She's Got Next

by Melissa King

  Plato paused for a minute, thinking, before he said, “You know what? That’s some real fucked-up slavery shit right there.” He said it like it was the first time the idea might have occurred to him.

  Clem said oh hell, he used to get beat with extension cords, like it was nothing.

  “I’ve got this brother,” Clem said, “and he’s always talking about ‘Remember when Dad did this’ and ‘Remember when this happened’ and constantly bitchin’ and moanin’ about our childhood. I say, ‘I don’t even remember that stuff, and if you’re letting your childhood wear you down, then you’re more fucked-up than you think.’”

  “No, man, it’s like baking a cake,” Plato said. “You’ve got to know what all the ingredients are before you can make a good cake. Your brother’s just trying to understand his childhood, that’s all.”

  Plato was getting calmer, while Clem was getting more and more agitated. Even though the two men were about the same age, Plato seemed eons older.

  Clem said no, fuck that, the goddamned cake was already fucking baked, and the ingredients didn’t matter, goddammit. They kept arguing, sounding more and more like they were talking about actual cake, until they suddenly stopped, looking confused.

  I was with Plato, really, but I didn’t say so.

  “Well, you got to get over that hitting thing, anyway, before you have kids,” Plato said to Clem, smiling at him in a way that closed the topic and could only be called kind.

  The short wall we were sitting on backed up to a grassy hill, and Plato leaned back on one elbow and gazed off toward the tennis courts. His new girl’s birthday was coming up, and he was gonna get her some cake, yeah, mmm-hmmmm, yes he was, cake.

  He mumbled something about some plan involving candles. Clem and I tried not to hear.

  I hung out a little longer, watching the new game and listening to Clem and Plato throw in their two cents’ worth about walks or fouls.

  Three young and pretty Asian girls walked by in a slow, look-at-us kind of way. One of them wore flip-flops, scuffling them so that, in case you hadn’t looked yet, you’d be sure to hear them coming.

  I expected Plato to make one of his risqué comments, but instead he snapped out of his sexy trance and said, “Girl . . . pick up your feet.”

  Men in their late thirties might be my favorite. They’ve still got it goin’ on, but they’ve quit thinking with their penis at least to the extent that they are capable every once in a while of avoiding women whom they know will be purely irritating. The combination is attractive, a foot in both worlds, a kind of peak.

  When I said I had to go, Plato rose and grabbed the back of my hand to give it a kiss, all gallant. I looked past him and gushed ridiculously to amuse Clem, but only a little; I didn’t want to hurt Plato’s feelings. The smile Clem gave me was neither prissy nor tough, just real, a glimpse at what was behind all the roles he played.

  That kind of glimpse never lasts long. By the time I’d gathered up my things, Clem and Plato were debating the difference between an ape and a monkey. As I walked off Plato gave me an offhanded wave, never looking, never missing a beat.

  With pickup ball, it’s always about the game, but sometimes it’s also about fleeting intimacies the game makes possible.

  If Venice Beach nights were for the old guys, afternoons were for the studs. As the early risers finished their play and their talk and began to leave, the testosterone rose with the temperature.

  I was sitting in the bleachers one early afternoon, munching a burrito and watching the transition. The concrete courts and the ocean spanning out from them were beginning to sparkle in the sun, and I was pleasantly tired after playing with the oldsters all morning.

  A hip-looking guy in dreadlocks yelled at a guy on the other team.

  “You sorry-ass bitch!”

  The crowd around me giggled, bored and a little lazy in their flip-flops and hungry for action. A small boy with Down syndrome and his grandmother climbed up the other end of the bleachers. The boy, in cornrows and a shiny miniature basketball uniform, stayed in front of the grandmother, using his hands on the bleachers to make sure he didn’t fall down. He kept looking behind him and cowering a little, like he was afraid he wasn’t moving quickly enough for the grandmother, who never released him from her calm, threatening gaze. After they sat down, the little boy looked relaxed.

