I held out hope. Hope of a Dad change of heart or of Mom intervening as a peacemaker or for anyone to acknowledge calling me a failure crossed the line. But it didn't happen. I got nothing. Dad split me off quick, carrying on like I'd vanished from the Earth. I returned his contempt in kind.
This wasn't a time out, this was an impasse. A full breakdown. A father and son incapable of connection, let alone communication, at the critical juncture where growing up and parenting needed to meet. Maybe the whole tennis thing was just too much for us, for he was opting out and at the worst of times.
I needed help. Not adolescent tie your shoes help, but young adult kind of help; counsel, advice, guidance, support, for I was on the cusp of a tennis breakthrough but it wasn't going to happen with me running the show. Competing at this level was hard enough. I already struggled enough with belief, now I had to manage the feelings of being discarded too?
But a switch flipped in my Dad that evening in my room. With the thinnest of explanations, he was done, checked out indefinitely, disengaging to his safe space of detachment, leaving me no place to turn but inward, to my hazy, drugged out, increasingly complex world.
The goal posts had moved. Up to that point, he demanded results. Good grades, good tennis, good behavior. And I did my best to appease him. But now he expected something else. Now he wanted a fully functioning responsible adult. What he had though was an obscenely immature fifteen year old with a secret drug habit growing by the day. He demanded self-sufficiency, I could barely fold my clothes. How was I supposed to engineer a tennis career? With my dream of making it in tennis now fast becoming a nightmare, I began to plot out my future entirely on my own.
Needing attention first was money. Armed with a bus pass, I entered the work force, taking odd job to odd job. Cleaning courts as a maintenance kid at a local tennis facility, bagging groceries at the local market. Perfectly mindless gigs for a perpetually stoned teenager. Or so I thought. One too many times bagging fresh produce with the ant poison and my bagboy days were numbered.
I eventually landed at a local steakhouse as a busboy. Buss the busboy, the moniker made itself. An evening job close to home with a nice weekly paycheck supplemented by nightly cash tips for spending money. As good a job as I was going to get, as I quickly learned tennis balls, racket stringing, entry fees, transportation and a developing drug habit did add up.
For my secret life was becoming a burden. Normal people lived double lives of public and private spheres. I was living a triple life. Public life, student-athlete, the stuff everyone knew. Private life; partier extraordinaire, the stuff my growing circle of friends knew. Secret life; Addict and troubled, constantly getting high to manage my racing off the rails mind.
The secret stuff only I knew...
When alone, I became obsessed with experimenting. How high could I get? And what did it feel like when I did? I became obsessed with Jim Morrison. Pushing the boundaries, what lurked on the other side of breaking through? I started dabbling in things I'd swore I'd never try. All the yets. Hadn't tried that yet. Hadn't done that yet. Cocaine Speed Mushrooms LSD Opiates. Worse yet, liking them, desiring them, acquiring them, abusing them.
Once unimaginable behavior now became commonplace. More moving goalposts, this time of my own doing. Crossing lines while doing lines. Flying high, spiraling down. A human roller coaster I became, playing dangerous games with my brain chemistry. Where was all this curiosity taking me?
As with kids, I took perverse pride in my reckless ways. I wore my crazy like a badge. In the upside down world of teenage behavior, there was status being the guy who partied the hardest. The conflicts of teendom. Destroying myself to get the attention I craved. With a reputation to uphold, the word no never crossed my lips. My favorite drug was yours, my favorite amount was more. Pushing the limits of experimentation. Chasing the perfect high.
Or was it chasing me? For none of this was normal. Other kids my age would party hard but come curfew time, call it a night. Not myself. Always a nightcap. Always sneaking off for one more something. No matter the situation, no matter my best intentions, once I started partying I went all the way. There was no having just one. It was about getting as high and drunk as possible every time, a violent assault on myself, all of my own doing. Angry. Mounting. Dangerous.
