by Melissa King
Despite all the heat, everything was okay. Those guys understood themselves well enough to know it gets a little mental, and they really weren’t made outta glass, as long as nobody pushed things too far. It’s funny how a game can take you to the truth of things sometimes.
I stood in the doorway at Rogers Park in Inglewood, watching the games on a Monday morning. A guy walked up behind me and said what I have to admit I was thinking.
“All these grown men, and no employment.”
I turned around.
“Is that the situation?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “But hey, they’ve got good jump shots, and that’s all that matters, right?”
I asked him, “You ever see a woman playing here?”
“Every once in a while. They’ll let you on if you hustle for the ball.” He looked at me for a second before saying, “It’s all black, but they’ll let you on. You gotta work, though.”
The guy hopped into a shiny new SUV and drove away. Inside, the sound of a mean argument over a foul made me think about this court I’d played on once in Chicago, a gym open on Saturday mornings I’d heard about from some guys I played with at Wicker Park. They said some girls showed up there sometimes, and I could play, no problem, so I showed up one Saturday. When I saw all the big, high-flying guys who were there, and no girls, I should’ve just turned around and left, but I ended up shooting for teams and getting in.
Getting set to play, I tried not to see a guy stripping down to his underwear and changing into his gym shorts on the sidelines. It was unsettling, with all the loud, deep, angry voices echoing off the walls like a foreign language in a place I didn’t belong.
I was further brought to my senses during the game, when a player I never saw coming flew from behind and didn’t block my shot so much as spike it like a volleyball off my head.
I stood there at Rogers Park remembering that humiliation, and thinking about Lauren, a girl I’d played with in Chicago sometimes. She was good, big and tough, and she didn’t seem intimidated by much. One time she was talking about all the different sports she’d played with guys, and she said it was a miracle she’d never had the train run on her.
I guess I looked at her a little funny, like I didn’t know what she meant, because she told me: you know, gangbanged.
Damn, I’d never thought about that. There was the time I was afraid of that Peter guy in his house, but that was different. We weren’t outside on a playground in broad daylight, for God’s sake.
It had always seemed that, on the court, most guys thought of me as not particularly fuckable. I’ve stood by and waited when the game stopped because some girls dressed like girls walked by, making their way around and around the park like floats in a parade, and all the men gaped like they hadn’t seen a female in months. With me standing right there.
But Lauren did end up getting engaged to a guy who was always taking her to church retreats where she could learn to be dutiful and pray for forgiveness for the times she’d had premarital intercourse before meeting him. So maybe she was sort of crazy and I shouldn’t have even listened to her, but that phrase, running the train, would just hit me sometimes in situations where rape, like spiking a ball off my head, would be a real effective way to show me I didn’t belong.
I’m not out to get into things I can’t handle, or ruin a game by turning it into what amounts to four-on-five. It’s rude, giving your teammates a disadvantage when they’ve waited thirty minutes for the court. That day at Rogers Park, with all those men playing a kid’s game on a Monday morning, anger and ego were palpable, and I walked on, just like I had good sense.
I was in my car, stopped at a traffic light on Sunset Boulevard, when I saw a mannequin inside the shadowy doorway of a strip club. It was dressed in a bra and panties, posed dramatically with its head down. I was thinking what a good display person that strip club must have to create such a lifelike, stylish effect, when the mannequin suddenly wasn’t a mannequin anymore. The woman lifted her head, walked out to the front of the doorway like it was a runway, turned around so you could see her butt in the light, looked sideways for drama, tapped the ash off a cigarette, and strutted back inside the shadows, resuming her pose.
I was trying to get to the Hollywood Y, because someone had told me that sometimes movie stars got a game there. As I edged my car along a few feet at a time, I hoped that stripper didn’t have to stand around like that too long, because I myself have had more than one mind-crushing bore of a job, so I could sort of imagine what it must be like to sit there all afternoon thinking, Fifteen more seconds, and I’ll get up and tap out this ash. It just seems like if you’re going to stand around in your underwear all day, it should at least be exciting.