  “You sorry bitch!” Dreadlocks yelled again. “Take the ball, with your bitch ass!” He slung the ball at the other team.

  Clem was back, playing on Dreadlocks’ team. He was a young oldster or an old youngster. He could mix.

  Clem had good fundamentals, starting the offense every time from the low post with a hop to the other side of the lane and a screen. Again, I noticed a vague effeminacy about him. His screen hops were on the sassy side, and when he shot a jumper, he stuck his butt out real far and had extra good follow-through, leaving his bent wrist up in the air and bouncing on his toes.

  Almost every time Clem missed a shot, he’d stop the game with a call, leaving everyone on the other team looking at each other and complaining, “What was that about?” Calling fouls just to get the ball back is about the lowliest thing you can do in pickup basketball. It’s not like refs are there to keep things fair.

  Clem kept making the calls until the other team was yelling at him, and then he started yelling back. “Blah, blah, blah, give us the goddamned ball!”

  Then the crowd would laugh.

  Once, when Clem had brought the game to a stop yet again, the point guard from his own team looked at his defender and said quietly, “I don’t know, man. He’s a pussy.”

  “Toot it! Toot it!” the little Down syndrome boy yelled, anxious for them to stop standing around.

  Dreadlocks got so mad at the sorry-ass bitch that he forgot who was on his team, and he threw the ball to a guy standing on the sidelines. The guy had his fishing gear strapped to his back, a long pole bobbing over his head, and he caught the ball with one hand.

  “Dude! I’m not playing!”

  “Shut up!” Dreadlocks countered, and then, after thinking a second, “Eat your hotdog!”

  The guy wasn’t eating a hotdog. He threw back a solid pass and said, “I’ve got your hotdog, slim.”

  The crowd thought that was funny, too.

  A young, curvy Latina walked by, wearing ultralow-waisted jeans and a short T-shirt that showed her flat belly. Her pants were so long and flared that you couldn’t see her feet, making her look like some kind of urban mermaid spray-painted on a wall. Her boyfriend walked ahead carrying a surfboard, and he couldn’t see her when she grinned at a good-looking guy on the court who was slobbering over her. It was one of those thunderstruck moments, and everyone could see what was going on. Except the boyfriend, who just kept walking and carrying his surfboard.

  They walked on down the beach, and it took the good-looking slobbering player a few minutes to shake it off and remember where the hell he was.

  Earlier, I’d asked one of the old morning dudes why they argued so much in LA. He told me the younger guys got into it when women were watching. In the hot sun with their shirts off, the players seemed like posturing lions, desperate to stand out.

  Clem was yelling at the court at large, ever ready to philosophize. “You know what your problem is? All that testosterone gets going and fucks you all up in the head!” He squinted his eyes tight and flashed his teeth as he said it, using all the fingers of one hand to tap his own skull, like the whole thing was impossibly frustrating.

  I hated to admit it, because I liked Clem, but he really was playing like a pussy.

  The little boy stuck his arms up in the air and called out to the guys on the court, “My turn, pease! My turn!” but the players weren’t aware of his existence. The grandmother ate her nachos and stared ahead, looking vacant.

  The fisherman dialed his cell phone and left somebody a message that he was at Venice Beach, home of the freaks. Then he hung up and resumed standing there like some grinning
statue.

  Many of the tourists in the bleachers were smiling, too, but the little boy and his grandmother and the small group of black people they sat with watched the game as if it were a rerun of a television show they didn’t particularly like, but there was nothing better on.

  A ghostly white player wore pants and long sleeves and had his shaved head covered with a bandanna. Amid all the dark skin, the colorless guy looked like an alien protecting himself from uninhabitable conditions. Once, when he and Dreadlocks collided and fell, the crowd drew a collective breath, like they thought someone was hurt and they were afraid, or maybe hoped, there was going to be a real fight now. But Dreadlocks extended a hand to help the pale guy up and said, “You okay?” quietly, passing his brown hand over the guy’s smooth bandanna like he was stroking a baby’s head.

