Chapter 9 Telling on Myself

Fall of 1981. 

Turning seventeen, I began my senior year of high school and last year of junior tennis. With the stakes  high, everything seemed magnified. My partying, my moods, the pressure in tennis, the discord at home. For important decisions loomed. High school seniors of all stripes perused college handbooks, hoping to continue their education. But not myself. I was studying college tennis handbooks; their campuses, their schedules, their players, their coaches, their history, their scholarship availability, all in the hopes of playing big time college tennis, all expenses paid.

Taking inventory. I'd been playing tennis over half my life now. In the beginning, I played because I had to, because my Dad liked it and he wanted me to like it too. It seemed the better I played, the nicer he was to me. So I tried real hard to get good at tennis. As I got older and better, I started playing for different reasons. For trophies, for sponsorships, for rankings, for a chance to go to Nationals, but never not with an eye to that approval from Dad. But with him increasingly out of the picture, my reasons for playing took on a more personal nature, the goal now being the prestige of a scholarship, with a possible professional career to follow.

College sports. The NCAA. Exploitative of some. For the remaining 99.9% of all college athletes over the NCAA's long storied history, easily one of America's greatest institutions, especially for aspiring young athletes like myself. Four years of all expenses paid boot camp with some of the finest coaching, training, practice and competition imaginable. All while pursuing a college degree, all done with an entire student body behind you, if not in form in spirit. 

College tennis did not engender the BMOC status of the football and basketball stars, but playing for a school definitely came with perks. Yet it was all one big handout. Tennis welfare. College tennis, one of the many non-revenue generating sports benefiting from the NCAA athletic system. We were the takers among the takers and makers, just don't ask where the money came from. Just know it didn't come from you.

My learning curve would be steep. My lone exposure to college tennis had been at The Ojai, one of the few events in the nation where the juniors and collegians played side by side. Every April in the Ojai Valley, about an hour and a half northwest of Los Angeles, the largest and most prestigious junior/college tennis tournament in the nation took place among the orange groves and pristine countryside of the Ojai Valley. Steeped in tradition (Picture of old Ojai), Ojai was where The Pac-10 conference Championships took place, with all the famous west coast tennis programs present, from Stanford and Berkeley to USC and UCLA.

It was the Bruins of UCLA who first captured my fascination. Couple years before, I pressed my young impressionable face up against the fence of the courts of sun-drenched Libby Park, watching the elegant Bruins of lore do battle. Robbie Ventor, Marcel Freeman, Blaine Willenborg, all decked out head to toe in the most stylish blue and gold Tachini gear (extra cool with the UCLA script on the lapel) with the venerable legend of a coach Glenn Bassett hustling from court to court dropping truth bombs of tennis wisdom upon all his star players. 

I would watch in awe, wondering what brilliance he bestowed upon them to create such inspired play and just how insanely cool that would be to have a coach do that for me. But the whole spectacle all seemed so surreal. The fence I  pressed against could just as well have been a 100 foot wall.  No way that was ever to be me out there, on that court, playing that level of tennis for that team being coached by that legend.  Pac-10 tennis was the big time, the college tennis gateway to professional greatness. UCLA USC Stanford, they were tennis' king makers. Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors... 

The thought of ever playing among them seemed borderline delusional...

Beyond my annual sojourn to Ojai, I knew about as little as a junior player could know about the college tennis experience. I had never toured a college campus, never seen a college dual match, had no relationships with any of the current coaches or players and the little knowledge I had about the structure of college athletics was topped only by my parents complete lack of care

My future on the line, I was back in full do it yourself mode, as my parents checked out for another stint. But if learning the college tennis system was the goal, SoCal was the place to be. Within an hour's drive from home stood five Division 1 programs. UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, UC Irvine, and Long Beach State. Expand out another couple hours were all the San Diego schools and Santa Barbara.  A little further north up the coast, Berkeley and Stanford ruled the roost. Not a native Californian, I had no tribe. None of that legacy stuff or alumni connections. Finding attractive programs would be easy, plenty to swipe right to. The challenge would be finding a program interested in myself. For in college sports, the attraction had to be mutual. The Coach had to want you too.

The recruiting process. Players trying to extract as much scholarship money as possible, coaches trying to get players for as little money as they could. Everybody lying to everybody. Coaches promising you're their top guy, only to tell ten other guys the same thing. Players saying their heart was set on a school, yet going on five official recruiting trips while fielding offers from ten other schools. Promises got made. And promises got broken. But nothing mattered til signing day in May, still half a year away. Which meant I still had a lot of important tennis matches to win if I wanted to land a full ride.

