Match Maker

by Alan Chin

  Every part of my intellect screamed “no,” but I caved into his pleading, gray-green eyes. And it was simple, really: he could never be happy in college, knowing what he’d given up, and I could never be happy without him.

  I HAD assumed that my life’s work was a matter of my choosing, but when I told my parents I would bypass college to tour with Jared, my father ranted for five full minutes before putting his fist through the kitchen wall.

  “Your ass is college-bound,” he hissed with a dangerous tone. “Discussion over.”

  My mother stared down at her hands, her eyes moist with disappointment. She would not, however, try to stop me. She knew why I had made my decision; I saw the comprehension in her tearful eyes.

  “I’ll give it a year. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll go back to school.”

  “If your butt is not in a classroom tomorrow morning,” he said, “you’re no son of mine. Don’t come back home and don’t expect anything from me when you fall on your ass. You hear me?”

  I hugged my mother. “I’ll miss you.”

  “You’ve always been more stubborn than him,” was all she said.

  “You don’t get it,” Dad continued. “Those bums who scratch out a living with their rackets are the dumb ones. They have shit for brains, too stupid to make something of themselves. But you, you can be any damned thing you want, a doctor, a lawyer, a politician. You’re so damned smart that people are throwing opportunities at you.”

  I grew angry because the larger part of me agreed with him. For the first time in our lives, he and I were on the same wavelength but still on opposite sides of the fence. I wanted to shout at him how much I loved tennis, that I loved a tennis bum (who no doubt had shit for brains), but it was pointless. He could never understand, and she already did.

  I packed a bag and walked away without looking back.

  Chapter 5

  ON TOUR, Jared worked with the diligence of a seasoned professional. His work ethic and boyish good looks earned him the reputation of being the small-town, red-blooded American Boy personified.

  He dominated his peers with a blistering forehand and sheer hustle, darting about the court and smashing bullets every time he could hit a forehand. He put a hundred percent effort into every point. He always wore the same understated white outfit, and he loved to take on the flashy rivals who followed the Andre Agassi proclamation that “Image is Everything,” giving the crowd a farm-boy vs. Hollywood match up. His forehand and his determination took him into the top twenty in just three years.

  While Jared played leapfrog in the rankings, I played the challenger circuit, which is tennis’s version of the minor leagues, trying to break into the top hundred. My game was pure retriever. Strategy, speed, and stamina were my weapons. Nimble as a cat, I flew over the court, sending every ball back with heavy topspin and no pace, baiting my opponents to go for powerful, low-percentage shots. With each ball I struck, I sent a message across the net: I can do this all day.

  I rarely hit an ace, but I never double-faulted, and I didn’t crack many winners but seldom missed a passing shot. My strategy usually put me in a winning position, but often as not, I would choke and lose.

  My demons surfaced when closing out the match and related to the very nature of competition. In tennis, one player wins and the other loses; it’s unavoidable. One player establishes who is tougher, faster, and/or smarter. The winner earns a sense of superiority, and the loser feels inconsolable. On tour, a player’s self-esteem hinges on his most recent performance, and playing well and winning are life-and-death concerns.

  I would invariably choke because I would begin to pity the player I was thrashing. I knew I was not a superior person. I also knew how he would feel regardless. Once sympathy crept into my thoughts, my focus crumbled, and the wheels fell off. I could not perform at my peak while carrying that extra mental baggage.

  My handicap kept me out of the top echelon, and after two years of being ranked in the one-thirties, I abandoned the challenger circuit to focus on helping Jared.

  I poured my frustration of being a second-rate player into honing Jared’s game and organizing his tournament schedule, practice agenda, diet, interviews, cross-training, and gym workouts. I pumped him up before a match and calmed him down after. I became the Parris Island drill sergeant of the practice courts, pushing Jared to develop his weak backhand and volleys in order to round out his game. Whatever the drill, I always did it with him, unlike those beer-gut coaches who load up a ball machine and bark encouragements from the sidelines.