  Men are strange that way. One minute they handle each other like they’re pulling legs off bugs, the next minute they’re tender as nurses. I guess there’s a hell of a lot that goes into it, how their relationship to each other seems beyond their control as they respond to the call to compete, like the lions.

  After the game, Clem and Dreadlocks sat together in the bleachers, and I saw that human smile of Clem’s again, now that he wasn’t acting out some drama. On the court, an old Frederick Douglass-looking dude was trying to get in the next game, and all the players were ignoring him like he was a little kid under their feet. FD was wandering around the court, asking people who had next or did they need somebody, and the guys would mumble, “I don’t know, man,” and turn their back to him. But the old dude stuck it out, and by the time another game got started, he was in.

  The kid who was put on him looked awkward with the association, and a couple of hipsters sitting behind me in the bleachers amused themselves by making fun of how short the old dude’s shorts were. What was strange was, the shorts were fine, really, I mean, they weren’t Magic-Johnson-in-1976- or Bill-Clinton-jogging-short-short. They were too insubstantial to be stylish, but exactly what you’d expect from an older dude. I guess the peanut gallery needed something to chew on.

  The poor old coot didn’t play very well, even for an old guy. He looked dazed, a few seconds behind everyone else. He wasn’t at all like Sandy from the morning, gliding up to the court on his Rollerblades, saying little, and playing like a sage, everyone asking him how he was doing and saying thanks to him when they left. Instead, FD was in over his head. His team lost the game and the court without much question about it, and I felt sorry for him, after all that work to get in.

  A deformed pigeon pecked around for food in front of the bleachers. Where one of its feet should’ve been, there was a round, marble-sized mass, and instead of strutting like a proper city chicken, this one wobbled like a broken rocking chair. Or he simply stood, by himself, looking up at us in the bleachers, red, crazy eyes demanding something.

  I felt a sudden urge not to be sitting in the middle of a crowd by myself, but the bombardment wasn’t over yet. On the way out, I passed a group of middle-aged, retarded men arriving at the beach. They were so perfectly silent I could hear their shuffling feet as they moved by, holding hands like little kids on a field trip. They were being good boys, smelling vaguely of Lysol and staring up at the sky as if they’d forgotten it was there, and my crazy head couldn’t help wondering how they were treated back at the institution, whether or not somebody was nice to them.

  Pease, said the child who scrambled up bleachers like a nervous crab. Please, I said, slinging the word like a half-court buzzer shot at anything that might be called God. Please help the old, the hobbled, and the innocent, forever begging the strong for crumbs of gentleness.

  On good days, you approach a court, and even if you don’t know anyone, it seems like everyone has been waiting for you to arrive. Players are well meaning and intense and amusing, and you go home feeling like the world is a pretty good place.

  It was often that kind of day at Westwood Park. There were teenagers, college guys, some families on the half-court side, even a girl or two sometimes.

  I was there shooting around, waiting for a game. A very pregnant woman and her toddler walked past me, and I heard her ask the child, “You wanna go play basketball?” They went over toward a hoop, and the little kid started throwing a small ball up into the air. The mother clapped her hands, paying attention to the child and nothing else in the whole world.

  A guy in red shorts shooting at the hoop near the toddler kept catching my eye and smiling. Another guy came over to my hoop, and we shot around. His name was JJ, and he was in for the day from Pasadena. I mentioned to him I’d just bought a new ball, because I’d lost my old one. I said the ball had been on sale for fifteen dollars, and I was glad to get the deal, because all the other balls were twice as much. He laughed a little and said well, he would’ve gotten that one, too.

  Westwood was a neighborhood full of Mercedes- and BMW-driving UCLA students. I didn’t realize that my talking about saving fifteen dollars was a little different before JJ’s slightly amused and gentle reaction.

  The game on the other court ended, some of the guys were leaving, and the remaining players looked around for replacements. JJ and Smiley Red Shorts guy and I looked over, showing our interest, and the guys on the court included the three of us in the head count, no big deal. In the world of pickup ball, this was an advanced civilization.

