THURSDAY AFTERNOONS, LARRY and I used to go down to the Y, play a little pickup basketball, take a shower, go out for a couple of beers. It wasn’t a team. Just a bunch of guys blowing off a little steam.
I remember this one time in particular. We’re sitting in the sauna after the game. Us and these other two guys we used to play with sometimes. Single guys, like me.
“Man, did I hit the jackpot last night,” one of them says. You know the way guys talk. “Chick could’ve kept going all night, like she hadn’t been laid in a year.”
So then I say something about the girl I’d been out with, you know? I mean, half of the stuff you say is made up, and everybody knows it. You just like to talk big. It’s part of the game, same as dribbling the ball or making foul shots. Just a bunch of guys screwing around, no big deal.
So this other guy, the first one, he starts telling us how this particular chick liked to do it at her parents’ house when they were downstairs watching TV. And this other guy starts talking about this chick he knows that likes to be tied up. I say my girlfriend likes it the normal way, “just often is all.” “How often?” says the guy with the tied-up girlfriend. “Three, four times a night,” I say. “Man, it’s a sacrifice, but what can you do?”
All this time, Larry’s just sitting there, not saying much. Then this one guy, he turns to Larry and says, “So, how’s it feel to be an old married man? Your old lady keeping you happy?”
And then he does a funny thing. He gets up off the bench and wraps his towel around him. “Why don’t you guys just grow up?” he says. “You think that’s all there is to life? Let me tell you, there’s more to it. There’s such a thing as love and commitment.” I don’t remember the exact words, but that was the gist of it, anyway. Real heavy and serious. Like the guy couldn’t take a joke. Which generally he could.
After he left, Buzz, this buddy of ours that did it at his girlfriend’s parents’ house, he turns to me and says, “Jeez, what’s with him?”
Richie, this other guy, says to blow it off. “Sounds to me like he just hasn’t been laid in a while,” he says. “Just because the package looks good doesn’t guarantee it’ll be so great on the inside.”