Chapter 6

 

 

 

 

THE Saturday following my interview with Connor Lin dawned cool and humid. Broken clouds drifting off the Pacific smudged the morning sky with wide streaks of gray. Being both late and angry had me jogging through the parking lot with my pulse throbbing at my temples. Beside the stone path that led to the clubhouse and at the end of a line of BMWs, Mercedes Benzes and Cadillacs sat a twelve-year-old Chevy delivery van with a crumpled right fender and a sign on the door that read Oakland’s Prime Produce. They were at the courts, waiting. That should have pleased me, because until then I had no idea if they would show, but the fact that I had kept them waiting for an hour only fueled my anger.

My morning had begun on a sour note when Jared stumbled through our front doorway at three a.m. after a night of pub-crawling with friends. I tore into him with nine hours of built-up frustration, but I didn’t get ten words out before I saw the pain behind those bleary eyes, pain that a deluge of alcohol couldn’t drown.

There is a kind of vagueness among drunks, even when they’re sober, a look that usually passes for stupidity, but being one of the initiated, I know it’s a shield from their pain. As my rage crystallized into pity, I led him to bed, peeled off his clothes, and tucked him between the sheets. Slipping in next to him, I held him until we both fell asleep.

When morning’s light turned the windows blue, Jared’s body purged itself of its self-induced poison, followed by the shakes and a hangover. I dumped him into a hot bath while the coffee brewed and I changed the bedding. It took an hour to pull him from the tub, force pancakes and painkillers down him, and lead him back to bed.

The drive to work had my stomach performing slow, agonizing somersaults. That was partly due to my car, a ’68 VW Bug we lovingly called Slug because of its mustard yellow color. Slug’s broken odometer registered all nines, the front windshield had a starburst-patterned crack, and heater-warmed gasoline fumes seeped into the passenger compartment, which often made me nauseous.

That morning, though, my nausea came from being unable to help Jared. His nights out were becoming more frequent. Day by day, I watched him disintegrate. I pleaded with him to see a doctor, but his eyes frosted over, and he gave me the silent treatment. At times, he ignored me for five or six days straight, as if his pain were somehow my fault.

His drinking had robbed us of social interaction with our gay friends, because they would invariably invite us to go out clubbing, and I was intent on keeping Jared as far away from alcohol as humanly possible. His binges always started building a few weeks before a big tournament, particularly a Grand Slam, like a pressure cooker gathering steam, and that first week of play, the lid would blow off and he would focus his hostility inward, incinerating his insides and lashing out at anyone who tried to comfort him.

 

 

I HEARD Connor before I saw him, heard the sound of a sweet spot striking the ball in a smooth, metronome-like rhythm. I pulled my thoughts away from Jared and refocused.

Connor was on the show court, dressed in white shorts and a faded blue sweatshirt. But something looked different, and I realized what had changed: he wore clear, wire-rimmed glasses, not the dark Oakleys he had on when I first met him. He must have used contact lenses when he played in Carmel. I took a moment to appraise this new look. It suited him, giving his face a slight bookkeeper’s fragility.

Across the net was a blond, about the same age and body type. He wore red shorts and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Both boys were hitting out, smashing the ball with every stroke, and it was easy to understand why: on the clubhouse veranda overlooking court one stood a bevy of teenaged girls dressed in their skimpy tennis skirts and tight blouses. They all squirmed with excitement as they ogled these new boys.

Roy Lin sat at a table on the veranda sipping tea, his eyes glued to the boys. He resembled a stone-faced Mandarin watching two Tae Kwon Do Black Belt Masters in mortal combat, willing his man to defeat the opponent.

I pushed back my parka hood, feeling the sunshine spread over my face.

Connor glanced up at me, smiled, and continued to crush the ball. He put some extra mustard into each swing, no doubt to impress me.

I was impressed, not at how hard he hit the ball, but at the sheer dexterity of his movement: his explosive strides to run down a wide ball, the tiny adjustment steps as his racket looped back and the forward stroke began. The technique of his groundstrokes carved rounded Os through the air with machine-like precision. His footwork and timing were efficient and had that unreal athleticism of Pete Sampras or, I dared to think, Stefan Edberg.

I couldn’t blame those girls a bit; he was ravishing. They both were. For a moment I forgot all the practical elements like footwork and timing and I simply admired their poetry, a pair of Appaloosa colts racing across a spring meadow.

A nervous excitement suffused me, obliterating the anger of a few minutes before. Even the sun on my face gave me new optimism.

I strolled into my office to grab a racket and towels, then headed to the show court. As soon as I stepped onto the court, Connor hit a screaming bullet down the line before jogging over to me. His face radiated energy. Up close, I caught the pleasant scent of the sweat that dampened the front of his sweatshirt. I hesitated for a heartbeat as I watched a perfect tear of sweat journey down his temple and hang on his jaw.

