If Rock and Roll Were a Machine (16 page)

Bert did.

“Feel how it fits your hand?”

The handle was thin. Really thin. Bert's small hand felt big around it. He nodded.

EKTELON
, the brand, was written on the frame near the handle, and
QUANTUS
, the model, was written next to it. Bert smiled. It made him think of the Australian airline and their koala bear mascot. A furry little koala munching eucalyptus was an
appropriate symbol for Bert Bowden to carry into competition.

“The handle on that Head you destroyed was too thick,” Scotty said. “You'll never develop any accuracy, and you'll never get any smoke on the ball, if you can't control your racquet. Use Rita's until you get your own.”

Bert turned to Rita. “What will you use?” he asked.

“I'm just a banger,” Rita replied. “It doesn't matter what I use.”

“Rita's major strength on the court is body checking,” Scotty said. “Body checking and high sticking.”

Scotty and Rita both laughed. Their faces were bright.

Rita had walked to Bert, and now she looked down at him. “Sometimes Scott and I go full contact,” she said.

Rita placed the heel of her hand against Bert's forehead and pulled the tape with her thumb and index finger. Bert felt the tape and bandage lift. “You're going to have a scar, Bert,” she said. “Can your folks afford cosmetic surgery?”

“I want the scar,” Bert said. “I figure a scar might kind of ease me into a tattoo.”

“What's your plan after self-mutilation?” Scotty said. “A stretch in the state pen?”

“Satanism, maybe,” Bert replied. “Maybe heavy metal. I don't know yet. Maybe aerobics.”

Scotty and Rita laughed. Rita sealed the tape with her thumb.

“I bashed my own head,” Bert said. “I'm a psycho.”

Rita moved her fingers into
Bert's hair. “You're not a psycho, baby,” she said. “A psycho bashes someone else's head.”

*  *  *

Bert spent his Saturday night whacking away at that little blue ball. He practiced the only two serves he had, a drive and a lob. He hit the ball, then turned and watched it. When the ball crossed the receiving line Bert hustled back to midcourt and set up. He worked that one move again and again. He served, turned, watched the ball cross the line, relocated at midcourt, watched his imaginary opponent set up various returns.

When Bert began to feel like he'd go nuts if he hit one more serve, he hit forehands until he couldn't stand it, then he hit backhands. He was trying to create a fluid motion.

But fluid motion refused to be created. Maybe two of ten forehands felt right, and no backhands. Not a single backhand in ten minutes of hitting felt smooth. It was pathetic.

*  *  *

Bert lost his match on Wednesday. He won one of the games, though, and scored ten and twelve points in the other two. His court position allowed him plenty of good shots, but even with the right racquet he still wasn't accurate enough to put them away. The other guy wasn't good, but he was better than Bert.

Bert felt okay about it. He hadn't given in to any of his urges to scream, smash his
racquet, quit, and go home. It was true that he'd uttered a few nasties under his breath, and it was also true that he was playing with Rita's racquet, which he was not about to break on purpose. Still, he had exercised a degree of self-control.

*  *  *

Thursday evening, before team racquetball, Scotty worked Bert on stroke. Forehand and backhand. “Like you're hitting a baseball” was the phrase Scotty repeated. “Set up solid, stride into the ball, watch your racquet meet it and then,
then
bring your head up. Swing through it in a smooth stroke. The power starts in your shoulder, builds on the downstroke and tops out in the wrist snap. The power needs to exhaust itself, and it does that in the follow-through.

“Meet the ball a little in front of your forward hip,” he said. “Don't let the ball get into you. That's what restricts your swing. Forehand, backhand, it doesn't matter. Think of yourself as a switch-hitter, and work to develop a smooth swing from both sides.”

Bert's forehands weren't too bad. He thought he had the feel of it. But his backhands were a disaster. He felt like his mind was trying to hit the ball with someone else's body. Scotty said it would come. “One thing in the world you can count on, Bert,” he said, “is that practice makes you better. And it makes you better a hell of a lot faster when you're young.