From my vantage point, my goals were simple. Get away from home, academics, financial resources, location, get away from home, girls, partying, teammates, coaching, clothes. cheerleaders and most importantly, get away from home.  From the coach's side, ability, discipline, attitude, composure, stability, not a slew of terms oft associated with my turbulent self. Besides my abilities, what I wanted and what coaches were looking for were galaxies apart. And though my rankings merited some attention, it was my off court antics that were attracting the type of attention I definitely didn't need.

As with most teenagers, its hard to keep a secret. I'd begun to dabble with amphetamines, speed to be exact. Found I could play this mercurial tennis better than I ever thought possible all the while feeling better than I ever thought imaginable. The surge of energy, like a current pulsing through my every nerve. Who knew how much better life could be by just tweaking the brain chemistry. Eager to share my addled epiphany, I would offer black beauties to my practice partners. Some would partake and be equally amazed. Others though, would be horrified. It was the horrified ones who began to leak the word on my new habit and who could blame them. 

For many of my peers were becoming uncomfortable with my experimenting. And kids talk.  And my once secret life of narcotics was not only no longer a secret but a hot rumor spreading out of control throughout all levels of the tennis community. And not without some merit.  I came with game, I came with problems. Problems at home, problems on the court, but mostly problems off the court with drugs, problems of my own making for which I had little control.

For I wasn't seeing them as problems yet. Young, curious, experimenting. Already smitten with altering my reality, I became obsessed with experiences. Life expanding events loomed every weekend.  I sought every opportunity for something exciting to happen. I was adventurer zero for FOMO. becoming a human chemistry set, experimenting constantly on how I could make myself feel. I'd become my own Beta. Uppers to energize my body, downers to calm my mind. Then seeking clarity and equilibrium through powerful hallucinogenics. I was pushing boundaries with an unbound zeal for life, with nary a thought of spending a quiet night at home.

I was dancing with nirvana, myself the conductor, the world my orchestra. Lights, views, sounds, settings, friends. Chasing the perfect high. As my partying expanded, so did my life. Running with a faster crowd, The Medavoys, The Wellmans, the heirs to Hollywood royalty. I got turned on to new places.  Top of the World in the Pacific Palisades, with the most jaw dropping views of the Los Angeles basin. The city at night, a city of lights. Each light representing a household, a family, a group of kindred people just like my family, struggling to get it right.

Hallucinogens would slow me down. So many people, so overwhelming, and so much to each and every one of them. And me. To feel the weight of the world's humanity as I set forth on the proverbial trip. Regularly having out of mind and body experiences, getting introduced to myself along the way. My mind taking inventory of who I was and where I stood in life. And to my surprise, I didn't entirely loathe who I met. 

I had friends. I had talents. I had goals. I had things going for me. Most importantly I had people who cared about me. Those evenings on the top of the world, tripping hard, often by myself, watching the moon rise over the basin, staying there all night til the first hint of morning. Those evenings helped me become aware of a larger world around me. And that awareness grew to a fascination. I wanted to learn everything about everybody. Even if just for a moment, a little slice of a strangers life as my worldview continued to expand. I became intrigued by other people and what made them tick. Strong Beat vibes before I knew the first thing about who the Beats were. And through getting to know myself better, I actually came to like myself. Yeah, I had problems, what teenager didn't, but for the first time in my life I saw hope and promise in me, that I was a decent kid worth fighting for. 

And if all that sounded like the stoned blather of a perpetually high teenager, it very well may have been, but that didn't make it any less true...

The intensification of my partying created tension at home. If I wasn't away for entire weekends, I was running around town, not able to come home until I came down, often returning home in the wee hours or sometimes not at all, which was totally not ok with the folks. Our fighting flared. They attempted some Hail Mary attempts at reigning me in with curfews and groundings but in perfect rebellious teenage form, they were scoffed at and broken. When the fighting further intensified, I went out one night and didn't come home for a week, adding ever more tension to an already edgy house. Questions soon arose about money. Having quit my jobs, how was I able to afford this new lifestyle? 

And all they had to do was look under my bed...

But the drugs were also beginning to affect me personally, their grip on me tightening like a vice. As exhilarating as the highs were, the come downs became crushing. From top of the world to crash landing back to reality, the reality I was consumed with escaping. Ups and downs, ups and downs. Sky high, Free falling. I was either high, coming down, withdrawing or craving.  Finding anything resembling stability was fleeting.

Feeling high had become everything. To not be high felt terrible. My mind would race and race and race, then burn itself out to the point I could barely function. Then all I could do was sleep. Often I could barely get up to go to school as my impatience to feel better again would wear thin. I mean, I knew how to make myself feel better, just not legally. And so the cycle would begin. My already crossed wires becoming further tangled. Unknowingly, I was playing dangerous games with my still developing brain, games I was too young to know came with dire consequences, that I was altering my mind's chemistry in ways not so easily reversed, a fraying mind/body connection passing the point of no return.