The other boy wandered over and stood beside Connor, trying hard to look as if he belonged.

I tossed them each a towel and refocused on tennis.

Connor swiped the towel across his face and shook my hand. He introduced the other boy, Spencer Young, as his regular practice partner. Spencer stood as tall as Connor, but he carried more weight and definition. His hair, tawny streaks of gold mixed with albino-blond, framed his fine-boned face, which was speckled like a robin’s egg from too much time in the sun. A girlish loveliness softened his eyes, which were very large and teal blue.

“Hope you don’t mind me bringing Spence here, Mr. Bottega. He wanted to meet you.”

I shook Spencer’s hand, thinking, This could be great: if Spencer chaperoned our practice sessions, Mr. Lin had no reason to take issue with my being gay.

A sheen of sweat moistened Spencer’s forehead and sparkled in the sunshine. He looked like the Caucasian equivalent of Connor, only softer, more sensitive, and his youth combined with his innocence to give him a slightly dopey air that I found very alluring. Yes, I thought, and I encouraged Spencer to join every practice. The notion struck me that Connor had already thought of that. Did he feel the need for a chaperone?

I led them to the middle of the court, and I sat on the service line beside the net. They joined me, the three of us sitting in a tight circle. I did this to give them a different perspective of the court. A note of confusion marred Connor’s face, but he played along without comment.

Before I could begin the lesson, Connor spread his legs and toweled them off, starting at his calves and working his way up his inner thighs. His shorts bunched up, exposing more of his thighs: pale skin as smooth as porcelain and laced with thin blue veins.

The words caught in my throat like a hummingbird in a net. I noticed a series of fine muscle tremors moving under the skin of both legs. They had overdone the warm-up, and I reminded myself that Connor’s legs could be injury-prone or fall prey to cramping.

“Drape those towels over your legs so you don’t cool down too fast.”

I turned my head in time to see a look of sexual interest etched on Spencer’s face. He couldn’t draw his attention away from Connor’s exposed thighs. His eyes crept further up Connor’s legs to the fullness in the crotch of his shorts. Spencer’s mouth hung open, making a little red O. His story became crystal clear. He was aroused by Connor’s fresh, kid-brother sexiness. His adoration of Connor made me like him all the more.

“Sure thing, Mr. Bottega,” Spencer said with a mild voice. He grudgingly pulled his attention away from Connor to cover his own legs.

Spencer’s obvious puppy love made me grin, but I hardened my resolve and put on my poker face. “Your first mistake,” I began, “was coming onto this court without a plan. These club hackers can do that, but we must always act with purpose and intelligence.”

Connor’s smile faded. His mouth opened to say something, but I cut him off.

“Your second mistake was showing off instead of warming up. If you want to impress those girls, get your butts up there and talk to them. Impress them with who you are, not how hard you can hit the ball. Any time you’re on the court, you must zero in on executing our plan.”

Connor dropped his head and studied his sneakers.

“Your third mistake was hitting the beans out of the ball without a proper warm-up.”

“Sorry, Mr. Bottega,” Connor said without looking up. “We’ve always done it that way.”

I reached over and patted his shoulder to let him know I understood. “Before I show you how to perform a proper warm-up, I want to give you my most valuable lesson.” I paused until Connor looked up and we locked eyes. “The first time my partner, Jared, gave me a piano lesson, he taught me about perfect practice.”

Connor grinned. “You play piano?”

“Connor, are we here to discuss my personal life?”

“Sorry, Mr. Bottega.”

“You’ve heard that practice makes perfect?” They both nodded. “Well, that’s bullshit. Practice reinforces what you practice. If you practice with bad form, you reinforce bad form. The only way to perfect technique is by doing what Jared called perfect practice. Understand?”

“Everything except what perfect practice is,” Connor said.

“For the piano it means to play a piece of music as slowly as is necessary to perform it perfectly, to move your fingers from one note to the next without making any mistakes in finger position or cadence. If it takes an hour to play the Minute Waltz perfectly, that’s what you do. Make a mistake and you stop and do it again, only slower. You see, your body learns. The second time, it will take fifty-eight minutes, and fifty-two the third time. Before you know it, you’re playing it as it was intended, and because you’ve always played it perfectly, you never develop any wrong habits.”

“But this is tennis,” Connor said. “You can’t take an hour to hit the ball.”

“I’m feeling resistance here.”

“Sorry, Mr. Bottega.”

“First off, I want us to perform a perfect warm-up, the way I want you to warm up every time we step on court. We’ll start with you both on one side of the net hitting balls to me. Don’t swing any harder or any faster than I do. Mimic me. Focus on breath control and seeing the ball. By breath control, I mean inhale into the lower abdomen so that your belly expands like a balloon. That gives you a fuller breath, which makes you take in more air. As you hit the ball, I want you to grunt.”

