Par for the Course

by Ray Blackston

In the adjoining kitchen I poured a soft drink, and Pauly plopped ice cubes into my glass and urged us to get started. “I only got an hour,” he said, “then I have to go upstairs and help put the kids to bed.”

  Paul ceded Benny the sofa—which was the only piece of furniture we were confident would hold him. I sat in the recliner, while Pauly opened for himself a folding chair and completed our triangle.

  At each meeting we rotated responsibility for introducing a new topic, and tonight was my turn. It struck me as a strange thought at the time, what with my losing the match to Lin and being too embarrassed to tell the guys about it, but I wanted to ask some church-going males what their perspective was on men becoming Passive Adams—if it had anything to do with men and women failing to communicate—so I figured these guys my best bet.

  During our summer meetings we’d covered more routine stuff like managing our finances, and now I was about to steer us toward relational topics, which I figured would orbit equally around our threesome, regardless if I were the lone unmarried member.

  “Recently I got talked into attending this supposed relational course,” I explained and grabbed a handful of almonds off the coffee table. “Turns out that a man-hater is using Adam’s lack of action in the garden with Eve to promote an all-woman agenda.”

  Benny nodded and stuffed a pillow behind his back. “My wife says I show a lack of action when it comes to house work.”

  Without pausing to smile I asked, “So why would a man-hater use that Adam material to slam men?”

  Pauly Three Seeds, ever the deep thinker, rubbed his chin and said, “She probably stole it for political purposes. Lots of folks distort things at election time.”

  Benny raised a finger to make a point. “My wife also accuses me of distorting things.”

  With faux sympathy I nodded at Benny. “Okay, guys, my question is, can it be true what the man-hater said about Adam affecting all men, that we lack initiative when it comes to relationships?”

  Benny’s expression turned serious, and he leaned forward on the sofa and lowered his voice, as if what he was about to say was secretive. “Hack, last week my wife tried to get me to attend a class, said it would help me understand the opposite sex. She also threatened not to cook for me next week unless I went. So check this out—I go downtown to sign up for the class, get there ten minutes early, and it’s all women, and I mean ALLLL women.”

  “So you left?” asked Pauly.

  “Of course I left,” Benny replied. “If there ain’t no other dudes in the class, I ain’t stayin’.”

  I squirmed in Pauly’s recliner. “That class wasn’t held at the Hyatt, was it?”

  Benny nodded, sipped his drink. “Yep. And from all I could tell in the two minutes I was there, the lady who was hosting didn’t care much for men.”

  Both of these friends then stared at me as if I were alien.

  Pauly said, “Hack, you just turned pale. What’s up?”

  “Yeah,” Benny blurted. “You all right, man? Ate bad almonds?”

  I blinked slowly and with embarrassment. “No.”

  “Then why do you look so out of sorts?”

  I wanted to hide under the sofa, though Benny had compressed it to where its crawl space was less than half an inch. “I went to that same class. I was fifteen minutes late.”

  While Pauly got up to refill his drink, Benny eyed me with a mixture of amusement and concern. “So you left too . . . didn’t ya?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  Benny nearly came off the sofa—which was no easy task. “You stayed?! Man, how could you stay?”

  “She ticked me off.”

  “But there weren’t any other dudes there, Hack. It was fifty to one.”

  “Sixty-four to one by the time I introduced myself.”

  He looked disappointed in me. “What’d they talk about?”

  “Mostly about how great Eve was. And still is.”

  He frowned, shifted his weight on the sofa. “So then you left, right? Bolted out the Hyatt’s door?”

  This was not the direction I’d intended for tonight’s discussion, but I knew there was no way these guys would let the subject pass. I set my glass on the floor and shook my head. “Nope, I stayed till the end. I even got so ticked at her that I made a bet.”

  Benny covered his eyes with his left hand, as if he knew what was coming next. “Golf bet?” he asked.

  “Mmmhmm. And I lost.”

