Boson Books By C. Bradford Eastland
The Basketball Expatriate
Where Gods Gamble
______________________________
THE BASKETBALL EXPATRIATE
by
C. Bradford Eastland
______________________________
BOSON BOOKS
Raleigh
Published by Boson Books
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606
ISBN 1-886420-54-8
An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.
Copyright 1999 C. Bradford Eastland
All rights reserved
For information contact
C&M Online Media Inc.
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606
Tel: (919) 233-8164
e-mail:[email protected]
URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com/
One
{ Entry #1, 7-28-87. [handwritten, mailed same day---*ed. note]
Final descent. Thanks for nothing, God.
Man I can't believe I let you talk me into this. This has been the longest damn plane ride in history. Twelve miserable hours sandwiched around a stupid half-hour layover in Connecticut, where only twenty new people got on and they wouldn't even let us get off the fucking plane and stretch. Typical intelligent human behavior. Boy, do I feel like shit. I can'tthink of anything that tastes worse than that taste you get in your mouth and throat after you've thrown up a couple times. The screwy thing is, the flight itself has been just as smooth as can be. I know, you'd probably go and call it something nauseating like "ironic",I know. But I mean it, they even got the air in here at just the right temperature for a change.Just shows you what a crappy mood I'm in. Fuckin' shitty Clippers. The one time in my life I get on a plane that doesn't smell like an old folks home or bounce like a bucking bronco and I can't even relax and enjoy it. Fuck.
Really about the only memorable thing to report up here (besides my making a complete fool of myself with this smart, friendly, terrific-looking blonde creature whose only real crime, I guess, was that she wanted to know what kind of car I drove before she would agree to make "the beast with two backs" with me) happened about an hour ago, just as we were cruising over Northern Ireland. I was just looking lazily out the window, looking down, and suddenly I realized the world was gone. At first glance, I couldn't figure it out. Woozy as I was from not sleeping, I thought I was dreaming about white vanilla frosting on a cake; you know, smooth but with those gentle wave-like ripples the frosting knife makes, but on second thought it struck me more like a glacier. I've never actually seen a glacier before, but I could tell that this is what they look like. A cold, endless, beginningless glacier. Maybe that's the difference between looking down at clouds and just looking up at them. Looking down, they weren't wispy or puffy or billowy at all. Just ripply-flat and solid. It was one solid, continuous, impenetrable fucking object, and we were flying close enough over it that you would've thought you could've crawled out on the wing, strapped on a pair of ice skates, jumped off, and man you'd be cutting the cake yourself. Weird. It was weird how cold it made me feel, how cold it makes me feel just writing it down. It makes me feel sorry for every goddam cub scout airline pilot who has to look down at clouds for a living, like looking at a big white cake, like a birthday party where nobody, where no one....must be just about the loneliest feeling in the world....well anyway. I suppose it one of those things that when you see it you know you'll never forget it, even though it probably doesn't mean a god damn thing.
And that's about all I've got to say on the subject. I'm already pretty fucking sick of this deal, and that worries me some. I'm also pretty damned tired right now, and I wouldn't've taken the time to jot down even these few meaningless stray thoughts if I hadn't promised you I'd write down every stupid thing I think of the minute I think of it. That's one thing my old man taught me: "If you don' wanna do somethin', kid, keep yo' mout' shut," he used to tell me, in that annoying southside accent of his, "but if'n you say you gonna do somethin', do it---that way they cain't call you on it later." I guess that's about the only goddam thing he ever taught me, the son of a bitch.
(Don't get me wrong, dude. I might complain a lot, and I know I'm a pain in the butt, but I am grateful. The way things are....well, I guess I need this job. I know it. I just wanted to say it. Once.)
But the thing is, boss man, is I just don't see why I'm the one who has to fly all over the place and go through all this, this, this fuckin' baloney, and pewk my guts out and stuff, when I'm the one being dumped on and cast off and its not even my fault ! Get me? Why should I be punished! Why should I be the one flying the hell off to a nuthing place like England! By all rights, it should be Sam on this plane. Not me. She should be the one with the stomach cramps, not me. Ungrateful whore. Man, I wish I could at least stop thinking about her. Think after all those years I'd be worth one phone call, one lousy phone god, where the fuck can she be--------I'd like to think that if I, I mean if I had any well, if I did I swear I'd turn right around and go right back to L.A. the minute this thing lands, I could do a hell of a lot more good there than here, and thing is well I just know she'll eventually come around, that's all, everything'd be okay if I could just find her, yeah, talk to her, yeah, fuck yeah, and I know I could find the bitch, I know I could....that is, if I really wanted to. If I gave a god damn. if if if if if if IF//////////////////////////////////////////////
Runway in sight, touching down any second. Silky smooth and about time. My stomach hurts. I bet I've put away about ten bags of these goddam honey-roasted peanuts they give you. The first thing I'm going to do in the airport is take probably the biggest nastiest shit of my life. Sure hope I can hold out till then, because I'm just not going back inside that bathroom I'm sorry. There's puke smell all over the place in there (by the way, exactly how do you smell puke?)//////okay, stop ! Change of subject, new paragraph....
