by Alan Chin
I turned my head in time to see a look of sexual interest etched on Spencer’s face. He couldn’t draw his attention away from Connor’s exposed thighs. His eyes crept further up Connor’s legs to the fullness in the crotch of his shorts. Spencer’s mouth hung open, making a little red O. His story became crystal clear. He was aroused by Connor’s fresh, kid-brother sexiness. His adoration of Connor made me like him all the more.
“Sure thing, Mr. Bottega,” Spencer said with a mild voice. He grudgingly pulled his attention away from Connor to cover his own legs.
Spencer’s obvious puppy love made me grin, but I hardened my resolve and put on my poker face. “Your first mistake,” I began, “was coming onto this court without a plan. These club hackers can do that, but we must always act with purpose and intelligence.”
Connor’s smile faded. His mouth opened to say something, but I cut him off.
“Your second mistake was showing off instead of warming up. If you want to impress those girls, get your butts up there and talk to them. Impress them with who you are, not how hard you can hit the ball. Any time you’re on the court, you must zero in on executing our plan.”
Connor dropped his head and studied his sneakers.
“Your third mistake was hitting the beans out of the ball without a proper warm-up.”
“Sorry, Mr. Bottega,” Connor said without looking up. “We’ve always done it that way.”
I reached over and patted his shoulder to let him know I understood. “Before I show you how to perform a proper warm-up, I want to give you my most valuable lesson.” I paused until Connor looked up and we locked eyes. “The first time my partner, Jared, gave me a piano lesson, he taught me about perfect practice.”
Connor grinned. “You play piano?”
“Connor, are we here to discuss my personal life?”
“Sorry, Mr. Bottega.”
“You’ve heard that practice makes perfect?” They both nodded. “Well, that’s bullshit. Practice reinforces what you practice. If you practice with bad form, you reinforce bad form. The only way to perfect technique is by doing what Jared called perfect practice. Understand?”
“Everything except what perfect practice is,” Connor said.
“For the piano it means to play a piece of music as slowly as is necessary to perform it perfectly, to move your fingers from one note to the next without making any mistakes in finger position or cadence. If it takes an hour to play the Minute Waltz perfectly, that’s what you do. Make a mistake and you stop and do it again, only slower. You see, your body learns. The second time, it will take fifty-eight minutes, and fifty-two the third time. Before you know it, you’re playing it as it was intended, and because you’ve always played it perfectly, you never develop any wrong habits.”
“But this is tennis,” Connor said. “You can’t take an hour to hit the ball.”
“I’m feeling resistance here.”
“Sorry, Mr. Bottega.”
“First off, I want us to perform a perfect warm-up, the way I want you to warm up every time we step on court. We’ll start with you both on one side of the net hitting balls to me. Don’t swing any harder or any faster than I do. Mimic me. Focus on breath control and seeing the ball. By breath control, I mean inhale into the lower abdomen so that your belly expands like a balloon. That gives you a fuller breath, which makes you take in more air. As you hit the ball, I want you to grunt.”
They both gave me a queer look as I demonstrated the technique.
“Grunting makes you exhale so that you automatically inhale after hitting the ball. That keeps you breathing during a rally, and focusing on your breathing keeps your mind free of thoughts. Understand? Correct breathing keeps your mind empty as difficulty and exertion levels increase. That’s what I’m after: for you to keep your mind blank.”
“But that makes no sense.” Connor said, a whiny note creeping into his voice. “You said that seventy percent of tennis is between the ears. Why keep our minds empty?”
“Connor, you play your best when you’re in the zone, right?”
He nodded and tilted his head to one side.
“When you’re in your zone, what are you thinking?”
“I told you, it’s like I’m not there. I’m not thinking anything.”
“So you play your best when your mind is silent; your body takes over and it all tumbles into place, right?”
Connor’s eyes drilled into my skull.
