Mannish Boy

from Mannish Boy (a memoir)

You couldn’t miss the jersey if you needed glasses. Gold with maroon trim. A giant 23 under the word cavs. Last year the kid wore a Heat jersey to the courts. This year his favorite player, LeBron James, is back in Ohio. Cleveland is 1,243 miles north of Miami. If the Rust Belt were a real belt, Cleveland would be the cracked red spot in the center of its buckle. One city has sand, the other grit. One Celia Cruz, the other Dwight Yoakum. Both have had their hearts broken by number 23. Except for this kid who is from neither place, who doesn’t follow teams but the man. So deep is the kid’s devotion that I saw him hit a three-pointer, walk to the other end of the court, and raise one knee, then the other, all while pushing the invisible earth he had just razed back down with his hands. The celebration of his shooting prowess ended with him pounding his chest just like the love of his young life. Sometimes I think “what a sad bastard,” and then other times I’m envious that he can still experience a love so naive and pure as to make him impervious to the ridicule of all the guys on the sideline. And at twenty years of age, no less! Usually that kind of idolatry, especially male on male, is stomped on, jeered at, and shamed out of a young boy much sooner.

During the nineties, I was infatuated with Michael Jordan (may the Celtic gods forgive me) when Boston languished and spent the playoffs sitting at home. My tongue wagging every time I drove to the basket, I was trying to fulfill the wet dream of some Gatorade executive and “be like Mike.” But jokes behind my back, to my face, all the usual tactics of intimidation and shame that boys are masters at, cured me of this fixation and I relented and began just being me on the court. That and almost biting my tongue in half while trying to do a reverse layup did the trick. But this kid with the thin moustache and floppy hair (he should’ve picked Pistol Pete) is still at it. What a piece of luck for him to be already a young man in college and not yet broken on the rack of male shame.

That I call him a kid reveals a sad fact. I’m old. Or at least old enough to be this kid’s father. I call him a kid, for Christ’s sake! Living in a college town used to make me feel young, but now that I’m the age of their parents, a polite “Sir” or “Mister” waits around every corner for me. One day I woke up and became one of the old guys I played ball with growing up, only without the cool nickname like Joe Dog (animal control officer) or Gator (ladies’ man), the Mexican Magic Johnson of Mathis, Texas. Secretly I dream one day I’ll play a game with a former student, and after he calls me “Professor,” the other kids will pick up on it so that before I know it, I’ll be able to step on any court in San Marcos and be known as The Professor. But who am I kidding, what could I possibly teach that they couldn’t learn from playing one-on-one with one of their parents? Old equals slow. Surely they can learn that anywhere.

It’s been at least six or seven years since I gave up defending guards. No longer can I lock down the opposing team’s shooting guards and make them reluctant passers. Where my defense used to be smothering, now it’s like a stick of butter on a sidewalk in summer. I’m like the plastic chair the coaches used during practice for us to shoot over and dribble around. Because I’m also just as slow on offense, now I play inside with the bigs, with the guys who at twenty have...