Abandonment. I pawned everything for the party, abandoning everything that mattered to me. Was this my subconscious way of honoring my Father? Was my giving up on myself just like my Father giving up on me? If I abandon me it would justify his abandoning me? Ease the sting of his decision some. Show him he was right, I wasn't worth fighting for in the first place. A self-fulfilling behavioral prophecy. The ultimate self abandonment. Whatever the driving force behind my actions, my adolescent psychology was getting complicated
Having no style and even less game, I was now a stoner kid running with a stoner crowd. The punks, the rockers, the new wavers, the Deadheads. All the misfit minions who didn't fit in. At first they appeared as lesser companions, kids you'd never bring around the house. Certainly not the cool crowd. Now they were my crew. Yet they were relationships of convenience. Transactional. We all wanted things from each other. Proverbially and literally. In the end, we all wanted each other's connections.
Having the connect. The importance of access. Who could get what and how quickly. The best drugs at the best prices. He who had access to the bomb was king. Marijuana, psychedelics, stimulants, mystery pills that did God knows what. It all happened so fast. It's not easy to develop a drug habit. It takes persistence, tolerance, resources for sure, but mostly it takes connections. And as bad luck would have it, I had the best connection a little druggie could ever want living right around the corner.
Having such a connection made me a pretty popular kid. My friends became my customers. My customers became my friends. For hardly a day passed with me not securing something for somebody from my new connect. Tiring of my daily trips to his house, my connect would set me up in business, mostly weed in the beginning, but eventually stronger drugs like mushrooms and LSD as my clientele grew.
The progression. A short year ago, I wouldn't try drugs. Once I tried them, I vowed never to buy them. Now I was dealing them. I got myself a little triple beam balance scale (the kind you'd see in chemistry class) and a bunch of zip lock baggies and started a thriving business. Cash money and lots of it. I wasn't much of a businessman, (people still owe me money to this day) my usage cutting in to profits greatly, but it sure beat working as I grew my illicit business from the bedroom of my parent's house right under their unwatchful eyes.
Despite being a felony on wheels, tennis continued to be played. With the breakdown with my Dad, I trudged on solo. The inertia. A break from Dad, but no breaks in the schedule. If there was ever a time for an
off season. But to rest at all was to fall behind. Because tennis. My recent losses to Leach aside, I'd been playing some pretty good tennis. After the Fullerton debacle, it went Long Beach, Ojai, CIF, Sectionals. I
was able to keep playing, getting some rides from friends, hitchhiking or riding the bus when no
ride was available. And in spite of all the dysfunction between my Dad
and me, I kept some good results going, landing me in the top 10 in SoCal, qualifying me for summer
Nationals and my first ever trip to Kalamazoo.
Kalamazoo Michigan. The unlikeliest mecca for American junior tennis. A dot on the map, on the outskirts of nowhere, somehow the central Michigan town with the funny name got hold of the US Junior Nationals in 1943 and never let go. And nor should they have. Played at Stowe Stadium on the campus of Kalamazoo College, the community housed and embraced the USA's best 16s and 18s, making their annual sojourn to Central Michigan feel just like home.
I had been reading about Kalamazoo forever in the yearbooks, could recite every past champion, scores and all. It was the ultimate goal of every junior tennis player to qualify for the Zoo, for winning Kalamazoo included a wild card straight in to the US Open, to maybe play a legend first round like Borg or McEnroe or even Jimmy Connors. One step closer to the big time. Except I had a problem. I needed my parent's endorsement to get there.
Having to ask my Dad's permission if I could play Kalamazoo. He knew just as much as myself how important an achievement this was. As a kid, we used to stay up late, scouring the yearbooks together, reading all the draws, learning all the players, where they were from, him correcting me as I mispronounced their names. And here I was, mere months from him calling me a failure and telling me to quit tennis about to become one of them, now needing his blessings in order to go.
How broken were we? How did we fuck this up so badly? I had to ask his permission to go to Nationals. I thought I'd done enough. Great grades, supporting myself and my tennis, top 10 in SoCal, now top 40 in the country, a couple points here and there and I'd be top 20. The whole situation was surreal.
Kalamazoo was what all the years of work were about. No one gives you Kalamazoo. You have to earn it. And it doesn't happen over night. It's the culmination of a junior tennis career, work that starts from our earliest tennis memories, playing with our Dad's at public courts or frozen bubbles all across this land.