  My favorite part was giving him rubdowns after a hard-fought match or a grueling practice. I became an expert on every nuance of his muscles and tendons, where he was prone to injuries, and how to treat those injuries. I even tailored a gym routine to strengthen his more fragile muscle groups. If there was ever a hog heaven, I was living it.

  After four arduous years of crawling our way up the rankings, with the endorsements and other perks beginning to come our way, Jared played the match of his career in a French Open quarterfinal. Suzanne Lenglen Stadium overflowed with twelve thousand fans. An estimated two million Americans watched on ESPN. Jared pranced off the court as radiant as a shooting star.

  That night, we hit the town to celebrate. We wandered through the Marais wide-eyed and breathless. The heavy beat of music oozing from the gay clubs and the parade of beautiful men along the narrow streets had our blood pumping.

  We squeezed into a club, the Blue Frog, known for its clientele of elegant men and lovely boys. The men sat along the walls sipping drinks from long-stemmed cocktail glasses. The boys jammed onto the dance floor to perform a gay version of the Hip Hop Shuffle.

  We snaked our way to the bar and downed two Cosmos. Jared pulled me onto the floor. He danced loose and cool, with all the attitude of a Justin Timberlake video.

  In street clothes and locked in a crush of shirtless, sweaty dancers, we became confident that no one recognized us, so we pulled off our shirts too and began to be sexy with each other, the way we did in the privacy of our apartment. The multi-colored lights glistened, prism-like, through his sweat, and I became hard watching his swaying torso and gyrating crotch. The sexier I felt, the closer I drew to him, until we were an inch apart with the music vibrating between us. Our bodies merged, panting, sweating. We kissed. Under the spell of that throbbing music, I fused into the softness of his lips and became ravenous for more. I cocked my head and ran my tongue along his neck; his salty sweat became nectar.

  Someone yelled, “Lick it, baby. You know how,” and I knew he meant me. I remember being surprised that they taunted us in English, but I guessed it was obvious we weren’t French.

  He unbuttoned his jeans and lowered his zipper to half-mast. In street clothes, he never wore underwear, so as his fly peeled open, his pubic hair came into view. The boys around us whistled. I felt swept away by my lust for the creature weaving in front of me. He reached over and unhooked my belt, pulled it from my waist, and draped it around my neck like a dog collar, which he used as a leash to pull my face toward his open fly.

  I dropped to one knee, and my face nuzzled his belly. As my lips followed his treasure trail, a bright light exploded over us.

  Jared whirled around and zipped up while dancing away, leaving me breathless and alone. The crowd howled in disappointment. I sometimes wonder how far I would have gone if that flash had not made Jared pull away.

  That bright light had been a camera flash, and the next day our picture, with my face pressed to Jared’s open fly, showed up on the tournament director’s desk. We were summoned before the director and told that the ATP had paid a tidy sum to keep that photo out of the papers. Any more publicity of that nature, he explained, and we risked not being invited back.

  Adding to our injury, a day later, Jared lost his semi-final match in straight sets to fellow American Nicholas Ahrens. That tournament proved to be the pinnacle of both Jared’s career and our relationship. Once rumors of our sexuality leaked to th
e International Tennis Federation, we began a downward slide, imperceptible at first, then avalanche-like, building in speed and force.

  In 1973, Billie Jean King made history by beating fifty-five-year-old Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, giving women’s tennis some well-deserved recognition. In 1977, Renee Richard, who was Richard Raskind before her sex-change operation, played in the women’s draw at the US Open after a legal battle that had denied her entry the year before. In the eighties, it was common knowledge that several top women players were lesbians.

  But when it came to sex, the powers that govern professional tennis would be pushed only so far. In our case, everything was whispered behind closed doors, but the message became all too clear: there is no place in professional tennis for gay men.

  Jared became the game’s whipping boy. The officials shunned us. The endorsements dried up. Competing became a nightmare to get fair treatment. Chair umpires made bad line overrules against Jared, tipping the matches in his opponents’ favor.