They both gave me a queer look as I demonstrated the technique.

“Grunting makes you exhale so that you automatically inhale after hitting the ball. That keeps you breathing during a rally, and focusing on your breathing keeps your mind free of thoughts. Understand? Correct breathing keeps your mind empty as difficulty and exertion levels increase. That’s what I’m after: for you to keep your mind blank.”

“But that makes no sense.” Connor said, a whiny note creeping into his voice. “You said that seventy percent of tennis is between the ears. Why keep our minds empty?”

“Connor, you play your best when you’re in the zone, right?”

He nodded and tilted his head to one side.

“When you’re in your zone, what are you thinking?”

“I told you, it’s like I’m not there. I’m not thinking anything.”

“So you play your best when your mind is silent; your body takes over and it all tumbles into place, right?”

Connor’s eyes drilled into my skull.

“That’s what I plan to show you,” I continued, “how to put yourself in the zone every time you play. I’ll teach your body to play perfect tennis and your ego to stay out of the way so your body can do what I teach it. Now, what I’m trying to get across here is that breath control and keeping the mind still are the chariots of creating the zone, what my mother called the power-shift.”

Connor nodded, even though I was sure he didn’t understand.

“Good. Let’s start with the two of you on that side of the net and inside the service line.”

Connor glanced up at the group of girls still huddled at the edge of the deck. He turned back to me and groaned, “That’s baby tennis. I haven’t done that in years.”

“Show me you can do it perfectly and we’ll up the ante.”

“But Mr. Bottega—” He looked up at the deck again.

“Connor,” I cut him off, “if you’re concerned about what those girls or your father or anybody else thinks, then you’re wasting my time. If you’re too good to do things my way, then you’re too good, and we’ll shake hands and call it quits. Otherwise, get your butt over there and let’s hit some balls.”

With a visible surrender, he abandoned his protest and they dragged themselves into position. I told them I wanted to see their bellies expanding with each breath, and when they were, I floated balls to one, then the other, like a slow-motion ballet. I hit the ball perfectly each time: split-step when either of them hit the ball, full upper-body turn and back-swing, seeing the ball all the way to the racket, grunt, good follow-through. I wanted to demonstrate, let them see rather than think about what I wanted from them.

Spencer had no problem concentrating on his breathing and floating a clean ball back to me each time, but Connor had trouble constraining his strokes. He sprayed balls past me. The exercise stymied him like a thoroughbred racehorse forced to pull a milk wagon.

Roy Lin’s raw voice boomed over the court, telling Connor to focus.

“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “Focus on mimicking me, nothing more. When the body is free of the ego, the chi expands, and it will surpass your expectations.”

Too much telling fills the mind with obstacles to overcome. Images are better teaching tools than words, so I minimized my verbal instructions and focused on doing the exercise flawlessly. Spencer began to enjoy himself, perhaps because he did it so much better than Connor, who couldn’t return more than five balls without spraying one too deep or into the net. His cheek muscles tightened with every mistake, and his lips pressed together in an effort to force concentration.

Roy’s voice cut the air again, telling Connor to split-step.

“Damn it,” Connor mumbled after knocking one into the net. “Eyes on the ball, blockhead.”

I stopped and walked to the net. “Connor, who are you talking to?”

“Just reminding myself to see the ball.”

“This is important,” I said. “Tell me, who spoke and who was he speaking to?”

“I just told you, I was talking to myself.”

“So, you’re telling me that your ‘I’ and your ‘self’ are two different entities. Otherwise there’s no need for conversation between them.”

The same baffled expression crossed both their faces. I explained that each of us has two selves, the ego (conscious mind) and the body (unconscious mind and nervous system). Connor had made all those errors because his ego kept trying to control his body. His ego dictated what to do and blamed the body when the communication broke down and it made a mistake.

They both shook their heads, still baffled.

“The funny thing is, your body already knows what to do, and it doesn’t need anything controlling it. But your ego is like Mr. Lin: it can’t just sit back and enjoy the game; it’s got to try and run the show.”

Connor smiled and glanced at his sneakers.

“That’s why Spencer has no problem. His ego is so small, it’s easy for him to silence it.”

Connor punched Spencer in the arm, and they both laughed.

“Okay, so we’re going to focus on breathing into the lower belly to expand our chi and at the same time, try to quiet the ego so the body can do what it already knows. Let’s do it again, and if you hear that voice in your head saying anything at all, that’s a warning that Mr. Ego is taking control. That’s the time to concentrate on just breath control and seeing the ball.”

We continued to float balls back and forth. Connor relaxed a bit, but he visibly struggled to harness his inner voice. Spencer had found something that he could do better than Connor, and he glowed.

