Chapter 2
The hockey stick is belted across Sterling’s backpack much like Olympic skiers carry their rifles in the winter biathlon. He cycles toward the ball fields. He, of course, dons his Giro helmet. When biking Sterling is never without the Giro. One time he had left it home; never again. The state had passed a mandatory helmet law in 2001 for under 16s, but enforcement was lax and lots of kids flaunted it, knowing they could outrun the police, especially those on their ‘coppercycles’. Sterling had been told: obey the law, wear the helmet or face the consequences. He had forgotten; one careless mistake. His mother had lectured him: one careless mistake is all it takes to kill you. His dad had given him DOT’s Highway Statistics, 2005, with its tabular reporting of deaths (786 cyclists in 2005, the highest in eight years). His ol’ man knew full well that stats more impressed their son than parental advice, which he seemed to consider optional, like stop signs and red lights. True, the kid didn’t think much of signs and lights that caused nothing but delay; an excuse for the government to spread the pork among campaign contributors and for cops to harass kids. As for the stats book, who would pay $31.50 for information that’s mostly free on-line? Still, his father, a man of few words, had given Sterling one sound piece of advice, which Sterling would never forget, not that he ever forgot anything. “When they write your obituary, son, you don’t want them to say: ‘He died of stupidity.’”
Big deal, he had explained; so what, he had forgotten to put on a helmet. It was not the end of the world. That’s what he had said, and that’s what brought on the trouble. His big mouth. For he and his parents both knew that Sterling did not forget things. Never. Thus, his not wearing the Giro could be interpreted only one way: he had purposely decided not to wear it. The boy had sworn to his parents this was not true. He then wanted to engage them in a discussion of free will – because ironically, if perhaps not coincidentally, that same morning he had been contemplating free will and was still unable to reason out whether he was more Hobbsian than Dennettian, or vice-versa, a compatibilist in any case – but his parents were having none of it. Philosophy, at this moment especially, did not interest them, despite its being the one subject that suggested to their son that he might not know everything, or at least realize that just by memorizing everything, he couldn’t know everything. Philosophy was not the issue; misbehavior was the issue. Sterling wondered if maybe he was lying to them; helmet wearing was considered sissy by his friends. Sterling didn’t like being taunted. Maybe subconsciously he had indeed refused the helmet, or maybe he had just plain forgot it. As perfect as Sterling would like to think his memory was, perhaps it wasn’t. In any case he had been observed (he never learned by whom, but no doubt his mother or one of her neighborhood spies) and he had been made to pay the price, downstairs in the Vegas Gym, after he had sparred a few rounds with his dad, something he usually did several nights a week. Out came the strap, three times across the back (the boy preferred the buttocks, where marks were concealed) administered in place of a lecture, almost ritualistically as Sterling leaned across the pommel horse, that most detestable apparatus, whose sole raison d’être at Vegas was to offer support during whippings. Before the whap-whap-whap his father had said: “I love you son.” And the son had reciprocated: “I love you dad.” That was their ritual.
Corporal punishment may be out of fashion now in these post-modern times, and it may be ineffective, but in Sterling’s case it works. He never again left home without a helmet, and he had had at least one stop-sign ignoring head-over-handlebars spill after which he thanked god, actually he thanked himself, that he had had protection: the strap had been worth it. Then, after a fellow student, bareheaded, had been struck and killed by a Toyota while riding near campus (one of the nation’s 772 bike deaths that year), it swiftly became ‘cool’ to helmetize. Before that Sterling had merely fought back against the taunts, but now he veritably badgered his friends with gusto, not letting them forget their departed classmate, the very boy who had indeed taunted Sterling for being a “cop-ass-kissing helmet-wearing sissy;” no more taunts, no appreciation of irony, no sadness over the death of a kid he had never liked, only regret (indeed shame) that he hadn’t been able to serve as a better role model thus maybe to have saved the asshole’s life.
Sterling’s own bike is a Cannondale “Law Enforcement.” Black, cool, not flashy. Like police dogs, coppercycles endure a relatively short working life. This particular bike had not seen much patrol duty – under a thousand miles – and during a Cary Police Department spring cleaning it had been given the pink slip, to be sold as police surplus at a generous discount to officers. For the past few years it had ended up being Sterling’s chief form of transport, used even now – he had been driving legally for almost two years – if neither of his parents had their cars at home, for which he has made duplicate keys.