It involved choking away matches and tearful drives home only to suit up again the very next week. It involved being called a cheater, it involved years of parental conflict, it was about saving match points one round only to blow them the next, it involved all the countless hours trying to perfect the most imperfect of sports. And here I was, in a tennis crazed country of 250 million people, one of its top junior tennis players, and this shouldn't have been a hard decision, nor was this a conversation we should even be having, me having to ask if he would let me go play our National Championships in Kalamazoo.
But as conversations went with my Dad, it didn't go well. Apparently there were new terms and services, yet I was still playing by the old rules. I had not updated. I thought I'd done enough simply by qualifying. But he countered. He was observing. In his eyes I wasn't committed enough, not giving every fiber of my being to my tennis. Not the full immersion he required for support, the type of immersion to become great, maybe even special. As he told me before, he was done supporting my tennis and he meant it. To reward such a partial effort would send all the wrong messages.
His final answer was no...
Was he wrong? Who knows. Most parents would give a limb to reward their child's accomplishments. Was it fair? Tough call. Could I have done more? Of course. Who among us couldn't. I certainly wasn't treating tennis as a hobby. Yet nothing was simple, trying to balance an aspiring tennis career with the onset of a raging addiction.
Did I really need to be taught another lesson though? Was this supposed to inspire me, this tough love before tough love was all the rage? It was risky. Would I fight or flight? At what point does a kid just give up? I wasn't asking for much. I had earned this. I won a lot of tough tennis matches over the prior 9 months. But he gave his answer and it was no.
And I could have fought. I could have cried, carried on, made a huge mess, played the victim, and maybe, just maybe won him over, but I didn't want to give him that. Too risky. I'd vowed after him calling me a failure to not make myself vulnerable to him ever again. Yet he should have wanted this for me. It was his accomplishment too. I shouldn't have had to beg him. I knew enough that was wrong. So I asked guardedly, protecting myself, keeping my expectations at ground level to minimize the likely disappointment. And when he said no, I didn't say another word. I turned away, walked back down the hall to my room and closed my door.
Yeah it hurt, but not enough to show him...
And so would end my year. I showed some game and even more promise. I would end the year on everyone's radar, ranked 39th in the country in the 16 and unders, my highest national ranking to date. And as messy as my relationship with Dad was, he knew what that ranking meant. For in tennis, the numbers didn't lie. Another good year and I was looking at a full scholarship at a major tennis school of my choosing.
Without any grand compromise, Dad and I's relationship reached a detente. The flat mundane part of our run. I tried to cut my partying back, become a little more present, giving him something to work with. And that seemed to help, with him easing some on his hard-ass discipline, going back to helping me out financially with my tennis. Yet there were no baring of souls, nor heart to hearts, or amends or apologies, confessions or concessions. We just carried on like nothing was ever said between us.
The shit the broken people do...
And this was the dance we would do our whole lives...
Now in the 18's, the final age group in juniors and the years that matter. I did well my first event, making another final before heading down to Anaheim for the first big tourney of the year. SoCal tourneys being brutal, bad draws were always a possibility. And as luck would have it, I drew the top seed Tim Pawsat in the second round.
Pawsat was pretty much the man growing up. Tall, ripped, strong, intense, intimidating, driven, focused, experienced, sponsored head to toe in the latest Adidas. Pretty much everything I was not. Tim had been one of the top ranked American juniors since the 12's. He was a professional tennis player in a teenagers body. Comparing how he carried himself to how I felt about myself, I was beat before we even took the court.
Match day. Dad knew what I was up against, having watched Pawsat dominate for years now. There would be no pep talks. But no sarcasm either. A cautious unspoken optimism hung in the air between us, that maybe my best tennis might be enough to hang in there.
Back in tournament formation; Dad driving, the same VW van we drove out from Massachusetts, the same van he told me to get in after choking to Leach, telling me I sure fucked that up good... A van full of horrors. Me in the passenger seat, just like we were for my first tournament years ago, now my head a couple feet above the dashboard, almost even with his.
Expectations and nerves fueling butterflies galore, the two of us only capable of small talk, nothing deeper. So much going on. So much left unsaid. Were we really doing this again? Maybe on a trial basis? Could we finally get it right? It didn't feel right. Some damage had been done. I didn't trust him anymore. And I don't think he trusted himself either, not in this situation, not with my tennis when the stakes were high.
