Gio was in town for what he kept calling my “bachelor party,” and what I continuously revised to a “friend’s weekend.” I was thirty-nine, engaged for the second time, and my two closest friends had put together a weekend in Denver to celebrate, a rarity for us since the pandemic had hit fifteen months prior.
Gio arrived early to see Cheyenne, where my current academic job had landed me, before we would drive down the next day, and I’d decided his first experience should be the Rib & Chophouse, a staple of Wyoming’s capital. Being one of those planners who overthinks and gets flustered by unexpected obstacles when it comes to these trips, the Chophouse needed to be the first stop because the dinner crowd – an early dinner crowd in Cheyenne – would make it unbearable, so four-fifteen on a Wednesday afternoon should’ve been the perfect time to snag seats at the sprawling, half-hexagon bar.
It wasn’t.
I opened the door to find it already near capacity, which brought dueling pangs of surprise and frustration before I spotted the two vacant stools in the far corner where the half-hexagon ended. Aside from the relief of finding a spot, the Chophouse had a particular quirk to their bar that made those seats desirable: the three long planes that form the half-hexagon were extended at each joint by odd round bulbs that looked like swollen kneecaps, and that, I suppose, allow for additional seating, but their bulbous shape created odd angles and made them awful options if you were with company. A couple were available with one seat on the plane and the other on the kneecap, but that’s like going to a game with someone in the row behind you, so I didn’t bother explaining why I didn’t take those, figured Gio understood.
I found out later he made a different observation about my decision. A harmless observation I should’ve seen as an invitation to deeper conversation and connection with one of the very few people I consider a close friend.
Instead, I took it as a threat.
*
Gio and I are both novelists and English professors, and I like to think we’re two of the more self-aware males out there, often laughing about idiots like us needing to sit at the bar so we don’t have to look each other in the eye while having a conversation. I’m aware. But I also still need the bar so I can stare into the mindless drone of ESPN above the tap handles rather than my friend’s face.
We’re also NBA junkies, so the trip was planned around this date in particular, so we could watch the NBA Draft together. Gio and I used to host a seldom listened to NBA podcast that we mostly did as a reliable way to stay in touch, which we add to the list of our laughably male qualities: this construction of a highly inefficient, inconvenient way to stay connected because of our inability to call each other just for the sake of a life catch-up. But we’ve always loved talking NBA, and our writerly egos tell us that we have thoughts worth listening to.
The third member of our group, who would meet us in Denver the next day, has no such delusions. Carter had been offered spots on our episodes many times, but it was never worth the effort to him, even though he’s probably the biggest junkie of us all. Carter and I grew up together in Oklahoma, long before OKC landed the Thunder, and he’s been a season ticket holder ever since the team arrived in 2008. He’s an intensely proud Oklahoman who lives and dies with every game, even when we’re tanking; then it’s just about obsessing over the wins that hurt us in the reverse standings, and therefore, hurt the Thunder’s chances in the pre-draft lottery. But in that ’21-22 season the losing did, in fact, pay off. The Thunder landed the number two pick, making the draft particularly interesting for our viewing party.
And yes, I refer to the Thunder as us and we and use every possessive first-person pronoun available when talking about them. Even though I left Oklahoma when I went off to college and never moved back, I still feel tethered to the state, still carry that little brother chip with me like so many Oklahomans. My well-being doesn’t go for a manic ride with every Thunder game like Carter, though. Mostly I consider myself an obsessive fan of the league with the Thunder just being my particular team, the one I feel connected to through family and friends, through history and the knowledge that any spring one of those small towns I grew up around, and most likely played basketball in their gyms, could just be up and swept away one afternoon in a tornado. So even with the politics of the state continuing to darken to the deepest shades of red, and even though most Oklahomans would probably vilify me as a godless commie-socialist, I still feel a kinship to them. Still try to make it back for one Thunder game a year with Carter, so we can drink a few beers with fellow Okies and yell like hell.