A young kid bouncing a basketball up the sidewalk passed me by. On the other side of the street, a man walked up the strip wearing a long, blond wig, a skintight black miniskirt, and black pumps. All his makeup made him look old and not less unfeminine, and it made me a little sad, thinking about him leaving (in my mind it was reluctantly) wherever he lived for the bright light outside. Then the traffic light turned green, and I stopped and started my car along past him.
There were two separate gyms at the Y. On one side there was a bunch of movie-star-looking-men-in-the-prime-of-their-life playing five-on-five, shirts against skins. There was a chalkboard where you signed up for next, and a few dozen men hanging around on the sidelines. Forget it.
In the other gym some little kids were playing a three-on-three game. They looked like they were about seven or so. One side was wearing Junior Laker jerseys, and the other side was in street clothes.
The best player was a Hispanic boy on the street clothes side who could shoot a lay-up and actually dribble. The ball tended to find its way to him, and all the other kids on both teams seemed to think the idea was to run to wherever the ball was and try to get it, whether they were on offense or defense. It looked like they were playing five-on-one, and the Hispanic boy was winning.
There were parents sitting on two benches, but no one looked like they belonged with the Hispanic boy. Nobody cheered especially hard when he scored.
The one girl who was playing seemed more interested in taking her hair in and out of a scrunchie than playing basketball. She wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt with a pink, glittery butterfly on the front, and when she got the ball, she’d run for about five steps before she began to dribble. The refs, who were doubling as coaches, didn’t make many traveling calls.
The girl kept looking over at her dad all through the game, and he’d tell her things to do. He was serious about it, like it was really important for her to do well. Every time the girl got ready to shoot, she picked up the ball, ran around for a few seconds as she looked up, brought the ball back to her ear, smiled, then heaved the ball in the air. Her shots made it about halfway up to the hoop.
The Junior Lakers had a short, stocky boy with a seventies-style mushroom haircut and a constant grin on his face. When he found himself with the ball, he widened his eyes really big, like he had no idea what he might do next but he couldn’t wait to see what it was.
The kid’s obvious dad had a long, gray ponytail, and like the son, he appeared perpetually on the verge of laughing. He kept looking at the other parents, the way you do when something funny happens in a movie and you want to see if the person sitting next to you thinks it’s funny, too. But the other parents didn’t seem to notice him, riveted as they were to the sight of their own kids competing. I liked that smiley dad. At least he wasn’t trying to relive some disappointing aspect of his youth or Tiger Woods his kid.
Another Junior Laker had dark, allergic-looking circles under his eyes, and he kept glancing around at all the other kids, like a chorus-line dancer who hasn’t memorized a routine. The look on his face said the best he hoped for was to get through the game without drawing too much attention to himself. His tall, skinny dad paced the sidelines bouncing a basketball with a grim look on his face. He wore a rattling
watch chain that clanked every time he moved, and it was impossible not to notice him, with his rattling and his bouncing. Every once in a while, he would take a loud and clanky mock jump shot. Then he’d stand flat-footed and practice his form, shooting the ball into the air and bending his wrist with good follow-through the way coaches always have you do. You could tell by the way he handled the ball he’d played a little.
During a timeout, the rattling dad took his kid aside and gave him pointers as the rest of the kids surrounded their coach. When the dad finished up his lecture, he threw the ball really high into the air, almost to the ceiling. It was a little sad to see the kid throw his hands up over his head and duck, in his fancy Junior Lakers jersey, as the ball came back down.
There was nothing for me at the Y, so I decided to take one of those tours of the stars’ homes, just for the heck of it. As I walked up Hollywood Boulevard and turned the corner onto Vine, it was like there’d been a set change; suddenly, I could’ve been at any American theme park.
People were overweight again, wearing their khaki shorts and running shoes and sunburns. The same “three T-shirts for ten dollars” deal was being offered all up and down Hollywood, and many of the shops sold commemorative plaques for various movie stars or miniature Oscar trophies that said “World’s Best Dad.” One store sold refrigerator magnets and nothing else.