  We trained harder than before, and the fatigue from our workouts helped to anesthetize our frustration, but fatigue alone could not quell all the anger building in both of us. During the worst times, we clung to each other and said, “Screw you bastards,” which was the only way we survived as long as we did.

  Our last six months on tour transformed Jared into a renegade. He flew into a rage when umpires made bad calls, turning matches into circus-like forums of obscenity, umpire-bashing, and hysterical meltdowns. He plummeted out of the top fifty, then gave up altogether.

  We moved to San Francisco and settled into an apartment on Russian Hill with a view of downtown, the Bay Bridge, and the Berkeley hills. After months of bumming around and burning up what money we had put aside, I met Carrie Bennett at a tennis event in Golden Gate Park, and she offered me the job of tennis pro at the Windsor Club. I wrapped that job around me like a cocoon, letting myself be content with teaching people the game.

  Jared posted a want ad in the local gay rag offering lessons, and he lined up a dozen students who shelled out fifty bucks each week for a one-hour session. I sometimes wondered what would have happened if I’d gone to college. When those thoughts haunted me, I’d smile and watch them fade away. I had my job and my man. I was happy—as Hemingway said, “as happy as it is safe to be in life.”

  Then Connor Lin breezed into my little world and ignited a force in my heart that threatened to blow it all away.

  Chapter 6

  THE Saturday following my interview with Connor Lin dawned cool and humid. Broken clouds drifting off the Pacific smudged the morning sky with wide streaks of gray. Being both late and angry had me jogging through the parking lot with my pulse throbbing at my temples. Beside the stone path that led to the clubhouse and at the end of a line of BMWs, Mercedes Benzes and Cadillacs sat a twelve-year-old Chevy delivery van with a crumpled right fender and a sign on the door that read Oakland’s Prime Produce. They were at the courts, waiting. That should have pleased me, because until then I had no idea if they would show, but the fact that I had kept them waiting for an hour only fueled my anger.

  My morning had begun on a sour note when Jared stumbled through our front doorway at three a.m. after a night of pub-crawling with friends. I tore into him with nine hours of built-up frustration, but I didn’t get ten words out before I saw the pain behind those bleary eyes, pain that a deluge of alcohol couldn’t drown.

  There is a kind of vagueness among drunks, even when they’re sober, a look that usually passes for stupidity, but being one of the initiated, I know it’s a shield from their pain. As my rage crystallized into pity, I led him to bed, peeled off his clothes, and tucked him between the sheets. Slipping in next to him, I held him until we both fell asleep.

  When morning’s light turned the windows blue, Jared’s body purged itself of its self-induced poison, followed by the shakes and a hangover. I dumped him into a hot bath while the coffee brewed and I changed the bedding. It took an hour to pull him from the tub, force pancakes and painkillers down him, and lead him back to bed.

  The drive to work had my stomach performing slow, agonizing somersaults. That was partly due to my car, a ’68 VW Bug we lovingly called Slug because of its mustard yellow color. Slug’s broken odometer registered all nines, the front windshield had a starburst-patterned crack, and heater-warmed gasoline fumes seeped into the passenger compartment, which often made me nauseous.

  That morning, though, my nausea came from being unable to help Jared. His nights out were becoming more frequent. Day by day, I watched him disintegrate. I pleaded with him to see a doctor, but his eyes frosted over, and he gave me the silent treatment. At times, he ignored me for five or six days straight, as if his pain were somehow my fault.

  His drinking had robbed us of social interaction with our gay friends, because they would invariably invite us to go out clubbing, and I was intent on keeping Jared as far away from alcohol as humanly possible. His binges always started building a few weeks before a big tournament, particularly a Grand Slam, like a pressure cooker gathering steam, and that first week of play, the lid would blow off and he would focus his hostility inward, incinerating his insides and lashing out at anyone who tried to comfort him.

  I HEARD Connor before I saw him, heard the sound of a sweet spot striking the ball in a smooth, metronome-like rhythm. I pulled my thoughts away from Jared and refocused.