Basketball was my sport growing up. It was the game I spent hours and hours and hours practicing in the driveway, honing and crafting the art of the spin move and step back, pounding out the muscle memory deep into many lonely, alluring nights. It led to playing a couple years in college, getting a brief taste of the dream I’d held since I was little, before two things coincided and led me to give the game up: first, one surgery had led to another and another, and second, an incident with my roommate and teammate charted a deceiving path towards alcohol and isolation. Isolation I knew well from basketball training, but alcohol was new and attractive.
Life after basketball also made sense because the game had always been a two-sided coin for me. The player side occupied a totally different space in my brain than my fan and observer side, so despite my passion and drive as a player, despite my investment in basketball player as my identity, I was always a little more suited as the basketball observer and commenter than the player. It would be easy for me to say that after I hung up my sneakers I was no longer able to pour my intensity into the playing of the sport, and I just shifted that passion over to viewing and analyzing the game instead, but what I think is more accurate is that I simply let one part of myself go – euthanized might be most accurate – while I let that other part expand.
While I might get emotionally wrapped up in a particular playoff game or series – might feel that passion, that burn and pulse at the temples when things get tight, especially when the Thunder are involved (though I’ve never smashed my phone against a brick wall over a loss like Carter has) – what really fascinates me are the player driven narratives. The big picture legacy questions. The micro moments that impact those macro questions. Multiple character arcs constantly intersecting with ever-evolving plots, spanning generations – spawning new generations – the mega saga that goes on forever. The epic narrative arc I could outline for a lecture hall of undergrads that traces from the foundation laying Bird and Magic[1], dips into the Bad Boy Pistons, on to Air Jordan and the golden era also-rans, Shaq and Kobe, to the culture-rocking Iverson, (I suppose the most boring super star ever Tim Duncan would be included), on to all the iterations of Lebron – Believeland, the Heatles, and the Return of the King – the paradigm shifting Steph Curry, and all the inroads in between. There would be footnotes and divergences, causing me to still be talking over the bustle of students putting notebooks away when I’m running five minutes over, chalk breaking against the board as they begin to scatter, trying to emphasize one final point (or two or three) as the lecture hall door closes behind the last barely listening ear[2].
These differences between me and Carter have made us great NBA buddies – he can go deep on the Thunder roster, the rotations, the five-minute sequences that determine a game, along with the local mini-dramas since he still lives in OKC (like, say, a local radio host’s grudge against a player who said something positive about Seattle), while I go big picture scope of the league – and the discussions, especially when aided by beer, tend to go on and on and on. Likewise, Gio adds a perfect third wheel (because sometimes you want these in sports debates). He grew up in Scranton, PA, where his cable company showed all the Knicks games, making him a die-hard at a young age.
Gio and I met in Pittsburgh when we joined the same grad program, and as soon as the NBA playoffs rolled around that April, you could find us at Silky’s, The Cage, PHI, or any spot that would put the NBA on over the Stanley Cup playoffs, drinking Yuenglings and debating the NBA. As a fan, he’s somewhere between me and Carter. He’s got the critical thinking professor brain, but he’s also passionate to the point of blind belligerence at times about his beloved Knicks. Add in that he’s the epitome of the big market fan who gets off on trolling the small market fanbases – have I mentioned Oklahomans carry a little brother chip on the shoulder? – and the addition of Gio often adds a shot of Fireball to the NBA discussions.
But we had kept the NBA talk light since Gio arrived in Cheyenne. It had been over two years since we’d seen each other, the pandemic throwing a wrench in the usually twice-a-year-or-so get togethers. When he first pulled up to my house we worked our way through awkward small-talk, trying to get back in our old groove, as I ran my plan for the evening by him. The Chophouse was a great food spot in Cheyenne, but I was never a fan of the beer options, which filled me with unnecessary turmoil when planning out Gio’s one evening in Cheyenne.
