Wednesday, September 13, 2006

the basketball bride... part 1

I feel like I’m being shaken. The plywood panels reverberate behind my head and shoulders with every footstep, every bounce. Assaulted with a cacophony of squeaks and shouts, terms unintelligible to my naive ears.

They run, confident in their game; the sweat begins to flow. The whistle blows, they quickly wipe their shoes in the pause – to slip, even for a moment, is to risk mockery. Besides, he tells me later, it looks cool. I smile. It’s his game to play, not mine, after all. There it goes again, a flow of musculature, ball careening down the court, hand to hand. The wall shudders. A leap, contested by unmoving bodies; a curse.

A pause, he crouches, bounces, lines up the shot. He grins over at me as it falls, confident in the knowledge that it’s in; then his consciousness snaps back to the game.

Interesting to watch, men playing boys playing a game. They all have their idiosyncrasies. As number 14 sips his blue Gatorade, number eight drapes his towel across his legs, looking for all the world like a sage old man in sneakers. As number 13 stretches, 9 is focussed on all the wisdom the coach can hope to impart in a one minute time out; whilst the coach picks his jocks out of his ass for the hundredth time. Its comical to watch; a running tally of his discomfiture. It irritates me, a court width away, I feel like going to Target to buy him some trunks – perhaps lilac, to match his shirt.

He stands, flexing his muscles, the immovable wall, then fluidly stretches up, up to claim the rebound. He passes, too soon, to selfless to run the ball himself.

The siren screams, he grins. As the coach picks his wedgie for the thousandth time, they wander away – intent on other games they have to play. We sit here, like pigeons in a row on our bench as they wander over to claim their well-deserved spoils. What a game, they say, man-hugging each other as they disband. He meanders over, salty with other men’s sweat – he kisses me and I taste them; the spoils of the battle. And all I want to say is, yellow is not your colour.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

thank you

5/19/2007 10:14 AM  

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