Losing Is Not an Option

by Rich Wallace

  J.D.’s back tonight, but Curtis doesn’t show. Mr. DelCalzo is there to watch. He looks almost too young to have a kid who’s almost eighteen. He tells me Aaron roomed with the nephew of one of the Syracuse coaches at camp and they hit it off real well. “Aaron’s gotta get his SATs up,” Stan says, “but he could play there.”

  The blond girl’s name is Jess. We get to talking a little. Says she met Hatcher at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting last spring. They’ve been hanging out on and off ever since. “He helped me through a lot of painful things,” she says. So I guess she isn’t with Ollie after all.

  The game follows a predictable pattern. We fall behind early, make a run, fall behind again, then get frantic. J.D. finds his range in the second half and starts hitting long three-pointers, and Hatcher plays his best game inside, just outhustling everybody for rebounds. The Building Products players are struggling with the heat, so we substitute freely and run them off the court.

  They were undefeated, we were winless. But we should be 3–1 by now instead of 1–3.

  Tony Hatcher was the top-ranked wrestler in all of Pennsylvania at 140 pounds for most of his senior season. He went to the state meet as the number one seed but got caught in a cradle in the first period of his first match by a kid from out in Altoona. Tony worked his way through the wrestle-backs and finished fifth, sitting in the bleachers for the championship round as his teammates won titles at 130 and 135.

  Things started declining, or at least the decline became apparent, when he got in a shouting match with his coach on the van ride back from Hershey, a ride that should have been celebratory. Tony went on a long, wild drunk beginning five minutes after the van left him off at the high school.

  He quickly turned away from Al and Digit—the state champions—guys he’d been inseparable from for at least six years. He still had scholarship offers from Rutgers and Bloomsburg, but a few other schools that had been showing interest pulled out.

  Graduation was just a few months off, and unlike my brother, he managed to slide on through. But by the time summer came he was into cocaine and Jack Daniels and Marlboros.

  “It wasn’t just the wrestling,” he told me the other day. “Not blowing it in the states, anyway. It was a long time coming. My father never shut up about my future, not as long as I can remember, and the coach ran the team like a drill sergeant. It was like I wasn’t even accomplishing these things on my own, or for me. I just said screw it all.”

  So it was his idea to go into construction, his idea to enroll at Weston CC, his idea that he would try out for the college’s basketball team this October despite never having played in an organized league before this one.

  “I can’t wrestle again,” he says. “It’s been too long. But I love basketball. I love it even if I ain’t any good at it yet.”

  It is the nature of a summer league that guys have to work, or they go to the Jersey shore for a few days, or they just plain don’t feel like showing up. This is our fifth game and we haven’t fielded the same lineup yet. Curtis doesn’t show again.

  The humidity’s finally broken and there’s no chance of rain. Mr. DelCalzo shakes his head when I ask him if he’s seen Curtis. “Not lately, Ron,” he says. “You heard what happened?”

  “Yeah. Aaron told me.”

  “Apparently he was always in trouble with the coaches,” Stan says. “Mouthing off in practice and shit. He just goes into these rages. I don’t get it.”

  Shifty has wandered over, shirt hanging out, BB beads around his neck. “You talking about Curt?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I left him like six messages last week,” Shifty says. “He finally left me a message that he had to go back to Syracuse early. Some kind of preseason conditioning program for the defensive backs.”

  “In June?” Mr. DelCalzo asks.

  “That’s what he said.” Shifty looks out at the court for a minute, then grins and shakes his head.

  “You buy that?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Not really. I think he went to his father’s place down in Philly.”

  “Big mistake,” Mr. DelCalzo says. “You didn’t hear what happened? With school?”

  “I kind of figured it out,” Shifty finally says. “Guess I’m screwed. He owes me three hundred bucks for the deposit on the apartment.”

  Only five of us show up. Aaron’s still at Penn State, so it’s me and Shifty and Ollie in the backcourt, Hatcher and J.D. up front. Mr. DelCalzo has Aaron’s shirt with him and says he’ll go in if we get in foul trouble.