“That’s what I plan to show you,” I continued, “how to put yourself in the zone every time you play. I’ll teach your body to play perfect tennis and your ego to stay out of the way so your body can do what I teach it. Now, what I’m trying to get across here is that breath control and keeping the mind still are the chariots of creating the zone, what my mother called the power-shift.”
Connor nodded, even though I was sure he didn’t understand.
“Good. Let’s start with the two of you on that side of the net and inside the service line.”
Connor glanced up at the group of girls still huddled at the edge of the deck. He turned back to me and groaned, “That’s baby tennis. I haven’t done that in years.”
“Show me you can do it perfectly and we’ll up the ante.”
“But Mr. Bottega—” He looked up at the deck again.
“Connor,” I cut him off, “if you’re concerned about what those girls or your father or anybody else thinks, then you’re wasting my time. If you’re too good to do things my way, then you’re too good, and we’ll shake hands and call it quits. Otherwise, get your butt over there and let’s hit some balls.”
With a visible surrender, he abandoned his protest and they dragged themselves into position. I told them I wanted to see their bellies expanding with each breath, and when they were, I floated balls to one, then the other, like a slow-motion ballet. I hit the ball perfectly each time: split-step when either of them hit the ball, full upper-body turn and back-swing, seeing the ball all the way to the racket, grunt, good follow-through. I wanted to demonstrate, let them see rather than think about what I wanted from them.
Spencer had no problem concentrating on his breathing and floating a clean ball back to me each time, but Connor had trouble constraining his strokes. He sprayed balls past me. The exercise stymied him like a thoroughbred racehorse forced to pull a milk wagon.
Roy Lin’s raw voice boomed over the court, telling Connor to focus.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “Focus on mimicking me, nothing more. When the body is free of the ego, the chi expands, and it will surpass your expectations.”
Too much telling fills the mind with obstacles to overcome. Images are better teaching tools than words, so I minimized my verbal instructions and focused on doing the exercise flawlessly. Spencer began to enjoy himself, perhaps because he did it so much better than Connor, who couldn’t return more than five balls without spraying one too deep or into the net. His cheek muscles tightened with every mistake, and his lips pressed together in an effort to force concentration.
Roy’s voice cut the air again, telling Connor to split-step.
“Damn it,” Connor mumbled after knocking one into the net. “Eyes on the ball, blockhead.”
I stopped and walked to the net. “Connor, who are you talking to?”
“Just reminding myself to see the ball.”
“This is important,” I said. “Tell me, who spoke and who was he speaking to?”
“I just told you, I was talking to myself.”
“So, you’re telling me that your ‘I’ and your ‘self’ are two different entities. Otherwise there’s no need for conversation between them.”
The same baffled expression crossed both their faces. I explained that each of us has two selves, the ego (conscious mind) and the body (unconscious mind and nervous system). Connor had made all those errors because his ego kept trying to control his body. His ego dictated what to do and blamed the body when the communication broke down and it made a mistake.
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br /> They both shook their heads, still baffled.
“The funny thing is, your body already knows what to do, and it doesn’t need anything controlling it. But your ego is like Mr. Lin: it can’t just sit back and enjoy the game; it’s got to try and run the show.”
Connor smiled and glanced at his sneakers.
“That’s why Spencer has no problem. His ego is so small, it’s easy for him to silence it.”
Connor punched Spencer in the arm, and they both laughed.
“Okay, so we’re going to focus on breathing into the lower belly to expand our chi and at the same time, try to quiet the ego so the body can do what it already knows. Let’s do it again, and if you hear that voice in your head saying anything at all, that’s a warning that Mr. Ego is taking control. That’s the time to concentrate on just breath control and seeing the ball.”
We continued to float balls back and forth. Connor relaxed a bit, but he visibly struggled to harness his inner voice. Spencer had found something that he could do better than Connor, and he glowed.
We drilled for two hours, always hitting softly. Whenever Connor returned twenty consecutive balls, we backed up one step while putting more pace on the ball, working our way to the baseline. Whenever he made an error, we stepped forward and took pace off.