As he approaches the sports fields he is thinking about his friend Billy, specifically the request Billy had made just as Sterling was mounting his bike to leave. It is really unfair of Billy to ask so much, he thinks. But it is Sterling’s own damn fault. No, he is now of the mind that he had even given Billy an opening to ask for such a favor. He had encouraged Billy when he had blurted out: “I owe you big, buddy” in thanks for his friend’s father’s solving the pee-wee insurance matter (which he still regretted not having thought of himself). A demand to repay the favor had come a few minutes later, a delay required so Billy could connive how to ask, how to lay a guilt trip on Sterling, if need be. Why had Sterling used the word “big”? Why did he have to be so serious? Why hadn’t he just sluffed off something like “Hey, I owe you,” something you might say to anyone anytime. Like to a bus driver who keeps the door open a second longer so you can board. “Thanks, I owe you.” That works. The bus driver is not going to ask for a favor which he, the one who must grant the favor, finds a bit disgusting. Fuck the bus driver; Sterling hasn’t taken a bus in years.
It’s not that sex bothers him. Sterling, for all his active inexperience, is still what one might call “liberated” in those regards. Born into the internet revolution, he’s seen it all, thanks to the wonderful wide and wild world of the web, and he really doesn’t find much of it all that disgusting. Hey, if it’s your thing to pierce your junk, that’s your business. Hey, the body has plenty of orifices; they don’t come with “dos and don’ts” labels. Sex is about consent, not much else. Sterling gets such “enlightenment” from his parents, who share the European values of mother’s own parents, commies that they were. His folks are not hung-up, except about spreading STDs, which is an almighty obsession with them. His mother’s not called “Mrs. Condom” for nothing. Indeed, he and Billy have been open about sexual matters since, well, forever. It’s more or less a one-way street. Billy confides in Sterling; Sterling listens. Whether it’s about nocturnal emissions, or coarseness of pubic hair, or worries about testicular cancer, or what kind of foreign objects can damage the prostate, Sterling listens. It was Billy who, when they were hardly nine years old, announced that he was “queerish”. At first Sterling thought it was a joke, a test of some sort. Sterling loves tests; so he played along. But as thick-headed as this155-IQ adolescent can sometimes be (“For being so smart, you can really be dumb” is not something he enjoys hearing from friends and folks alike.), he quickly realized this was no joke. Immediately, for both of them, Billy’s sexual orientation was fixed; the subject was never debated. Sterling accepted it; it was not his problem, and he had no choice. He accepted it much more so than Billy himself did. That was the fuckin’ problem. It wasn’t just that Billy had locked himself in a closet that he didn’t want to quit (only Sterling was allowed knowledge of the closet); rather, Billy had constructed his closet in a dungeon underneath a fortress in a remote evil empire on a planet in another galaxy. It took several light-years of effort for Sterling to lead Billy back into the reality of their own solar system and eventually into the closet
in his parents’ home. Which was where the problem lay. How to break the news to the living representatives of twelve generations of Dukes and their duchesses, how to tell them that their hope for the future was a boy of…here Sterling had to grope for the precise words to be used in Billy’s announcement to his parents. He settled on: “a boy of another persuasion, different from you and me.” Billy wholeheartedly agreed. He nagged Sterling into accompanying him when he came out to his parents. First, however, they tried such an announcement on his – Sterling’s – parents who, being misty-eyed liberals, were all praise and glory for Billy’s courage, honesty, integrity…so many laudatory nouns which Sterling could not recall – and he racked his brains – ever having heard applied to he himself, their only begotten son, who was straight to boot, a fact that seemed not to interest them in the least. Now, armed with a successful trial-run experience, Sterling went as moral support with Billy to deliver to the Dukes their son’s news. Only seconds before they had moved through the parlor to the sitting room on to the den and past the living room, did Billy break the news to Sterling that he – not Billy – was to be their spokesman. As if it were now “their” problem. Billy, no less a chicken-shit than usual, had no intention of breaking the news himself. Sterling was not happy with his elevation to leadership but he was even less happy with the prospect of continuing the current situation: three year’s of Billy’s constant whining about “my orientation” and how he couldn’t budge the closet door ajar, and how he wouldn’t know where to find men to date, and he wouldn’t know the type of sex he should have with men… Three years were quite enough. For god, Billy, it’s only fuckin’ sex, Sterling had told him. So when they sat down to dinner in the pomp and circumstance of the grand Duke’s formal dining room – Billy had prepared the family for a big announcement and had insisted on a good meal with a kid’s portion of claret for him and Sterling – no sooner had grace been said that Sterling blurted out: “Your son is a homosexual. In other words, gay. That means he likes boys or men, not girls or women. We’ve been over this for three years. His orientation isn’t going to change, I assure you. Now he needs your full support.” After a bit of silence, he added: “Boy this is good steak. Maybe we can borrow Thelma to cook for the pee-wees.”