  The team we’re playing is basically last year’s varsity team at Wallenpaupack. Butch Landers is officiating.

  We play a tight zone, forcing them to shoot from the perimeter. It’s a quick game, with more running than any we’ve played so far. Somehow we seem looser, more fluid, and we get some fast-break points and move the ball around well. The bleached-hair girl is yelling for Hatcher; they were holding hands before the game.

  Ollie always brings up the ball, using Shifty and me on the wings, making good passes inside. We talk to each other, crash the boards, and hustle our butts off all night.

  That’s how it is on a team; five players on the court trying to fit together. It’s about knowing who you are. Choosing the right ones to play with or making the best of the group you’re thrown in with. Giving yourself a kick in the ass.

  Knowing where you end, where the other ones who matter begin.

  Dawn

  For two days I have been surrounded by lithely writhing dancers, intensely brilliant cellists and singers, and lyrical expressers of inner-city/rural/suburban angst and desire.

  You may have heard of the Griffito Conference, a weeklong summer workshop for teenage poets, musicians, and dancers. It’s sponsored by some giant corporation like Microsoft or the Republican Party.

  I’m being cynical. It’s sponsored by the Griffon Foundation, which is apparently a big deal in its own right.

  They run contests and auditions in late winter to attract several dozen of us for a week of (this is from the brochure) “sharing, learning, experimentation, and growth in the idyllic setting of the lakeside Athenaeum Institution in western New York State.”

  I like words. But no way in hell do I belong here.

  My English teacher (and track coach) badgered me to apply. He tells me I have a point of view, and I suppose I agree with him. When I write lyrics, which isn’t often, I just write about what I’m going through after making a jerk out of myself with a girl or feeling powerless and stupid after an argument with my father. And I don’t go comparing myself to a wilted dandelion or using metaphors or that other shit; I just lay out the emotions and try to let you know what I’m saying instead of expecting you to interpret.

  But I am way outclassed here. By everybody.

  My mother dropped me off in Scranton early Sunday and I boarded a bus for Erie, six hours away. After a two-hour wait I took a second bus to Jamestown, New York, where I was picked up in a van and driven another half hour to the gates of the Institution, arriving dehydrated and nervous at dusk.

  “We’re so glad you’re here, Ronny,” said Mrs. Henderson, the gray-haired conference director, when I showed up at the dorm. “You missed dinner. You’re in one of the singles—the rooms are tiny, but we hope there’ll be as much interaction as possible.” She brought her hands together in a sharp little clap, touching her fingertips to her chin. “You must be exhausted. Are you?”

  I let my gym bag slip down off my shoulder and grabbed the handles. “I guess I’m okay. Thirsty, maybe.”

  She smiled. “We have bottles of water, lots of them, in that little room over there. In the fridge. Today we just get to know each other. At dinner, for example.”

  I started to say something about getting a bottle of water, but she was only taking a microsecond to breathe. She clapped her hands again and said, “Now, you-ou … are in room 2-H. It’s a little musty. You don’t have asthma or anything?”

 
“No. Not, uh … no.”

  “Then you’ll be fine. So glad you’re here. The other poets … it’s a diverse group. Such sweet girls. And Ramon—he’s from the Bahamas. Just four boys in the poetry group. Ten girls. You’re not a smoker?”

  “No. I run.”

  “We ask that you smoke outside.… So. You’ve arrived.”

  I nodded and pointed toward the stairs. “Up here?”

  “Yes.” She smiled tightly. “You’ll be fine. Just fine.”

  On Monday morning they brought everyone together for an inspirational talk on creativity by some professor from Cornell. Then the dancers headed off for the dance hall, the musicians for the conservatory, and the poets stayed put in the dormitory conference room.

