Page 14 of Side Hustle
No, the problem was, now that they’d said it, I couldn’t get the damn idea out of my head.
6
Hazel
“Holy hell these balls are hot.”
The only downside of being a side-hustling maven was that sometimes I took on jobs that were a little on the demeaning side just to make a buck. No, I wasn’t on the street corner hawking my lady goods. In fact, lady parts had absolutely nothing to do with today’s job from hell.
I was the mascot for the annual testicular cancer awareness 5k run in Auburn Hill. I was an advocate for men to touch their balls on a semiregular basis to check for any growths. Testicular cancer didn’t care how old your balls were, but most men—and women—didn’t know you needed to be doing regular self-exams as young as the teenage years.
As the fundraiser’s mascot, it was my job to cheer on the racers and remind them that balls weren’t something to be stuffed in tight underwear and forgotten about. We needed to get them out in the open—but not too in the open as that was a misdemeanor—and fondled regularly.
I was dressed as a pair of balls, replete with wrinkly brown felt material, squishy foam inside, and several black spray-painted coat hangers bent in a curlicue to look like pubes poking out.
It was humiliating.
But it paid reasonably well.
Getting out of my car at the event was my first hurdle. One of the wire pubes got caught on the doorframe and I had to give it a tug to get loose. I had a large pair of sunglasses over the holes for my eyes at the top of the ball sack. Thankfully, if I distorted my voice enough, no one would know it was me. My whole goal, other than doing my job well, was to do this thing without revealing who was sweating ass in the ball costume. Only then would I call it a job well done.
“Oh good, you’re here!” I heard the new race coordinator, Maeve, holler.
She rushed me off to the stage they set up in the park. It would serve as the starting line, finish line, and where they’d hand out awards after the race. Maeve had swung back in town to visit her mother, Mrs. Trudowsky, last year and had somehow not only stayed long-term, but taken over as the coordinator, making this year’s race look different than last year. This year would also be the debut of the balls mascot, i.e., me.
Maeve went over all the areas she wanted me to cover and when, talking and walking a mile a minute while I struggled to keep up. All seemed doable, especially when she handed me a couple different flavors of electrolyte drinks. As she ran off to harass someone else, I stuffed the bottles in a safe spot under the registration desk and hustled over to the stage to climb up and view the parking lot. It wasn’t long before racers started to arrive, the goody-two-shoes serious racers pulling up first so they’d have time to warm up and stretch in their synthetic materials made for maximum blood flow or some such nonsense. The moms with kids came next, warming up by wrangling their kids into jogging strollers. The final racers were the twentysomethings, dragging ass and finishing getting dressed as they approached the registration desk.
Heart beating out of my chest with excitement, I ran down the line waiting to check in, entertaining and high-fiving the racers. I hid behind my sunglasses, but I heard the snickers, saw the dropped jaws, and felt the fingers pointing at me in laughter. It was okay. I could take it. If my day of pretending to be a pair of balls could save a life, I was all for it.
And then I saw my group of friends minus Lucy and Bain, who were obviously exempt from coming, what with a newborn and all. Lenora and Jayden, Finnie and Charlie, Amelia and Titus were all standing at the back of the line, yawning and stretching. My stomach swooped all the way down to my white sneakers. Rip hadn’t come.
Titus bent down to stretch his hamstrings and my stomach soared back up. There he was. Rip stood at the very back of the line, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but here. He kept swiveling his head like he was searching for an escape route.
Not wanting to reveal who I was, I didn’t go over and high-five my friends. Lenora and Amelia would know right away it was me, even with my voice dropped lower and being covered head to toe. The last thing I needed was to have Rip see me as a ball sack. He already thought I was insane. Let’s not go adding to it.
I took one last glance at his downturned face and got back to working. If I spent the majority of the race wondering how he was and how he was handling the news that Lucy was his sister, or if he’d given the idea of running for mayor any further thought, or if he’d gotten the results back from the geologist about the gold nugget, I would never admit it. Because Rip and I, despite the few and far between moments we had where I felt closer to him than anyone on this crazy planet, we weren’t actually friends. We weren’t anything.
The race went off without a hitch. Hundreds of people came out to support the cause, some running, some jogging, and quite a few walking and laughing. All were welcome and all of them got a little time with the bubbly mascot, I made sure of it. When the race was over and Maeve was handing out awards on stage, I ducked behind the now empty registration desk to see if I could take a swig of those electrolytes. The green grass of the park was starting to sway and lurch when I moved my head too quickly, which I knew was an early sign of dehydration. Two hours in a felt ball bag in the hot sun could do that to a person.
I looked left and right and didn’t see anyone looking in my direction. Crouching down, I grabbed the drink and pulled the head of the ball sack off. The rush of cool air against my cheeks and sweaty forehead felt like heaven. The electrolyte drink went down quick. Why was it you never knew how parched you were until you started drinking something cold and then couldn’t stop, even to breathe?
I may not have done the run, but I was so close to crossing the finish line of this job today. Maybe thirty more minutes and I could head home to shower away the humiliation. A woman walked across the park, at odds with everyone else as she wore high-heeled wedges and a skin-tight sundress just shy of appropriate length for a family event. I squinted, thinking maybe I was more dehydrated than I thought.
That woman looked a hell of a lot like my mother, had she aged unusually fast. And you know. Stayed in Auburn Hill.
The very same woman I hadn’t seen since I was eight years old and crying for her not to leave me.
The woman got closer. I fell back on my butt, the nut sack foam cushioning me. I blinked harder. My face went numb and I was one held breath away from passing out. She looked like a bleached version of the brunette I saw in pictures, holding me when I was little. Even the little mole on the side of her cheek looked familiar.
“Excuse me. Could you tell me where I can find Yedda Redding?” the woman asked, not even bothering to look at me sitting there on my ass in the grass. She was too busy surveying the throng of people clustered around the stage.
A half-crazed voice in my head stuttered out a laugh. Good luck finding tiny Yedda over in that swarm of people. She was barely five feet tall.
But alas, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond the shouting in my head that told me over and over that it had to be her. Then her head swiveled and she pushed her sunglasses on top of her fake blonde hair. Brown eyes shaped exactly like mine, except with a fan of tiny lines off the corners, studied me.
“Are you…?” She frowned.
I sucked in a huge breath of air finally and held it.