Except for his father’s wife (number two) who commented that in North Carolina same-sex couples could adopt an heir, just that it best be done out-of-state and imported as an immigrant, Billy’s family took the news in silence. Silence throughout dinner and silence over brandy and cigars, neither of which the boys were allowed, not even in kiddy portions. Billy was subsequently sent to a child psychologist and now, five years on, the family had accepted what was never called anything but “his current orientation,” more comfortable with it than Billy himself. It was like their exceedingly uncomfortable Louis XIV chairs, always there, nothing to get depressed about, but something that wasn’t going to get more comfy with time, either.
Sterling shifts gears, focusing on which of the two sports to grace: lacrosse or ultimate. Usually there’s no conflict but for some reason he received a text that ultimate practice has moved to Saturday. The lacrosse scrimmage looks like it had just started, the players showing no signs of fatigue. Better Sterling give them an hour and he can join them when one of the middies needed a break. The ultimates, on the other hand, look tired; a frisbee wobbles ever so slightly and slices away from its target. Maybe one of the team needs a rest. They are playing a city league match. Usually, in just about any sport, the entire team attends each and every game. But ultimate being a sport with a large degree of flexibility, Sterling had been given reserve status on this, a local club, the Faux Dukes, a dispensation granted due to the fact he can never find sufficient time away from boxing to make many work-outs. He is, however, considered a very good player, even if he rarely practices. Maybe he is good because he never practices, never gets hung up on set plays and such nonsense. He was born with good hand-eye coordination which means he excels in most all sports. Given just about any activity, over the years Sterling has time and again proved that he can quickly become better than average almost off the bat.
He sits down on the bench with three others, two girls and a boy. One jumps up to substitute for another who limps off with a leg cramp.
“Hey U, you finally get here?” asks another teammate, who at the moment serves as de facto captain and coach. Ultimate for these boys and girls (and men and women since the politically correct team has an anti-age discrimination policy) is a coachless sport, but someone has to make decisions during a match. The “coach” is a rotating reward to whoever has been on the bench the longest. You couldn’t ask for a more democratic, and often confusing, process.
“Yeah, sorry. I was coaching the little tykes. Took longer than I thought.”
“Well, you’re here. Take over for Sally. Her head’s somewhere else.”
Wearing a team jersey that he’s fetched from his backpack, he darts onto the field to take his place on the seven-person squad.
Ultimate has been around since the late sixties and remains somewhat of a counterculture sport. It has a reported five million American players – so Wikipedia says; the US census doesn’t yet track the sport – more than lacrosse (1.2 million) but far fewer than baseball (13m), basketball (24m), soccer (13m), or even football (9m). Some team sports in the Olympics certainly draw fewer adherents in the US. One cannot imagine five million Americans joining weekend league teams, often but not always coed, in volleyball, team handball, field hockey, rugby union or cricket, some of which sound blatantly un-American.
Although not sanctioned by the NCAA, ultimate has generated great interest on college campuses where it puts some minor sports to shame. Why is it so popular? Is it because it’s democratic: can’t anyone throw a frisbee? Actually, its popularity would seem to stem from the two main features that distinguish the game, which is sometimes called ultimate frisbee (frisbee is a trademarked term and thus politically incorrect for collegians to say without considering some sort of licensing fee), from other field sports such as hockey, soccer or lacrosse. First, the player who holds the circular disc must keep one leg planted on the ground. It’s hard to imagine the NBA or NFL adopting that rule without a bit of hassle from the major networks, not to mention the bored fans. Second, it is self-officiating. Again, what would world cup soccer be without atrocious refereeing? Officiating is actually often much more interesting than actual play. Self-refereeing? Can one envision 300-pound testosterone-pumped boys on the gridiron rationally debating the pros and cons of whether a particular incident, whose interpretation can lead to either glorious victory or utter humiliation, should be considered a foul? Why should Americans expect their sportsmen and women to behave like anything other than spoiled brats; their politicians aren’t civil to one another.
Self-confessed libertarians like Sterling are fond of ultimate, in part, because it leaves decisions to the individual, even though it is notionally a team sport. The individual, not some god-official, is the ultimate authority. Sterling thinks little of government, despite the fact he lives off the incomes of two public civil servants. He thinks even less of government’s telling you what you can and cannot do. Sterling doesn’t consider himself an anarchist but if he had to choose between anarchy or communism, such a decision would not cost him much sleep.
Fouls in ultimate are defined as actions “sufficient to arouse the ire of the player fouled.” Sterling has never once complained about a thrown elbow or a knee to the groin or a foot that somehow gets in the way and lands him flat on his face. Physicality is part of the game; no complaints, he won’t be seen as a whinger. In any case Sterling can give back as good as he gets. Consequently, his game is played in response to his opponents, eye for eye, elbow for elbow. Teams who are familiar with “Elbow U” before usually afford him a wide berth.