  Connor was on the show court, dressed in white shorts and a faded blue sweatshirt. But something looked different, and I realized what had changed: he wore clear, wire-rimmed glasses, not the dark Oakleys he had on when I first met him. He must have used contact lenses when he played in Carmel. I took a moment to appraise this new look. It suited him, giving his face a slight bookkeeper’s fragility.

  Across the net was a blond, about the same age and body type. He wore red shorts and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Both boys were hitting out, smashing the ball with every stroke, and it was easy to understand why: on the clubhouse veranda overlooking court one stood a bevy of teenaged girls dressed in their skimpy tennis skirts and tight blouses. They all squirmed with excitement as they ogled these new boys.

  Roy Lin sat at a table on the veranda sipping tea, his eyes glued to the boys. He resembled a stone-faced Mandarin watching two Tae Kwon Do Black Belt Masters in mortal combat, willing his man to defeat the opponent.

  I pushed back my parka hood, feeling the sunshine spread over my face.

  Connor glanced up at me, smiled, and continued to crush the ball. He put some extra mustard into each swing, no doubt to impress me.

  I was impressed, not at how hard he hit the ball, but at the sheer dexterity of his movement: his explosive strides to run down a wide ball, the tiny adjustment steps as his racket looped back and the forward stroke began. The technique of his groundstrokes carved rounded Os through the air with machine-like precision. His footwork and timing were efficient and had that unreal athleticism of Pete Sampras or, I dared to think, Stefan Edberg.

  I couldn’t blame those girls a bit; he was ravishing. They both were. For a moment I forgot all the practical elements like footwork and timing and I simply admired their poetry, a pair of Appaloosa colts racing across a spring meadow.

  A nervous excitement suffused me, obliterating the anger of a few minutes before. Even the sun on my face gave me new optimism.

  I strolled into my office to grab a racket and towels, then headed to the show court. As soon as I stepped onto the court, Connor hit a screaming bullet down the line before jogging over to me. His face radiated energy. Up close, I caught the pleasant scent of the sweat that dampened the front of his sweatshirt. I hesitated for a heartbeat as I watched a perfect tear of sweat journey down his temple and hang on his jaw.

  The other boy wandered over and stood beside Connor, trying hard to look as if he belonged.

  I tossed them each a towel and refocused on tennis.

  Connor swiped the towel across his face and shook my hand. He introduced the oth
er boy, Spencer Young, as his regular practice partner. Spencer stood as tall as Connor, but he carried more weight and definition. His hair, tawny streaks of gold mixed with albino-blond, framed his fine-boned face, which was speckled like a robin’s egg from too much time in the sun. A girlish loveliness softened his eyes, which were very large and teal blue.

  “Hope you don’t mind me bringing Spence here, Mr. Bottega. He wanted to meet you.”

  I shook Spencer’s hand, thinking, This could be great: if Spencer chaperoned our practice sessions, Mr. Lin had no reason to take issue with my being gay.

  A sheen of sweat moistened Spencer’s forehead and sparkled in the sunshine. He looked like the Caucasian equivalent of Connor, only softer, more sensitive, and his youth combined with his innocence to give him a slightly dopey air that I found very alluring. Yes, I thought, and I encouraged Spencer to join every practice. The notion struck me that Connor had already thought of that. Did he feel the need for a chaperone?

  I led them to the middle of the court, and I sat on the service line beside the net. They joined me, the three of us sitting in a tight circle. I did this to give them a different perspective of the court. A note of confusion marred Connor’s face, but he played along without comment.

  Before I could begin the lesson, Connor spread his legs and toweled them off, starting at his calves and working his way up his inner thighs. His shorts bunched up, exposing more of his thighs: pale skin as smooth as porcelain and laced with thin blue veins.

  The words caught in my throat like a hummingbird in a net. I noticed a series of fine muscle tremors moving under the skin of both legs. They had overdone the warm-up, and I reminded myself that Connor’s legs could be injury-prone or fall prey to cramping.

  “Drape those towels over your legs so you don’t cool down too fast.”