The Basketball Expatriate

by C. Bradford Eastland

  Hart.

  Doesn't it crack you up how some people wind up becoming famous? All those guys I just mentioned would never've been heard from if they didn't work for the President, and would never've been heard of period if the President had never been elected. And the President might never have been elected if his predecessor hadn't done stupid things like boycott the Olympics. And if I actually become famous as the result of this hotel-room gossip, it's because of everything happening just as I just said it happened, and then everything else happening in some sort've relevant way because of that.

  Or look at it this way. What would've happened if that nut who tried to kill the President in '81 had succeeded? I'm not being twisted here, just think about it. No Meese, no Ollie, no Poindexter, and, indirectly, no Mr. G. Hartpence. The point I'm trying to make here is that nothing ever happens in the world, nothing, that isn't at least the indirect result of something else that happens first. Nothing. And that means, since we are all at the uncontrollable mercy of what has gone on before us, it means before we actually decide to do anything that everything already has (to some degree) been decided for us, and that therefore everything that happens in the world boils down, more or less, to luck.

  And speaking of Bush, do you think anybody would still be paying any attention to him if he hadn't been the President's Veep all these years? I can't think of anybody in the world who more effectively proves my theory than George. If the President had picked anybody else to be his perpetual running mate, the skinny whiny geek would be political history. It's the only reason we're still interested in him enough to let him run for President in '88, and let him drag up all the old Iran/Contra ties and make a bloody fool of himself. Not to mention all those Central American dictators and drug czars he used to hang out with. Fame-grubbing politicos....It just occurred to me that there just aren't too many famous people I really like, in or out've the sports world.

  But when I think of 1987, when later in life I sit back in my rocking chair with a cold malt liquor in hand and reminisce about the year that shall forever mark the halfway point---or at least the turning point---in my life, I think maybe I might remember it as the year that any two-bit insignificant no-talent female could become famous if she did something shitty enough. Maybe the year should be called "the year of female mediocrity", or maybe this piece should be called "1987---The Year Of Mediocrity, Especially Shitty Neo-Famous Women" or something like that. We will not do them the satisfaction of mentioning them here by name, but I'm sure you know the particular ladies I'm talking about---North's document-shredding secretary, Hart's shipboard playmate, the playmate's so-called "friend" who turned them both in to both the National Enquirer and People for a few bucks, the professional barfly who tried to squeeze a ton of money out of that stupid baseball player, that T.V. evangelist's strange-looking wife and last but not least that same evangelist's opportunistic girlfriend. Great group of gals, huh? I guess I should probably stop for a second and assure all you millions of potential book-buying females out there that this diatribe I'm in the middle of has nothing to do with you. It's more that I'm trying to make an historical statement regarding fame. Hell, I don't want anyone to get the idea I hate women, I love women. That's my main problem....Anyway, my favorite shitty '87 woman has got to be the evangelist's girlfriend, who I believe was originally one of his secretaries before she saw her opportunity to become rich and famous. Why, you ask, is this particular worthless woman my favorite worthless woman? Because: Perhaps no female in American history has managed to cash in so spectacularly (with the willing help of the American public) simply, merely, by getting laid! Hell, on that basis, if I were a woman, I'd be a fucking multi-millionaire. And so I think you've just got to admire that. And not only did she get more than her share of "hush money" from the evangelist for not blowing the whistle, even though she wound up blowing the whistle anyway, but I also read where she picked up another cool million from Playboy, just for displaying ten pages of her strictly minor-league tits throughout their mag. Now that's genius. She's a good speaker, too. I believe her most memorable quote for the ages was "I am not a bimbo!", which I believe she delivered right about the time she posed for the Playboy photos. And believe you me, I've seen much better tits than that at UCLA sorority parties, and even at a few goddam USC sorority parties, and I mean some of those 'SC chicks were nasty.

  I tell you, even Sam could take lessons from some of these clever ladies that our country has freely elected to shower with fame.