Once he gets the disc, Sterling is formidable. For shorter opponents (the defensive player
directly challenging you is called a mark) it’s hard to defend against his arachnid body. He is not fully ambidextrous, but marks who ignore his weaker arm do so at their own peril. He pulls his shares of bricks, but generally he’s among the most accurate throwers in the league. Sterling can play anywhere on the field. He can be a handler (designated thrower) or a cutter (a receiver in American football parlance). Wherever he is, his marks seem unable to keep him from finding a trajectory either around or through them. Having someone throw a frisbee through your legs is downright humiliating! Some say the game is won or lost on set plays. But like in basketball, it’s just as much about spontaneity, creativity and accuracy. Those are Sterling’s strengths. Still, he has memorized the playbook (15 minutes to commit it to full understanding) and follows the set plays when absolutely unavoidable.
Sterling is substituting for a defense player who was positioned close to their own goal. Play continues; eventually he receives the disc. Immediately a mark arrives within ten feet, yells “force forehand” and begins the stall 10-count: “One, two, three, four…”
“Hey, you missed ‘two’, beautiful.”
By yelling “force forehand” the mark has alerted her teammates that she is guarding Sterling’s left, forcing him to throw right, supposedly the weaker throw for most players, who prefer the backhand (think Federer or Sampras). As a result the players rearrange themselves on the field while the count continues. Sterling’s comment, however, has rattled the player for a nanosecond, for she wasn’t prewarned about Sterling’s tactics, which include flirtatious and disarming eye-to-eye contact as if they were lovers over wine. This ever so slight loss of concentration by the mark (subconsciously thinking “I didn’t skip two, did I?”) has allowed Sterling to change hands, find an opening and throw a huck to a teammate who’s undefended at the goal. He lunges, catches the Hail Mary, a deep-deep in ultimate jargon, and flips it into the goal. Sterling gets the assist and turns to the mark, who is totally baffled. “They should have told you I was a southpaw.” He doesn’t apologize by the “you missed two, beautiful” remark, which he would admit was a bit childish and something he should not have been doing for the past five or so years he’s played the sport. “Beautiful” is warranted in her case; no apologies necessary.
Score is 6-11; this is an abbreviated 13 point match so it won’t be long, Sterling figures, before he can finish up and head over to lacrosse, which is more physical and definitely not coed (it attracts a few girly groupies). Play continues and the disc is passed again to Sterling. His teammates have stacked themselves vertically; someone calls out “blind monkey” which refers to a set play and the team disperse in a pattern. As designated handler Sterling tosses the disc seemingly to nowhere and he heads along a diagonal. The designated cutter has caught the frisbee, passes off to another as the pattern continues, fully out-foxing the opposing team, which has broken from person-to-person to zone and is now back to person-to-person, confused enough to leave some of Sterling’s teammates double-teamed while others are completely open. Sterling is double-teamed and his teammates quickly score again. In the process he is elbowed hard in the gut by the beautiful one who had earlier allowed him to throw the huck round her. The elbow does not appear to be unintentional; he stares at the girl and says nothing. For the moment. The treat of retaliation is enough to make the elbow beauty take to the side of the field opposite Sterling.
The game continues toward the end. Sterling receives the disc only once more: he fakes a little flick to get the mark off balance, pivots and plants his right foot out of bounds to break the mark, and lets a backhand go down the sideline. The defense is caught out of position yet again and action eventually results in the game-ending score. The team assembles at the bench. They congratulate each other; there’s a good chance they will win city league, sponsored by Triangle Flying Disc Association. The main opposition for the Fauxs will be an unofficial university team, the Dukes (as opposed to Duke’s official teams, Brimstone and Chakra). Someone mentions that they might advance to the Youth Club Championships in August in Minneapolis. Another adds they may have to adjust the roster to accommodate age limits and gender distribution requirements. Being a sport without a long history and, more importantly, without a commanding top-down management structure, ultimate has yet to work out some operational kinks; an enthusiast finds a bizarre collection of clubs and leagues with differing age and gender requirements, and a veritable potpourri of local, regional and national tournaments. Some communities have rival leagues; chaos can rule. A couple of female teammates comment they could use more of Sterling. They worry he may want to go to a rival club or league. Talent filching is not unheard of. The subject of discussion, however, is already cycling over to lacrosse.
As he’s cycling across the park to the far field, Sterling wonders if he isn’t allocating too much time to sports. He has a lot on his plate (which reminds him that the three PB&J sandwiches and the leftover lasagna he had for lunch are wearing off, but that’s another diversion), may be too much. The app says he spends two hours on average for sports; apps don’t lie.
