by Brian Rowe
Forever.
---
Basketball practice started at three. I had been receiving strange glances in the halls all week, but nobody acted more disagreeable toward me than my teammates. Aaron, who I felt pretty certain had an obvious man-crush on me, seemed to be the only one enjoying my daily physical conversions.
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” he said, resting his back against the locker next to mine. “I think you’re starting to look better as you get older.”
“Really?”
“Yes, more refined.”
“Well, thanks Aaron. It’s nice to hear something positive this week.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He threw his jersey on and slapped me on the back as he walked out to the gym.
“All right, let’s do this!” I heard from behind me.
I turned around to see Ryan walking over to his locker. “Oh, hey Cameron,” he said. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at a retirement home or something?”
He opened his locker and started pulling his uniform out, some papers and a folder dropping to the bench below us.
“Tell me something,” he continued, barely making any effort to clean up his mess. “How does it feel to no longer be at the top of the pyramid?”
“Excuse me?”
“You had everything I always wanted, including Charisma—”
“You can’t have Charisma!” I shouted, slamming my locker shut.
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you,” Ryan said, “but I didn’t pursue her. She came running back to me. As if the last few months with you never even happened.”
“We had a fight,” I said. “It’s true. But she’s just a little confused right now about everything. You’re taking advantage.”
“Yeah, she’s confused because the guy she had feelings for is turning into a crusty old man with erectile dysfunction right before her eyes.”
“Shut up.”
“No,” he said. “I’m here to say what everyone’s thinking.”
I looked over Ryan’s shoulders to see the other members of the team standing in a huddle, all just staring at the two of us.
“I don’t make the rules, Cameron,” Ryan said. “I just have to ask. Why are you still here?”
“What?”
“I mean, you look forty years old. You think you can still play on the varsity team?”
“It’s still me. I’m still the best free thrower we have!”
“No, you’re the best free thrower we used to have.”
“No! It’s still me, Ryan!”
He started laughing as he closed his locker and pulled his basketball jersey over his giant, egotistical head.
“Dude, here’s the best advice I can give you,” he said. “Maybe you should think about finding a basketball league for senior citizens. You know… people your age?”
“Ryan, I swear—”
With every word this guy said, the more I wanted to shove my backpack in his face again, this time with the backpack loaded with bricks.
“The great superstar of Caughlin Ranch High has finally been downsized to someone more pitiful than a chess club member. I don’t know how or why it happened, or why now. But it’s oh so sweet…”
He took a step closer to me. I was ready to pound both my fists against his face.
“…Just like your girlfriend’s tongue when I massage it with mine…”
“You son of a bitch!”
I grabbed Ryan by his shoulders and slammed him against the lockers. The other players were watching so intently I imagined the only thing to make their viewing experience more pleasurable would be a bag of buttered popcorn.
“Come on, Grandpa,” Ryan said, a rotten smile on his tanned face. “Take your best shot.”
“I swear, Ryan, one more word—”
“Face it,” he continued. “I’m the perfection now, and you’re just sad, flabby, middle-aged leftovers.”
I turned to my left to see the players staring at me. I didn’t know whose side they were on, but I wasn’t going to let Ryan win this round.
I smiled right back at him. “You know, I always knew you were a dick. The question is if you ever actually had one.”
I took a step back and kicked Ryan in the testicles.
All the blood rushed to his face. He bent forward to cough, but nothing came out. He fell to the floor with a loud crash, his head smacking the hardwood as hard as my neck had hit the cement outside.
“Oh,” I said. “You do.”
“Hey! What’s going on in here?”
The players scattered as Coach Welch marched up to me and Ryan. He glanced down at the floor to see Ryan groaning in pain.
“Help… me…” Ryan said, his voice sounding like a girl well under the age of five.
Welch walked right past him, and me as well.
“Martin,” he said, “come take a walk with me.”
I didn’t want to follow him, but I knew I had no choice. I followed Welch out of the locker room and into an adjacent empty hallway.
“I’m sorry, Coach,” I said. “Ryan was saying really vicious things about my appearance, and I had to stand up for myself—”
Welch took hold of my left shoulder and drew me closer to him. I wasn’t sure if he was going to lecture me or give me a high-five.
“I heard what’s happening to you, Martin. I wasn’t at the assembly on Monday, but word’s gotten around. I’ve heard about your disease. I’m disappointed, but most of all, I’m just really sorry. About everything.”
“Thanks, Coach,” I said, trying to keep a smile on my face. “That means a lot for you to say that.”
“It’s bizarre,” he said. “An accelerated aging disease? It feels like something you’d see in a movie or something. I’ve never heard of it. It’s too bad, it really is. And I’m here to tell you that I’m here for you, Martin. For anything you need.”
Welch had never been this nice to me in his last two years as our coach.
I nodded. “Wow. Thank you, Sir. And I promise you, here and now, no matter what I look like, no matter how old I become, I’m going to bring my best out there on the court one hundred and ten percent—”
“I have to remove you from the team,” he said.