We drilled for two hours, always hitting softly. Whenever Connor returned twenty consecutive balls, we backed up one step while putting more pace on the ball, working our way to the baseline. Whenever he made an error, we stepped forward and took pace off.

After we reached the baseline and hit out long enough for them to demonstrate they could control their shots, I waved them forward.

“That’s how I want you to warm up,” I told them, “starting inside the service line with no pace and work back to the baseline. Now that you know how, it should take ten to fifteen minutes. Then you can hit out.”

They had learned a hard lesson and done well. Inside, I beamed, but I didn’t let it show. “Grab some water and pull on your sweats,” I said. “We’ll take a run to build up your legs.”

They piled into the clubhouse, and I strolled over to Roy. He popped a Tums into his mouth and chewed with force, as if he were crunching my skull with every bite.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “how this baby tennis helps Connor’s strokes?”

“It doesn’t, but like I said, there’s more to this game than strokes. Give it time, Mr. Lin. The Great Wall took four dynasties to complete.”

“But what’s the point of all this?”

“I’m getting him to tap into his chi,” I said, getting a little annoyed. “The lesson stems from the esthetic poise of him striking the ball with his inner force and from the beauty within the flight of a well-struck ball, that is, man transformed into pure action.” I could see he was not satisfied with my answer, but I was in no mood to find another way to explain it, so I said, “It’s not something that can be expressed with words. It has to be felt.”

I darted into my office and grabbed a book from my bookcase: A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. Connor and Spencer were back on the veranda by the time I walked back and handed the book to Roy.

“I want you all to read this carefully, and read it again. It explains why we expand the chi so much better than I can.”

Roy grunted and handed it back to me. “This was written by a Jap.”

I was stunned. I felt heat rising to my temples. I took a deep breath to make sure my voice came out smooth, with no trace of anger. “It’s arguably the finest book ever written on strategy and the warrior mindset.”

“Do you have any idea, Mr. Bottega,” Roy said, “what the Japs did to our people in the thirties and forties?”

“Mr. Lin, Musashi was born in the fifteen hundreds. I assure you he never set foot on Chinese soil. Musashi fuses Zen, Shinto, and Confucianism in order to form a philosophy that every champion needs to utilize.”

Roy’s back stiffened. “I will not allow this book in my house.”

I felt my whole face redden as I handed the book to Connor. “I guess you’ll have to read this on your porch.”

He slipped the book into his tennis bag while staring at Roy with an obstinate expression that challenged his father’s stern glare. Turning to me, he asked, “Ready?”

Good, I thought. Roy had just learned a hard lesson himself: in the game of professional tennis, coach always trumps parent.

We sprinted through the woods at the edge of the golf course, heading toward the sea. Connor took the lead, setting a brisk pace. Spencer and I dogged his heels. I loved to run through those woods, and doing so made the day’s frustrations vanish and produced an exhilarating, glad-to-be-alive energy that exploded through my system.

Waves of wind rolled over us, drenching our faces as we plunged through pools of sunshine and shadows. I noticed everything: the tangled colors of Spencer’s hair flashing in the noontime light, the sound of our feet crunching the moist dirt, the trees and greens and golfers going by lickety-split.

Before reaching the northern-most fairway, we squeezed through a gap in the fence and crossed over the Great Highway. We ran along the pavement until we came to Ocean Beach. Running on sand was a great exercise to strengthen Connor’s legs. We flew past sunbathers lounging on the sand and ran for two miles with nobody in sight. Waves trounced the beach with a steady rhythm that merged with my thumping heart.

I had not run on loose sand in over six months. Three miles had my legs burning. I slowed the pace until I came to a standstill, looking across that blue plane at the point where the horizon stretched into infinity. I told them to catch their breath before we headed back, but before I finished saying the words, they had tossed off their sweats and run all-out and bare-assed for the surf. Their naked skin shimmered in the strong sunlight.

“That water’s freezing!” I yelled, but they were already knee-deep and howling from the cold. A spray of fine mist haloed around them as they tumbled through the boiling surf. The sun’s rays electrified the spray and gave it a cool golden color that looked like bullets of liquid gold pelting those two perfect beings.

Connor tackled Spencer, and they disappeared beneath the swirling foam. For a split second I felt a stab of concern, but they appeared in the next heartbeat with rivers of water running off their skin. The cold had them shrieking. Spencer tried to fight his way to shore, but Connor kept dragging him back into the oncoming waves.

Their frolicking brought a smile to my face, then had me doubled up with laughter, then caused an aching in my chest. I felt a space open just under my sternum, about the size of a fist and as dense as silt. I seemed to tilt to one side, which pulled me off balance for the time I stood watching them. I realized that the heaviness that pressed against my heart was envy. I yearned to join them, to be eighteen and naked and defying the cold, but I stayed on the beach, unable to pull my eyes away.

I have experienced envy twice in my life, and that was one of them.