Short Takes #6

Hayden Carruth: Human Cruelty, 271
Michael Datcher: The Spinners, 292

Datcher shines light on the troubling absence of fathers in project housing and the suburban aspirations repressed within urban culture. There's no men raising children where he grew up, and when a man interacts with the neighborhood boys, they compete for his attention with one-upsmanship and stunts. But the attention is fleeting, the problem of men who have children but aren't fathers cyclical and rampant in the ghetto. A fantastic line in this, after laying out a scene where black kids do backflips to impress a man passing through their project:

"It's likely one of these men laid the seed that spouted into a back-flipper before them." (293)

Datcher says it's easier to give into vice than take the easy road, yet his essay isn't prescriptive; it laments the hardship but neglects to fix anything. Perhaps that simple fact indicates the paradox of the urban problem, identifiable but doomed to repeat.

Sky-hooks and Supernovas: The (unauthorized) Lardner family story

My long essay:

I was built for this. I'm tall and wiry, with a wingspan that can stretch out of both car windows when I'm in the driver's seat. Basketball-sized.

My dad has one regular hobby, a singular passion that governs his very-limited leisure time: It's my dad's basketball league; or maybe, his beer and pizza league with an ancillary side of basketball. He's lost a step; they've lost multiple. He stays in shape toting packages for UPS; the job gives him chiseled legs, financial stability, a ravenous appetite, creaky knees, and heaps of stress. Every Thursday, he shows up about 20 minutes late and replaces his brown uniform and boots with ankle braces and thick-soled athletic footwear.

He's the garbage man, cleaning up rebounds and getting hustle points on plays others won't contest. As a child in a family of five brothers, food wasn't in abundance. Eating was an intense sprint of ravenous gulps; the tortoise would starve, outmatched by five eager hares who knew there was no time to pause. He still won't waste food; I've watched him eat many things no one else wanted, not because he was enjoying it, but because it would be bad form to trash it. He makes the best out of scraps, somehow generating points and posterity, carving out a niche.

In real life, he's sometimes just a bland dad. I guess that's what 12 hours of physical labor daily will do, make a man into a barely-animated corpse. But on Thursdays he's not dad but Rob, consistently but not fashionably late (it's a matter of obligation and function), prideful, foul-mouthed, a scrapper. Plays a big man's game in an average body. Rob's teams barely lose, he's the unappreciated hot glue that bonds a squad.

I play blind. I should order myself some goofy wraparound prescription goggles, but instead I hoop on instinct. It's pretty phenomenal, really, how good I am without being able to make eye contact, without reading the passing lanes betrayed by a precursory glance or setting up an unspoken lob through a look with my distributor at point. It's all on feel; I've put in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours for mastery(or at least it feels like it), in gyms and on blacktop and in driveways, and watching the game and observing its intricacies and committing to memory and then performing until it's muscle memory, ingrained in every jerk and lean.

When I play with them now, I supernova. I'm unstoppable, competing against myself at the start. Back to the basket, working my way left, preparing the hook or the bank. Always smooth, unless it's not, and then I'll just snatch the rebound and rectify my heinous error.

Last time we played, I stuffed Rob on his first shot. “Damnit,” he cursed as his buddies gave him some shit. I can't let him score though, I need to show Rob who's boss. My teammate shoots and misses; I'm there to clean up scraps. Put back, points. Rob, a head below me, wanted the rebound and contested my shot. Didn't matter, I was taught positioning and hustle and how to stay with a missed shot. I was taught never to bring the ball down in a double clutch, to keep it above my head so shorter players couldn't hack at it. Sorry, Rob, dad taught me how to render you helpless.

But, by the 5^th or 6^th consecutive game, I'm gasping like a pack-a-day smoker, as they keep on chugging while I'm tugging on the shirttail of my man, hanging on for dear life. Thinking about how embarrassed my dad is going to be when his virile young man of a son has a heart-attack playing in the old-timers game. Now I'm the hare, showboating and sprinting until I get passed by the smart and steady.

My dad and I play in the driveway all the time. I've gotten too good for him, I can't even turn around and play back to the basket. He's defenseless in the post against me. Rob's wife, Kathie, sits outside with her black lab on the bench by the pine and watches us play. Most of the time, I show Rob up in front of Kathie. As she watches, I see her chuckle and imagine she thinks about how much has changed, pictures cradling her 6'6” infant who's now battering her husband, a full-grown, former military man himself. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sinks yet another lefty skyhook; he's unblockable.

