Mike Sager's Blog - Posts Tagged "aging"
GO ASK SAGER: The Game Never Stops Calling, Even When Your Body Won't Answer
I’m parked in a folding chair in a dollhouse of a YWCA gym, sitting on the sideline, wearing my official NBA-logo socks. Voices rise and fall, sneakers squeak, a ball pounds the vintage hardwood floor—the familiar sounds mingle in the stuffy humid air with the smells of floor wax and ammonia and the rising stink of men past their athletic primes spilling vainglorious effort into headbands and knee wraps and reversible jerseys, a vital piece of equipment necessary to the orderly commerce of the Regular Game. Nobody wants a sweaty man boob in his face.
Out on the court, the action proceeds, five-on-five with a couple of subs, the usual Monday night suspects, a game that has been convened here for almost a decade.
A big guy with twinkletoes anchors the paint. You can tell he’s been working on his drop step; the hook is pretty eccentric. A white guy in orthopedic knee-high stockings makes a lot of shots—all of which have zero arc and barely clear the rim. There’s a dark, handsome guy; someone mentions later he’s a male model. He has a sweet release with perfect backspin, but his knees are wrapped like a mummy’s; running up and down the court, his Ultra Brite smile winks on and off like a neon sign, switching between pleasure and pain.
An Asian guy with a red mouthpiece chucks three-pointers. A mixed-race guy in low-tops works his handles, ping-ponging around the floor, dishing unselfishly to less mobile teammates. A skinny guy with jet-black hair plays point guard. He keeps stealing the ball for breakaway layups. Nobody tries to catch him.
I’m here because I’m visiting a friend. His name is Peter. He’s my age, 57—probably the oldest guy on the court. This is his regular game, one of two he attends religiously every week. Peter stands about six-foot-one and had some hops in his day, one of those lanky wing players—a Jewish kid from New York who still takes his game seriously. Right now he’s guarding Twinkletoes in the post. Peter’s irregular nimbus of longish white hair is flying every which way. His face is a mask of indignant determination; two plays ago he caught an elbow in the mouth. He’s already made a couple of blocks and a bunch of rebounds; a little later he’ll pull a nice up-fake for a put-back in heavy traffic and then hit a three. On his shin he’s sporting a pair of Band-Aids. Last Monday night a ball was headed out of bounds. It had to be saved because… he doesn’t remember why it had to be saved. Or what the score was. Or who was on his team. Or even what happened on the play, other than the fact that he barked his shin on a cabinet and shins tend to bleed profusely.
The ball was going out of bounds, for Chrissake. When you’re a player, you play.
Even when the little things become problematic.
Like lateral movement, stopping and starting, bending your knees, running up and down the court.…
***
Growing up, sports were my life. I was that boy who always had a ball in his hand. The glory of a perfect head fake was never more than a bike ride away. Absent others, I could amuse myself for hours at a time shooting baskets, practicing bicycle kicks or playing catch against a wall with my lacrosse stick. During the winter, my pal Boots Friedman and I would spend entire days playing one-on-one in my basement with a tennis ball and a piece of metal strapping we formed into a basket and screwed into the cinderblock wall.
As it happened, all that practicing paid off. Despite a 2.8 GPA in high school, I was invited to attend Emory University and to try out for the soccer team. I made varsity as a freshman, sat mostly on the bench for a year and then quit to pursue a more well-rounded agenda, which included a career as a writer.
But I continued to play sports; it couldn’t be any other way. Intramurals were my first taste of the spirit behind the Regular Game, where people make a special effort to come together for the love of playing and also for the personal glory, that sense of self you get from completing a perfect no-look assist, catching a high pass on the sidelines and keeping both feet in bounds, smacking a walk-off homer in a company softball game—those great little moments for the personal highlight reel.
Twenty or 30 years from now, nobody will remember.
Except you.
In the Regular Game, you’re always LeBron.
***
Peter takes a pass under the basket, gathers himself, fakes a shot on Twinkletoes and throws it back out to Knee-High Stockings on the perimeter. As it happens, I’ve been guesting at Peter’s regular games since we were both in our 20s; my favorite was the Tuesday night game in the tiny gymnasium at PS 6 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on 81st Street between Park and Madison. After playing, we’d always hit a diner, four to a booth. In high school and college, if you’re lucky, you make good friends and learn to appreciate the value of male company. Forever afterward, as life changes and contracts and becomes more work- and family-oriented, you feel the loss. On these nights of the regular game, I once again had fraternity—a primal need a man never outgrows.
