gpc

At the post-game table for three, the captain reveals to us his plan for Thursday — pick her up at the airport, flowers, Shari’s Berries, late dinner.

“Whatchew guys up to for Valentine’s Day?”

“Nothing going on,” I say. (This could be a lie, I realize.)

“I’ve got a B-school mixer on Friday,” says our ringer. “Not so sure about Thursday…”

“C’mon, man,” says the captain. “You two just gotta go out, meet somebody.”

The ringer continues: “I know I’ve got friends going out that night, but it would be like…seven girls and two guys at the table.”

“What, that sounds perfect!”

“Not really. I mean, let’s say I got myself invited to that. So…well let me put it this way: What if it turns out you’re more interested in one of the other girls at the table than the one who actually invited you? I’m thinkin’ that could be, well, not so good.”

I tell them that earlier in the day I discovered that I might be in the wrong neighborhood. “According to the research, you’re in the right place,” I assure the ringer, who lives in the Upper East Side.

“So where else the ladies at?” the captain asks me.

“Canarsie…Forest Hills…”

The ringer’s eyes suddenly widen. “Oooooh, you know who lives in Forest Hills, don’t you?”

Yeah — we do.

Over a post-game slice on the Upper West Side, I listen as the driver grills a marketing strategist on her trajectory from entrepreneur to tech start-up hire to Bain Capital consultant to MBA student to her current gig at an incumbent bureaucratic hierarchy.

I suppose it makes sense — that after exhausting yourself on the court, you let the workout mentality bleed into life outside the gym. How can I make my game better? How do I climb the ladder?

But I wonder if the driver is buying it.

“Choose an executive MBA program that works for you,” advises the strategist. (She has given this pep talk many times.) 

The driver nods. I’m not sure I can picture him delivering product spiel in front of a deck. But clearly he wants to reinvent himself in some way, and he’s taking suggestions. At some point I’ll have one to offer. I haven’t fleshed it out yet, but most likely it will start with, “Don’t do what I did — which is wait.”

Old friends, plus a Hawaiian tourist, at an old haunt I haven’t been to in a while. The server is the same one who took my order at the bar the last time I was here. Same smirk, but his hair is much shorter now.

The tourist sits at the end of the long table — across from me, and diagonally from our mutual friend. It’s her first time in New York.

“The air here is so crispy,” she says. “Hawaii is always so muggy, I get sick of it.”

She takes a sip of her sangria and then glances at my food. “What is that?”

“Beef, tomatoes, onion, sautéed with soy sauce and French fries, over rice.”

“Ooh…”

Down at the opposite end of the table, they are chatting about a formerly secret couple within The Group who has just been outed.

“Noooooooo way,” one of them reacts.

“Who told you that? You’re making it up.”

The Leak refuses to reveal the source.

“Noooooooo way, you lie.”

The tourist is staring at her phone.

“Sorry,” I say to her. “This group can be kind of cliquey. And gossipy, because it’s incestuous. We also have very short attention spans.”

She smiles, then returns to her phone.

Within a couple minutes the table has moved on to another rendition of the What-is-the-best-age-ever-if-you’re-a-woman? discussion.

“For me, it was twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight,” says Miss Thirty-Eight.

“So this is it?” asks Miss Twenty-Eight.

“Yes, enjoy it while you can.”

Miss Twenty-Seven shakes her head. “Noooo, I think the best year is way younger than that. Hey, what do you think? Stop reading your phone. What’s been your best year so far out of the ones you’ve lived?”

The tourist looks up and thinks it over for a few seconds before chiming in. “Twenty-three,” she says.

“See? She agrees with me.”

“At twenty-three,” the tourist continues, “I was just so…single, you know?”

“So that’s it?” asks Miss Twenty-Eight. “It’s already gone?”

In about thirty seconds they will start going around the table, asking all the guys to say how old they are. 

I point to the pitcher of sangria in the middle of the table. “Hey — can someone pass that thing down my way, please?”

The physicist sitting across from me is not satisfied with his beverage.

“This doesn’t taste like cask ale,” he tells our waiter. “You sure you gave me the right one?”

“Oh, you know that menu is really old. I think maybe they might have changed it. But I’m pretty sure what you had was the cask. I, uh, I could double-check.”

“You got any pale ale on draft that’s local? I’ll just have a glass of that.”

“Sure. I can, um, get you that. Sure thing.”

After the waiter leaves, the physicist points to my empty bottle of Chimay. “On the menu, that’s listed under ‘draft,’” he says.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

He shakes his head at the mistake. “Typical.”

