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Four hundred meters

“On your mark, get set … go!”

As the coach said that last word, his arm went down, and Billy and I were off. Four hundred meters, four laps around the track. I don’t how this race ever wound up happening in the first place. Billy was clearly the better runner. And yet here we were, both of us coming up on that first turn, the top-left of my right sole always feeling on these curves like it was shouldering too much of my body’s weight as I tried to maintain speed. I don’t know why we always had to run counter-clockwise around the track. It would have been nice to go in the opposite direction, even if just once in a while, to give that right foot a little bit of a rest, maybe build up the left foot muscles, which, I could never notice a difference between the two, but I always felt it, like on molecular level, they just had to have been a little bit weaker in the left.

“You’re an idiot,” Billy said to me, and now I remembered why I’d taken this challenge in the first place. Because great, you’re the fastest runner Billy, that’s awesome. Do you have to be such a jerk about it? Couldn’t you be a little cooler? And not cool, but like, you know, nice, not a dick. If I’m in the locker room and I ask you a question about performance running socks, do you have to make it into a joke, you and your elite running lackeys repeating everything I say in that stupid nasally voice? That’s not what I sound like, by the way.

I wanted to say something back to him, but I couldn’t. I was putting everything I had into just keeping up, and we weren’t even halfway done with the first hundred meters. Hopefully I didn’t outwardly look like I was giving it everything I had, because I had the suspicion that Billy was doing just fine, that he was taking these three laps pretty easy, ready to just tear off at the end.

And then I thought, what if he was only running as fast as I was running? If I were in a four hundred meter race against someone who I was pretty sure that I could beat, I’d probably only try to match my opponent’s speed for the first few laps. Because why waste any energy? Why not let him lead, and then I could sprint away at the end?

So I waited until we turned the next corner and I slowed down just a little bit. It worked. Billy totally took it down a notch to match me. “You getting tired?” he taunted. We were passing the row of bleachers on the final hundred meters of the first lap, that straightaway where all of Billy’s friends were hanging out in their warm-up suits. I could hear them calling my name out in the same stupid voice they used to make fun of everyone who presented an easy enough target, the high-pitched whine, sucking their cheeks in and sticking out their teeth, smiling and laughing, celebrating even, both at the perceived humor in their jokes as well as the contented belief that they’d never have to be on the receiving end of such verbal abuse.

I put them out of my head and concentrated on what I had to do. I felt OK now, like I had a chance at pulling this off. But there were still three laps left. I’d have to maintain this pace for two more, crank it up at the last lap, and then give it everything I had for that last push toward the finish. Would I be able to do it? Doubt started to creep into my fleeting sense of what now felt like misplaced confidence.

Almost on cue, my legs started to tighten up, not a lot, but it was enough of a physical sensation to give my growing doubts some actual weight. My breathing must have picked up, because Billy looked at me. We were approaching another turn and, so far he hadn’t even bothered to get in front of me. He ran right alongside, not worrying about the extra distance he’d have to cover by staying in that further lane. And I could tell, he really wasn’t worried. “You know I ran a four thirty-five mile last month, right?”

And he actually said it. I still wasn’t at a point where I could get words out, my lungs were right now exclusively working toward supplying my blood with the oxygen necessary to maintain my current pace, a pace which was slower than my initial pace, something that, if Billy didn’t have a problem with a four and a half minute mile, this must have been nothing. What was my best time, five and half? Five forty-five?

I had to slow down again and hope that he’d stay with me. As I pulled back, I could hear him laughing, mocking me, “Still two more laps. You sure you can finish?” and again, I wanted to say something, but my breathing was so controlled at this point. How was Billy able to have what sounded like casual conversation? This pace, was it that easy for him?

For the entire third lap, I had no choice, I had to drop my speed. And on the first hundred of the fourth, Billy started running backwards right next to me. From where we were at, the bleachers were all the way on the other side of the track, but I could still hear everyone laughing and calling out in that mocking voice.

As we approached that last hundred meters, I thought, did I have what it took to race him in a sprint? Probably not. But could I at least put up a good fight? Could I somehow will my feet do what they had so far been unable to do, to pose somewhat of a threat to Billy’s dominance?

I wouldn’t be able to find out, because right as I started sprinting, Billy wiped out next to me. He fell to the track, hard. When he bounced up a few seconds later, I was about halfway to the finish line. I looked over my shoulder to see if he could still make a run for it. He probably could have. In fact, for a second I swear I saw all of his muscles twitch, like he was ready to pounce. But then he just stopped. He stood there, and then he started walking.

I crossed the finish line, but nobody said anything. All eyes were on Billy. And just as he was in earshot, I heard him say, “Whatever, I wasn’t even racing. That doesn’t count. Didn’t you see me running backwards? What a joke.”