  Jim, the guy running the poetry strand, is about thirty, with short dark hair and glasses. He teaches at Kenyon College. He read us a few of his poems—dense, self-absorbed, and pompously literate. Strange, because he’s witty and cheerful, the type who probably plays volleyball at picnics. He was wearing a golf shirt and expensive sandals; most of us were in T-shirts and shorts. A few of the girls were in halters.

  We did the usual getting-to-know-you exercise, going around the circle to state our name, place, interests, and hopes for the week. Ramon likes MTV and women of all types. He considers himself a lyricist as much as a poet, “but what’s the difference anyway? Nassau rocks; you must visit me there,” he says.

  Sue is Nebraskan and her poems cover “horses, desires, and eating disorders.” Molly is down from Toronto and writes about “Eclectic Stuff. Rivers. Rage. Ice cream.” She giggles.

  Dawn. From outside Boston. Stunning to look at. I’d have placed her in the dance group if I’d had to guess. “Tom Waits. The Pogues. Irwin Shaw—his stories more than the novels. Coffee, carrots, blueberries. Nat King Cole. Jack London. Anything by Toni Morrison or Annie Proulx.” Her navel is pierced with a silver ring.

  Twice back home I’ve given books to girls I was interested in. Salinger’s Nine Stories to a smart-mouthed hurdler with nimble legs; Cannery Row to a girl I shared a joint with at a party. They both said things like “Wow, this looks great I can’t wait to read it” and then never mentioned books, or reading, again.

  I’m in the dark when it comes to women. Like anybody else I’m wanting physical release more than anything cerebral. Is it too much to ask for both in the same package? Maybe not. Maybe here.

  My turn. I try to be funny. “I’m from this little hick town in Pennsylvania. Mostly I run track and cross-country and play summer-league basketball. I read a lot of stuff. Magazines. A few novels. I gets C’s in English. My poems are simple and I’ve only written a few. I hang with my friends on Main Street and we bust each other’s chops about zits and parents and masturbating. I’m a big TV watcher. A slug.” I don’t mention my batting average with women, which is zero.

  They were all looking at me, of course, since I was speaking. But my eyes met Dawn’s. She was smiling at me, looking interested. I hope I wasn’t blushing.

  Mrs. Henderson keeps stressing to us that the Foundation is eager to bring about cross-cultural and cross-discipline understanding, so we should strive to interact as artists, rather than poet to poet or clarinetist to oboe player. So we have assigned tables at dinner, and there are opportunities to bike or play basketball or dance recreationally after hours. Before dinner on Monday I played two-on-two basketball with Ramon and a couple of ballerinas. My teammate was Christina, who is leggy with short straight hair, big eyes, and plainly beautiful features. Also the high, muscled butt of the well-trained athlete. She sucks at basketball, though.

  Ramon is a showman, making elaborate drives and behind-the-back passes that left his teammate, Tanya, in a state of amusement and confusion.

  We won, despite Christina, but neither girl seemed to notice how well I shoot jumpers. They were both intrigued by Ramon, who has an endless capacity to coyly suggest having sex without ever really bringing it up. “I love to drive the lane,” he says after scooting past Christina for a layup. He was talking about swimming in the lake at night as I slipped away after the game.

  After showering I went down to the cafeteria. My table included Sue, the Nebraskan poet; an instructor from the music school and two of his students; and Christina. Yes.

  Jerry, the instructor, dominated the dinner conversation by telling about his recent trip to Europe. He was interesting and funny, but I’d rather have been flirting with Christina. She did not seem to be flirtatious, so I looked around and spotted Dawn at another table. She was talking to a musician.

  I followed Christina out just for the hell of it. “Need to brush my teeth,” she said, which I took as a dismissal. “Then maybe a walk by the lake.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Join me.”

  My heart began to race. “Uh … okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you right here.”

  I ran upstairs, brushed my teeth vigorously, gargled with mouthwash, and reapplied deodorant. Then I ran back down.

  It was at least twenty minutes before she returned, and she had four other people with her, two of them guys.