A few weeks back he downloaded a time management app that allows him to figure out exactly how he spends his days. Studies from back in the 1950s have consistently shown that people are fairly clueless as to how they allocate their time. The $0.99 app facilitated the keeping of a self-report time log and did all the necessary arithmetic; when Sterling began a task, say when he went to Vegas to train, he touched the sports icon on entering then again on leaving the gym; when he took time to eat he touched the food icon, or went into the bathroom, the hygiene icon. If the smartware thought you had forgotten to log out of a task you had begun (more than five minutes on the toilet as a rule) it would ask you to reconfirm. After a day or so, logging in and out had become second nature. His parents were amused that he couldn’t defecate without first informing his iPhone, but other than them, no one seemed to notice. He was just communing with his PDA like any normal kid. After a week he received an interim report and the results were mildly disconcerting: The day’s biggest accomplishment was sleeping (8.6 hours), followed by intellectual stuff (6.6 h) such as reading, in class, on the iMac for coursework or general knowledge investigation, i.e., surfing the web for educational purposes; transportation (1.5 h); physicality – i.e., sports & recreation (2 h); food, including preparation – i.e., making sandwiches, reheating leftovers or ripping open packages (2 h); friendship (2 h) including networking, shooting the breeze, etc., subdivided by person: 80% of his social intercourse was with Sara or Billy; family (10 m); misc. recreation (10 m); shopping (5 m, all-on line); household chores (10 m); and sex (5 m) most of it on-line, regrettably; and unspecified (57 m). It reported that Sterling was time-structured, that he had few unplanned tasks but also that he generally underestimated, by usually 15%, how much time he would spend on any given chore. It reprimanded him for spending too much time on-line (obviously the programmers were middle-aged, probably thirty-somethings), for spending not enough time with his family and for having too few recreational activities. In completing the start-up questionnaire, Sterling realized just what he didn’t do: he didn’t fish, he didn’t hunt, though he had guns; he didn’t bowl, he didn’t watch reality TV; he didn’t paint; he didn’t sing in the school choir. He spent more time rearranging his room than thinking about sex, which is perhaps where the lost 57 minutes should be placed.
That Sterling was over organized had not been flagged; thus the smartware seemed to confirm that he wasn’t the only teenager who liked order. In fact he is no less a disorderly teenager than most, who are forever trying to find order in their disorder. Sterling doesn’t realize that the reason he is organized is because he is constantly having to deal with his disorder. The app was similarly unaware. For its part the app reflected non-judgmentally that Sterling was active on his PDA for three hours per day, across almost all categories save for sports. This is only about half the national aver
age for American youth, who are plugged in to something almost non-stop, except when in class or asleep. Like his peers Sterling multi-tasks all day long, but the app (version 1.4) wasn’t sufficiently sensitive to appreciate just how much multitasking is taking place: changing iTunes, while on Facebook, for example, while streaming a movie in a pop-up window on-line, while texting your mother you’ll do your chores during the next break. Sterling, himself, usually texts while he takes in or lets out food except if his parents also happen to be at the table AND are in a bad mood AND want quality time with him, three conditions almost never met simultaneously. Even when he is extremely focused, as on Napoleon recently, he is listening to music, without lyrics so it is just background noise to keep out other noise. In any case Sterling does not consider himself to be an exceptional multitasker. He has friends who can pack 11 hours of media content into seven and a half hours of clock time. Sterling is more into focus. And right now he had to start focusing on his next sport.
Sterling has always liked lacrosse, and he is looking forward to a good scrimmage as the team prepares for Tuesday’s game with its cross-town rival, Durham Academy, the final match of the season. He’d prefer to be put in at the attack position in scrimmage, but playing midfield is OK, at least for the moment. Beggars can’t be choosers, he knows. If he could afford the time, he’d love to play on the school squad; but it’s just as well he can’t make the time, for he’s never found coaches he likes, who know much about the sport, or at least as much as he does. The school teams never win and, blame the players if you want, but it’s not really their fault. Yet, he likes this new guy, Coach Mac; or more accurately Coach Mac likes Sterling and has been wooing him to join the team. That’s why he’s been allowed to mosey in and out of practice at will. One of these days, the coach figures, Sterling will forsake boxing for lacrosse, will choose a sport of today, not one whose glory rests in the past. One of these days, Sterling figures, the Coach will loose patience and tell Sterling to put up or shut up. At that time he’ll have to decide between box and lacrosse. The time for decision probably won’t come until the fall, with the new school year; by then maybe Coach Mac will have gone on to greener pastures; and Sterling can play cat and mouse with his replacement.
