, from opposite corners of the pool. Then, as if responding to an imaginary bell, they both kicked off the walls, coming to meet each other in the middle of the water.
Horseplay let an eerie grin turn up the corner of his lips before asking, “Did you hear they put out a shark warning?”
Chip had a pretty good idea where this was going, and he chose his words carefully. “That a fact?”
“Yuh-huh,” Horseplay said. “Seems there’s been a shark spotted swimming around.” Horseplay then proceeded to hum a couple of low notes, the second a half-step up from the first. He hummed the notes repeatedly, growing in tempo, slowly sinking down into the water until the notes turned into bubbles. Those wide-set eyes hovered above the surface for a moment, flicking back and forth, before they sunk down below. Chip took a step back, watching Horseplay’s long body carve out a snaking underwater path.
Horseplay shot above the surface, spitting water into Chip’s eyes.
“Not fair! No. No. Sharks don’t spit,” Chip insisted, but by the time he had rubbed the water out, Horseplay had disappeared.
Chip surveyed the open water, suddenly eerily calm. No sign of Horseplay anywhere.
He sensed the presence before he felt it, but there was no time to react. Horseplay Jones was underwater behind him, his massive hands having grabbed both sides of Chip’s swim trunks. Chip tumbled, whipping all four of his limbs like helicopter blades, but it was like trying to fight off a genuine shark attack. The struggle was over before it even began. Horseplay Jones stood triumphant, holding up Chip’s bright orange swimming trunks and waving them like he had just won a game of capture-the-flag.
Chip stood naked, humiliated, suddenly cold as he felt the water lap against his knees. The assembled group of onlookers and eliminated horseplayers cheered. Even the Super 8 manager was applauding. Horseplay tossed the swimsuit to a young child, a souvenir he could tell his grandkids about.
No, thought Chip. It does not end like this.
Horseplay Jones never had time to enact the sideways-palm-on-the-nose gesture that might have saved him. As soon as he turned around to look at Chip, who had tapped him on the shoulder, Chip let his fingers fly, both of them ending up lodged in Horseplay’s right eye socket.
Chip had the sensation of removing a glob of jelly from one of those plastic square packets at a restaurant. He yanked back, taking the bulging eye with him. As Horseplay had done with the swim trunks, Chip displayed the eye to the crowd, waving it in triumph.
The crowd grew hushed. The Super 8 manager stared. A child cried.
It had been all fun and games until then.