I couldn’t have heard him correctly. I opened my mouth, and then closed it. I finally opened it again.
“Wait… what?”
“Listen,” he said, “I need you at your best, and only your best. I need everyone to be at the top of their game right now. You have a problem, Martin. You are sick. You’re not fit to play basketball. You’re not fit to play any sports.”
“No, Coach,” I said, trying not to look too desperate. “I see where you’re coming from. But trust me, I’m fine. Look at my abs! I’ve been working out like crazy!”
I lifted up my shirt to reveal my toned body. It was the best it’d looked since my age-altering problem began.
Welch nodded but the frown on his face didn’t disappear. “Martin, if you were thirty years old, I’d say you were in terrific shape. But you’re supposed to be young. You’re supposed to be my seventeen-year-old star player. And you look old, Martin. Really old.”
I shoved my back against the wall and brought my head down. I couldn’t face him.
“You can’t do this to me,” I finally said. “We’re weeks away from State, and I’ve put my heart and soul into this team for four years! I don’t care if I need a goddamn cane to walk out onto the court. I want to keep playing! Please, Coach. Just give me a chance.”
“It’s my final call, Martin,” Welch said, turning around and heading back toward the locker room. “I’m very sorry. Good luck to you.”
He disappeared around the corner, leaving me alone in the dark, uninviting hallway that in this moment felt like the loneliest place in the world.
---
I did a lot of aimless driving that evening until I wound up in
the Silver Mine Casino parking lot, my hand wrapped around a waffle cone filled with a double scoop of cookie dough ice cream. Despite my obsession with fitness, I had the biggest sweet tooth of anyone in my family, even more than Kimber. After Coach Welch dropped me from the team, it was time to exercise my natural born right to inhale as much junk food I could get my hands on.
I took my last bite of the delicious buttery cone and licked each of my fingers. I then looked in my wallet to see three twenty-dollar bills. I smiled and threw all of my credit cards inside the glove department, so I wouldn’t spend an extra penny at the casino slot machines.
I stepped out of the car and peered at the person reflected off the driver’s side window. It wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been me. But the older face before me did promise one important element to my night of never-ending fun.
No need for an ID!
I followed a family of seven as they waddled toward the casino’s front entrance. The glitzy building called to me with its bright lights and loud, obnoxious noises, as if inside wasn’t a gambling paradise but an over-crowded monster truck rally.
I started walking against the right side of the casino, scanning each and every slot machine. I didn’t like the digital slots, or the slots with weird themes, like western and under-the-sea. I didn’t want to succumb to dull nickel machines, but I didn’t feel confident in attacking the fancy dollar machines either.
I found the perfect medium, a flashy quarter machine that called to me from across the casino. I passed half a dozen cocktail waitresses and various blackjack tables until finally taking a seat at the slot machine, appropriately called Quarter Chaos.
Slipping in my first twenty, I took a calming deep breath. I wanted to savor every moment of this experience. I’d wanted to try gambling for years, legally, and now I finally had the opportunity, a rare benefit of my bizarre condition.
I pulled. I waited. I sighed. No jackpot.
You can do better than that.
Ten minutes later my sense of joy turned to one of disappointment. Before I knew it, I had already splurged through forty of my sixty dollars, almost as fast as it had taken me to steal the money from my dad’s top dresser drawer.
I leaned back and almost fell off my chair. I glanced across the way to see a multitude of dollar machines.
Maybe I’ll get lucky.
I kissed my last twenty and stuck it in the black and blue dollar machine. I watched, dishearteningly, as six more pulls gave me nothing.
I had one pull left. I closed my eyes. I inhaled without exhaling. I jerked the lever down as hard as I could and waited for the loud noise to signal that special million-dollar jackpot.
But the ding-ding-ding didn’t follow. Instead, I was met with a greedy, selfish machine asking me to put in more money. I kicked it with my right foot and turned around to see a security guard making her way in my direction.
I figured it best to get out of there before I became a repeat gambling offender. I started racing through the smoky casino, from one room to the next, realizing over the course of five minutes I had become completely lost.
I finally located the nickel slots. I sighed, knowing those three twenty-dollar bills would never again find their way back into my pocket, when a familiar laugh caught my attention.
I stopped and turned to my right.
“Yes!” a familiar voice shouted. “Me likey! Daddy come to poppy!”
“Oh come on!” a voice I didn’t recognize screamed out next to him. “I was just about to play that machine!”
I took a step forward and noticed two older men celebrating a big win. One was a short, goofy-looking man wearing clothes that looked more suitable for a twenty-year-old than the sixty-year-old he appeared to be. The other was Coach Welch, dressed in more relaxed Friday night attire, a cigar in his right hand. He was laughing at the top of his lungs.
“Can you believe it?” he asked, turning to his friend. “This could be a thousand bucks!”
“You’re kidding me,” his friend said. “You have got to be kidding me.”
I stayed far enough away so that Welch wouldn’t catch me in his eye-line. It was weird to see him outside school grounds. It was like catching Santa Claus without his suit and beard.