And I looked to the coach, hoping he’d at least validate my accomplishment, just name me the winner, please. But he looked more concerned with his star runner. “Billy, you OK? Anything hurt?” he was walking in his direction.

“Nah, I’m good. I wasn’t really running that hard anyway.”

Everyone started laughing from the sidelines, and the coach said, “All right, let’s get out of here everyone. Showers!”

Novice wrestling

When I was in high school, all I really wanted was to be part of a team. I’d grown up playing on most of the community youth sports teams, basketball, hockey, baseball and soccer. While I didn’t expect to be a varsity captain or anything, I still thought that I’d at least find something I was good at, or good enough at, to go through tryouts and find my name posted up on the bulletin board outside of the gym, telling me that I’d made a team.

But basketball was out of the question. I went to the first day of tryouts and knew immediately that it wasn’t going to happen. There were something like sixteen hundred boys in my school, and so the sheer amount of bodies in the gym that day, all of them there with their eyes on one of the sixteen spots available, it was a wake-up call, that even though I wasn’t horrible at basketball, I wasn’t really that good either.

And so the coach had us line up and shoot lay-ups, and I missed the first lay-up. I told myself, that’s all right, I’m tall, I’m fast, I’m sure they’re not too concerned with that one lay-up. But some assistant coach blew a whistle and pointed in my direction. I looked at him like, what? What do you want me to do? And he just barely lifted his eyes in my direction and blew the whistle again, this time pointing to the locker room. I’d been cut.

But hockey, I’d been playing hockey since I was in the second grade. There’s no way I wouldn’t make the ice hockey team. I mean, just think about all that it takes to get your equipment ready and have your parents take you to all of those hockey practices and hockey games and summer hockey camps. I thought, I must have an advantage over the majority of these guys.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” the ice hockey coach told me and a group of five or six other kids after the second ice hockey tryout. His first words weren’t all that encouraging, and I looked around at the others in my company, all of us scrawny, awkward, obviously inferior to everyone else still skating on the ice.

And then it was like, OK, no basketball, no hockey, what else can I do? Volleyball? The volleyball coach actually approached me, seeing as how I was so tall. I guess he had this idea that, even though I told him I’d never played volleyball before, that it was OK, that he’d train me, that by the time I made it to senior year, I’d be some sort of spiking machine.

But those tryouts too ended in the volleyball coach kind of just shaking his head from side to side, one of those, “Listen, I’m really sorry I put you through all of this,” speeches where I could tell by his lack of eye contact that he probably did actually feel a little bad about suggesting that I try out in the first place.

So what was left? Freshman year came and went and I hadn’t made it on any sports teams. Was I destined to go through high school without ever knowing the camaraderie associated with team athletics? One of my friends was on the junior varsity wrestling team and, while he laughed when I asked him if I had what it took to try out for JV, he suggested that I attend the first day of novice wrestling.

Novice wrestling was the only sport in my school that had zero cuts. It wasn’t varsity and it wasn’t junior varsity, but it was still technically a sport. And so I showed up, me and a hundred and fifty other kids that looked as if they’d also never played on any team sport in high school. Everything about novice wrestling was exactly how it sounded, novice. We had to wrestle in this small, old gym, tucked away behind the pipe-room of the main gym. I didn’t even know the school had a secondary gym. It was one of those neglected rooms that looked like it hadn’t really been considered in decades.

Our uniforms were similarly relics of a bygone era. While the varsity and the JV squad wore these modern looking spandex outfits, we each wore a very outdated crimson wrestling singlet, made of whatever fabric they used before the invention of spandex, with bright yellow piping around the neck, arm and leg openings. I looked ridiculous. I was six foot five, but only a hundred and sixty pounds, so my uniform didn’t really hug the sides of my body, it hung, loose, making my torso look like a popsicle stick.

With a hundred and fifty person team, it was unlikely that I’d actually see much action. We basically went to practice every day, and then when we had meets, the coach would give us all turns, placing us into different weight classes, maybe we’d get to grapple, maybe not.

I remember the first time I actually had a match. My opponent was about five foot one, and he made his entrance onto the wrestling mat, slapping himself in the face, making weird yelling sounds, I guess in an attempt at intimidation. I didn’t really get it, and neither did the ref, who blew his whistle immediately and penalized him for unsportsmanlike conduct.

We got into position and the ref blew his whistle again to start the match. And my opponent ran off of the mat and vomited by the edge of the gym. I just kind of stood there, not really understanding what had happened. And then the ref blew his whistle again and raised my hand in the air. I won.

The next day on morning announcements, after they showed the highlights from the basketball game, they read a list of novice wrestlers who had won their matches. I almost felt silly hearing my name called. Some of the other novice wrestlers in my homeroom laughed knowingly. But it wasn’t that bad, because another guy in my homeroom had wound up facing off against a girl wrestler. He pinned her to the ground and won, and everyone was on his case, making up an exaggerated story about how the match went down, how yeah, he won, but just barely.

