X. – on a dream come true.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
September 22, 2000
Dear Mike,
It’s fall now. He’s got a new pair of And One Basketball shoes that are half baby blue suede, half white leather. And one size bigger than his last ones. He’s reading The Diary of Anne Frank in L.A. (language arts) and studying integers in Math. He and his friends are trying to plan a trip to Minneapolis in October to see the Vikings. It would be his birthday present. I guess you know he’s turning fourteen at the end of October.
This summer we went to L.A. (Los Angeles) and while we were there O. insisted that we go to Venice Beach. Specifically, to the Venice Beach basketball courts. They’re famous, he told us, movies are shot there, some of the Lakers play there once in a while, we have to go there. We’d be fools not to go there. We can’t not go there. Plus, he said, Jonathan Richman sings about Venice Beach. This summer he started loving the music of Jonathan Richman. When we drove all day through the sequoias to see the big one, general sherman, the biggest living thing in the world, he said he didn’t care, that he’d rather sit in the van and sing along to “I, Jonathan” one more time. So we went to Venice Beach.
At first we strolled along the boardwalk looking at different stuff, eating ice cream, talking, laughing, the usual. Then, suddenly, there were the courts right in front of us. And you could just feel this kind of tension come over O., like the way a dog gets when he sees a cat or a squirrel and just stops and stares and you know something’s going to happen. The happy, easy feeling of strolling along a boardwalk in the sunshine was gone and it felt like we’d just entered another zone or something. And O. says oh man, oh man, there they are. And then suddenly his voice kind of gets lower and his body kind of slumps around the shoulders to indicate that he’s one badass killer dude, unfortunately with an ice cream cone in his hand and with his mom and little sister standing next to him, and he says, in this low voice, uh, I’ll be over there, and jerks his head towards the courts, and starts walking away using the new L.A. killer dude walk that he’s been practicing. Can I have your ice cream, O.? G. yells after him, which at this moment is for him like being shot in the back with an AK-47 but because he’s such a sweet badass dude, he slowly turns around and holds out his cone to her before heading towards the courts.
Naturally, the rest of us can’t follow him. We know this. So we go and sit far away from the courts, on a wooden bench, and we watch. We can barely see him, he’s about an inch tall, but we can see enough to know, sort of, what’s going on. First of all he goes and sits on these bleachers that they have set up between the main court and one of the three other lesser courts. He’s smart enough to know that he’s not going to get to play on the main court. There’s a full game happening there already and these guys are really fucking good, and much older than O. But on the court beside the main one there are some other guys playing three on three and these are the guys O.’s watching. We figure that he thinks he can get to sub in one of these games. But he just sits there, he doesn’t make a move. He’s waiting.
And it’s really hot outside and finally G. says she wants to go to the beach, so C. takes her and I stay on the bench reading and watching O. from time to time. He’s still not moving, not playing, not doing anything but watching from the sidelines. Then C. and G. come back from the beach and C. sits down on the bench to watch, and G. and I go back to the beach. We’re there for a while, splashing around, digging in the sand, collecting seashells. Eventually we go back to the bench to find out what’s going on. Nothing, says C. He’s still sitting there. And I think to myself, he’s not going to do it. Then, suddenly, we see O. get up and walk over to one of the guys playing three on three. He’s saying something and the other guy says something, and then O. goes back and sits down. Shit! I say, they’re not going to let him play. But O. doesn’t leave the bleachers. He just sits there. The only difference is that now he’s taken off his baseball cap.
Behind us is the spot where those guys lift weights and swing from metal hoops and stuff, Muscle Beach, and C. and G. and I turn to watch these guys for a few minutes. Then we turn back to look at O. and right then, he makes his move. He gets up off the bleachers, walks over to the same guy as before, they say a few things, and then the guy sits back down where O. was and O. starts to play! He’s playing. He’s playing basketball at the Venice Beach Basketball Courts in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. His dream has come true.
And then he plays for what seems like forever, he plays for at least three hours, while the rest of us watch him in between doing beach things, totally in awe of the kid’s nerve and patience. He looks good out there on the court too, he’s younger but he’s just as good as some of the guys he’s playing with, and better than a few too. He’s the only white guy and he’s so white and with his shirt off and his long, skinny torso darting in and out, moving around, he looks like a ghost or a flash of lightning or something. Afterwards I offered to take a picture of him in front of the Venice Beach Courts sign and he said oh god, mom, no. Then G. asked him why he waited so long to ask the guy if he could play, what was he waiting for, Christmas? I don’t know, he said, smiling through all his sweat and whacking her over the head with his T-shirt, yeah, whatever. We kept walking, all of us silent as though we had just witnessed a miracle, and then O., forgetting that he was the top shit brother of the Boyz of Venice Beach, kind of arched his back, put his arms up in the air, sank to his knees right there on the asphalt and said oh man, this is the best day of my life!
See you in the photos, Mike.
X.
