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Authors: Norah Vincent
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about most of the other girlsâ serves, but when it came to mine, he raved unconditionally, playing my portion of the tape over and over again in slow motion.
At this, one of the prettiest girls in the group, no doubt exasperated by the repetition, said, loudly enough for everyone to hear: âWell, Iâd rather look the way I do and serve the way I do than serve the way she does and look the way she does.â
Now thatâs female competitiveness at its finest.
But with these guys and with other male athletes Iâve known it was an entirely different conflict. Their coaching reminded me of my fatherâs, whose approach to fatherhood had always been about giving helpful, concrete advice. It was how he showed his affection for us. It was all bound up in a desire to see us do well.
These guysâ attentions were like that: fatherly. And it really surprised me coming from members of opposing teams, since this was, after all, a money league. But they seemed to have a competitive stake in my doing well and in helping me to do well, as if beating a man who wasnât at his best wasnât satisfying. They wanted you to be good and then they wanted to beat you on their own merits. They didnât want to win against a plodder or lose to him on a handicap.
But my game never got consistently better. Iâd have good frames now and then, but mostly I hovered around an average of 102 and learned to swallow it. So did the guys. They knew I was trying my best, and that was all that really mattered to them. As with everything else a little odd or off about me, they accepted my clumsiness with a shrug of the shoulders, as if to say: âThatâs just how some guys are. What are you gonna do?â
I guess thatâs what I respected about those guys the most. I was a stranger, and a nerd, but they cut me all the slack in the world, and they did it for no other reason that I could discern than that I was a good-seeming guy who deserved a chance, something life and circumstance had denied most of them.
Â
I could never have predicted it, but part of me came to really enjoy those nights with the guys. Their company was like an anchor at the beginning of the week, something I could look forward to, an oasis where nothing would really be expected of me. Almost every interaction would be entirely predictable, and the ones that werenât were all the more precious for being rare.
When somebody opened up to me suddenly, like when Jim confided how much he loved his wife and how much it hurt him when the doctor told him that the best he could hope for was to see her alive in a year, or when Bob smiled at me playfully after teasing me over a toss, it touched me more deeply than my female friendsâ dime-a-dozen intimacies ever did. These were blooms in the desert, tender offerings made in the middle of all that guy talk.
Iâd never made friends with guys like that before. They had intimidated me too much, and the sexual tension that always subsists in some form or another between men and women had usually gotten in the way. But making friends with them as a man let me into their world as a free agent and taught me to see and appreciate the beauty of male friendships from the inside out.
So much of what happens emotionally between men isnât spoken aloud, and so the outsider, especially the female outsider who is used to emotional life being overt and spoken (often over-spoken), tends to assume that what isnât said isnât there. But it is there, and when youâre inside it, itâs as if youâre suddenly hearing sounds that only dogs can hear.
I remember one night when I plugged into that subtext for the first time. A few lanes over, one of the guys was having a particularly hot game. Iâd been oblivious to what was happening, mourning my own playing too much to watch anyone else. It was Jimâs turn, and I noticed that he wasnât bowling. Instead he was sitting
At this, one of the prettiest girls in the group, no doubt exasperated by the repetition, said, loudly enough for everyone to hear: âWell, Iâd rather look the way I do and serve the way I do than serve the way she does and look the way she does.â
Now thatâs female competitiveness at its finest.
But with these guys and with other male athletes Iâve known it was an entirely different conflict. Their coaching reminded me of my fatherâs, whose approach to fatherhood had always been about giving helpful, concrete advice. It was how he showed his affection for us. It was all bound up in a desire to see us do well.
These guysâ attentions were like that: fatherly. And it really surprised me coming from members of opposing teams, since this was, after all, a money league. But they seemed to have a competitive stake in my doing well and in helping me to do well, as if beating a man who wasnât at his best wasnât satisfying. They wanted you to be good and then they wanted to beat you on their own merits. They didnât want to win against a plodder or lose to him on a handicap.
But my game never got consistently better. Iâd have good frames now and then, but mostly I hovered around an average of 102 and learned to swallow it. So did the guys. They knew I was trying my best, and that was all that really mattered to them. As with everything else a little odd or off about me, they accepted my clumsiness with a shrug of the shoulders, as if to say: âThatâs just how some guys are. What are you gonna do?â
I guess thatâs what I respected about those guys the most. I was a stranger, and a nerd, but they cut me all the slack in the world, and they did it for no other reason that I could discern than that I was a good-seeming guy who deserved a chance, something life and circumstance had denied most of them.
Â
I could never have predicted it, but part of me came to really enjoy those nights with the guys. Their company was like an anchor at the beginning of the week, something I could look forward to, an oasis where nothing would really be expected of me. Almost every interaction would be entirely predictable, and the ones that werenât were all the more precious for being rare.
When somebody opened up to me suddenly, like when Jim confided how much he loved his wife and how much it hurt him when the doctor told him that the best he could hope for was to see her alive in a year, or when Bob smiled at me playfully after teasing me over a toss, it touched me more deeply than my female friendsâ dime-a-dozen intimacies ever did. These were blooms in the desert, tender offerings made in the middle of all that guy talk.
Iâd never made friends with guys like that before. They had intimidated me too much, and the sexual tension that always subsists in some form or another between men and women had usually gotten in the way. But making friends with them as a man let me into their world as a free agent and taught me to see and appreciate the beauty of male friendships from the inside out.
So much of what happens emotionally between men isnât spoken aloud, and so the outsider, especially the female outsider who is used to emotional life being overt and spoken (often over-spoken), tends to assume that what isnât said isnât there. But it is there, and when youâre inside it, itâs as if youâre suddenly hearing sounds that only dogs can hear.
I remember one night when I plugged into that subtext for the first time. A few lanes over, one of the guys was having a particularly hot game. Iâd been oblivious to what was happening, mourning my own playing too much to watch anyone else. It was Jimâs turn, and I noticed that he wasnât bowling. Instead he was sitting
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