 

And it was against this backdrop that the most important few months of my tennis life began. Yet again, tennis continued to be played. And quite robustly. I was now one of the big boys, my weekly practice schedule read like a future ATP Tour draw. Witsken, Rostagno, Jones, Pugh, Lozano, Amend, Letts, Ackerman, Canter. Two matches a day, every day of the week against the world's best juniors. Sets and more sets. Spending no time drilling, even less on technique. Still no coach, still no training program. There was no method to the madness, it was all madness, playing each point like there was no tomorrow.

My year got off to a rocky start with a couple late match chokes. Traumatizing. I'd be playing well, running out to comfortable leads, but come closing time complete breakdowns followed by meltdowns. And a disturbing pattern was setting in. My already shaky confidence was rattling right off the Richter scale, my unsteadiness at crunch time becoming a defining concern. 

For I had a dilemma...

Much of my inspired practice play was done under the influence, yet I just couldn't bring myself to play my tournament matches high. With the National Indoors approaching, I had a hard decision to make. Play high or play uncomfortable? I tried to sober up in training but everything felt off. Now what to do?  The weed, the speed, the coke. The mushrooms. All quieted down my raging brain. Without them, I felt out of control. Did I dare play my matches sober, or should I pop a few pills and compete like I practiced? I'd manage to pull this off with my schooling. I would be high in class, do my homework high, take my tests high, not without a little struggle with the nerves and all, but not without any noticeable fall off in performance. Did I dare risk competing at tennis high too?

And it shouldn't have been a hard decision. To leave the drugs home and compete before the nation's top coaches clean and sober. But I devised a plan. Addicts. That's what we do. We plan. I'd start my matches sober, but if things started getting away from me, I'd have some speed ready to go in my racket bag to kickstart myself. And sure enough, Round of 32, big match, center court, against highly seeded and NBTA original member Bobby Banck, I started nervously, falling behind 5-1 in mere minutes.

The first set pretty much gone, I hustled over to my bag to pop a couple black beauties. I managed to win the next game right when the pills kicked in and whoa it was on. From idling to redlining within seconds. With the speed kicking in, I started flying all over the court like a player possessed, but not just during the points, but between points, running to pick up balls, feverishly bouncing in place, eager beyond words for the next ball to be played.

I came back from 5-1 down to win the set 7-5 and race out to a 3-0 lead in the second. But with drugs, when one goes up, one must come down, unless you have more. And as the anticipated crash began to set in, so did my play as my waning energy played havoc with my nervous system, eager to recalibrate. 

I only had a small amount of speed left to send me soaring again. Trying to conserve my stash for only desperate times, I failed at closing out the match in the second. Feeling listless to start the third, I took the remaining speed and as it clicked in my play soared too, getting out to a quick lead in the third but the high wasn't as high and it didn't last as long, leaving me crashing ever quicker and harder as crunch time approached. Out of speed, fading fast, and nervous at all the attention our match was getting, I tried to hang in there. Serving to stay in the match, the combination of coming down and crippling nervousness sent my hands shaking so badly I could barely toss the ball, eventually losing the final set 6-4 and the match.

One of addiction's many conflicts is seeing ourselves clearly as we are. There are no out of body experiences (sober ones at least). We become prisoners of our own minds, obsessed with trying to feel a certain way. But after the match, my friends who knew the conditions I was playing under enlightened me to my jaw grinding, obsessive sweating, and overall frenetic on court behavior, eliciting commentary from the coaches watching that not all seemed right with me. 

Rattled by everything, the coming down from the drugs, my fear of being exposed to the coaches, and another gut-wrenching loss during a year quickly getting away from me, I went directly to my only tried and true solution to all problems life. I hit the streets of Dallas to find some beers and get hammered.

I quickly spotted a Forty, throwing it down in a hurry, trying to kill all the bad vibes swirling within me. Sitting alone in a parking lot on a random Dallas street, as the sun set I felt the night begin to cool. It was time to head back to my hotel, but not before securing a full case of beer from the liquor store. Mission accomplished, one problem remained. How to get the beer to my room without being detected, for everyone involved in the tournament was staying at the hotel. 

Usually I'd have grabbed a racket bag to transport the beer safely to port. But this time, emboldened by who knows what forces, I said fuck it, walking right through the lobby to the elevator, case of beer cradled in my outstretched arms. Brazen beyond words. Did I want to get caught? Was this some misguided cry for help? I hurried through the lobby undetected, arriving at the elevator to await the short trek to my room. Why I didn't take the stairs was beyond me, but there I stood, at the elevator, case of beer in hands waiting for what felt like forever. As the door finally opened, I immediately rushed forward, only to run square in to Dennis Ralston, famed US player and head coach of local college tennis powerhouse SMU. And Ralston was not alone, as several other prominent coaches flanked his side.