“How are you gonna spend it?” his friend asked.
“Not on dinner,” Welch said. “Come on. I’ve got a better idea.”
They stumbled off their chairs with drunken difficulty and moseyed on over to the cashier.
I followed them as best I could, trying not to get too close. I watched as they both sucked down shots of tequila and waited patiently for the teller to count all the money. When the lady finally handed over a large sum of cash to Welch, he started clapping his hands.
“Let’s hit it,” he said, and the two men walked toward the casino exit.
Where could they be going? I asked myself.
When I stepped outside, I started shivering. I dug my hands into the pockets of my bulky sweatshirt.
I felt like I had lost the two men for a moment, but then I saw them standing at the crosswalk across the parking lot. They looked so weird standing next to each other, with Welch towering over the other guy to such a degree they looked like they could be father and son.
As they walked across busy South Virginia Street, I quietly and inconspicuously made my way to the crosswalk. I followed them for ten minutes along the sidewalk on the far side of the street, trying my best to appear like a tourist, not like someone joyfully stalking others.
The two men stopped and turned to each other. I watched with confusion as Welch gave his mini-me buddy bill after bill of his slot machine cash.
Finally they turned to their left and proudly marched into a shady red-painted establishment in the back of a small parking lot.
There was no name on the front of the building, not even an address. But the loud cheers from inside gave away that this was certainly no ordinary bar.
Oh my God. I should’ve known.
I laughed. I couldn’t believe I just watched someone from my school administration waltz into a strip club. I watched as another group of men made their way inside. I imagined this was their version of Disneyland, a place where the magic never ends.
Man, oh man. If only I could go in.
I stopped. And smiled. Sometimes in the midst of all this craziness I forgot about my condition.
Time for your first strip club, Cameron, I thought.
I walked to the front of the two-story building. I tried opening the entrance door, but my conscience seemed to be holding me back.
“Don’t be shy, sugar,” a female voice said behind me. Before I could register a face, a hand gripped my right arm and led me forward.
“Hey, what are you—”
“You wanna go in or not, cutie pie?”
I turned to see a woman in her forties, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, a large head of curly blonde hair bouncing against my face.
“Sure,” I said. “Sounds like fun.”
“Sounds like fun? What are you, twelve? Come on, sexy. You need to start acting your age.”
She led me through the front door, and my young eyes found pleasures rarely seen by the high school set. There were two bars that I could see, lots of pool tables and burly men, with a single big-breasted stripper dancing on a pole in the center of the large, darkly-lit room.
The chain smoker finally let me go with a kick and a shove, and I started making my way toward the larger bar. My smile grew bigger by the minute.
This place definitely is the Disneyland of Reno.
My eyes locked in on the young stripper at the pole. She had long, brown hair, and a body that screamed perfection. I think she smiled at me as I walked by, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t take my eyes off her titillating chest.
I wonder if she’s ever visited my father?
But as much as I enjoyed all the pretty sights, tonight’s journey into Reno’s finest strip club wasn’t about ogling the pretty ladies. I had a p
lan.
I made my way to the bar and looked up and down for Coach Welch. He and his shrimpy friend were nowhere to be found.
I then trekked to a second, smaller bar toward the back, but still, I couldn’t locate them. I scanned the room, concentrating on every chair.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
I turned around to see the pockmarked face of a rail-thin bartender, intimidating but jovial. I pointed at myself, not sure if he was speaking to me.
“Yeah, you,” he said.
“Oh… uhh… could I get a Diet Coke?”
He stared at me like I had just asked for baby formula.
I stood up straight and coughed into my hand, trying to look more manly. “I mean, Jack and Coke, of course! Make it a Jack and Coke!”
“That’s more like it,” the bartender said and poured me the drink.
I swiped the glass from him. I’d never before tried this famous drink. I found it pretty gross.
“That’s ten!” the bartended shouted at me as he hurried to the other side to take another drink order.
Uh, oh.
I had spent every last penny I had. And I’d left my credit cards in the car.
I glanced up to see that the bartender was still at the other end, occupied with three additional customers.
I’ll pay you back next time, I thought. When I’m really twenty-one.
I turned around and saw a wide, dark hallway near the back of the room, with a staircase that led up to a second story. I skipped over to it as fast as I could, slowly making my way up a winding staircase that led me to a hallway even darker than the last one.
Every door down the long hallway was shut, with loud music and even louder moaning emanating from each blackened room.
This is disgusting.
I need to get out of here.
Is Welch even in here?
“Yeah, baby!” shouted a man from inside one of the closed doors.
I took a step forward. It had come from one of the doors to my right.
That was him.
I turned to my first door on the right. It was locked. The second door was locked, too. But the third door opened with ease.
I set my palm against the knob and, gently as possible, opened the door just a crack. I peeked my head in to see a disco ball spinning at the top of the ceiling. Then I saw the stripper, that revolting chain smoker who led me into the club, performing a wild show for a man with a bald head.