Moments like these brought out the worst in us. The insanity of it all, repeating the same behaviors, expecting different results. Lines crossed, new lines drawn. We were tentative, posturing. We sought out our terms for endearment. Me craving his approval, hell, his love, in a perpetual state of grief at the breakdown in our relationship. Him in over his head emotionally, his perpetual aura of disappointment filling the space between us. In moments like these I needed a Dad. But I would get the opposite. I'd get a sentencing judge. I just couldn't understand what he wanted, better yet, why what I was doing and who I was never seemed enough. Not exactly the power of positive thinking mere moments before taking the court against America's top junior. How much to invest? Him with me and my tennis. Me having him in my corner once again.
For fool me once...
Match time. And right from the first ball its my day. I'm in the zone, that elusive state of body and mind where a player can do no wrong. I win the first set comfortably. But will it last? That unfamiliar buzz returned. Electric, yet unsettling. I'd been knocking on the door of junior tennis' elite for some time now. Would this finally be my moment?
As the match tightened, I continued to look toward my Dad during my matches just like I did when I was twelve. Hoping for something. Something to calm or encourage, a fist pump, a head nod, a thumbs up, hell, I'd settle for a pinky, anything to show he was in this with me, that I wasn't out there battling all alone. But still nothing. He stuck to his age old tired script, remaining straight faced and stoic, watching the action from afar.
My mind started to race. Why can't he root for me. All the other parents rooted for their kids. They brought fucking pom poms. But no. He just stood there. Arms crossed. Pacing. Nothing. I began to admonish myself. Stay focused. It doesn't matter. He's here. Its better than him not being here. Well, that's debatable. Concentrate. Focus. Dig in. Win this. Then all will be well in our strange little world.
Second set gets tight. Like champions do, he raised his game, yet I continued to play well, catching all the breaks. Starting to run out of steam, he began to reel me in. It was now or never. I fluked a couple games late to stay close. With my zone kicking back in, I managed to eke out a close tie-breaker and the match in straight sets. I'd finally done it. My first major win in junior tennis against one of the world's best.
For once, I was the one picking up the balls after a big match. Hurrying to the desk to report my score, barely able to contain my excitement, I blurted out.. I won I won, turning more than a few heads. Shocked congratulations began to come my way. I hurriedly said thank you thank you to all as I went to check the draw for my next match.
The shit winners do...
Matters at hand under control, I started walking toward Dad, tempering my excitement, not sure what reaction awaited me. I arrived to my Dad still standing still. Full neutrality. No approaching me, no signs of his excitement even remotely matching mine. Just a head down, slight smile, almost embarrassed good match.
He just didn't know how to react. I mean, he had to be excited.
Just not enough to show me...
Too risky. We weren't there. We were just getting back together. Maybe he didn't dare take a chance either. Show me how excited, how proud he must have felt, for there was no change in his tune, for to change his tune now would be admitting there were problems with the old tune. No. There would be no showing of emotion, no dropping of walls. For our fucked up little family dynamic, emotions could be weaponized, to be used against you at a later date.
No, this should have been it. For both of us. To let our walls come down and patch us up. But no. Just couldn't do it. He had to be proud, but he just couldn't go there with me. Too much guilt, too much shame. Here I was, with the best achievement of my life, and he couldn't/wouldn't share in my joy. Was it all mine to enjoy? Maybe. He always insisted on not being that Dad, the one who said we and not he. And in spite of our challenges, none of this happened without him. Why couldn't he share a moment's joy? And as buoyed as I was from winning, all the feelings were muted, for his approval, that approval I so desperately needed to hear, the cherry on top, never came.
My big win proved to be an aberration, unable to back it up with similar results. I reverted back to the mean throughout the year, once again beating who I should, losing close matches to those above me. I won just enough to stay in the top 10 in SoCal, qualify me for the National Hard Courts in Northern California. My first National tournament in the 18's, these were the events to excel at. This was where the college coaches came to recruit, this was where the US Junior Davis Cup teams played, walking around with the USA on their backs. These events were the elite of US junior tennis, and in the year of 1981, that meant the world. If a player was ever to make his mark, the National Hard Courts was the place.