After we reached the baseline and hit out long enough for them to demonstrate they could control their shots, I waved them forward.
“That’s how I want you to warm up,” I told them, “starting inside the service line with no pace and work back to the baseline. Now that you know how, it should take ten to fifteen minutes. Then you can hit out.”
They had learned a hard lesson and done well. Inside, I beamed, but I didn’t let it show. “Grab some water and pull on your sweats,” I said. “We’ll take a run to build up your legs.”
They piled into the clubhouse, and I strolled over to Roy. He popped a Tums into his mouth and chewed with force, as if he were crunching my skull with every bite.
“I don’t understand,” he said, “how this baby tennis helps Connor’s strokes?”
“It doesn’t, but like I said, there’s more to this game than strokes. Give it time, Mr. Lin. The Great Wall took four dynasties to complete.”
“But what’s the point of all this?”
“I’m getting him to tap into his chi,” I said, getting a little annoyed. “The lesson stems from the esthetic poise of him striking the ball with his inner force and from the beauty within the flight of a well-struck ball, that is, man transformed into pure action.” I could see he was not satisfied with my answer, but I was in no mood to find another way to explain it, so I said, “It’s not something that can be expressed with words. It has to be felt.”
I darted into my office and grabbed a book from my bookcase: A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. Connor and Spencer were back on the veranda by the time I walked back and handed the book to Roy.
“I want you all to read this carefully, and read it again. It explains why we expand the chi so much better than I can.”
Roy grunted and handed it back to me. “This was written by a Jap.”
I was stunned. I felt heat rising to my temples. I took a deep breath to make sure my voice came out smooth, with no trace of anger. “It’s arguably the finest book ever written on strategy and the warrior mindset.”
“Do you have any idea, Mr. Bottega,” Roy said, “what the Japs did to our people in the thirties and forties?”
“Mr. Lin, Musashi was born in the fifteen hundreds. I assure you he never set foot on Chinese soil. Musashi fuses Zen, Shinto, and Confucianism in order to form a philosophy that every champion needs to utilize.”
Roy’s back stiffened. “I will not allow this book in my house.”
I felt my whole face redden as I handed the book to Connor. “I guess you’ll have to read this on your porch.”
He slipped the book into his tennis bag while staring at Roy with an obstinate expression that challenged his father’s stern glare. Turning to me, he asked, “Ready?”
Good, I thought. Roy had just learned a hard lesson himself: in the game of professional tennis, coach always trumps parent.
We sprinted through the woods at the edge of the golf course, heading toward the sea. Connor took the lead, setting a brisk pace. Spencer and I dogged his heels. I loved to run through those woods, and doing so made the day’s frustrations vanish and produced an exhilarating, glad-to-be-alive energy that exploded through my system.
Waves of wind rolled over us, drenching our faces as we plunged through pools of sunshine and shadows. I noticed everything: the tangled colors of Spencer’s hair flashing in the noontime light, the sound of our feet crunching the moist dirt, the trees and greens and golfers going by lickety-split.
Before reaching the northern-most fairway, we squeezed through a gap in the fence and crossed over the Great Highway. We ran along the pavement until we came to Ocean Beach. Running on sand was a great exercise to strengthen Connor’s legs. We flew past sunbathers lounging on the sand and ran for two miles with nobody in sight. Waves trounced the beach with a steady rhythm that merged with my thumping heart.
I had not run on loose sand in over six months. Three miles had my legs burning. I slowed the pace until I came to a standstill, looking across that blue plane at the point where the horizon stretched into infinity. I told them to catch their breath before we headed back, but before I finished saying the words, they had tossed off their sweats and run all-out and bare-assed for the surf. Their naked skin shimmered in the strong sunlight.
“That water’s freezing!” I yelled, but they were already knee-deep and howling from the cold. A spray of fine mist haloed around them as they tumbled through the boiling surf. The sun’s rays electrified the spray and gave it a cool golden color that looked like bullets of liquid gold pelting those two perfect beings.