  Sam. Been thinking a lot about that magnificent bitch lately. Why I waste my fucking time thinking about and talking about a worthless hose monster of a chick such as her I'll never know. It's just that all my best memories, unfortunately, are sort've tied up with the girl. I can't help that, it's not my fault, it's like what I said before; everything that's happened to me in the last eight years has got something to do with her. For instance, take last Thanksgiving. Sam and I spent practically the whole night curled up in front of the bedroom fireplace, nursing a couple bottles of righteous California chardonnay, all within the cozy confines of my meticulously-furnished (by her) $2500-a-month Beverly Hills condo. And we didn't waste any fucking time opening Christmas presents, you can believe that. But this Thanksgiving? Well, naturally it started in this cave of a hotel room, where I spent the entire day reading the papers, and when I couldn't take it anymore I took a walk down Cromwell and then up Queen's Gate and finally across Kensington High Street in the pouring rain to Knightsbridge, where I wandered into this cutesy-pie little restaurant called "The Frontier Restaurant" or "Across The Old Prairie" or something. American food, country music, sawdust on the floor, everything. I figured, at the time, that eating Thanksgiving dinner in a so-called American-theme grease joint might make me a little less homesick, y'know? Big mistake. All I did was wind up having the worst steak sandwich of my life in a lonely crowded room with a sweaty bunch of loud strangers, and walking home I wound up giving all the money I had on me to some big old homeless drunk guy with long hair and a beard who was lying smack up against the side of an apartment building and who asked me if I had any spare change. Just on impulse. Lucky for him he was an American. I would never've given a half-penny coin to some stupid grinning down-and-out Brit, the mood I was in. If you want to catch one hell of a priceless facial expression try handing over about 500 pounds cash, about 770 dollars, to some burned-out old bum you run into on the street. Hysterical. And boy was he appreciative! Made up some teary-eyed lie about how now he could finally afford to go see his "old baby girl", or something like that. Shit, the guy was probably a recovering wife-beater. I mean he sure was a big guy. Biggest guy with a pony tail I've seen since Bill Walton had one. (please don't depress me and write me and ask me who Bill Walton is)

  And when I got back to the fucking hotel there was Omar, with his patented goddam "Gude evening, sir!", and I think I must've almost hit him....Anyway, it was the crummiest Thanksgiving ever.

  The problem with Sam is I just don't understand any of what happened. And believe me I've thought it over. I honestly don't understand how anybody, even a good-looking woman, I'm sorry to have to say this, can pull the unbelievable fucking bullshit she pulled. What am I going to do now....You think everything's so easy in school, there's a million chicks around and it's like you'll never run dry. But when you get older, out in "the world" so to speak, you meet less people, you hang out by yourself a lot, or in crummy bars, and you just don't run into many delicious-looking tight-bodied babes you can actually rap on. Let me say it this way. The way I figure it, right around age 25 is the cut-off, the make-or-break point for hooking up with a good one, much less the "right" one. After 25 or so, it's all downhill. (Even if there really are 50 women for every man!) I mean I look at my old college buddies, my high school buddies for that matter. Seems like all of them had a shot at the right one in their early 20's, took that shot, and nailed her; that is to say married her. And while they were all still marketable as marryable men. I mean it's supp
osed to be a knee-jerk, right? Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl likes boy back, hit the sack, hit the aisle, hit the road, end of story.

  So anyway, do you think the kid here could get a decent break? Heaven forbid things should go smoothly for a change! And when things started getting bad for me the press didn't exactly cut me any slack. Maybe it was their fault....yeah sure, it wasn't enough they took basketball away from me, they had to go and turn Sam against me, too. Those articles that said I was washed up really must've screwed with her head. She tried to warn me. I admit it. And now she's....man, when she was around she was....man, she be everything. You suppose she dumped my ass because she's still hot-looking and I'm past the cut-off point? No....no, when we met I was a long way from the cut-off point. And once you pick your mate, I think maybe the cut-off becomes irrelevant, if you can manage to keep her....so why, then? I mean when a man picks the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with it's supposed to work out, right? She's supposed to say yes, right? Fuck, I asked her enough times....And even if it doesn't work out it's supposed to end with the man at least being able to retain a soft spot for her, she's not supposed to turn out to be a fucking worthless piece of shit! I mean she treated me like shit, worse than shit, like garbage, like someone who she barely knew rather than the guy who she had spent practically every day of the last eight years of her life with! I don't have any idea what turned her sour! The press isn't that powerful, her friends couldn't have that much influence, and she wasn't even on regular speaking terms with my so-called friends. I remember when I got out of the hospital in October she was fine, quite affectionate actually, and all those weeks I had to wear the cast---all the way through late November---she was as supportive and attentive as a chick could be. One day, she even made me this big grandstand offer to "support" me in my "new career", financially that is, until I became successful at this new career. I remember saying what new career, and she said something like now that your basketball days are finally over, and naturally I laughed and you should've seen the look on her face when I told her I was gonna friggin' play basketball till I was frickin' forty! And around Christmas-time, even though I was still walking around with a crutch, we had some of the best times and some of the best sex I think we ever had. And New Year's Eve was downright spectacular. The bed part, I mean. That was exactly one year ago.