I walked over to the van, and as my fellow tourists and I settled in for the ride, two women and a man from Ohio laughed and told everyone how they’d just called one of the women’s husbands and told him they’d seen Jennifer Lopez in Frederick’s of Hollywood, which they hadn’t. The wife, who looked to be about a size 18, carried a tiny pink Frederick’s bag. She said she was starting to feel a little bad for her husband, because he’d gotten so excited about Jennifer Lopez and had kept asking questions about what she looked like. “He likes her,” she said with a shrug.
I guess that’s love, indulging someone’s juvenile preoccupations, instead of despising him a little, and squeezing into whatever was in that little shopping bag.
Our tour guide, Jim, swung into the driver’s seat. He shouted “Welcome to Hollyweird!” and we took off.
“This is the house of Brad Pitt!” Jim screamed over the air conditioner of our van. “That is the Brad Pitt house, right there, the one by itself on the cliff! Then Brad Pitt he had the lady stalker in the house, so he took her to the court and he forgive her. Now he live in Beverly Hills, where they have the securities and the service secrets.”
Jim told us he was a Greek from France who had moved to Hollywood fifteen years ago to become a movie star. He had the looks for it: not strictly gorgeous, but with the requisite straight teeth and thick hair.
We worked our way back up Sunset for a while after viewing the house of Brad Pitt. “Lots of crazy ladies here, the prostitutions!” Jim hollered as we drove up the famous street. “There you see some crazy ladies in the night,” he said, pointing out two very tall and wildly dressed people, possibly women, sauntering down the sidewalk. He showed them to us as if they belonged to the city, like they were statues or public buildings.
“You know the actor Hugh Grant?” Jim screamed so we could all hear. “Here is where he was caught with a prostitutions. Right at this corners! And he has a beautiful girlfriend. He say he want to be with a black crazy night lady. I do not understand.” Jim laughed like someone who exists in a mad, mad world.
As the van groaned up into the Hollywood Hills, Jim showed us the house of Steven Spielberg, which was visible from a mile away.
“He owns the whole hill to himself. He doesn’t want the neighbors! Ha ha!”
Our attention was directed toward the garage of Shaquille O’Neal, where he housed his fifty cars. Fifty cars. I mean, really, couldn’t someone cure something with all that money, or put some poor kids through college or something? Maybe Shaquille O’Neal should just make enough money to afford, say, six cars. That should be enough for anyone.
My mind wandered to thoughts of a couple I’d seen with their kid at the park a few days earlier. I was dribbling a ball around, which is a good way to see people when they don’t know it. The couple walked, holding hands, their child bounding around them, to a grassy area, where they tossed a soccer ball on the ground. As they started kicking the ball, they laughed, involved, moving, not watching or worried about being watched. They seemed to be onto something. Most people I see can’t be that happy and relaxed, even for a few minutes, with the people they live with.
Nobody cares whether or not a family kicks a ball in a park, just like nobody cares if I play basketball. We’re not paying money, or watching commercials. It’s pure.
So I don’t totally trust professional sports. And anyway, watching basketball on television just makes me antsy, makes me want to play. And I hate to high-five; I really hate to high-five over something happening on television with people I don’t even know.
Then again, maybe I’m just a stubborn jackass. It’s hard to say.
Jim led us back to Sunset. He showed us the Laugh Factories, where the biggest and funniest comedians in the country played, like the Bob Sagets. Then we passed the Hustler, where you could find to buy some spices to put in your relations, and the bathroom where George Michael the crazy man from England got caught naked.
“Here is the place where Eddie Murphy the black comedian was caught with a male prostitute!” Jim screamed delightedly. “He say he was just giving him a ride, but they don’t believe him and they take him to jail! Eddie Murphy, Beverly Hills Cop!”
“It’s easy money in the movies!” Jim hollered at us. “Not like me, driving a van every day to pay the thousand-dollar rent. Ha ha!
