Finally we find a court free of teenagers and we stand, unsure of ourselves, seven years between us. Then the ball hits the blacktop, and we are snapped back into our loose-fitting lives.
Basketball may lack the storied history of baseball or the bone-crunching majesty of football but it IS the great American sport and this is why: if you pay attention to movies or Saturday morning cartoons, you’d learn that American boys naturally group themselves into circles of five: the leader, the sidekick, the smart guy, the big guy and the crazy guy.
In other words, point guard, shooting guard, small forward, center and power forward. And seven years ago, we wore these skins like oversized throwbacks, loosely, but proudly. We believed. Never played for no high school. Played for our neighborhood. Played for our pride, sharp as the summer, natural as sweat. Played for girls we still dream about sometimes.
Tonight… we play two on two. Seven years dancing over our shoulders, under our feet, swirling in the space between us, the space where your once ever-present laughter would be. Seven years can pass so quickly, like a winning senior season, like OT in a playoff game, like college for me, like bootcamp for you, like that email I never responded to. They can pass like the flash of a roadside bomb.
I’ve been passing a lot, content to just watch my old friends and try to capture something I know I can’t hold on to… Our five went to prison, the only one of us to actually get better at the game, but his play now is harder, triple-teamed by shadows at all times. He travels, and no one has the guts to say anything. Our four lost his health insurance and his hustle with it; he just camps out on the three-point line, waiting. Our three got married, got rich and got soft, and you…and me… Your mind is always a thousand miles away when you find the ball in your hands, wide open.
So I take my first shot of the game, my first shot in seven years, a jumper from just inside the three-point line, top of the key, no problem. I feel the ball rotate out of my hand like God giving birth to a new planet, and watch it sail…over the backboard, over the fence, and into the darkness.
When you died, I needed both hands to count the number of people who tried to tell me how natural it was. How you believed in what you were fighting for, as if that made you right. How losing the people we care about… is just part of growing up. Like paying your taxes. Like turning the music down. When you died, your mother told me: “everything happens for a reason.” I don’t think she was talking about god.
Because when you shed your skin you’re supposed to have a new one underneath. There are some things you don’t outgrow. There are some things you don’t just lose along the journey. There are some things that must be taken from you. And we accepted growing old, we accepted the fact that we would never be seventeen again, but standing here, like the five horsemen of American Apocalypse: Prison, Poverty, Greed, Apathy, and War… we understood: this is what they take from us.
The politicians, the teachers, the cops, our parents, each other—everyone who ever told us that this is natural, that the way things are is the ways things have always been and always will be. This is what they take from us.
Ten points and ten rebounds every game. Those ugly-ass crosstrainers you played in. That smile, like you knew the ball was going in before it even left your hands, like it was…inevitable. There is a difference, between tragedy and injustice. Between losing and being lost. The mosquitoes pinch me awake. I run off to get the ball. You’re the only one of us laughing.