  Just when I thought Benny would chide me further, he craned his neck and shouted into the kitchen. “Hey, Pauly, get a load o’ this: Hack lost a golf match to a woman!”

  Pauly re-entered his den and sat again. He crossed his legs to make a space in his lap for his paper plate, and in his calm, measured tone said, “You bet a woman at golf? You never told us that.”

  “This was the one and only time.”

  “What was the bet?”

  My sigh was one part reflection and two parts shame. “I was going to get half the teaching time in her class.”

  “But you lost.”

  “I know that. So now I have to attend the rest of the sessions.”

  Benny and his ample girth resembled an amused vat of Jell-O as he doubled over and laughed. Finally he sat back and said, “Can I come videotape you in class?! Please?”

  Pauly waited almost the appropriate amount of time before turning serious again. He resumed his studious composure, and now with hand to chin, index finger tapping his upper lip, he posed a question. “Hack, I don’t mean to interrupt your quest to learn all about femininity, but if a single guy like you is asking questions about Adam’s lack of initiative, it must be for a specific reason.”

  I glanced at Benny, met his interested gaze, and nodded. “Her name is Molly.”

  His expression broadcasted “Ah,” but his mouth said, “You’ve been out with her?”

  “Yep.”

  “And how did that go?” Pauly inquired.

  “Pretty well, I think.” I blurted my reply, glad to be discussing Molly rather than Lin. “Kinda hard to tell, since the evening ended on an awkward note.”

  Paul kept tapping that upper lip with his finger, as if he were preparing more questions. I was hoping to avoid more questions. “Mind if I ask you something else?”

  Not wanting to offend a buddy, I lied. “Nah . . . go ahead.”

  “Did you tell her at the end of the date that you wished to see her again soon?”

  “No, I asked her if she wanted to have kids and if she could envision little plastic golf clubs in a crib.”

  Wide-eyed, Benny appeared stunned at my answer. “Whoa, man! Little plastic golf clubs in the crib is not a first date topic. Little plastic footballs might be okay for a sixth date topic, but now you probably scared her off.”

  Pauly Three Seeds nodded in agreement. “Next time you call her, you’ll be lucky if she even answers the phone.”

  I considered this for all of three seconds. “C’mon, Pauly, now you think you’re some sort of dating counselor?”

  Pauly smiled with a kind of mild embarrassment. “Hmmm.”

  Now I was worried that interrogation would never cease. “What do you mean by ‘hmmm’?”

  “I’m just wondering if instead of ‘do you want to have kids and little plastic golf clubs in the crib,’ you should’ve instead told her that you found her interesting and attractive and would enjoy an opportunity to go on a second date.”

  Though I did not like the relational pressure from Pauly Three Seeds, I felt that I should hear him out. “So, you’re saying that I should have been more subtle?”

  Benny interrupted Paul. “We’re saying that unless you pace things well, a woman might get scared off. When I pursued my wife, I was smooooth.”

  Paul was eight years older than Benny and me, and in the way of more seasoned citizens he took his time. He even sipped his water with maturity. “Think of it this way, Chris. It’s so easy for you to initiate something as quick and unemotional as a golf swing—where t
he only thing vulnerable is the ball. But in contrast, it seems much harder for you to take your time to get to know a woman, where the thing most vulnerable is two people’s futures.”

  All three of us stared at the hardwood floor and nodded slowly, in the way men do when they’ve dived too deep into a subject and can no longer bring themselves to make eye contact.

  From my perch in the recliner I tried to steer our chat. “Um, what does all this have to do with Adam?”

  Benny said, “In my opinion, Adam ignored his Eve because he was thinking about his golf swing . . . or something similar.”

  For a moment we remained silent, male minds trying their best to combine the art of hitting golf balls with the complexities of relationships.

  “Hmmm,” Paul muttered, still staring at the floor and tapping his lower lip. “That’s another deep thought. And a complex one too. Especially when we consider that golf was invented in Scotland in a much later century.”

