I'd Like to Play Alone, Please

by Tom Segura

South America and specifically Peruvian culture is one of my favorites in the world. I am the person I am today because of my time there, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. I told my coach that my parents wouldn’t let me stay, and he asked me to do one thing while I was gone: gain weight. “Coach, I got you.” Boy, did I. Before I left, he handed me a large plastic tub of powder. On it, in marker, was written, “Protein & Carbs.” It looked like he’d made it at home, all of it. The powder, the jar, the writing. I left for Lima around 180 pounds. When I returned in August: 210. Yup. A sophomore in high school who looked thirty-five. Yes, he asked me to gain weight. For a two-and-a-half-month stretch he was probably thinking ten or fifteen pounds, not thirty. You could see it in my shoulders and chest, but you could definitely see some of that new weight in my belly too. You know how people in their thirties and forties sometimes say, “My metabolism just changed. I can’t eat how I used to.” That happened to me at fifteen. My first day at school I saw some jaws drop. That summer I was drinking two of his “homemade” shakes a day and not working out nearly as hard as I should have. I didn’t even realize I had gained too much weight until I saw the coach who had given me the powder. “Damn, son. How much did they feed you down there?” “Not much, Coach. Your shakes did the trick.” “You know you have to move and not just drink shakes, right?” Yeah. I was still fairly str...