  We are not the only ones here this week, not at all. The Institution is a gated community that’s bigger than the town I live in, and it’s all tree-sheltered old homes and small inns and shops. Families come here for a week or a summer of swimming and boating; the symphony plays at night in a wooden amphitheater; there are lectures and classes on chess and philosophy and creative writing and religion. It all seems safe and white and sort of artificial, what with the gates and the wealth and the security patrol on bicycles. The grounds are about a half mile wide and three times that long, and everything slopes toward the water.

  The lake was beautiful; the walk was boring. They were all dancers, and the talk was entirely over my head. I said nineteen words in the next ninety minutes and was relieved when we got back to the dorm.

  This morning—Tuesday—we read poems we’d been told to bring with us. First a personal favorite from a published work, then one of our own for discussion. I read Gary Soto’s “Profile in Rain,” then what I think is probably my best, called “The Hour Before.” It’s about warming up for the state cross-country championships last year, the anguish you go through, afraid you’ll fail, the heat building inside you, the growing calm as you focus and remember how hard you worked to get there.

  Reading one of my poems in front of a dozen other writers is almost as nerve-inducing as racing.

  Some of the other poets are truly amazing. Ramon, for all his cockiness and flash, reads an introspective poem about the beach at night after his father has left in drunkenness and anger, comparing the reflection of the moon on the water to the way he sees himself in his dad.

  Melanie, a quiet girl from New Jersey, cracks us all up with a hilarious poem about getting dressed for a junior high dance.

  At lunch, I hesitate on the buffet line, pondering a choice of tuna salad or bologna. I opt for yogurt and several pieces of fruit. You can sit wherever you want to at lunch, so I scan the room for a spot. Then I set my tray on the counter near the juices. As I’m filling a glass with fruit punch I feel a knock against the back of my knee, and I tilt forward slightly and spill it on the counter.

  “Hey,” Dawn says, grinning at me.

  “Hi. Was that you?”

  She kind of flicks up her eyebrows. “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  What a smile. She again becomes my immediate, intense priority.

  “Where are you sitting?” I ask.

  “Right there,” she says, pointing. “I saved you a spot.”

  I get a fresh glass of juice, shut my eyes for a second, and say a silent prayer of thanks. Then I join her at the table.

  “They’re bringing in a DJ tonight,” she says.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You can dance, right?”

  I roll my eyes. “Some.”

  “You must have strong legs,”
she says. “All that running.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I go fine when I’m moving in a straight line. Dancing is a different matter.”

  “I love to dance,” she says. She beats out a rhythm on the table. “You ever do a poetry slam?”

  “You mean like a reading?”

  “No. Well, yeah. But a slam is physical, too. Very animated. You get up and perform your poems, like a storyteller. It’s where poetry and muscle overlap.” She flexes her bicep. There’s a tiny star tattooed on her shoulder. “I’m putting together a slam for Friday night. You’re up for it, right?”

  “Sure,” I say, kind of tentative. Then I realize that no one knows me here; I can be anybody I want to be. “Definitely,” I say with some authority. “I’ll be there.”

  I squeeze in a workout before dinner, kind of a slow anticipatory run along the lake. No sense tiring out my legs. I think real hard about what to wear tonight, but I don’t have many options. Shorts. Running shoes. The adidas T-shirt, I guess. It’s clean.

  Around nine I start looking for Dawn. I know I’ll see her at the dance hall, but I’d like to meet up with her first, let people notice that we arrive together. But I don’t find her. So I walk the hundred yards alone.

  I see her right away, dancing with a group of girls. Her shirt is low-cut and her skin is glistening. The music is coming from a cheap little boom box, and there’s no sign of a DJ. There are only about fifteen people in the room. I take a seat in a wooden folding chair.

  After about four songs she comes over to me.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  “Nothing much,” she says. “They said the friggin’ DJ isn’t going to show. What a rip.”

  “Yeah.”

  She gently grabs my arm. “Come on,” she says, leading me toward a small stage on the other side of the room. There’s a tiny booth there with a chest-high window. She opens a door on the side and we enter the booth.

  “I can do this,” she says.