Back then, a number of decades ago at Peter’s regular game, I was the guy on the perimeter, on the receiving end of one of Peter’s passes, thrown now as then with a good dose of hot sauce, the mark of a real player. I remember one night in particular. I was new to the mix. I’d spent the whole night passing. Now the game was on the line, and I had the ball. I feigned the shot (my trademark head fake), shook the defender, drove for the basket… and surprised everyone with a perfect running hook shot that floated above the outstretched fingers of the big guy in the middle. It wasn’t a conventional choice of shot—more of an old-school move, something I learned from my father in the driveway, perfected during my long hours of one-on-none. I can still remember my teammates’ hoots of ironic appreciation—a fucking running hook! Game over.
On this night, Knee-High Stockings is too eager to shoot. He forgets to catch first; the ball slips through his fingertips and bounces out of bounds, right to me, sitting on a folding chair, watching the action in my NBA-logo socks.
For a moment, I’m that boy again.
Standing on the sidelines at the high school court watching the big guys bang, wanting so dearly to touch the ball, to be asked to play.
But instead, I’m this older guy with a bunch of injuries, most of which are related to sports. About a year ago, a neurosurgeon told me, “You’re one face-plant away from paralysis.” I’m sure he was being glib. You know how some of these surgeons are. Look at me. I’m upright. So what if I can’t turn my head very well, much less head fake. I have my reel of personal highlights to remember. And nearly every day I walk four miles in the steep hills around my house. Or sometimes I walk the boardwalk. There are lots of college girls around here who like to run in the afternoon.
I just have to make sure I don’t get distracted and trip.
Mike Sager's new novel, High Tolerance, A Novel of Sex, Race, Celebrity, Murder...and Marijuana is available now on Amazon.
This article was originally published on Playboy for iPhone. For more exclusive content and the best articles from the latest issue of Playboy, download the app in the iTunes Store.
Out on the court, the action proceeds, five-on-five with a couple of subs, the usual Monday night suspects, a game that has been convened here for almost a decade.
A big guy with twinkletoes anchors the paint. You can tell he’s been working on his drop step; the hook is pretty eccentric. A white guy in orthopedic knee-high stockings makes a lot of shots—all of which have zero arc and barely clear the rim. There’s a dark, handsome guy; someone mentions later he’s a male model. He has a sweet release with perfect backspin, but his knees are wrapped like a mummy’s; running up and down the court, his Ultra Brite smile winks on and off like a neon sign, switching between pleasure and pain.
An Asian guy with a red mouthpiece chucks three-pointers. A mixed-race guy in low-tops works his handles, ping-ponging around the floor, dishing unselfishly to less mobile teammates. A skinny guy with jet-black hair plays point guard. He keeps stealing the ball for breakaway layups. Nobody tries to catch him.
I’m here because I’m visiting a friend. His name is Peter. He’s my age, 57—probably the oldest guy on the court. This is his regular game, one of two he attends religiously every week. Peter stands about six-foot-one and had some hops in his day, one of those lanky wing players—a Jewish kid from New York who still takes his game seriously. Right now he’s guarding Twinkletoes in the post. Peter’s irregular nimbus of longish white hair is flying every which way. His face is a mask of indignant determination; two plays ago he caught an elbow in the mouth. He’s already made a couple of blocks and a bunch of rebounds; a little later he’ll pull a nice up-fake for a put-back in heavy traffic and then hit a three. On his shin he’s sporting a pair of Band-Aids. Last Monday night a ball was headed out of bounds. It had to be saved because… he doesn’t remember why it had to be saved. Or what the score was. Or who was on his team. Or even what happened on the play, other than the fact that he barked his shin on a cabinet and shins tend to bleed profusely.
The ball was going out of bounds, for Chrissake. When you’re a player, you play.
Even when the little things become problematic.
Like lateral movement, stopping and starting, bending your knees, running up and down the court.…
***
Growing up, sports were my life. I was that boy who always had a ball in his hand. The glory of a perfect head fake was never more than a bike ride away. Absent others, I could amuse myself for hours at a time shooting baskets, practicing bicycle kicks or playing catch against a wall with my lacrosse stick. During the winter, my pal Boots Friedman and I would spend entire days playing one-on-one in my basement with a tennis ball and a piece of metal strapping we formed into a basket and screwed into the cinderblock wall.
As it happened, all that practicing paid off. Despite a 2.8 GPA in high school, I was invited to attend Emory University and to try out for the soccer team. I made varsity as a freshman, sat mostly on the bench for a year and then quit to pursue a more well-rounded agenda, which included a career as a writer.
