On the way to the driving range, I am stopped at a stoplight, and I see a woman, small, young, and pretty, pumping gas. I see her take the nozzle out of the gas pump and stick it into the whatever you call it, the receptacle that leads to the gas tank of her car, which is a big black boxy thing, an Explorer, maybe, but I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care that gasoline prices are soaring. The woman is wearing these hiphugger shorts, and I can see way down her back to the tattoo of a bird. An angry bird, maybe an eagle, diving into her shorts. What I wouldn’t give to kiss the bird tattoo just above the woman’s ass. When the light changes I am thinking about sticking my tongue as far as it will go into the heart of the woman’s asshole. That’s what that tattoo makes me want to do.

At the driving range I bash half a bucket of golf balls all over the place. My target is a big tree, maybe an oak, just beyond the back fence, but I never get near it. There is a fairly stiff wind blowing straight out, but that doesn’t seem to help. The balls are old and decrepit, and for the life of me I can’t keep them straight. I push right, hook left, sky and skull and dribble. I try all kinds of different swings. Finally I go back to the swing I had twenty years ago when I was twenty. Aim a little left, swing hard and full, a little from the outside in. Amazingly this works. The good old power fade. I slam ball after ball up against the fence right at the base of the tree.

There are two balls left in the bucket when my hat blows off. It’s a straw hat, and the wind just takes it. It sails out twenty yards before touching down, and then it starts rolling along on its brim. It rolls and rolls. Finally it comes to rest, about 120 yards out in the middle of the driving range. Shit.

I take out my nine iron and aim at the hat. I hit the shot perfect, but the nine iron is too much club, and the ball soars straight over the hat, lands twenty yards past it, and shoots along the ground like a scared rabbit. I think about changing to a pitching wedge, but I don’t, I just hit another nine iron—I hit it just as solid and true as the first one. Now I’m all out of balls. I should have switched to the pitching wedge or even the sand wedge and really tried to nail the hat. That would have been something.

Instead, I go inside the pro shop and ask the guy if he can PA the people to stop hitting balls so I can fetch my hat. Then I trot out and grab it, wave briefly to the golfers on the practice tees, and trot back in. When I’m just about back to the tees, I recognize the young woman with the bird tattoo. She has a full bucket of balls and a big-headed driver with a golden shaft. She’s really pretty, and maybe about twenty. I smile at her. “Hey,” she says. “Nice hat.”

I grin foolishly.

It’s only when I’m back in the car driving home that I think I should have said, “Nice tattoo.” Or at least stayed to watch her swing. Not that anything would have come of it. Not that she’d want me to give her some tips or fuck her brains out. I do stop at the gas station where I’d first seen her, though, the same exact pump, and I think of her while I fill my tank. It’s satisfying, but not very.