We used to wrestle on the tacky shag carpet; my parents didn't design the house, and it was the first of many, many renovations they've undertaken. My dad was tougher than me, as is the usual dynamic between parent and toddler, but I'd give it my best shot. I was scrappy, but no match in the scrum. I like to think my dad felt threatened, like I was the young cat of the savannah challenging the patriarch, who may have excessively rested on laurels, lost a step, but in fact I'm sure he was toying with me, like I was the outmatched mouse putting up a valiant but ultimately useless struggle. One day he pulled too hard on a loose toddler limb, horsing around in a rough enough manner to incite the fiery rage of my mom. She thought it was broken, but I escaped with just a sprain. I was 3. My dad sprained his 3 year old's arm. Kareem's arm, high in the air now as the leather tickles twine.

I set foot in Ping a few weeks ago for the first time in my nearly two years at OU. I played basketball with my roommate and a few of his friends. They were awful. Kareem was at Ping. That is, until we were challenged from across the court.

“Are you any good,” I asked the tall and cut man across from me. I was afraid I knew the answer before he opened his mouth. “I used to be, I'm kind of out of shape now.” It was a nice reply, sportsmanlike and humble, but it was patently false.

I blocked him a few times and tallied my fair share of points, but I faltered with my team on my back. I couldn't defend him. He dropped probably 7 on me in a game to 12 during our second game. He was quicker and took better angles. It was a second round knockout after a first round takedown. Judges' scorecards all read 20-15 when the fight was stopped. Before that, I can't remember the last time I've lost. That isn't meant to be bragging, I literally cannot remember.

I set foot in Ping for the second time two days after I set foot in Ping for the first time. This time, I was by myself, in a barren and desolate wasteland of inactivity that vaguely resembled a functioning gym. I logged about 70 minutes of solo time, shooting and driving and dribbling and sweating. I woke up early before class three days after that, and did the same. I didn't enjoy losing, and decided it wasn't going to happen again.

Once, my dad threatened to walk home when my parents were greater than 20 miles away from it. They were playing Whirlyball, which I had to research before writing this section. My source tells me “It's like each player is in a dodgem car on a basketball court. You get a Jai Alai racquet...players try to shoot the ball at a high goal with a net. It actually was fun I know Laura Freiberg and Maureen have both done it years ago too, love mom xoxoxoxo.”

They went with a bunch of friends, and played on separate teams. My dad disagreed with a ref's call that went against him, and stormed off, announcing he would just walk home. Their friends encouraged my mom to go talk to him, make sure he's okay. “No, I'm not going to chase him when he's being a baby,” my mom replied. Eventually, he made it back to the car.

I see his competitive edge flare up when we play ping pong, when he plays morbidly boring Wii games with my brother, when we play cornhole at graduation parties. I also see it in me. It can't be healthy for either of us.

In a shameful stint of my life, I broke 5 Xbox microphones. They kept snapping after they somehow hurtled towards the wall or the floor. Coincidentally, it always seemed to happen when the newest Call of Duty game was in the disc tray. That can't be healthy.

My dad was never very good at sports. He was a wiry offensive guard on his junior high football team; too uncoordinated to play a skill position, but scrappy enough to take on larger kids in the trenches. They won the city championship; I'm still regaled with stories of those glory days. He had never played soccer until high school; he found a niche as a full-back who could barely kick, stepping up for tackles and out-hustling the other team's forwards. But his worst sport was basketball, he sat on the end of the bench every year in an era where giving kids mandatory minutes wasn't the protocol. He rarely played. The summer over his 7th grade year, he left town to stay with an aunt. He made a friend who wanted to get better as much as he did. They played for hours that stretched into days that ran together into weeks. They got significantly better. When winter basketball started up, my dad was a new player. He started getting minutes, minutes he carved out months before with exercises of effort and devotion.

My dad and I communicate on the court, bond using the language of the game. Dish on my brother's laziness and how to get him motivated, or the pratfalls of UPS' bureaucratic waste. It's our “thing,” grease that keeps the wheels of our relationship spinning smoothly, the tie that binds. Playing basketball is a really wide-ranging phrase; it encompasses a casual, almost meditative shoot around, as well as full-contact competition. The level we play at varies, but it's always synchronized, every step mirrored like only the most familiar of foes. He shaped my game, genetically and in practice. It must be weird to see an improved version of yourself across from you, the upgraded model that you had a stake in building.