  But get this: That was the last friggin' time, the....hell, it was the last god damn mother fucking time I ever saw her.

  That's right. No big well-rehearsed explanation, no weepy watery-eyed speech, no good-bye, no phone call, no letter, no fuck-yous, no nothing. She just disappeared. It was a week or more before I even found out anything was wrong. When I realized I hadn't talked to her in awhile I called her up just to see what was going on, and I got this recording on her answering machine requesting for callers to just leave a message. No new number. No forwarding address. She'd just up and moved out of her apartment, and was just keeping the old phone number for messages! None of her friends or family members would tell me where she was, and then they stopped taking my calls! And her fucking father---whose blue-blood honky guts I always hated, by the way---even threatened to call the police if I didn't stop "annoying" everybody. Annoying everybody? We were adults, and I was her dude! And all them acting like the whole thing was like some stupid teen romance movie for jesusgodsake! After a couple weeks I was starting to get really pissed off and I stopped trying to reach her---I figured when she was ready to come to her senses and beg for my forgiveness she'd naturally get in touch with me. And I had a lot of other stuff on my mind anyway, what with having to get to work rehab-ing the knee and everything. But February went by and still no Sam. Then March. April. May. And when I didn't hear from her during the summer that's when I decided to bag roundball for awhile and go ahead and make this trip and do whatever you/////////////

  Not in the mood for this right now, signing off. Hungry. Think I'll walk down to the corner and pick up a couple've sausage rolls or Cornish pasties or something. Should still be open, but I can't find my fucking watch------must've left it lying around

  [---approx. three days later, first week of 1988; *ed. note---]