Boxing vs. lacrosse vs. ultimate. A forced decision is grossly unfair: sports are individual; comparing them is stupid, reasons Sterling. You can’t compare apples with oranges or pears. Well, you can compare them but it’s an absurd exercise, because they are so individualized, and certainly not mutually exclusive or fungible. Sterling feels a philosophy paper rearing its ugly head, so he switches his thoughts to the more practical matter of how to beam in without causing the coach to notice. It’s too late for that.
“Eumorfopoulos, are you warmed up?” Coach Mac asks Sterling.
“Yes, Coach.” Coach Mac is about the only one at school who uses any more than the first syllable of his surname. The principal just calls him Sterling and the other teachers Mr. U, when they want to sound formal, or Sterl when informal.
He has changed helmets, put on a chest protector, elbow pads and gloves – the rib pads just take too much of an effort – and is almost ready to play. Both hands are in his shorts as he inserts the cup into his jock.
“Good, then sit down and cool off. And when you can force your hands out of your crotch, you can help with some drills.”
The Coach whistles the team to quit scrimmage and assemble.
Coach Mac would be considered by almost any measure to be overqualified for what he’s doing: teaching at a private day school and coaching its forever losing lacrosse team. He has an AB (cum laude) from Duke doubling in Economics and Psychology. Certain events disrupted his post graduation plans; notably he failed to secure the Rhodes Scholarship that was anticipated. This lacuna in his future thus allows him to teach economics at Durham Prep, where Sterling is enrolled. Mac also acts part-time as a school counselor, a position that seems always to be looking for a permanent staff. Durham Prep is a K-12 school for the gifted, and the gifted have ways of driving guidance counselors past their wits’ end. Sterling, himself, was partly responsible for one’s early retirement. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” is the way he explained the woman’s departure to his parents.
But Coach Mac’s placement at Durham Prep has little to do with his personal career pursuits. It’s really about location. His fiancée (a Southern term for live-in girlfriend) is getting her masters at Chapel Hill and he wants to stay close by (they house in Durham, that’s about as close as they could affordably get). Mac was a Duke senior in 2006 and a midfielder on the lacrosse team, an adequate college lacrosse player on a perpetual national powerhouse. That’s the year the team was “nifonged” and the lacrosse program terminated in mid-season. “To be nifonged” refers to the eponymous former district attorney, Michael Byron Nifong, who used trumped up criminal charges – an alleged March rape by some of Mac’s teammates – for personal political objectives, in this case to win the Democratic primary for DA that May. Sterling well remembers the case, was skeptical from the start – “Democrats do what it takes to get elected” he told his parents, themselves card-carrying Democrats – and he shed no tears when Mike Nifong was fired, disbarred, jailed and declared bankrupt. This Schadenfreude he certainly shares with Coach Mac who blames Nifong for his losing the Rhodes. Along with his teammates, he was awarded as paltry compensation another year of NCAA eligibility. Thus Mac found it convenient, a no-brainer actually, to remain a Blue Devil in the Gothic Wonderland for another year of lacrosse and to gather the credits needed for a double major. Now he’s waiting for his girlfriend to finish her education, and together they will decide their futures based on who gets what kind of job where. If they can’t accommodate each other, they’ll just pursue their lives separately with new lovers.
Sterling’s a more than adequate player, as far as Coach Mac can tell, for he’s an adept passer, using either hand, and he can create off the dodge both behind and in front of the goal. Naturally he is left-hand dominant, but only slightly so, and for this reason Sterling will be the focus of the next drills. In general Mac’s players need practice with their weak hand; right-handers who are forced by game action to hold the stick with their left must change hand positions in order to place their left on top, below the stick’s head, which is an uncomfortable position for the beginner. To become good at lacrosse there are stages one goes through and about half the squad is still not comfortable except with their dominant hand. They need to advance to the next stage. As the only lefty, Sterling will be tossed into various two-on-ones, which should require at least one of the twosome opposing him to go non-dominant. In a man-ball drill, the first player within five yards of the ball calls “man” and takes on Sterling with his body while his teammate, the second offensive player, scoops the ball. Sterling plays to win, of course, and can win if the regular twosomes aren’t connecting with each other. The drill also instructs Coach Mac about future pairings, for it’s his job to place the players in the best positions, to maximize the team’s strength. That’s often what separates a good coach from a mediocre one. It’s frequently not the player’s talent per se; it’s getting the most out of the talent.