I last saw Professor Okie about a year ago, in Harvard Square. These days he does much of his scientific journal reading at the local bars, where he often runs into his students. (But I assure you he does not drink with them.) Okie and I were once both enrolled in the same undergraduate process optimization class; in some ways we are still recovering from it…

Tonight he’s returning from an exam in UWS (“She passed”), thus the brown corduroy blazer. He wears it well.

I give him my latest injury report — almost as a cautionary tale, seeing as we are the same age and we play the same sport. (He is one of those reliable, solid-fundamentals type of players. I am the streaky, inconsistent, no-strategy-whatsoever player.)

“Do you think the bone tissue could have been damaged by the ice?” he asks me.

“Orthopedist doesn’t think so. But who knows.”

“Knee fracture. Geez…”

The waiter returns with a glass of Brooklyn IPA and a bottle of Allagash and then flees.

“Cheers,” says the Okie.

To longevity, I think to myself — although I’m not sure that’s what we want the most right now. 

Lomo saltado — I’ve ordered it twice here. The first time was at a table for five in the back. The second time is at the bar in the front.

The bartender recognizes me; I have a friend who used to flirt with him when he would take her order. He looks surprised.

“Your friends not coming today?” he asks.

“Nah. There was some kind of mix-up, so I’m in the wrong place.”

He can tell I’m lying. “You don’t want to meet them?” he asks.

“Not yet,” I answer.

He smirks a little and then turns around to make a half-pitcher of sangria. I bet he is a good liar.

I have a very insightful advisory council. But I don’t listen enough.

I don’t hide things. But since I don’t demand reciprocation, it gets me in trouble.

“I’m just gonna go ahead and say it,” she says.

I listen. I notice that it’s hard for her to look right at me. I don’t want to make it any more difficult for her, so I look away. But now it looks like I’m not listening to her, which makes me feel guilty. What a dumb chain of reactions this is…

As I’m listening, I try to figure out the parts that were rehearsed and the parts that she is making up on the fly. Much of it feels rehearsed (sometimes she slips and repeats the same line she said a minute ago), but there is a part of me that appreciates the effort.

There is another part of me that is just falling.

She stops. Is she finished? I am afraid to ask. The waitress comes by to ask if I want another drink. Nobody says anything, and she leaves us alone.

I remember when she gave me something back in January. Much of what I’ve written here since then is about her. It is also for her — a gift.

But is it a gift I still want you to have? I’m not sure anymore. What if I deleted all of it tomorrow so I could start from scratch? Or rewrote each post from the point of view that I have now? It might not be a gift you would want, would it?

I’m not sure what I’m going to do. But what I would like is to have exactly one less reader by tomorrow. Would you do that for me, S——? Would you stop reading this if I asked you?

(Let’s assume the answer is yes so I can write something else. Right now.)

Technically I’m off the court during the winter season resting the pre-arthritic knee, but every now and then I will pimp out my services to the highest bidder. Every team in the rec league wants to win, of course. But nowadays you also get style points if you’ve got an Asian ringer on your team. Let’s just say demand is high.

What does the lucky bidder get? My current marketing propaganda guarantees the following:

• Instant offense
• So-so defense
• At least a handful of flashy plays to make up for the fact that I’m not a good floor general. (In other words, if we lose, at least I know how to make the other team look bad.)

Tonight I get the call from an investment banking analyst I met at a scrimmage a few weeks ago. “Can you sub for me, man?” he asks. He tells me he’s got a good co-ed team: “The two girls, they played in college. They’re really good.”

I notice he doesn’t say anything about the guys on the team. But fair enough. Sold.

“Awesome. Thanks, man.”

I get to the gym, and I’m looking for the mystery team. I suspect they must be looking for me. Finally, it clicks: Hey, we just have to spot the Asian guy…

I meet my four teammates in quick succession. They all have names beginning with the letter A. I am unable to remember any of them. But that’s all right. Let’s play.

This team turns out to be a bit rangy. The two girls are indeed very good. They also have amazingly well-defined eyebrows. My brain is busy trying to process the shape. I know I’ve seen it before.

Adidas? No…Nike? No…Fila? No…

The two guys average out to be just average. One has got serious hops and pretty good ball control. The other one is going to get picked apart by our opponent. His footwork, his timing, his coordination all need some work. He is, as they say in ESPN editorial, the chink in the armor.

The ref blows the whistle. Game on.

As is often the case when I sub on a co-ed team for the first time, the men will overdo it to prove themselves to me, while the women will be very patient and work with me.

We lose the first game quick. Bad defense. Horrible passing. Offense is just not in sync yet.

I approach the taller of the two girls before the second game starts. “Should we switch up the rotation?”