Being part of a team was cool, but wrestling wasn’t really what I was after. Besides, I kept getting ringworm, and one of my teammates had to go to the hospital because his testicles got twisted around each other in the middle of a match. I did novice wrestling for a year, got my athletic letter, and then threw away my wrestling gear. But every once in a while I’ll have a dream like I’m back in high school. I’m in my adult body, and I’m just totally dominating every single sport. I’m blocking jump shots and scoring game winning goals in overtime. What are you going to do, right? You can only try so hard at sports.

Just admit that you still feel it

One time I was in line getting a cup of coffee. These two guys in front of me were having this conversation about how one of them was about to go spend a semester at sea. So there were a lot of questions back and forth, like what kind of stuff are you going to bring, how big is the ship you’re going to be on, questions like that. And then they got their coffees and left.

And then it was my turn to order coffee, and as I stood there and waited for the barista to make my drink, this guy to my back tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You know, I spent some time at sea.”

Usually I’d at least respond, maybe with a, “Really?” or some sort of acknowledgment. But this stuff always happens to me. People start talking to me about random stuff while I’m waiting on line. And I could see where this was going. He’d get into a crazy story about life on the high seas, I’d probably have a lot of questions, I’d wind up staying and talking to this guy a lot longer than I ever really wanted to.

So I looked at him and said, “Yeah man, well I lived on a boat for five years. A really small boat. It was just me and the ocean. Just me and this really tiny boat.”

And he looked at me and said, “OK man, way to make everything about you.”

I said, “Excuse me?”

“Yeah man, I hate it when people do that. When I start to tell a story, and someone else just has to butt in with their own story. You could have at least heard me out first.”

And now I was already putting milk into my coffee. I should have been gone, that should have been it. But here I was, still standing here. Obviously my attempt to pivot out of the conversation hadn’t worked out. But why should it have? I could have started talking about basketball. That would have been a nice pivot, something that didn’t have anything to do with the sea. But now I wasn’t even talking to this guy about the ocean or boats. I was getting scolded for poor conversation.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I just get really emotional when people start talking about the sea.”

“I hear you, brother.”

Jesus Christ I could not shake this guy. Now he was nodding in sympathy, patting me on the back, and what was with all of that brother business? I’m not this guy’s brother. I’ve never been on a boat for more than two hours at a time.

“Did you feel it?” he asked.

“Did I feel what?”

“When you were alone out there, did you feel it call out to you?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Sure you do. The ocean. The eternal sea. The abyss.”

“Listen, I think you have the wrong idea.”

“I don’t. Not many people know what we’ve been through, you and I. I know you felt it.”

This had to have been the worst conversation pivot in the history of small-talk. I felt like anything I threw at this guy, he caught it, turned it into something even weirder to say right back to me.

I tried to pivot toward the truth, “OK, look, I’ve never been out to sea. I just said that before. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know how to react when you told me you spent time at sea, and so I just made something up. I don’t know why I did it. It obviously wasn’t cool of me to lead you on like that. But I really have to go, OK? I just came in for a cup of coffee, and now I have to leave. So goodbye.”

And I started toward the door, but he just followed me. I didn’t want to exit now. I didn’t want him to find out what direction I was walking in, or where I lived. So I stopped.

He got uncomfortably close and said, “Now I know you still feel it.”

I took another step. He took the same step.

“Come on man,” I said, “I really have to go.”

“So go.”

“Are you going to leave me alone?”

“Just admit that you felt it.”

“What?”

“The sea. Tell me that you still feel it.”

“OK, fine, I still feel it.”

He just smiled.

And then I opened the door and started walking. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was following me maybe. That psycho. So I walked way out of the way, and then I got on the subway and took it two stops toward the city. And then I got out and took a cab back to my house.

Standing in line for coffee

Whenever I sit down to write a story, the only visual that ever comes to mind is that of me standing in line to get a cup of coffee. And I have so many of these stories. But I could have even more. Because, and I’m not exaggerating here, whenever I try to write, it’s like I’m always wrestling with this image of me standing in line at a Starbucks or a Dunkin Donuts or whatever.

Which is totally crazy, because even though I drink a ton of coffee, it’s not like I go out for coffee every day. Hardly, because that’s a cost that adds up. No, it’s much easier to make my own pot at home, to drink as much as I want throughout the course of the day, and then if I actually have to go somewhere, fine, then I can stop somewhere and wait in line for a cup.

But even then, even on the rare chance that I’m actually paying for a cup of coffee, they’re always the most straightforward experiences. They’re almost too straightforward. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything interesting to me happen while I’m waiting in line for coffee. If anything, it’s always so boring. I hate having to go out of my way to a coffee shop, and then waiting in line. And then even though my coffee order is so regular, every once in a while they’ll mess it up. Of course, I won’t notice until I’m like a block away, until the coffee has cooled down enough for me to take a sip.