Sterling is not aware of the coach’s practice strategy; he knows only that Coach Mac is making him work like a dog, constantly hounded by members of the pack. If Sterling outmaneuvers one pair of strays, they’re forced to repeat the drill until they eventually get the ball from Sterling. It took one pair six attempts. Sterling is not used to this coach’s methods, and he is certainly a bit fed up with his madness. No sooner has he finished with the rotating pairs in the man-ball drill, than the Coach initiates a cross-checking drill at the goal, positioning Sterling so his opponents again have to go to their non-dominant stance. Standing about ten yards in front of the defending goal, Sterling is never allowed to go on the offensive, rather he is perpetual fodder in a two-on-one. He wins in only about a third o
f the encounters; and he’s starting to get tired and consequently is winning less often. But he knows there’s no way he can quit before quitting time. It’s one thing to show up late; leaving early would not be acceptable. As the afternoon shadow lengthens, eventually Coach calls the practice. As much as the other players, Sterling is exhausted and is happy to gobble up a couple of the brownies from a tray that’s passed around by one of the team’s mothers, a woman he used to pool-boy for. They do not look each other in the eyes. None of the team really has anything to say to Sterling. He’s an outsider. Neither Sara nor Billy, in fact, none of his band of Twitter followers, goes to this school, which is at best a loose collection of unconnected nerds. Sterling does as he likes at Durham Prep. Many students there take independent study, but Sterling has made an art of not having to attend classes. He has sixteen APs under his belt (seventeen if you include the repeat). They wanted to shoo him off to university some years back; Sterling refused. Who wants to have classmates five years more experienced? The only thing he’d get from girls would be pity. Sterling has no regrets he stayed put. This term he has no more than four hours of in-class activity – four hours a week! As a senior he’s hoping he won’t have to go to class at all, concocting various independent studies with the local universities. No way college will be this good. Now Sterling can work from the iMac in the comfort of his room, comfortably in his jammies or stark naked if he wants. So continued participation in the athletic program seems highly doubtful. Coach Mac approaches, probably to ask Sterling to join the team. Sterling is doggie-style on the turf, preoccupied with removing his cup, as discretely as possible.
“Good work out there,” he tells Sterling.
“Thanks, Coach.”
That was surely the coach’s way of asking Sterling to play for him next year. He nods to the coach, meaning he’ll continue to take it under advisement.
Only an hour later, sprawled out across the bed Sterling sleeps off his afternoon of sports, never having bothered to shower or change togs. He is content and peaceful in his slumber and only slowly does he stir to life and then only because Sara’s hand gently strokes his shoulder in a neighborly sort of way. “Pan wants you downstairs,” she says, as way of explaining this intimacy. Sterling wraps a hand across her shoulder and pulls her close.
“Give me five minutes,” he requests as he pulls her face to his for a kiss briefer than he would like.
“Let’s do something tonight. Catherine wants us all for dinner; then we’re free.” She gets herself released and heads out.
Sterling stretches, turns off the phone alarm. He thinks about Sara, that she could be the one. Most definitely, the one. She knew she didn’t have to wake him up; that was a conscious decision. She just couldn’t resist the chance to see him asleep. How long had she been watching, he wonders. Maybe tonight, most definitely, maybe tonight is the night.
It’s not that Sara has the best of anything. Certainly other girls are better lookers; others are more intelligent; in all of Durham there is certainly at least one other young female who is as accomplished at home chores as Sara. She has a great personality, is very kind, and is liked by everybody, compliments that suggest she is a dog. Not true; she is very cute with fashionably golden shoulder-length waves that are often tied back in a bun or an animal tale. She’s tall, for a girl, so Sterling doesn’t constantly have to crane his neck when they converse. She has soft features, nothing much to offer a caricaturist. It’s not just her size and shapes that interest Sterling. Sara exudes plenty of empathy and compassion which, when added to Sterling’s meager offering in these regards, allows the couple to be a whole unit. In many ways she’s what Sterling is not: forethoughtful, non-judgmental and tolerant. Like his own parents who bring very different qualities to their couplehood, he and Sara complement each other and help fill in the other’s missing pieces.
He and Sara have known each other since, it seems, forever. He can’t fix an exact date to when she came into his life (only later did he begin irrevocably to affix events to the calendar), but it was likely either in kindergarten or first grade. That was when she lived in town, long before her father got the more prestigious position in Greensboro. Her father, always referred to as “The Reverend,” is a Bible-toting and sometimes thumping pastor. His daughter is not a fanatic, fortunately, but is certainly much more religious than Sterling, who is least comfortable around those who cannot resist the more irrational elements of faith. On more than one occasion he has been know to rile born-agains with provoked attacks on the very existence of God. These rants have increased of late, but Sterling keeps his agnostic cravings in check when he is around Sara; he even enjoys sharing her church activities: youth picnics, pilgrimages, Christian ultimate, Easter sunrise services and the like. His parents are way too liberal to pay much heed to a Divine Being and about the only time he is able to go to vespers or high liturgy – he likes the rituals – is with his grandfolks who live about two hours away as crows fly, about a century away as modernization travels and on another planet in terms of family relations. These are his mother’s parents, whom his own folks feel obliged to visit several weekends a month. It is nice for them to leave Sterling to his own devices. His only complaint is that he can’t prepare in advance for what type of mood they’ll be in when they return. Her parents are the one thing that can drive his type-B father crazy. Sterling doesn’t know why; he sees only the result. It isn’t politics, for the four of them are to the left of left, at least in terms of Carolina, which is liberal for Sterling’s tastes. They may be constantly arguing over Sterling himself, but that’s something he feels he doesn’t really need to know.