“No, I like it how it is,” she says. “We just need to tighten it up, play smarter.”

Good answer. I look at her eyes again. New Balance? No…Converse? No…

The second girl — she’s younger, with a slighter build and a craftier style of play — interrupts our private little huddle: “No, let’s change it up.” She decides to play out of her usual position for the entire game — in order to help get the win. I am really rooting for this team now. I look her in the eye.

PUMA? No…Mizuno? No…

We pull ahead briefly in the second game, but then the other team starts poking at the chink. Over and over and over. We lose again. But it’s a good kind of loss — the team is getting a lot better. We’re almost there.

On to game three. We have nothing to lose now, so it’s all about making them look bad. This is when I tend to play my best: fast, reckless, angry, risky, showy, high-wire, hustling, yelling, keeping us alive. I’m able to stave off the poke-a-chink strategy for much of the game. But when it comes down to it, this is a team sport. Someone else is going to have to step up to win it, and we’re getting tired now. We finally run out of gas and drop the third game. 0 and 3 for the night.

But I look around and my teammates are happy. They all had fun. They’re going to do better at the next game. (And if I ever play with them again, maybe I’ll learn what comes after the A in each of their names.)

The crafty one comes up to me after the game. “I know we lost, but that was still awesome,” she says. “Did you play in college?”

I smile because I’ve suddenly noticed her sneakers.

Reebok. It’s like half of a Reebok logo.

“No,” I tell her. “I was never good enough to play in college.”

My appointments in Midtown are infrequent and rather limited in scope: salad days with the Professor, whiskey nights in Chelsea, departures from Penn Station (whenever I get called back to the mother ship for work), and game nights.

Game night is a weekly time-machine session in which a bunch of twenty- and thirtysomethings convene at a gym to relive our varsity days on the court. While there are a few key differences (we are fifteen pounds heavier, our knees are creakier, and the post-game drink/smoke is no longer taboo), for the most part the game is the same as it ever was. The ball is the same weight. The court dimensions haven’t changed. The refs are still impatient, and the pitch of the whistle still irritating. Winning feels good, losing still sucks.

Tonight happens to be a win — not quite an ESPN Classic, but I’ll take it.

As soon as we step outside the gym, the post-game present sinks in: everyone on the team is either limping or being nagged by phone to get his ass back home. The ones without naggers head to Flor, where we talk shop over a pitcher of sangria, a roasted half-chicken with green rice (for the Captain), a roasted half-chicken with yellow rice (for the Enforcer), and garlic-y pork chops with yellow rice (for the Chinaman).

I first met these guys about month ago. Since then our post-game discussions have drifted ever toward the intellectual.

“There is this black chick at the open-plays that I’m like dying to have sex with,” the Enforcer confesses.

“Where? Which open-play?” the Captain asks.

“Chelsea.”

“Do I know her? What’s her name?”

“I don’t know her name.”

“What she look like?”

“Really tall. She’s got braids.”

“What color are the braids?”

“What the fuck do you think? Black!”

“Lots of black people color their hair, man. Fine, so the braids are black. She tawler than you?”

“No, no. But she’s tall. Taller than the Chinaman here.”

“How come you don’t just tawk to her, man? Ask her out.”

“Well, I just — I dunno.”

The Enforcer suddenly looks vulnerable.

“You have a good backstory,” I remind him. “Invite her to your next gig. Put her on the guest list. They go for that kind of stuff.”

“Hmm. I suppose I could do that.”

“Or, if she’s any good,” I say, “we could sign up for a co-ed tournament. Tell her we need another girl on the team.”

“Oooooooh, I hadn’t thought of that!”

“But I’m not doing it unless she can play.”

“Oh come on!”

“Is she any good?”

“She’s…she’s not bad.”

“Forget it,” I say. “Put her on your guest list, Mr. Singer/Songwriter.”

“You bastard.”

An hour later, as we’re waiting for the 1 train, the Enforcer is still talking about this girl.

“What, are you not into black women?” he asks me.

“I…try to be open-minded,” I say.

“What about Asians? You dig Asian women? Lotta Asian girls play at Chelsea.”

“I believe you…but so what? So what if you’re outnumbered — doesn’t context matter?”

“Sex is context!”

“I’m not explaining this well,” I say.

“No, no. I understand what you’re saying,” the Enforcer tells me. “But what’s wrong with, you know, just being obvious? You won’t get anywhere if you’re indirect about it.”

An express 2 train rattles by on the middle track, deafening us for 15 seconds. The Enforcer begins yelling at me now.

“The tournament! We’re gonna fucking do it, ya hear?”

“I can’t hear a damn thing,” I say.