  JJ said his knee was hurt, so he didn’t play. The rest of us started a game of full-court four-on-four.

  Most of the players were students, and they worked hard without taking themselves too seriously. The best player toyed with whoever was guarding him, challenging but not humiliating. When he faked you, he smiled a little at the subtleties of your response, and when he got you off-balance, he might or might not take it to the hoop. He tried to teach you something, not saying much except little things like “Whatcha gonna do?” and “I thought so” and “Uh-huhhh.”

  He’d found a way to keep things interesting for himself while at the same time letting you have your game, but he turned it on a few times, too, to show everyone he could.

  A tall blond guy and I went for a loose ball, both of us getting our hands on it. As we tugged for possession, he shouted, “I love you!” and we laughed. Finally the ball got away from us, and we gave each other an absurd and dramatic fast hug. Throughout the rest of the game, his eyes danced when he looked at me, seeming to revel in my oddball freedoms.

  I was guarding Red Shorts guy. Something about his initial smiliness had made me think of him as a little soft, a little underconfident and too anxious to please. When he turned down an open shot, I knew I was right about him. After a few hesitations like that, I backed way off him, physically daring him to shoot, but still, every time he was open, he’d study the hoop, then pass. So I said what you say when your guy won’t shoot.

  “You better take that.”

  There are certain times when you don’t shoot even though you’re open, like when you’re not in your range, or you can’t get your balance in time, or no one on your team is under the hoop to get your rebound if you miss. There are exceptions, like when you just have a feeling it’s going to go in. Then you take the shot, even if it seems wrong-headed. If you miss, you feel like an ass, unless you’re a ball hog and don’t care about anything except shooting every chance you get.

  When your man backs way off you, it’s a disrespect move, like you’re not worth guarding, and your man actually wants you to shoot, since you’ll probably miss. When a defender lets you have the open shot, you better take it, just to get some respect.

  I could tell by the look on Red Shorts’ face that he wasn’t feeling it, he almost never felt it, and I was making him feel some pressure by calling attention to him. Pretty soon, my teammates would start noticing what I was doing. Then they’d jump in, too, saying things like “He ain’t gonna take that” or “No shot” when he got the ball. Red Shorts needed to shoot and say, “You don’t wanna let me have that,” just before he let it go. T
hat’s what he needed to do, no matter how he felt.

  When Red Shorts finally took his shot and missed, I felt a little powerful, and a little guilty. I mean, he was so friendly and everything.

  Our best player was a short Asian guy with muscular calves who could take it through the lane even though he was smaller than most of the other guys. He was strong and quick, he could jump, and he got lots of steals for us, but his contributions were offset by a ball hog on our team. Like all ball hogs, for this one, defense was no more than the boring end of the court, and rebounding was for suckers.

  Being the smallest person out there, I had little chance for the offensive rebound, so as soon as Ball Hog shot, I got back on defense and tried to cause the other team to miss their shot on the break. If they’d miss just one, my teammates would have time to get down the court, but on the first few breaks, my team didn’t even try to get down, leaving me to guard two or three people by myself, jumping and sweating and jerking like those old Western movies where someone shoots a gun at your feet and says dance.

  My inner guy wanted to say, “Shit, y’all! If I’d known you were just gonna let ’em have it, I’da stayed back, too! Why don’t you leave me back here running my ass off by myself next time? Shit!” But I knew I didn’t have to say anything, because guys feel sheepish about letting a girl work hard while they loaf. Pretty soon, they started getting back on defense, especially the Asian guy.

  We had most of the same people for three games, with a few substitutions here and there. JJ from Pasadena couldn’t resist getting in when someone had to leave. He was on my team.

  JJ was an excellent player, and he didn’t like to lose. You could tell by a slight grimace on his face and a give in his step he was pushing his hurt knee too hard, and he complained under his breath, about his knee and about Ball Hog’s shots. Once, when Ball Hog threw up something crazy, JJ looked over at me and said, “I wouldn’t be takin’ that.” I shrugged in agreement.