But I continued to play sports; it couldn’t be any other way. Intramurals were my first taste of the spirit behind the Regular Game, where people make a special effort to come together for the love of playing and also for the personal glory, that sense of self you get from completing a perfect no-look assist, catching a high pass on the sidelines and keeping both feet in bounds, smacking a walk-off homer in a company softball game—those great little moments for the personal highlight reel.
Twenty or 30 years from now, nobody will remember.
Except you.
In the Regular Game, you’re always LeBron.
***
Peter takes a pass under the basket, gathers himself, fakes a shot on Twinkletoes and throws it back out to Knee-High Stockings on the perimeter. As it happens, I’ve been guesting at Peter’s regular games since we were both in our 20s; my favorite was the Tuesday night game in the tiny gymnasium at PS 6 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on 81st Street between Park and Madison. After playing, we’d always hit a diner, four to a booth. In high school and college, if you’re lucky, you make good friends and learn to appreciate the value of male company. Forever afterward, as life changes and contracts and becomes more work- and family-oriented, you feel the loss. On these nights of the regular game, I once again had fraternity—a primal need a man never outgrows.
Back then, a number of decades ago at Peter’s regular game, I was the guy on the perimeter, on the receiving end of one of Peter’s passes, thrown now as then with a good dose of hot sauce, the mark of a real player. I remember one night in particular. I was new to the mix. I’d spent the whole night passing. Now the game was on the line, and I had the ball. I feigned the shot (my trademark head fake), shook the defender, drove for the basket… and surprised everyone with a perfect running hook shot that floated above the outstretched fingers of the big guy in the middle. It wasn’t a conventional choice of shot—more of an old-school move, something I learned from my father in the driveway, perfected during my long hours of one-on-none. I can still remember my teammates’ hoots of ironic appreciation—a fucking running hook! Game over.
On this night, Knee-High Stockings is too eager to shoot. He forgets to catch first; the ball slips through his fingertips and bounces out of bounds, right to me, sitting on a folding chair, watching the action in my NBA-logo socks.
For a moment, I’m that boy again.
Standing on the sidelines at the high school court watching the big guys bang, wanting so dearly to touch the ball, to be asked to play.
But instead, I’m this older guy with a bunch of injuries, most of which are related to sports. About a year ago, a neurosurgeon told me, “You’re one face-plant away from paralysis.” I’m sure he was being glib. You know how some of these surgeons are. Look at me. I’m upright. So what if I can’t turn my head very well, much less head fake. I have my reel of personal highlights to remember. And nearly every day I walk four miles in the steep hills around my house. Or sometimes I walk the boardwalk. There are lots of college girls around here who like to run in the afternoon.
I just have to make sure I don’t get distracted and trip.
Mike Sager's new novel, High Tolerance, A Novel of Sex, Race, Celebrity, Murder...and Marijuana is available now on Amazon.
This article was originally published on Playboy for iPhone. For more exclusive content and the best articles from the latest issue of Playboy, download the app in the iTunes Store.
ON THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
You get to a certain age, you wake up to piss. For me it's around five in the morning.
Of the various changes you go through as the years pass, this one's not so bad—at least for now. In the pre-dawn stillness I can hear the crash of the distant waves. Sometimes through the window I'll see the bright moon hanging in the leavening dark, a time known in Spanish as la madrugada, the early hours before twilight and the rooster crow.
I move toward the bathroom in a state of ethereal half-sleep and do my business. After 57 years on earth, I have no need to see my penis in order to find it. And since I live alone, I don't even have to raise or lower the seat.
Returning to bed, I always note the time on the alarm clock. Generally, life still owes me another 90 minutes of sleep before my self-imposed wake-up call, which actually seems pretty satisfying. These little wakeups used to annoy me, another irrefutable physical sign—like back hair and arthritis—of my inevitable decline. Now I think of it more in terms of having a little nap to start the day. It shows, I think, how much attitude matters.
Sometime over the past few years, this pleasant and necessary ritual of my middle years became corrupted by the appearance of a random stubborn noise.
I'd be standing there mid-stream with my eyes half-shut when all of a sudden I'd hear it: Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
A rhythmic sound. Periodically uniform. Five or six knocks in a row. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And then nothing for an imprecise span of time. And then again. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
If the house was very quiet, I'd occasionally hear it during the day. For long stretches I didn't hear it at all. But it always returned, most often at night, the noise seemingly localized in the wall and ceiling adjoining my bathroom commode. Eventually, I discovered the tapping also could be heard in the reciprocal bathroom on the other side of the wall. It sounded as if the wind was causing something to sway, perhaps a copper pipe, which in turn was knocking against something wooden. From the nature of the sound, the rhythm of the knocks, it seemed as if (I intuited?) this pipe was acting in the same fashion as a clapper in a bell. I imagined a pipe somewhere that wasn't strapped down properly, pushed by the wind, slapping a 2x4.