Neither of us are any good at being wrong. I keep my computer open, browser up and situated within arm's reach, whenever I'm home with him. The Internet will settle shit. It's grating. If we're watching sports, we have to argue about every call. I find myself automatically disagreeing with anything my dad says, taking the other side even if I don't believe it. It feels like a disease, or like I'm too dim to avoid the obvious trap. Contesting points for the sake of arguing. It can't be healthy.

He's hard-working and I'm averse to labor. He's religious; I'm indifferent. He fixes stuff around the house and makes things with his hands, I'm a wordsmith who's been helping him spell and write his Christmas cards since the 4^th grade. But on the court, we're threaded together, cut from the same cloth and weaved into the same blanket. Working the low post, back to the basket, battling on the glass, using the backboard for put-backs. Hustle points, never taking the first shot but clamoring for the leftovers. Scrappy.

Short Takes #5

James Galvin, A Second Time (111)
Michael Martone, Contributor's Note (176)

Martone's take is a third-person autobiography of his name, I was drawn to it for its unique form. My last short take is going to be an analysis of the "Biographical Notes" story, treating it like an actual artistic endeavor, so I was interested to see what Martone included.
He looks at the many ways he has been perceived  which is an extension of what name or nickname he weent by at the time. From Monk, the monkey imitator and monkey-pun artist, to Mike, card-carrying member of The Mikes of America club. It's a bit disorienting when he references other people while talking about himself in 3rd person; he has to be on point with his clarity or diction, or else the reader gets lost in sentence muck.
Friends call Martone Martone, a strangely intimate construction in the way
children in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Martone lives now with his wife who still calls
him Martone, call Martone Mr. Michael (179)

It's an awesome piece though, with details like:
 a high school crush writing her name as if she was Martone's bride
Martone's wife having private nicknames for him that he isn't allowed to disclose in his writing
ending with him ---SPOILER ALERT--- saying his name for the pastor as he's about to be wed

I'd recommend this, no doubt.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Free-wheeling Blog Post Where YOU decide your destiny!

My innate nature (are those words of a common ancestor?) is that of an tactical saboteur, deliberately and methodically assassinating my emotional well-being. It's fun to destroy.

Remember those Spy vs. Spy commercials for Mountain Dew? I looked those up and apparently they're adapted from Mad magazine and have been around since the 60s, the cultural recycling went entirely over my head. Anyway, the two Spies practically mirror each other, operating out of the same playbook of espionage. It's sugary-drink motivated sparring between masters; since they know each other so well, it's impossible for one to pull too far ahead.

That's how I feel about myself emotionally. When good shit happens, I somehow have to level it out. I can't appreciate highs without a morose counter-stroke. I have access to my manual, my innards. I know where to hit so it hurts. Isn't that some sort of sickening irony, that no one can hurt you more than yourself?

I don't damage myself like a bulldozer or wrecking ball. It's a pinpoint strike, like one of those ultra-secret martial arts moves long-rumored to exist where they hit a pressure point and the assailed loses consciousness immediately. It's terrifying that I'm a self-aware terrorist, a suicide bomber of the mind. I catch myself erring and I do it anyway. Is it like Dave Howells said, are we destined to be depressed? Doomed to be down? Is the human condition perpetual gloom?

Against my better judgement, I delight in ruining things. I'll even catch myself doing it, be cognizant about the inevitably and unflinchingly negative outcome, and go ahead anyway. As I walk away from the fire, flanked by a trail of smoke, I shake my head and wonder what else I could have expected. It went exactly as I expected. And I still did it.

I love stealing shit. I'm a financially stable suburbanite with literally no reason to need to take things. I don't take from other people, just corporate stores(ed's note: on second read, is this me trying to justify what is clearly illegal and probably reprehensible? How self-centered do I have to be to try to make stealing OK? I'm not fucking Robin Hood here). My recent kick has been from the Grab N' Go on campus; I'll shove cookies into my jacket, maybe a bit too conspicuously, even though I already got a sandwich and chips and a salad or chicken and an orange and a drink. I don't need cookies, but I want that tiny little rush. One day, I'll be caught. Maybe I'm trying to be. (Maybe this paragraph doesn't fit at all? Maybe I want to confess. Maybe I could work this in if I could figure out how to arrange it?)

Maybe it's my immaturity, maybe this is why I can't have nice things.

I''m trying to destroy. I want to destroy. And, unfortunately, I probably will end up ruining anything that goes my way.

I'm sorry.