The draw comes out. I get another rough one, facing top seed and perennial top ranked in the country Todd Witsken. From my earliest tennis memories, there were two players I wanted nothing to do with. Jimmy Arias, who thankfully turned professional as a teenager and Todd Witsken, who not quite Arias' prowess, still formidable. These guys were so good they frequently played up. (not wasting their time playing their inferior peers like myself) But now with all of us in the 18's, there was no up left to play.
As 17 and 18 year olds, we were all now pretty close to full grown. Wood frames put away, the graphite age was now among us. Head came out with the original Graphite Edge racket. I immediately upgraded. feeling like a Caveman discovering fire. The things I could now do with a tennis ball. I was now among the best of the best, the ones who stuck it out, through all the heartbreaks and drives home, all the uphill parts of the run.
This remaining crew believed in themselves. All of us were now on the precipice of the all important ROI. The return on investment. We were the survivors, now the thrivers. Colleges wanted us. Companies wanted us. Agents wanted us. Academies wanted us. We were commodities now. We were future assets. All that investment in ourselves was about to be repaid by others investing in us. For we had something to offer, maybe even exploit. Invest in me. I might just make you rich and famous.
I called home with the news of my draw. It was late on a Sunday and I should have known better. But I did it anyways. Dad answered the phone. A little small talk. I can tell he's half in the bag. I should have called earlier. He asks about my draw. I had a tough first round, but if I got through that, I had Witsken.
Slight pause from the old Man, then with his drunk maniacal laugh. "That outta be it for you!!"
I could feel myself shrinking. Why why why did I keep making the same mistake over and over and over. I didn't really have much choice though, for my Dad was all I had.
Putting Dad's bedside manner aside, you'd have been hard pressed to find anyone
who gave me much of a chance against Todd Witsken, the tournament's top seed and Nation's #1 ranked junior. And after 30 minutes of tennis, those predicting a
one-sided Witsken victory were right on, as I passively
squandered the first set 6-2
But I started playing better. Staying on serve throughout the early part of the set. Before long, it was 3 all, then 4 all. Another hold and it was 5 all.
Wow, I was hanging in there. A crowd began to form. The top seed was in a match. Faces began to appear at the fence trying to sneak a view, but for once they were watching me. I tried to keep my focus, but I knew who they were. They were the college coaches, they were the JDC team, they were the JDC coaching staff, all coming to see what was up with Todd and who was this kid giving him all kinds of trouble.
One more hold from each of us and to a tiebreaker we went.
By now I could see some friends of mine appear. All of a sudden, I had my own little rooting section. With each won point they got a little louder. Feeding off of them, I raised my game at just the right moment. A little more good serving on my part, some uncharacteristically
tight play from my opponent, and there I was with a handful of set points
to even the match.
And then it happened. I closed out the tie-breaker, evening the match at a
set apiece against the tournament's top seed and the first thought that came to me was wait til I tell my Dad I lost to Witsken in 3 sets.
Wait, What??!! I'm literally a set away from the biggest win of my life and my first thought was how respectable my losing score was going to be and how that might get my Dad's approval??!!
And the crazy thinking didn't stop there...
Third set begins. Both of us kept serving well. So one all became two all and suddenly it
was three all and all I could think about was with every game I won, how
cool my losing score was going to look on the draws for all eternity
One more hold and geez, I'm going to lose 6-4 in the 3rd now
Another hold to five all and OMG, I'm in to extra innings and how cool is this getting. I'm going to lose 7-5 in the third.
Two more holds to six all and there were no tiebreakers in the 3rd sets
of Nationals back then so here we go in to the great unknown. We both held again to seven all, and by now all eyes were on our court. There was a buzz on the grounds, anytime a match would run deep or a seed was in trouble. This was both, but not just any seed but the top seed in an early round. I had been that kid on the other side of the fence trying to sneak a peak. Now it was me they were looking at and all I could think about was how epic losing 9-7 in the 3rd was going to look!!!
And then it happened. With Witsken serving at seven all, I reached a
couple break points at 15-40 and for the first time in the match, the
thought crossed my mind.. "Damn, I could win this" To which I mortally collapsed, losing the match 9-7 in the 3rd in a rather undignified way.