But whatever, that’s not what this is about. It’s about how I’m stuck in this very nondescript situation. And I know there are other cooler things that I could imagine as the backdrops for my stories. And that’s cool, maybe I’ll get to some of them. But even if I do get to them, it’s only after I’ve considered and then dismissed the waiting in line for a coffee scenario. Because it’s always there.

And it’s always there first. And so, I don’t know, lately I’ve just been trying to go with it. It’s like I’m challenging my brain. Like, you really want this coffee shop? Fine, let’s do it. And then I write these increasingly bizarre stories that don’t even make any sense to me. And now I’m writing a blog post about how I can’t stop writing about coffee shops, and so I think I’m making a little too much out of this. So now feels like a good time for an abrupt ending. Yeah, I’m just going to go to sleep, and tomorrow I’ll write something non coffee related.

Free coffee day at Dunkin Donuts

I went to Dunkin Donuts, I went to the counter and told the guy, “Hey man, I missed free coffee day,” free coffee day was like a month ago, “I missed it, but I’m here, and I’m really sorry I’m so late. I don’t know what happened, it’s like, I was all about the free coffee, I kept making sure to remember to come in for the free coffee, and I don’t know what happened, I just totally forgot about it,” the guy behind the counter had a nametag that said “Jeff.” I said, “Hey, Jeff, do you think I could still get one of those free coffees? Please?” And I did one of those apologetic smiles, like come on, please?

And Jeff was like, “Come on, that was two weeks ago.”

“I know. I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t even bother asking, I know this is like super embarrassing. And it’s not even about not paying for the coffee. It’s just, I really … I was really looking forward to free coffee day. And it’s like, I’m in here all the time.”

“Well,” Jeff said, “Not all the time. Because free coffee day was two weeks ago. So you haven’t been here in two weeks.”

“OK, well these past two weeks have been kind of crazy …”

“You see that guy over in the corner?” I turned around and saw this old guy with a big bushy moustache reading a gigantic newspaper. He had the smallest cup of coffee I’ve ever seen placed at his table, like a paper cup, like I didn’t even know Dunkin had those tiny paper cups. “Hey Joe!” Jeff called out.

“What’s up?” the old man looked toward us.

“That’s Joe,” Jeff said to me. “He’s here every day, a regular.”

I didn’t know what point Jeff was trying to make here. “Listen Jeff,” I said, “I’m not trying to make this a thing about being like the number one customer. I come in here enough.”

“Do you?” Jeff said.

“Jeff, what did you call my name for?” Joe called over from his table in the corner.

I waited for Jeff to answer, but he didn’t break eye contact with me. So after an awkward half second, I said, “I think I come in enough.” Jeff didn’t look convinced, so I added, “And when I do come in, I always buy an extra large coffee with a turbo shot, and then I always get one or two donuts. That’s like six bucks. How much does Joe spend on that tiny coffee? And for real,” and I lowered my voice a little so Joe wouldn’t hear me, “how long does he sit there every day, just reading the paper? Is that the kind of customer you’re trying to please?”

Jeff looked at me, but didn’t say anything back. Maybe I was getting through to him.

“Hey Joe,” I called out this time.

The old man turned around and said, “Who are you?”

I said, “Were you here for free coffee day two weeks ago?”

“Of course I was here for free coffee day,” Joe replied, folding his huge newspaper down the front. “I always just get a small coffee,” he said. “But on free coffee day they give you a medium. It was too much coffee, so I didn’t want it to go to waste. I said to Jeff, I said, Jeff, just give me a small. But Jeff wouldn’t, he said a small was gonna cost me. But a medium was free. Go figure. So I took the medium. And it was just really … just really too much coffee. Who drinks that much coffee?”

I thought Joe’s testimony basically made my argument right there, but Jeff didn’t look pleased. Maybe I shouldn’t have had Joe undermine the company line. Maybe I should have just begged.

“Come on,” I tried again. “Please?”

But Jeff didn’t budge. I wanted to storm out, but I also really wanted some coffee, so I got my extra large with a turbo shot, my two donuts. After he gave me my drink, I thought he was maybe going to offer the next person in line a free coffee to spite me. But no, it was just, “Can I help you?”

On my way out the door, Joe was staring me down. He saw my extra large coffee and said, “Holy smokes, you kids drink way too much coffee. You know, before 1980, 1985, you never saw coffee cups that big. Never. And let me tell you …”

Usually I’m a nice guy with old people. Like, if they want to talk my ear off, I’ll give them two or three minutes of smiles and eye contact. But I was pissed off at not getting any free coffee, and so I just got out, I just gave Joe a polite nod, and I left.