Wonder if she's really asleep. I'm looking at her, right at that smooth, perfect face. Right now. The girl I just mentioned a couple pages ago. You should've seen her, man. What a sharp, funky, together chick she was. Reminded me of Sam a little, although just not as much. You know. But I really liked her. And I think she liked me a little too, before I blew it at is. Dumb. Plain truth is that I could easily be in the market for a steady chick, if things don't work out. I mean you'd think by now I'd know that women are always going to be the way they are, that's just the way they are, and that if you want a smart, decent looking one you is gonna hafta play the god damn game. And the depressing thing is she's built just the way I like them. Great tits. Even now, sitting here in this cramped seat with my underwear all bunched up around my ass, with my damn knee practically frozen solid, even as I write this sentence I find myself wishing I'd at least talked to her a little more, been more patient, hell, I should've at least given the girl a chance. It was my foul, I admit it. But too late. She's asleep. And I'm sure not gonna wake up a goddam female just because....well, just because. She sure is pretty. Boy, I wish I could remember her name. She told me but I forgot. If I remembered it I'd tell you. But I don't. I apologize for that.
But the fact remains she did ask me about my car. Right at the fucking moment of truth.
God, why did I ever agree to do this....I'm telling you, you pathetic bunch of sports junkies, this whole thing is beginning to look like nothing but brain damage. I'd better go find a stewardess now, give her this in an envelope along with a couple bucks for postage. And I mean right now, before I change my mind. ---end}
p.s. I was thinking, you really probably shouldn't print this part at all. It's got nothing to do with the game, for one thing. I just can't think of anythi
ng to say yet---and I only wrote it down because I promised you I would. Okay?
Thanks, man.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
* note to editor: This next part has got to be the beginning-- I INSIST !
First things first. I apologize.
Okay folks, chapter one paragraph one. But before we friggin' even get started here
(pardon my French), I really do want to say how truly embarrassed I am for having to tell this stupid thing in the first-person. I'm truly sorry. I've always thought it was a perfectly lousy way to tell a story, even for so-called "true-to-life" stuff like this, and nobody wants to listen to some jerk he doesn't even know cry about his own troubles, I realize all've this believe me, but it wasn't my decision. My new employer, wily, cold-blooded "professional" that he is, has determined that if I want this tale told for money I must tell the tale myself. And he knows that I need him (for the moment, anyway) a hell of a lot more than he needs me. Which means we're stuck. I'll do my best.
I only hope he has the good grace to leave this, and anything else I say about him for that matter, on the page....
I guess I might as well begin with the plane ride. No reason. It's just that this thing is so goddam complicated and confusing and who knows how far back it really goes, but you got to start somewhere, and just how does a guy go about deciding what is and isn't important anyway?---so, for purposes of providing a workable sequence of events, the flight over seems like as good a place as any to get this thing off the ground. First of all, I hate plane rides. Always have. I've never been able to understand why so many people you talk to say they like to fly so much, as if there was some precious idiotic social trophy that went along with willingly practicing---much less cheerfully submitting to---such moronic self abuse. Think about it. They coop you up in a long stuffy tube flying friggin' 40,000 feet above the ground at 700 frickin' miles an hour with a couple hundred sweaty, smelly, starry-eyed grinning morons, who it seems to me the only reason they ever get on a plane at all is so they can immediately pound down about a dozen drinks and at least fifty little bags of those "complimentary" honey-roasted peanuts, and of course spend the whole rest of the flight farting it all out and squirming in their farty seats and sneaking their hands down their pants to adjust their shorts (I suppose), and by all means crawling up and down the aisles to and from the bathrooms, and you're stuck with these wide-eyed touristy human sheep, like it or not, until some other jerk, who probably joined the airlines because he likes being called "captain" or "sir" or "skipper" and who actually gets paid to walk around with a big cheesy hand-shaking smile on his face in his nifty little dark blue Cub Scout uniform, decides it's "safe" to come down. Talk about being at someone's mercy! Hey, if anyone out there actually gets off on that kind of masochistic behavior, I feel sorry for you. And I defy any of you to look me in the eye and tell me you've ever had a flight that wasn't bumpy, ever been on an airplane that wasn't stuffy, just one stupid flying cabin that was cabin-pressurized with actual human beings in mind. I tell you, when I get back home I swear I'm not getting on another friggin' plane of my own free will until I'm at least forty. Man, as far as I'm concerned anybody who actually enjoys locking himself up inside one of these portable death traps for twelve goddam hours is probably secretly some kind've twisted, raging psycodick. Personally I would've paddled over in a canoe if it didn't take so bloody/////////okay okay, I guess I'm already starting to go a little overboard here. Sorry. (The rough spots will be edited out, right?) I've sort've been told to just jot down whatever comes to mind, no matter how raggedyass it is! But I think you catch my drift. Just getting near an airplane makes me a little jumpy. And I wasn't in exactly the best of moods to begin with, which naturally you'll come to understand better as I go along.