  “Yes,” Benny said, mocking Paul’s super-serious posture. “My opinion about Adam’s golf swing is like . . . water meeting vinegar.”

  “No,” I interjected, “it’s like water meeting vinegar mixed with riddles wrapped in enigmas.”

  “In outer space,” said Benny.

  “On Friday the thirteenth,” added Pauly.

  A squealing child from the second floor alerted him that we would likely have to end our meeting early tonight. So we did. Besides, we’d lost control of our main topic, gotten distracted, and now Benny had invaded Pauly’s fridge.

  I thanked the guys for their advice, told them to stop by the range sometime soon, and was first to leave. On the way home I stopped by my golf shop to check on the night’s revenue and to make sure everything was locked up properly.

  Cack, as usual, had been very thorough with the closing procedures. The only odd thing I spotted was a note stuck on the door—and it wasn’t Cack’s handwriting.

  Your range should not promote liberalism. Keep that up and my friends and I will boycott. Or worse.

  —Worried about you.

  I wadded the note into a ball and tossed it into a trash basket, assuring myself that this was from some nongolfing extremist who knew nothing of what really went on at Hack’s. Have a sense of humor, people.

  8

  LESSON FOR TODAY

  If a match (or a date) is scheduled to start at a specified time, such as 2:00 p.m., the players must be on the first tee (or the doorstep) promptly. Penalty for failing to show is disqualification.

  My third visit to the Hyatt began much like the previous two. I ran in late through revolving doors, sweating into my golf shirt and hurrying across the lobby toward Conference Room #4. All day long, a mixture of anxiety and delight had grown within me as I imagined Lin Givens’ reaction to my Super Blaster story.

  But on this Tuesday night, a young bellhop no more than high school age stood beside the open door. He stared straight ahead, and beyond him I saw the empty conference room. Not even the padded chairs in attendance.

  “Did they move the class to another room?” I asked the youngster.

  His stoic gaze remained fixed on the far wall. “No.”

  “Just ‘no’? What happened to the class? It was supposed to meet for eight weeks.”

  “Cops took her.”

  I stuck my head into the room and reconfirmed its emptiness. “They arrested Lin Givens? What’d she do?”

  The kid was a statue. “Can’t say. Manager said I can’t say.”

  “C’mon, what’d she do? Just whisper it to me.” I moved closer, tilted my head toward him.

  “Can’t say.”

  I sighed and turned to leave, wondering what was the best way to dupe a high schooler. “Well, anyway, it’ll probably come out in the papers tomorrow or the next day.”

  I was four steps departed when the bellhop cleared his throat. “Hey.”

  My turn was slow and calculated. “Yesss?”

  “We think she stole campaign money.”

  “From which party?”

  “Can’t say.”

  I raised my eyebrows to get him to say more. I turned my palms outward to request he say more. But he only shook his head.

  “C’mon, kid. Please? I lost a golf match to her.”

  He looked left and right down the hallway. Then he reached inside his bellhop uniform and drew out a folded piece of paper. “Found this note in the room when I was moving the chairs.”

  I stepped close. “You’ll let me read it?”

  “If you’ll leave me alone.”

  To all staff,

  To accomplish the goals we discussed Sunday night we must make women in the South understand the failure of men as leaders. We must convince women that following male leadership is not the way to progress. We can rise up from within the system, and we can do it by manipulating them just like the serpent manipulated Eve.

  We can do it!

  LG

  In half-hearted acknowledgment I looked up from the note to thank the bellhop, but the kid was already striding for the check-in counter and offering to carry luggage for an elderly couple.

  Normally not one to take pleasure in another’s problems, I nevertheless smiled as I pictured Lin in a jail cell, with nothing to keep her company but the stories her class had penned the previous week.

  With an unexpected free night thrust upon me, I pushed through the revolving door and stepped outside onto the sidewalk. There I plucked my cell phone from my pocket.

  Molly answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “It’s me—Chris. Are you still in town?”

  She seemed surprised that I had called. “One more day, then off to ’Bama. Are you working late tonight?”