And if my on court behavior was already concerning, standing there with a case of cold ones had to be a box of red flags. Fortunately Ralston et al had places to get, hurrying from the elevator, but not before a few concerning glances came my way. As the elevator door closed, my heart sank. WTF was I doing?   Keeping thoughts of how I was fucking up at bay was a key part of my denial. But this was undeniable.  What was I doing? There was no shame in not becoming a great tennis player, but did I have to be such a fuck-up in the process? 

Then the committee convened and the bargaining began. When I get home, I'll try harder, I'll do better, I'll sober up for reals this time. Future promises to ease the sting of the ever painful present. Excuse the past, rationalize the present, promise for the future. Yet today was the future I promised yesterday. And not only was I not doing better, I was getting worse, for at a National tournament in a year I needed to excel, I just walked in to the top coach in the USA with a case of beer in my arms after a super sketchy on court performance

And here I was at 17, a sorcerer in reverse. The sorcerer, who makes something from nothing. Myself, quickly making nothing out of everything...

Indoors behind me, The next couple months were grim. Drugs drugs and more drugs. I loathed my high school. Only 3 classes left to graduate, yet I could barely show up for them. And my usage intensified. Stronger pot left me even more apathetic and lethargic. I was now taking hallucinogens 2-3 times a week, often before school. Reckless and dangerous. I wasn't having fun, I was just staying numb as I felt my year slip away. 

The next few tournaments were disastrous. Fiesta Bowl, choke and a meltdown. Whittier the same. Fullerton, no choke, major meltdown. Nobody there for support, my parents off in their own world, not even asking how I did anymore. With no coach to crack the whip, my practice became sporadic as I openly discussed quitting tennis altogether for the first time in my life.  

My tournaments had become exercises in stress management. So concerned about choking, I would start choking right from the start. And it all came to a head in Long Beach where I played ultra talented and equal crazed junior player Steven Aniston (footnote). 

SoCal tennis. It was unrelenting. I needed to win this match or my dreams of playing big time college tennis were finished. Steven and I split the first couple sets. And as the third began, I started slowly and it only got worse, my nerves overtaking me again. Flailing badly, the rage within me erupted. With every error, streams of epithets, the shattering of rackets, with guttural screams of agony with every lost point.

With the match slipping away, my sanity wasn't far behind. I was losing control, yet I played on. The rage. The racing mind. I wanted to quit. I wanted to run away. But tennis. There's no bench, no time outs, no half time to regroup, no pep talks from your coach, certainly no parental moments assuring you everything was alright. And there's no switch to fix out of control. All my peers, all the college coaches, all the SCTA brass stood by uncomfortably watching my complete breakdown on court three. Nearing the end, I saw the tournament director Jim Hillman approach my court. They had seen enough. As Hillman opened the gate, I said hold on. On match point, I proceeded to launch two consecutive serves miles in to the sky, double faulting the match away mere moments before being defaulted.

Avoiding everyone, I raced off the court to walk the Long Beach State campus, muttering and crying to myself.  Losing always hurt, but this wasn't about tennis anymore. I was throwing away my future while losing my bearings in the process, and for what? For drugs? To feel high? And what started innocently and fun a mere couple years ago was now a problem raging out of control. Something had to give and quick. But what? 

My close friends Kelly and Sam finished their matches. They'd heard what had happened. Instead of letting me hop on the bus to wind my way home, they offered me a ride back to the South Bay to spend the day together. 

And on that ride home, we got to talking. Real talk. About partying and what I was doing to myself. And then it happened. For the first time I told on myself. Cathartic. Unburdening. It was so simple. Just open up and tell the truth. But often the shortest distance between two points is unbearable.

We spent the afternoon at my club, talking earnestly about how I needed to chill out, that what I was doing wasn't working and I was running out of time. And I vacillated. A part of me just wanted to give up and quit tennis and not have to deal anymore and be able to party with impunity, yet another part of me still held out hope. What was obvious is I couldn't continue to do both, so something had to give. 

And it shouldn't have been a hard decision...

But the fact that I strongly considered quitting tennis before quitting getting high needed  acknowledging. And I continued to spill the beans, telling my friends my struggles. My inability to stop. My loss of control. How I felt when I wasn't high with my mind always racing and how concerned I felt. As we talked throughout the day, it became impossible to ignore how the drugs were affecting me. 

And all the hard work, all the years of tennis, all hung in the balance. Could I stop long enough to salvage my year? And as the sun began to set, my attitude no longer in despair, we did what we kids did back then. We grabbed a court, opened a couple cans of balls and started beating the fuck out of each other.

Because tennis. Because that's what we did...

What it meant though was I wasn't done yet. I still had hope. But time was now of the essence. If I still wanted to make something of myself, I had some serious cleaning up to do.