“But a guy's got to have patience,” Scotty said. “And patience is tough, especially
when you're young.”

Patience, Bert thought. Where have I heard that before?

Scotty stepped closer to the back wall. The leather in his knee braces creaked. He bounced the ball into the corner, then unloaded a backhand. It shot to the front as straight and fast as if he'd faxed it there.

“A guy can get his patience to come a little easier if he reminds himself that his practice will pay off,” Scotty said. “It ain't like faith, because this ain't magic. This is plain old cause and effect.”

*  *  *

A week later Bert won a match. He lost the third game, but he won the match. It was wild. And it was fun.

Bert had scheduled the match late so Scotty could watch. Steve, who knew Bert's opponent from the weight room, came too.

Three things about the match were amazing to Bert. First: Position
was
an advantage. A huge percentage of the guy's returns came back through that spot at midcourt. And when they didn't, Bert was still able to reach a lot of them by taking that one long cross-step Scotty taught him. Second: Strategy could help him beat a better athlete. After the match the guy told Bert he played football for Whitworth College.

The third thing that amazed Bert was the most important. It was, in fact, one of those life-changing realizations: There were times during the match when Bert was concentrating so hard on
staying home
, on getting back home to that midcourt position and watching his opponent's return, that he forgot Scotty and Steve were watching him. Between points he'd raise his eyes to see if they were still there, and he'd try to read their faces. And sometimes when the speed of the ball slowed, his concentration would lag and self-consciousness would leak into his mind and his only concern would be what Scotty and Steve thought of his play.

But when the game was hot and the ball was steaming, Bert's mind and body were locked into that singular pursuit. If he could keep doing that, and if he kept on learning so he had more knowledge in his head to concentrate on, then maybe he could plug those leaks where self-consciousness seeped in like silt. And maybe then all the potential in him—however much that was—would finally have a chance to flow out through a clear channel.
People who have the guts make it happen
, Scotty had said. Maybe Bert could find the guts, and maybe he could make it happen.

*  *  *

Bert's humility made it easy for him to apprentice himself to Scott Shepard. It was an old-fashioned relationship and it required this old-fashioned quality of character. Bert saw Scotty as a master craftsman. Scotty had knowledge Bert wanted, and Bert was willing to do what Scotty told him to gain that knowledge. He knew Scotty wouldn't hurt him or humiliate him, so he just gave himself up.

This did not mean, however, that
Bert was thrilled to be doing aerobics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at five-thirty with the hardbodies. Scotty told him he needed conditioning and strength-training. He said aerobics was the best conditioning he knew, and for the strength-training he advised a circuit on the weight machines. In a tournament, Scotty said, you might play three matches a day. And if you also played doubles, it could be five. If a guy wanted to be competitive, he had to be in shape.

Scotty, Steve, and Bert had been sitting in the club's hot tub when Scotty issued this advice. Usually the tub was full of people, but the guys were alone this night, and Steve had taken these moments of privacy to add his counsel to his brother's.

“Aerobics is tough, Bootsie,” Steve said. “It's tough—not to mention potentially embarrassing and even dangerous—doing these routines with a boner. Few things in this life are a bigger turn-on than sweaty women in skimpy outfits. Add the Dionysian frenzy that rock and roll produces, give a number of these women the muscle tone of a Rottweiler, and you're talking about a lethal jolt to the gonads. This is not to mention the damage the unfulfilled fantasies can do to your psyche. Particularly for a guy in his sexual prime such as yourself.”

Bert had looked at Steve through the mist. Steve thought this was funny. But it was not funny to Bert.

“My advice?” Steve said. “My advice is to pay the women no mind. If circumstances
force you to notice them—say you happen to open your eyes during the hour—just think of them as other athletes getting their work done. After all, that's what they are.”

Steve's counsel had been wise, but it didn't help much at first. The aerobics women were athletes, all right, and most of them were better athletes than Bert. Still, it was difficult integrating the beauty of breasts into this concept. The breasts didn't have to be big or firm or clearly demarcated; even a smooth curve resisting the inertia of a floppy sweatshirt could do it. If Bert's eyes locked on to breasts, his clapping would stray off the beat, he'd lose the count, he'd stumble out of step.