  “No, right now I’m at the Hyatt.”

  “But that’s where I am. It’s where I’ve been staying all week.”

  “Well, I’m standing out on the Hyatt’s sidewalk.”

  Short pause. “Am I being stalked by a golf instructor?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you on the sidewalk of my hotel?”

  “The class I told you about, the one taught by the feminist who slanders Adam and wants women to distrust male leaders, it was held here at the Hyatt.” I stepped off the sidewalk to let two pedestrians pass. “But class got cancelled.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think the teacher got arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “You can trust me, Chris . . . I’m in politics.”

  “Yeah . . . right.” I admired the turf on which I stood and wondered why the Hyatt had nicer grass than my driving range. “Wanna grab something to eat?”

  The night was no longer young, but middle-aged. On a bench in downtown Charleston, not far from The Battery and the harbor, the two of us ate our ice cream cones and watched the lights dance on the water. Molly had confessed at dinner a not-so-uncommon quirk: Any spicy or salty meal consumed in warm weather must be immediately followed by a search for good ice cream.

  “It’s like a Democrat rebutting a Republican,” she explained between bites. “The sweetness of the dessert rebuts the spices in the dinner.”

  I ate the last inch of cone and wiped my mouth with a napkin, remembering the Roundtable advice from Pauly and Benny to avoid all mentions of cribs and parenthood on the second date. So, I kept things light. “Do you relate everything to politics?”

  Molly took her time, licked her cone. “Only as much as you relate everything to golf.”

  A small “touché” would hardly suffice. Not with this caliber of woman. “Ya know, Molly, golf is not subjective like politics. In golf, you play a hole and score a four or perhaps a five, but there are never any panels of pundits arguing that the four was really a four and a half, or the five a 5.33, all because so-and-so led a filibuster in the Senate.”

  She licked a chocolate circle around the apex of her cone. “True, Christopher. But that golf score only matters to the one who hi
ts the ball. Politicians make decisions that matter to the entire populace.”

  She was not only quick, but logical, and my cone was not only dripping, but onto my shoe. “Maybe so, but golf reveals a person’s character, their patience under stress. Politics hides character because the first priority is to gain votes.”

  She gazed across the harbor for all of two seconds. “Point taken, but remember this: the stars on the American flag represent fifty states governed by laws created by politicians; the stars do not represent fifty holes-in-one made by a bunch of no-name hackers.”

  I am losing. I am definitely not Superman. The way she made her points, not to mention the speed with which she conjured them, reminded me of why I never excelled at debate. But in an attempt to stay competitive I pursed my lips, crossed my legs, and said, “Politicians lie.”

  She never flinched. “Golfers cheat.”

  “Politicians can’t putt.”

  “Golfers can’t amend the Constitution.”

  “Politicians talk in circles.”

  “Golfers dress funny.”

  Just to amuse her I feigned a self-conscious glance at my clothes. “You don’t like the way I dress? I thought earth tones were all the rage.”

  For the first time since we’d met, Molly appeared taken aback, at a loss for what to say. She rubbed the sole of her shoe on the grass, and after an awkward silence, even her voice sounded reserved. “The way you dress is fine, Chris. Really. It’s just that I was trying to keep our chat light, especially since last time when you asked me about kids and cribs and stuff.”

  Her ice cream had begun to drip, and I pulled an extra napkin from my pocket and handed it to her. “I had a similar motivation tonight,” I confessed. “To not sound so aggressive.”

  She wiped her fingers and spoke between licks of her cone. “Then why did you bring up all that parenthood stuff the other night?”

  I held my own cone at arm’s length and allowed a couple of drops to fall to the ground. “I think I was just trying to mimic a friend of mine who signed up for an Internet dating site two years ago. He put at the top of his profile in big letters, ‘IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO HAVE KIDS, PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ME, AS I AM ALREADY CERTAIN THAT YOU ARE NOT MY SOUL MATE.’ ”