At some point, I engaged a plumber, but the sound wasn't in evidence that day—of course.
"Maybe you have a ghost?" the plumber joked, taking my credit card.
The way he looked at me, I could tell he was thinking more along the lines of bats in the belfry.
Nights turned into weeks. Months into years. Despite my regular use of saw palmetto [www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/... helps to keep the prostate pliable and is used by some topically as a cure for baldness—I continued to rise in the early morning hours to take my piss.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The longer the knocks persisted, the more annoyed I became. My lovely little sojourn through the dark and quiet oasis of la madrugada had been ruined.
Instead of beholding the hypnotic beauty of the full moon I began to entertain a recurring psycho fantasy: I'm bashing holes in the wall, hunting down the fucking tapping noise once and for all.
As long as I'm being so intimate about my plumbing, let me confess that the shower in the reciprocal bathroom, the only other shower in the house, has never worked properly. It became clear many years ago that the tile wall had to be removed and the guts replaced. If you're a homeowner, you know how these things go—I knew if I started, I'd end up remodeling the entire room. Where I live, a modest bathroom renovation comes in at about five figures. As a result, my son has shared the shower in my master bath for his entire life. Which was fine. I've never much encouraged overnighters anyway. So sorry, the shower in the guest bath is broken.
Now my son is a freshman in college. Since Thanksgiving he's been talking about his first Spring Break, that great rite of college he's been watching for so many years on MTV. Breasts and booze and parties, oh my. Something epic was in the offing.
By New Year's Eve, he had a plan for himself and his friends—at last count a total of five artsy kids with tats, piercings and various hair colorings, in addition to his best friend from high school and his visiting girlfriend, respectively an offensive left tackle and a varsity basketball player.
Their destination: sunny San Diego.
And more particularly, our house.
I called the contractor. In one day, the old bathroom was in my driveway.
Inside, the guest bath was reduced to studs and concrete.
And there was a new sound—like a file rasping against metal bars.
Nobody had any trouble hearing it, either.
Night and day, it continued nonstop.
Rasp, rasp, rasp, rasp, rasp.
They re-plumbed the shower, patched the drywall, laid new tile. I wrote a bunch of checks and charged a bunch of stuff at the hardware store.
The rasping disappeared.
But the tapping came back.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Louder and stronger than ever.
And constant. Unrelenting. 24/7.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The contractor took pity on me. We grabbed a ladder and I climbed to the roof. I crawled around one side of the attic; he stuck his head up through another side. Nothing. The only place you could hear the noise was in the two bathrooms, in the walls and ceilings adjoining the commodes and the new shower—the place we'd completely stripped and rebuilt. We'd had the walls and ceiling open, fer chrissake. There was nothing to find.
On the last day of construction, the plumber came back to hook up the new sink. The boss came along. As the plumber was working, the boss, contractor and I walked around the house again, rehashing the peculiar history of my egregious phantom tapping.
As we were listening in my bathroom, throwing theories against the wall, the tapping sound suddenly stopped.
The kids are due this weekend. I haven't heard any more tapping, though I admit I'm kind of waiting for it. The boss plumber says it was probably due to a build-up of water pressure. But even a guy like me, whose toolbox consists mainly of string, tape, glue and a checkbook, knows that the set of variables doesn't fit his conclusion.
In the meantime, I've regained the pleasure of my lovely little sojourn through the dark and quiet oasis of la madrugada. The other night the Pacific sky was especially clear. There were a zillion stars.
The winter crescent moon was beacon-bright. It resembled a smile.
To read more by Mike Sager and The Sager Group, please see www.MikeSager.com or www.TheSagerGroup.net.
Of the various changes you go through as the years pass, this one's not so bad—at least for now. In the pre-dawn stillness I can hear the crash of the distant waves. Sometimes through the window I'll see the bright moon hanging in the leavening dark, a time known in Spanish as la madrugada, the early hours before twilight and the rooster crow.
I move toward the bathroom in a state of ethereal half-sleep and do my business. After 57 years on earth, I have no need to see my penis in order to find it. And since I live alone, I don't even have to raise or lower the seat.
Returning to bed, I always note the time on the alarm clock. Generally, life still owes me another 90 minutes of sleep before my self-imposed wake-up call, which actually seems pretty satisfying. These little wakeups used to annoy me, another irrefutable physical sign—like back hair and arthritis—of my inevitable decline. Now I think of it more in terms of having a little nap to start the day. It shows, I think, how much attitude matters.