The distraction was so intense in those first couple of weeks of aerobics that Bert would grab his towel and wipe his face, hoping to suggest that sweat had dripped into his eyes, then he'd drape the towel over his head and tuck it into the collar of his shirt to form a hood. He would restrict his vision in this way, and he would face forward where the only thing he'd see was the back of the woman in the next row. This worked until the routine changed and that woman bent over. Bert would close his eyes before his vision fused with that tiny string of fabric running between the woman's legs.

Bert's thoughts of sex became so obsessive that he was losing sleep. He would scan the cable guide for movies rated N for nudity and SC for sexual content, and particularly for those rated N, SC, then he'd stay up till three
A.M.
watching. Bert was literally paralyzed by some of the scenes. Paralyzed except for
his hand. He canceled the movie channel while he still had the willpower.

Bert thought of women's breasts as the most beautiful creation in nature. Heavy breasts, smaller breasts hard like apples, breasts that perked up like the faces of playful animals, breasts that sloped like slings full of milk, breasts so slight, they seemed only an outline of themselves and a nipple. They were all beautiful to Bert. There were times when he wanted more than all the other things he wanted in his life just to kiss a woman's breasts.

Steve's advice only began to take hold after Bert started watching how Steve and Scotty treated the women at the club. They not only didn't ogle the women like a lot of the guys, they didn't even acknowledge any difference in them. They looked a woman in the face and said, “How ya doin'?” Their expression was the same whether the woman wore her string leotard or her ski parka, whether she was young or old, attractive or not.

When Bert started acting toward the women the way Steve and Scotty did, he began to feel more at ease in aerobics. If he looked at the women, it was their faces he focused on. If they smiled, Bert smiled back and said, “How ya doin'?” If they didn't, he smiled anyway and went to work.

In addition to his suggestion about aerobics and strength-training, Scotty had also advised Bert to watch certain players. Every time these men and women played they gave a racquetball lesson. Maybe the subject would be court strategy, maybe variety
of serves, maybe stroke, maybe superiority with a particular shot, maybe an ability to maintain concentration, maybe grace in competition. Every good player gave lessons, and all you had to do to get one, Scotty said, was check the court reservations to find out when they were playing.

Gary Lawler wasn't among the players Scotty told Bert to watch, but Bert kept an eye on the reservation calendar for Lawler's name, anyway, and he checked his scores in the standings.

Lawler's scores were highest in B league. He was a decent player, but in all the times Bert watched the guy he'd never seen him up against anybody who could really play. One guy had a good drive serve, another was fairly accurate, another really smoked the ball, another had speed and endurance, but none of them did more than one or two things well.

Lawler was quick, and he cheated way up past the serving box. He got to a lot of balls, and he put them away with a pinch shot that was so accurate, it pissed you off even when you weren't down there getting beat by it.

Bert knew it was easy to stand up at the rail and see what was wrong with another guy's game. It was easy to get it right in your head. But it was real hard to get it right when you were down there on the court.

*  *  *

At the end of February, Lawler was still on top in B. Bert had won five straight and moved up to the middle of C. He was feeling strong
and wasn't fading in third games.

Bert didn't think he was playing well, though. He'd begun winning just on his knowledge of the game, and this had begun to feel like cheating. Few of the guys in C cared how the game was played. Most of them were working men who wanted to sweat and bang out their frustrations on that blue ball. They played once, twice a week, and they never practiced. Bert played Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday night, and Sunday, and he practiced after aerobics on the other days.

Bert was afraid that the skills of the game were coming too slowly. He told himself to be patient, but that was another thing more easily conceived than enacted.

Bert was suffering a mild case of despair as he and Scotty sat in the hot tub for their Thursday night critique. Earlier Bert had played his best match since league started against the best player he'd faced. He lost the first game 11–15, then won the last two 15–13 and 15–9. Scotty had arrived for game three.