Connor tackled Spencer, and they disappeared beneath the swirling foam. For a split second I felt a stab of concern, but they appeared in the next heartbeat with rivers of water running off their skin. The cold had them shrieking. Spencer tried to fight his way to shore, but Connor kept dragging him back into the oncoming waves.
Their frolicking brought a smile to my face, then had me doubled up with laughter, then caused an aching in my chest. I felt a space open just under my sternum, about the size of a fist and as dense as silt. I seemed to tilt to one side, which pulled me off balance for the time I stood watching them. I realized that the heaviness that pressed against my heart was envy. I yearned to join them, to be eighteen and naked and defying the cold, but I stayed on the beach, unable to pull my eyes away.
I have experienced envy twice in my life, and that was one of them.
Chapter 7
CONNOR and Spencer knocked on my door at six thirty p.m. for an informal meeting to discuss their training program. I ushered them into my large and sunny living room. Connor wore a white cotton shirt buttoned to the collar, faded jeans, spectacles, and his coffee-colored hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Spencer had on a baby-blue wool sweater and the same style jeans as Connor, and his hair hung around the borders of his face.
They glanced around the room as they shucked their jackets and tossed them on a chair by the door. The room had an austere openness. The few pieces of comfortable furniture were of Asian design, and the intricately patterned Tibetan carpets covering the hardwood floors gave the room a cheerful complexity. The dining area nestled on the far side of the room, where a row of bay windows spanned the east wall, overlooking downtown and the Bay Bridge.
Spencer sauntered to the corner beyond the dining table to study a five-foot high bronze statue of the Buddha, cast in the Thai style. He looked around the room, his attention lighting on the four other Buddha carvings, three sitting and one reclining. Bright bits of gold flake covered the reclining Buddha, and it glistened in the light pouring in through the windows. He moved to the fireplace to study the four Chinese porcelain statues on the mantle. Th
ey looked antique and expensive, but I had found them at a thrift shop in Chinatown and picked them up for next to nothing.
“This place is sick,” Spencer said. “Like the Asian art museum.”
“Sick?” I asked.
“That’s a good thing, like totally awesome, only better.” He scanned the room again with a puzzled look and asked, “So like, where’s the tube?”
“We don’t watch television.”
He stared at me as if I had suddenly grown a second head.
Connor stood in the middle of the living room absorbing every detail. His attention gravitated to the only non-Asian artwork in the apartment, a large canvas on the wall behind the ebony baby grand piano: a Gauguin copy, four naked Polynesian women done in reds and browns with a smudge of mustered yellow slicing across the background.
“You’re Buddhist,” Connor said. “This décor seems more Japanese than Chinese. Very Zen. I expected a wall of trophies and pictures taken on the pro tour.”
My orange tabby cat, Mr. Toa, brushed against Connor’s leg. He bent and scooped Mr. Toa to his chest, stroking the cat’s ears. Mr. Toa scrambled to his shoulder and perched there, pawing at Connor’s ponytail as if it were knitting yarn.
“We like to stay in the present as much as possible,” I said, avoiding any discussion of how painful those past memories were. “Make yourselves comfortable. Tea and juice are in the fridge, bathroom’s down the hall. Who wants to help in the kitchen?”
Spencer nodded and followed me across the dining room. He froze, however, as Jared sauntered down the hallway wearing a bath towel more or less draped around his waist, his feet making wet footmarks on the hardwood floor. Jared leaned against the wall looking somewhat sodden and perplexed; then a cool grin spread his lips. I had come home earlier and found him stumbling drunk, so I hustled him into a cold shower, where he’d been for a long time. Long enough, I hoped, to sober him up.
“Well, well. Who do we have here?” Jared said, gazing at Spencer. He marginally slurred his words, which gave me hope that he had sobered enough to avoid embarrassing himself in front of our guests.