Sometime over the past few years, this pleasant and necessary ritual of my middle years became corrupted by the appearance of a random stubborn noise.
I'd be standing there mid-stream with my eyes half-shut when all of a sudden I'd hear it: Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
A rhythmic sound. Periodically uniform. Five or six knocks in a row. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And then nothing for an imprecise span of time. And then again. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
If the house was very quiet, I'd occasionally hear it during the day. For long stretches I didn't hear it at all. But it always returned, most often at night, the noise seemingly localized in the wall and ceiling adjoining my bathroom commode. Eventually, I discovered the tapping also could be heard in the reciprocal bathroom on the other side of the wall. It sounded as if the wind was causing something to sway, perhaps a copper pipe, which in turn was knocking against something wooden. From the nature of the sound, the rhythm of the knocks, it seemed as if (I intuited?) this pipe was acting in the same fashion as a clapper in a bell. I imagined a pipe somewhere that wasn't strapped down properly, pushed by the wind, slapping a 2x4.
At some point, I engaged a plumber, but the sound wasn't in evidence that day—of course.
"Maybe you have a ghost?" the plumber joked, taking my credit card.
The way he looked at me, I could tell he was thinking more along the lines of bats in the belfry.
Nights turned into weeks. Months into years. Despite my regular use of saw palmetto [www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/... helps to keep the prostate pliable and is used by some topically as a cure for baldness—I continued to rise in the early morning hours to take my piss.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The longer the knocks persisted, the more annoyed I became. My lovely little sojourn through the dark and quiet oasis of la madrugada had been ruined.
Instead of beholding the hypnotic beauty of the full moon I began to entertain a recurring psycho fantasy: I'm bashing holes in the wall, hunting down the fucking tapping noise once and for all.
As long as I'm being so intimate about my plumbing, let me confess that the shower in the reciprocal bathroom, the only other shower in the house, has never worked properly. It became clear many years ago that the tile wall had to be removed and the guts replaced. If you're a homeowner, you know how these things go—I knew if I started, I'd end up remodeling the entire room. Where I live, a modest bathroom renovation comes in at about five figures. As a result, my son has shared the shower in my master bath for his entire life. Which was fine. I've never much encouraged overnighters anyway. So sorry, the shower in the guest bath is broken.
Now my son is a freshman in college. Since Thanksgiving he's been talking about his first Spring Break, that great rite of college he's been watching for so many years on MTV. Breasts and booze and parties, oh my. Something epic was in the offing.
By New Year's Eve, he had a plan for himself and his friends—at last count a total of five artsy kids with tats, piercings and various hair colorings, in addition to his best friend from high school and his visiting girlfriend, respectively an offensive left tackle and a varsity basketball player.
Their destination: sunny San Diego.
And more particularly, our house.
I called the contractor. In one day, the old bathroom was in my driveway.
Inside, the guest bath was reduced to studs and concrete.
And there was a new sound—like a file rasping against metal bars.
Nobody had any trouble hearing it, either.
Night and day, it continued nonstop.
Rasp, rasp, rasp, rasp, rasp.
They re-plumbed the shower, patched the drywall, laid new tile. I wrote a bunch of checks and charged a bunch of stuff at the hardware store.
The rasping disappeared.
But the tapping came back.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Louder and stronger than ever.
And constant. Unrelenting. 24/7.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The contractor took pity on me. We grabbed a ladder and I climbed to the roof. I crawled around one side of the attic; he stuck his head up through another side. Nothing. The only place you could hear the noise was in the two bathrooms, in the walls and ceilings adjoining the commodes and the new shower—the place we'd completely stripped and rebuilt. We'd had the walls and ceiling open, fer chrissake. There was nothing to find.
On the last day of construction, the plumber came back to hook up the new sink. The boss came along. As the plumber was working, the boss, contractor and I walked around the house again, rehashing the peculiar history of my egregious phantom tapping.
As we were listening in my bathroom, throwing theories against the wall, the tapping sound suddenly stopped.
The kids are due this weekend. I haven't heard any more tapping, though I admit I'm kind of waiting for it. The boss plumber says it was probably due to a build-up of water pressure. But even a guy like me, whose toolbox consists mainly of string, tape, glue and a checkbook, knows that the set of variables doesn't fit his conclusion.
In the meantime, I've regained the pleasure of my lovely little sojourn through the dark and quiet oasis of la madrugada. The other night the Pacific sky was especially clear. There were a zillion stars.
The winter crescent moon was beacon-bright. It resembled a smile.
To read more by Mike Sager and The Sager Group, please see www.MikeSager.com or www.TheSagerGroup.net.