(Not to beat this airplane thing to death, but I just wanted to say that this was just about the hottest, bumpiest, stuffiest, sweatiest, most godawful airplane cabin I can ever remember being cooped up in. Trust me. I could hardly breathe up there. I swear, my stupid stomach was doing jumping jacks the whole way. But I don't think that makes me a pussy or anything. I mean I don't want you all to start picturing me barfing up all over myself. In fact, to this day, I don't believe I've ever actually thrown up on a plane in my life. Never. It's just that I think I'll always associate this particular plane ride with a certain kind of sour stomach ache. I wasn't myself at all. Frankly, the whole thing's kind've embarrassing.)
Anyway, so what do you suppose happens?
Well, just as this tub was beginning to pull itself free of that purplish-brown mud pack of "air" which sits the whole summer every summer on my illustrious home town, while I'm looking around at the other passengers in "business class", trying desperately to imagine these strange homely people to be more interesting than their blank smiling faces said they were, while all the while laboring to get halfway comfortable in my seat, half the time telling myself "everything's gonna be okay" and the other half of me wishing the damn Cub Scout would just have a nervous breakdown and decide to park it in the goddam ocean and do me a god damn favor (and save me all this friggin' paperwork if nothing else), I suddenly glance two seats to my right where wouldn't you know there's this girl. I know, I know. There's always a girl. But don't think for a minute that this was just an ordinary girl. Not hardly, dudes. I assure you, this was the type of female that really paralyzes a guy, right from stare one, changes the taste in his mouth, sweats up the skin of his hands, makes him wish they were already married or---even better---already living together, so that that very night he could perhaps, I mean hopefully, that is if the world ever worked the way it was frickin' supposed to, he could run his suddenly electrified fingertips over every curve of that creamy////////well, you get the idea. That type. Or in other words, sports fans, USDA choice.
But I want to make sure you get me. You know, the "big picture". Well, let's just say that on the day I reluctantly climbed inside that winged torture chamber---July 28th, 1987--- things could hardly've been worse. First of all, I'm only 27 friggin' years old and they're telling me I'm washed up. Excess baggage. Through. I'm talking forced retirement in the prime of life, man, I mean for godsake! And even my once-loyal local press says I'm damaged goods and can't cut it anymore. Of course you expect that from sportswriters. They say that about every jock coming off knee surgery, even a minor "scope job" like mine. My mom says to just not worry about what other people say, not to worry about things I can't control. And I know she's right. But the problem is that people read that crap, word gets around, and pretty soon every other team in the league adopts a "hands off" policy on you like you got some funny disease or something, just because every executive in the league is suspicious of every other crooked GM in the league, and because no one is in a very big hurry anyway to take a chance and swallow the final two years on a guaranteed contract for a gimp. I can't get my own coach to even talk to me, much less work me out, my so-called teammates are avoiding me like I'm their ex-wife's lawyer, I've been ditched by practically all've my so-called friends, and now I'm being practically forced to leave the country by some New York shyster I've known less than a year, to whom I made the mistake of virtually signing my life away for a few bucks just so you can have a good laugh or two at my expense. Needless to say I had a lot on my mind, right?
Alright then. So here I am mulling over circumstances that I now realize, in retrospect, could quite easily've convinced a shakier dude to swallow a .45 automatic, or practice swan diving off a freeway overpass, or at least convince him to set up permanent housekeeping at his local Padded Wall Inn, while at the same time getting ready to embark upon this "odyssey" of as yet indeterminate length [six months---*ed. note] that I have a hunch just might change the way I look at things forever, and just because I happen to be sitting three feet away from some sleek panther of a woman whose tight, flabless curves happen to be stronger than my hormonal power to resist them all that other stuff doesn't matter because t
he whole goddam world has suddenly stopped rotating on its goddam axis! And I know every guy reading this right now knows exactly what I'm talking about. That's what women do to us poor slobs. They make us behave like idiots, that's what. When you're put together like that, ladies, we've got no bloody control over it and you know it. And it's pretty goddam unfair, if you ask me....Anyway, all those so-called life-and-death circumstances I was supposedly so concerned about disappeared. All I knew was that I had to get the guy between us to change seats with me, no matter how. So I immediately started sizing up the guy. He was just some fat jerk businessman who insisted on keeping his vest buttoned up tight around the rise and fall of his fat annoying gut. You know. One of those crazed, orally fixated types that starts drinking and wolfing down little bags of peanuts practically before the bloomin' plane even takes off. Gross. I figured he didn't deserve to sit next to a primo chick like that anyway. (And I guess I should mention that the guy was black, which, as you'll soon come to understand, only made it worse.) Anyway, I figured if reason didn't do the trick, money would:
"Pardon me, sir, but would you mind changing seats? I know it's an imposition, but I'm six-five and the aisle's just no good for me."
So this fat black guy squinches up his bulldog flabby face like I'm on drugs or something. (I'm not, by the way.)
The Basketball Expatriate Page 1