Golfing with Ghosts
I actually took a day off from the festival to go golfing last summer. Never imagined i’d be doin that. Played mini-putt a few times, but never the real thing. No interest really. Seemed like bland white guy sport. Don’t like the aura around golf…the silence..the clothes…the attitude. Did like Caddyshack. Only went cause it was an opportunity to see two old friends. I was kind of excited because normally I’m a pretty competitive guy and I do okay in most sports. But now I was heading out to do something I really didn’t give a rat’s rump about. Figured I’d just go out have a few laughs and smack the ball around like Happy Gilmour. Paid $15 bucks for a set of clubs. Had no idea what any of them did. 9 iron, 3, 5, 7… didn’t mean squat to me. Headed out to hole/round/station 1. Friends let me go first. Gee, thanks. No I’ll go last. The three of them went through their shot. Each one rifled the ball through the air. I stepped up to the ball like a batter doing warm up swings. Before I unleashed my fury one of my chums stopped me to suggest a few adjustments. Elbow bent, eyes up…something like that. It’s all in the hips. Okay. Sure. No problem. That’s what my boxing coach. Seems like most of life is all in the hips. So…I wind up my fuck stick for my debut swing and WHAM a small island of turf sails through the air. Can’t see the ball. Must have clobbered it. “Hey guys, did u see where my ball went?” They start laughing. “umm… chris look down.” I do and shit there’s the god damn ball. It’s moved about ½ a foot forward. “Ya gotta relax the swing. It’s not hockey. You can’t wind up and whack it. When you do the club is hitting the ground before it hits the ball. That’s why the grass flew. Think of a pendulum. Okay I said and took a deep breath and then whoosh… the ball limply sailed maybe 50-75 feet. Looks like a ground ball into the outfield. Well, at least I hit it. And on it went like this. Fortunately, my pals weren’t golf pros by any stretch so I wasn’t holding them up much. Turned out too that once I landed on the green I was a pretty decent putter. Typical. In hockey I like to hover around the crease and look for tip ins. And on it went. We spent about 20-25 minutes I’d guess on each hole. We were supposed to play 18 rounds, but fuck I’ll say this…I’m in pretty good shape but I was sore after 9 holes. My shoulders and arms were aching and we musta walked a dozen miles in the hot summer sun. Beyond that I’d had enough. You hit (or try to) a ball, walk after it, hit the ball, walk after it. Eventually said ball goes into a hole momentarily. You pick it up and walk to the next hole and start the tedious process over again. Still, I actually enjoyed the fact that I sucked and didn’t care. When I play hockey, I get nervous. Even for a friggin ball hockey game. I’d get butterflies. Always want to do well. Something about identity I guess…something deeper about wanting mommy and daddy’s love, about wanting to prove right here and right now that I EXIST, that I breath, that I AM. But it was different here cause I was just doing it to be with old friends. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about this stupid game. It was just about checking in with some old friends, catching up, finding out what happened to those we once knew. Soon though even that became tiresome. After we’d run out of high school stories, I think we realized that we had little in common. Hell, with one exception, I’d unknown these guys a hell of a lot longer than I’d known them. And when I knew them it was from grade 3-13. Pretty insubstantial years in some ways. Golf was bearable while we had something, while there was a connection between us, but the stories ran dry, the game followed. Golf, at that moment, like the relationships became slow, tedious and awkward. There was just silence now. It was nice to give it a whirl and catch up with some ghosts from the past, but in the end, yeah, it was enough. Time to move on.
April 20th, 2007 at 5:46 pm e
i hear ye, ol buddy…
moving on myself, from an ended relationship
as you also know, it does NOT get easier the second or third time around
methinks i still have a pulse… somewhere
best to the family, chris
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:35 am e
Yeah … the old high school friends who after you rehash old times there just isn’t much more … the worst though is when someone recognizes you from high school and you can’t quite place them. Akward!!