Tennis. The oscillation between unshakable belief and crippling doubt. Though ahead, I never thought I could win. Though behind, Witsken never showed he ever thought he was going to lose ((Footnote. We would become good friends and practice partners years later. He confided in me he thought he was done, but vowed never to show me))
(footnote 2: Witsken would go on to win the event)
It was a crushing defeat. You never forget your chokes. The who, where, when, how, and who was watching. I was so close, yet I had a problem. My crazy manic internal voice. When I needed it to be calm, my mind kicked in to overdrive. Something wasn't right. A transcript of my internal voice would land me in a hospital it got so far out there. How was I ever going to beat the top guys with such a virus in my software?
So involuntary. So unwelcomed. How was I ever going to tame this? In times of stress my thoughts would overpower me, totally out of control, revving up, faster, faster, yellow line, red line. Dangerous. Betraying me in the worst of ways, conspiring against me when I needed it most. What was it? And what would trigger it? It was a river of thoughts, fed by many streams, some of them toxic. When I needed an ally, it would defy me. That voice, saying in the most colorful language, you'll never be as good as these kids. They're better than you. You can play with them, but you'll never be one of them.
Because you're a drug addict...
My mind had become a Superfund site. Every big moment, having to look within for strength, yet I would keep going back to that well. If only it were dry. Instead, I'd pull up another teeming pail of toxic dysfunction and open wide. And here I was, almost 17 years old, trying to grow up, to grow free, from him and his ideas of who I was, yet I kept getting pulled back, clinging to the idea that somehow a few words from him would make me whole.
And I didn't really know where else to turn except to drugs. They didn't make me whole, but they kept me numb enough to not feel just how broken I felt inside.
Later that evening, pretty high from drowning my sorrows, I called home with my results. I wasn't sure what to say. I lost, but in some ways I won. College coaches approached me directly after, the guys in the USA jackets all said great match. I'd lost a heartbreaker, but won a ton of respect. Plus, I proved my Dad wrong. Or almost. Disappointed, I was still pretty jazzed at playing the match of the day. But did I dare share that with him?
Dad gets on the phone. Not sure what to say. He asks how I did. I tell him in the most deadpan way I lost 9-7 in the third.
In his court now...
Yet he said nothing. Dead air filled the space between us.
There was just no way to talk about it. We were broken. He didn't know how to ask, and I wasn't about to share.
And as I hung up, a rage welled up inside of me, but not some childhood temper tantrum rage, but an adult style red out anger. I would pace around my housing having imaginary conversations with my Dad, yelling at him like he was right before me, though I knew he sat in his chair, drinking smoking staring obliviously at the TV 400 miles away.
In a different world, living a different life...
I'd play out in my head all the things I would have loved to have screamed....
"Don't you want to hear about the match. Don't you wanna hear about the coaches and the players and all the compliments, and that I had a really good chance today, I played him dead even for 3 hours in front of all the right people. I'm on the map now. They all know who I am now. Did you know that? Do you know what else? I'm really beat up right now, I'm really hurting. I had a shot at the big time today, but something's going on in my head that's not right and I can play with these guys but I don't know if I can ever be one of them because there's no way what's going through my head is going through theirs. And I'm walking around with all this shame, shame for what I do with drugs, but even worse, shame for how I feel, about what I do, about how we are... because it doesn't matter how good I play if my head betrays me like that, and its not just on the court, its off the court. I'm high all the time, because when I'm not, my head just races all the time, crazy like, 100 miles and hour then it speeds up some more and I have to smoke something or drink something cause I'm flying around and I seem to have to take more and more just to feel normal in my skin and I'm keeping this secret all bottled up inside of me you know if we weren't so fucked up I could trust you with whats going through my head in those matches and my life and maybe get me some help but I just don't. And I'm 16 years old and I'm starting to get scared, cause none of what I'm doing and feeling feels normal and you're my Dad and I can't tell you what's going on with me and my heart breaks for that"
And on and on and on. Through all my waking hours. A madness. A rage. Growing. Metastasizing. Eventually fading off to sleep, exhausted, in a hazy drugged out stupor, knowing that in a few months time I'll be a senior in high school, on the precipice of the most important year of my life.
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