“Here is the house of Ella Fitzgerald, the black jazz singer from New York, she battle the prejudice,” Jim yelled at us. “And there is Walt Disney, a shy guy from Missouri who became a millionaire through a cartoon character, the Mickey Mouse! His neighbor is Rod Stewart, the singer from England I am sexy!”
When the tour was over, I got out of the van and walked back down Hollywood, nearly tripping over three giggly guys taking each other’s pictures by Sylvester Stallone’s star. I was thinking again about that happy family kicking the ball, and the miserable kid in the gym with his clanking dad. As usual, I was busy living in my head with the people I wish I could be more like and the ones I worry about, which was just one of fifty good or not-so-good reasons I wasn’t walking around with a Frederick’s bag or calling someone back home to play a joke on him or say I love you. That, and I don’t high-five when the situation calls for it.
A Weeble-shaped Hispanic guy with a mullet haircut was getting ready to toss the jump ball for a junior high girls’ game when I stuck my head in the door to see what was going on at Hollywood’s Poinsettia Recreation Center. I watched the guy say something that made the girls giggle before I headed back outside, where there was a full court and two smaller half-courts, and a handball area nearby.
On one of the half-courts, two women were putting a group of girls through some drills. The girls ran laps around the court for a while, and then they performed pivots, over and over. I watched them and their coaches, who ran and pivoted, too. They looked a little like synchronized swimmers, with their arms going up and down and their legs swinging around all together.
Over on the full court, the game looked serious. There was a crowd watching, talking and laughing and touching hands and saying hey.
There were a couple of teenage girls hanging out on the sidelines, wearing serious basketball clothes, knee-length shorts and sleeveless jerseys in no-nonsense colors, with their hair up in this or that funky way. I was hoping to see them get in, but they didn’t. They only jumped in to shoot a few while the game was on the other end. Sometimes one of the guys standing nearby would chase the girls around or put some spontaneous defense on them. The girls laughed and showed off with some flirty moves. Then they’d get out of the way as the game came back down.
A game on one of the half-courts lo
oked potentially ragtag, so I walked over to watch. One team had a guy who was so much taller and bigger than everyone else that all anyone had to do was lob the ball somewhere in his direction and the other team was left jumping at him like gnats. Pickup ball is often pretty lax about the three seconds in the lane rule, but the big man ignored it entirely, so he shot as many times as he needed to get two points. He didn’t even need to jump.
Two guys walked up and called next. I told them I wanted in, too, and they said okay. We chatted a minute, and I found out they were UCLA students. One guy was German. His name was Heinz, he said, just like the ketchup.
We watched Big Man’s team annihilate their opponents, and then we picked up a guy off the losing team to play four-on-four. Our new player was a tall black kid, as skinny and cool as the Pink Panther, and just as silent. He gave a quick nod when Heinz asked him if he’d play, and then he jumped up to the rim and hung on, swinging there while the rest of us organized ourselves.
Pink Panther took Big Man, who outweighed him by at least one hundred pounds. We didn’t have a chance.
Big Man took a lot of notice of my being on the court. As we played, he’d say stuff to his teammates that was really meant for my benefit, stuff like “Don’t let her fool you, stay on her!” Then he’d yell “Double!” every time I put the ball down, even though I wasn’t traveling, and if I took a shot, he’d say “No shot” just before I let go of the ball. He was trying to get into my head.
Once I made the mistake of dribbling too quickly after a rebound, moving away from the hoop with my back turned, and Big Man thundered out from the post, double-teamed me along with my defender, and stole the ball. It was the first time I’d seen the guy hurry.
Big Man and Pink Panther looked like a straight line bumping into a circle, and pretty soon Pink just gave up trying to defend Big and began to focus entirely on his offensive strategy, which was to shoot every time he touched the ball. Even with his sorry 10 percent field goal percentage, he scored most of our points. Heinz and his friend and I worked our butts off and managed to score a few times, but it was inevitable that we lost, six to eleven.