The Basketball Game – Chapter 15
Winter 1993 – Age 20

I woke up at noon on a Monday. This week was like each preceding one. There was nothing to look forward to. I planned to skip classes again, like every week. I’d spent the weekend hidden in my room crying and feeling sorry for myself, nourished only by a Shoney’s strawberry pie. I pulled myself out of bed, showered, dressed, and made my way outside into the chilly winter afternoon. The wind was so strong I had to go back in and grab a heavier coat.

Then I saw him. It was the guy from the day before who had offered to share his pot with me. He was sitting in his car at the curb by the fraternity house. He waved to me to come over.

“Hey,” he said, “I’ve got something to show you.” He fumbled in the backseat and pulled out a bag of marijuana. I tried to look blasé, as though I’d seen pot before, but the truth was, I’d never seen marijuana up close.

“You excited about tonight?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Good. It’ll be cool. See you later.”

I wandered over to the couch next to the basketball court near the fraternity house. I should have been in economics class, but I didn’t want to go. I’d been to that class only once in the past three weeks. I was afraid the instructor would notice my absence – or, in this case, my presence. Instead, I sat bundled up on the couch. I had nowhere to go and didn’t care.

A group of fraternity brothers came out of the house with a basketball and began to shoot baskets. It was a chilly day for a game, nearly 50 degrees, but at TEP the weather was always good enough for a game of 3-on-3. I envied their stamina and grace and remembered sadly how it felt to aim a jump shot and have perfect confidence that the ball would cleanly swish through the net.

“Ouch! I’m out!” someone yelled and interrupted my reminiscence as he limped off the court.

“Hey Andy,” one of my pledge brothers said, “play.” It was part request, part command.

No way, I thought. Do you guys want to lose? But I thought I might have a little game left in me, and what did it matter? O.K., I said.

I slipped out of my jacket and began to play. I was almost instantly exhausted. I kept coughing and wheezing and couldn’t catch my breath. I was spitting up chunks of green phlegm. My shirt was soaked in sweat. The game seemed to last for hours. The wind was pushing me around like a rag doll. Finally our team got the ball. It was mine. I shot it. It was an airball. I used to have what some of my fraternity brothers admiringly called “the shot” because it was so accurate. That was gone.

Toward the end of the game, I took breaks at every possession change and was heaving up enough mucus for a whole sick ward. Imagine how much worse it would have been if it was a summer day in Athens where temperatures reach the 100-degree mark regularly. I was minutes from quitting when Brad* (denotes that some names were changed to protect those individuals’ privacy), one of the fraternity’s best players, crouched for a jump shot. I tried to block him. The next thing I felt was a blow that sent me to the ground like a pin in a bowling alley. I didn’t know what hit me. I realized I’d been plowed over by a 200-pound muscular player named Brett who was built like a wall. Between coughing spasms, I looked up from the ground to see Brett grinning maliciously.

His beefy hands encircled my skinny bicep and he lifted me off the ground. I had no power to resist him or even to help myself up. I was like a marionette without strings, a limp version of myself.

“Entering any weightlifting contests anytime soon?” Brett said with a sarcastic laugh. Everyone laughed with him. They were laughing at me, as usual. His jab took another cut into what little ego I had left. I was hurt, again. And I was angry. What right did he have to mock me like that?

I shockingly realized that Brett had every right. I was a loser who deserved to be scorned. It wasn’t because of CF, though. I was a loser because CF was my excuse for everything that sucked in my life, from my lack of friends and a girlfriend to my bad grades and even worse attitude. By telling myself that I was a failure because of CF, I made myself into one.

I finished that basketball game. It hurt terribly. I gasped for breath with every shot and my throat and chest felt raw from my incessant coughing. My team lost. I was the reason they lost. Everyone headed inside to shower and eat dinner, but I stayed out on the deserted court. The temperature got colder, but I didn’t realize how blistery the winds were anymore. I could only reminisce. I remembered other games I’d played there and how my fraternity brothers vied to have me on their team. I remembered when they didn’t want to guard me because I was such an accurate shooter. Now, they didn’t want to guard me because there was no challenge in it. I was hardly an athlete and even less of a person. I was a sick kid with CF.

What had happened to me in the last eight months? How had I faded from the cool and athletic “Flip” to someone so self-hating and timid, so pitiful and despairing? I’d always had a steady stream of friends calling to invite me out or stopping by to talk. I’d chased them all away and retreated further into myself, seeking their pity. Was I any happier? No. Had I made my peace with CF? Not really. What was I doing? Where was I going?

I turned these thoughts over for so long that the afternoon faded to evening and the lights in the fraternity house and the houses across the street began to pop on. Finally, I pulled myself up from the sofa and slowly walked inside. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

Inside my room, all the rage I’d been feeling for months welled up inside of me. “Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!” I screamed. “What the hell have I done to myself?” I was so enraged that I ripped off my shirt. “I hate myself! I hate myself!” But then I said something that I hadn’t said before or even thought in all those months. I don’t know where it came from. It just sort of erupted from within.

“I’m going to change! I mean it! I’m going to change!” The words startled me. How would I change? I looked at myself in the mirror. A pale, nearly gaunt face with red-rimmed eyes and a sad mouth stared back at me. I knew my face so well, yet this seemed like a stranger’s. I examined myself as though I was strange. Who was this person? I felt a rush of compassion and an urge to help him. Not pity him, but help him out of the hole he’d fallen into. No more feeling sorry for myself, I vowed, and the face in the mirror nodded solemnly. No more skipping therapy. No more skipping pills. No more skipping meals or classes. No more …

There was a knock at the door. I opened it and there was the guy who’d showed me the bag of pot that morning.

“Ready?” he said, grinning.

I was ready, but not for that. It would have been so easy though, to try it just once to escape, even temporarily, from what I knew would be a grueling battle back. I wasn’t sure I could do it. Was it even worth attempting? I remembered Brett’s sneer and the whispers of “Is he gay?” and the look of horror on the girl’s face when she saw me doing my therapy. I remembered the face in the mirror, looking and waiting for – for this?

“Never mind,” I told him. “You go ahead, O.K.? I can’t risk hurting myself.”

His face fell.

“O.K.,” he said with a shrug.

This was the first challenge to my new resolve. I’d mastered it. Now, I had to take the next step. I had to make some drastic changes. I grabbed a notebook and a pen and settled down on the sofa. I wanted to make a list: “Ways to improve myself.” What did I want? I wanted to play basketball again. And I wanted to play it well. I wanted to have the energy to walk to my classes again. I wanted to attend my classes and bring home a report card I’d be proud to show my parents. I wanted friends and a girlfriend. I looked at my watch. I didn’t really notice what time it was because time was irrelevant. The time was now.

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