Sterling and Sara’s father get on well enough. They enjoy philosophical discussions, which Sterling almost always lets the ol’ man win. They are both quite well read on the ancient Greeks. Of course, the father has no idea that Sterling might entertain carnal desires on his daughter, and vice-versa; that will have to be sorted out when the time comes. Sterling hopes that events will force that sorting sooner rather than later. Life has taught him, however, that relationships are things over which he has limited control, unlike at most times in his life in which he feels in full charge. No question, he prefers dealing with himself; but that’s just not an option, not at his age, in this age. As much as he would like, he can’t stay in a cave shadow boxing through life. Relationships must be negotiated; sometimes they work out spontaneously, but mostly it’s a bit of a plod. Sterling is trying his best to figure all this out.
Friends who know Sterling and Sara, either individually or collectively, are convinced they’ve been having sex since at least the age sixteen. Sterling’s male friends from boyhood know that he’s not shy over sex. Sara’s girlfriends always prod her for details; her caginess is seen not as denial, but rather as the modesty expected of The Reverend’s driven-snow pure daughter. When either of them had proffered their virginity, they were laughed off. Now they have since given up on denials, which exactly confirms all the rumors. In fact Sterling and Sara’s relationship is not strictly platonic. There is sex, if not intercourse, per se. They have had many bouts of heavy necking. From his point of view, which is nothing if not malish, chauvinist Sterling-oriented, he always tries to get to second base. Watching American Pie some years ago, before they really knew what they were doing, he hit a surprise triple, only to surprise Sara with a damp hand. Neither cares to remember that night. In the intervening years, they’ve been friends, never boy nor girl friend, per se. And they live their own lives. It didn’t bother Sterling that Sara once went out with some chess geek, who Sterling could beat if he had really tried (he didn’t want to upset Sara by doing so); eventually the geek moved away; Sterling was left to console Sara over her loss. Over the years she’s always been there for Sterling when some social function, like a school dance, requires accompaniment by someone of the opposite sex. To avoid having a girl ask Sterling out, which is both hum
iliating and flattering, he always pops the question first to Sara, giving her the right of first refusal. After that he feels free to play the field. He can always find some girl who wants to try him for a homerun. Sterling is weighed down with the reputation among schoolgirls of being a model heterosexual adolescent, and if gigolos came this young, he would probably be a good one.
Given the constant media attention about teenage pregnancies, abortion clinic bombing, stem cell research and the like, sex is all over the bandwith. It has become the area of adolescent children’s lives which adults love to discuss, in general terms, on Oprah and the like. Ironically, when it comes down to giving personal advice or even interfering with their kid’s life choices, parents stay away in droves. Sex handling by both Sara and Sterling’s folks is perhaps distinctive, but not atypical in its evasionary tactics. Sara’s mother instructed her on puberty’s changes, as mothers always do (except for poor Carrie’s) and The Reverend offered the Christian approach: abstinence, marriage and procreation, necessary and not optional, and always in that order. Sex education in the Eumorfopoulos household is Catherine’s private reserve, for Sterling’s mother is a professional sex educator, hence her prophylactic nickname. Neither the theological nor technical approach was adequate for the children; fortunately for Sterling and Sara, the WWW filled the informational void. That’s where they both turned when they had (and still have) questions or when they are just interested in the flow of the forums. And at least for Sterling there’s always pornography, of course.
Sara and Sterling have had five or six years to ponder the consequences of going all the way. In what one might view as romance’s training sessions, just before things get complicated, Sterling has been known to bunt just off the bat. Obviously he can’t help himself. It’s his second at bat that he would like to concentrate on; yet in his experience there are never enough innings. Sometimes efforts at restraint begin to fail; inadvertently, this seems to happen at the specific moment Sara needs to head off on the hour drive back home. In those cases they apply the ten-run rule, and Sterling finishes up on his own (not for the first time). So tonight is important, the first night that Sara will sleep-over with his family. He hopes it will be the first night of the rest of his sex life. But first, he must box.