  I was thinking today about all the stupid letters I've written to Sam in the last year. I'm not going to tell you exactly how many, it's embarrassing. Rest assured I've only gone ahead and mailed the least stupid ones. I don't have to tell you she hasn't answered any of them; if she had, I'd at least be able to give you better information. Every letter, I can tell you this, always wound up coming down to or coming back to or around to why, just why. why why why why why. I mean eight years. Okay, seven plus. Eighty six fucking months. Twenty five hundred goddam days. You'd think that would be worth at least a five-minute conversation, now wouldn't you? Am I supposed to believe that all of a sudden she just got this uncontrollable urge to rip me into little pieces and go off somewhere and fuck the wrinkled dick off some 46....no, make that a 53-year-old fat-bellied four-eyed egghead, some glorified intellectual babysitter, am I just supposed to fucking believe that? Some butt-ugly, pasty-faced guy 28 years past the cut-off? No. No, I don't believe it. I don't know exactly what's going on but I don't believe that. If you want my opinion, I think God is behind it somehow. Yeah, God, I'm serious. Truth is, I'm not exactly the most devout guy anymore. Maybe I'm being punished. This whole thing is so unbelievable I'm sort've inclined to look for the most unbelievable explanations. Sounds ridiculous, but I really do think The Big Fella is trifling with me. Not that God can't just go and secretly fuck with any disloyal small-fry like me if he really fucking wants to. I just never thought I was worth the trouble. Come to think of it my fu///// my mom used to tell me that if I didn't "make my peace" with God before too long I'd "rue the day", whatever that means. But I guess this could be it, huh? This whole thing is so bizarre even the supernatural makes sense. Maybe God and Sam are in cahoots on this thing! It's as if God selected her to be the perfect-titted instrument of his wrath, sort've a twisted punishment for my "stubborn agnosticism". If that's true, he sure picked the perfect agent to do his dirty work. I can't imagine another girl doing it for me the way Samantha does....did....Y'know, I was thinking. I wonder how many of you other guys out there have had this type of experience. I don't mean just being dumped, I mean this disappearing act thing, where your number-one girl, or wife, just takes off forever in the middle of the night and makes sure not to let the screen door hit her in the ass on the way out; and no forwarding address, just keep the furniture baby, go ahead and sell the car sweetheart, you can have the whole joint checking account, honey....and don't bother to try to find me to say good-bye you stupid penis-bound jerk, you may have noticed that I didn't....There's billions of people in the world, billions of potentially massively shit-upon dudes, I'd like to think I'm not the only one who'se been reamed clean through. The problem is that women, and I'm sorry to have to say this, women think that just because God gave them two tits and a cunt that they can do just about any shitty thing they want---and don't fucking tell me they don't know it! And don't talk to me about penis envy, the floppy things really don't do us any damn good, give me tits, yeah, give tits to the men, God, then we'll have the power for a change, we'll be in control, yeah give me tit envy every time. Y'know back when I was a kid growing up in Chicago, I used to feel sorry for girls because they had periods and got pregnant and had to wear two-piece bathing suits at the lake, and they couldn't play sports very well, and I used to feel so sorry for them not being able to take a piss wherever and whenever they wanted, but I realize now that I just wasn't thinking clearly. God gave them tits and pussies and tight little asses and left us poor stupid male sonsabitches out in the cold. And since it's human fucking nature to squeeze whatever you can out of life, and steamroll right over any poor slob that gets in your way while you're doing it, and since women have always called the shots in this shitty world, all of that proves I'm right about tits, proves I'm right about women, why they lie, why they cheat, why they're all so godda
m cold-hearted about everything, all that stuff, and since they've got no control over it about the only thing you can do is accept it and simply live your life disliking them. The fucked ones, I mean. Which is to say most of the good-looking ones. But I just never figured Sam for any of that. Not Sam. No, not Sam goddammit! I figured her for different, for godsake. A guy just doesn't figure his girl to be one of....one of the....I mean she said "I love you", she said it man, she said it lots of fucking times, not as often as I stupidly insisted on saying it but what's the difference? Was she just kidding around? Does "I love you" for a chick simply mean "I like you" or "good to see you" or "your cock makes me so hot I can't stand it" or "what time will you be home?"? Oh I know, it's just a sweet friendly thing to say to your current bedmate, I know. But for a guy, and I know this from all the other guys I've talked it over with over the years on basketball teams and everything, the word love actually means something. I know it did for me. I know it did. For me love is strictly capital L, boss. But I tell you this. I've discovered that it's just not worth it to tell a girl I love you. Bad idea, man. You, the guy, might be telling the truth, but she, the chick, has the tits, has the power, has ultimate and total control of the situation, and therefore doesn't have to fucking tell the goddam truth! It puts you at an impossible disadvantage. Don't say I love you. It doesn't do any good, and when it's over it only makes things worse....even as I'm writing this I'm having a hard time thinking straight....and my goddam head hurts....I mean she did care, I know she did. Unless she's really an android from Venus or Jupiter, I know she did. I just couldn't be 100% completely wrong about that. She has to get in touch with me some time. That girl knows me! She has to know how a guy like me can drive himself half-crazy laying awake nights just longing for the touch of a single set of fingers, aching for the taste of a certain pair of soft lips, willing, if only given one more chance, to do or say anything, anything, just to be able to take his....his chosen babe in his arms and hold her tight. It isn't even a sex thing, really. So....so for her to do this whole thing within such a well-executed game plan? Like the government making somebody disappear in a stupid spy movie and giving him a brand-new secret identity? And without even so much as a fucking warning, jesus god....At least in basketball they give you six fouls and two T's, you know where you stand, they don't just come up to you in the first quarter for no goddam reason and say yer out've the game....and she knew what she was doing. That's what kills me. She knew! And she had to know what this would do to me later on, and she fuckin' did it anyway! Could she possibly have cared that little? Could anybody? my god....And I was ready to spend the rest of my shitty life with that cunt whore bitch. The rest of my life. The rest of my life. The rest of my life! Do you know what kind've fool that makes me? Do you, bitch? Do you? Well fuck you then! Fuck you and thanks for the nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents! Now the whole world knows how fucked you are! God damn you, damn you, damn it all damn everybody.... somebody, somebody answer me....somebody just fill me in....help me.... please please please please God