Rosa Blasi - Jock Itch: The Misadventures of a Retired Jersey Chaser

Jock Itch is dedicated to the true loves of my life:
my Mom, Dad, and Kaia.

E veryone has a type. Dudes tend to be either boob guys or ass men. Some prefer blonds to brunettes. Few prefer redheads, mainly because their private parts resemble baloney and carrots. Intelligence-wise, some dig the hypersmart Tina Fey type, while others settle for those dumb bitches on The Hills essentially blow-up dolls who rarely speak and seldom have opinionsto adorn their arms and blind them with cleavage. Types arent just for the boys: Women have them too. Some like good guys, more like bad ones, and some just crave a big fat walleteven if it comes with a guy who looks like George Costanza. You know what your type is. Its the one who gives you the uncontrollable urge that makes you go weak in the knees. Its the one who makes you a little bit dumberand a whole lot giddier. Admittedly, we all have our celebrity crushes. And Im no different. Its just that my itch is for athletes. I wish the cure were only as simple as buying a case of Lotrimin and being done with it. But it took a lot more than that to cure my jock itch.

There is a certain dangera confidence and a swaggerthat comes with professional athletes. Its what I call BDAor Big Dick Attitude. Im not insinuating that all athletes are hung. Believe me, height and stature have nothing to do with theirathletic equipment. What I do mean to say is that sometimes you meet a guy and he just has that certain something . Athletes are overly confident, and people are naturally drawn to them because of it. Theyre the fives who date tens. They have BDA. They carry themselves differently from the rest of us. And they know it. They simply have an air about them that you cant quite put your finger onor around.

If you think about it, these guys have literally been worshipped since they were in junior high, when people discovered their talents. In fact it was probably even before that. How many unsuspecting, drooling infants have heard: Oh, hes gonna grow up to be a linebacker! Look how big he is! That worship continues through grade school until finally they become like pied pipers, whose adoring following only grows as they move from junior to varsity to college, and then on to the professional leagues.

If youre a guy, chances are you tune in to ESPNs SportsCenter at least three times a day, if not more. You worship a team, or severalmaybe a player, maybe a city, maybe some dumbass mascot or school that you didnt attend. Im pretty sure there isnt a guy out there who hasnt had the I wonder what would it be like fantasy. Guys who dont fantasize about playing maybe just fantasize about looking around the players locker rooms instead!

Some fans take it as far as obsessing about fantasy ball. Or as my friend Randall Slavin says, Fantasy should strictly be used for storytelling and masturbation. In the same vein, imagine how youd look at your girlfriend if she were sweating out and losing sleep over with whom she would potentially pair up in the latest Judd Apatow movie. Should the lineup be Cameron Diaz and Ben Affleck? Or should it be Ben and Jennifer Aniston? Or Kate Hudson? Or should we not go with Ben, because he once made a movie like Gigli , which was like watching a root canal in slow motion, with a windup drill. (You know Ill never get those two hours back.) Amplify this with the countless magazines dedicated to the fiction or fantasy of choice, along with websites, chat rooms, blogs, frantic phone calls, draft-pick parties, and even more frenzied sports-event watching. The behavior is really bizarre, I think.

If youve ever had a partner do this in front of you, its almost like watching your once-adult mate travel backward in time, regressing and obsessing over this waste-of-time fantasy sport. But things could be worse. They could actually play the sport for a living. And you might even find yourself dating one of these fantasies, or, in my case, one (maybe two) in every professional sport except soccer, tennis, and horse racing.

My infatuation with jocks all started with Ken Doll Donny Gothem. He was on the junior varsity football team. Donny was a public high school trifecta. He was hot, popular, and he wanted me because I had just thankfully grown out of my gawky junior high phase. (You know the look: when your teeth are too big for your mouth and go every which way but straight, your face hasnt caught up with your nose, and your monobrow is filing for a legal separation.) It was the late eighties, and I was sporting the big, teased, and highly flammable Aquanet hair that sprouted like cauliflower florets on top and curled under like a sausage down below. (My bangs could take gale-force winds without budging.) I completed the look with blue eyelinera color not found in natureand neon fuchsia lip gloss. Who needed safety reflectors riding a bike with a makeup palette like that?

Donny was my it guy, until I wouldnt put out, so he dumped me in favor of someone who would. You can only endure so much jeans-to-jeans dry humping before causing significant chafing and possible first-degree burns to the crotch. It was high school, so Donny just asked for his football jacket back and mumbled in that intelligible teenage angst garble: This aint working. Because it was high school, I acted like I didnt care, made sure I looked extra cute at school the next day (in case he changed his mind), and never bothered to ask him to expound on the reasons for our breakup even though I cried myself to sleep on my Like a Virgin pillowcases. (Ah, vintage Madonna, the first Lady Gaga.) After the whole brief Donny debacle, I realized I actually really enjoyed the attention of athletes. I felt coolcooler than I did before. And isnt that the main objective of a high school education?

So I used my creativity to devise a scheme that would give me more access to them (as well as create a nice high school cash flow). Armed with a fake pregnancy bump and a shopping list from my husband, I went to neighborhood grocery stores dressed like I was about to give birth any moment and bought alcohol for members of the football team. Due to my delicate state, the clerks not only helped me gather the ingredients for the barbecue we were having, they also carried the load out to my parents woody station wagon. And when they asked what I was having and when was my due date, I had to resist the urge to answer: Bartles & Jaymes Black Cherry wine coolers, later tonight!

They were innocent times. I came from Mount Prospect, Illinois, Where Friendliness Is a Way of Life our towns welcome sign boasted (unless thats been changed to Home of 2010 American Idol Winner Lee DeWyze!!!). A few years before meeting the Donny doll, I used to voraciously read anything by Danielle Steel. I would get lost in her world of romance and opulence. Since my childhood home was a modest, ranch-style house (similar to all the other houses on the block) I thought anyone who had white carpeting and an upstairs was rich.

I also immersed my literary tastes in the grand dame of booksJudy Blume.

When I read what was considered the dirtiest book of all time, Judys Forever , it felt very forbidden. The novel got its reputation because the two lead characters had sex in chapter 17, on lines 54 and 55, oh, and 56, and then in even more chapters. It was the summer before sixth grade. This was the time when I would have given my left leg to get my period and start developing breasts. My friend Tanya and I even went so far as to try to insert a tampon (with a mirror to guide us) in hopes that this might jump-start the real thing, because rumor had it that once you got your period your breasts could double in size! Sign me up.