Here’s the thing: I love beer, probably[3] to an unhealthy degree, and over the years my palette has been condensed to a very specific style of IPA. Dry and bitter. No juice. No haze. No malt. Dry and bitter. If I can’t have this specific style, I have to fight the encroaching feelings of dissatisfaction and malaise that want to take over my psyche[4], forever chasing the correct beer that eluded me, but one I know is out there. The Chophouse has an agreement with Accomplice, the brewing company in the old train depot in downtown, and I’m a huge proponent of supporting local breweries, but Accomplice’s two staple IPAs are a hazy and a west coast that goes the malty route instead of that dry, bitter finish I crave. “West coast” is one of those trigger descriptions that alerts me to my preferred style, but the malt of Accomplice’s west coast is so overbearing it barely qualifies as an IPA, in my opinion, and certainly not one I enjoy. So I ordered the hazy, telling myself to let it go, that it was better than no beer at all, and tomorrow I’d be in Denver, a city stumbling all over itself with craft breweries.
Non-NBA, not-quite-footnote-worthy note: Along with only drinking IPAs, my preferred coffee (i.e. the only kind I drink no matter the circumstances) is hot and black, preferably as bitter as possible. Even if, say, I’m in NYC during a summer heatwave where all that concrete and glass have the heat index up to 110 by one in the afternoon. On one such day, I just might have asked a barista to brew a fresh batch because the coffee they handed me wasn’t hot enough. Eternally self-conscious, I believe I added, “Sorry, I know I sound crazy.” When I walked back into the swelter with bitter coffee not quite burning the roof of my mouth in a very satisfying way, I thought of the article Gio once forwarded me about how people who drink IPAs and black coffee are more likely to be psychopaths.
It’s sort of our thing – to rib each other about our quirks.
Which is why, after I settled on the hazy and take the first sip, Gio asked this question:
“How’s that pint glass working for you?”
He was literally asking about the glass, not the beer, referring to my hatred for beers served in tulip glasses, cocktails served in collins glasses instead of the hefty lowballs. The biggest, most inexcusable offense being the manhattan served in a martini glass.
“I’ll never complain about the classic pint,” I told him and raised the glass in mock-toast (just the beer inside the pint, of course). And it’s true, even with the non-preferred IPA, the classic pint on the wooden bartop helped me find that feeling of relief, especially with the late afternoon sunlight filtering through downtown Cheyenne and the floor to ceiling windows of the Chophouse as I enjoyed the drink with one of my closest friends, grateful that we could do it after the long pause of the pandemic. And I took another moment to let it sink in. The cold beer. The lingering crisp bite still on my tongue after the first sip. The soft natural light and growing shadows. Even the crowd, now that we’d safely landed on a pair of corner barstools and I had a full panoramic view of the space, added a buzz to the air, a sense of community. And to top it off, the rarity, for me, of being able to share this time with Gio.
After Gio raised his glass back to join my mock-toast, I prepared a sort-of volley jab, thinking I’d mention how I would’ve taken him to Bella Fuoco, the wood-fired pizza place that’s a local favorite, but Gio would probably dump all over it since he’s been trashing “midwest pizza” ever since he moved west of the pizza belt’s tentacles a decade ago. This plan was disrupted though by our bartender attempting small talk with us as she punched in another order.
“Actually,” Gio began, sitting up a little straighter, his voice suddenly perkier, “I’m in town for this guy’s bachelor party.”
Worst nightmare is strong…but perhaps apt.
“Oh!” the bartender beamed.
“Oh!” two women next to Gio beamed.
“Cheers, brother,” a burly man wearing a Thin Blue Line hat sort of growled.
I was already waving them off.
“Not a bachelor party,” I said.
“It is, though,” Gio offered confidentially to the women next to him.
“Congratulations!” one of them said and reached across to pat my arm.
“No, really, it’s not a bachelor party,” I kept saying, head shaking back and forth.
“He’s a bit shy,” Gio told whoever was still listening, which felt like all of Cheyenne.
“I can see that,” a woman said, somewhere between in-on Gio’s joke and just confused.
“It’s just a weekend with a couple friends,” I said, trying to avoid eye contact with everyone involved.
“Well, cheers to that either way,” the bartender added, bringing a merciful end to the exchange, other than Gio chuckling next to me.
“Should’ve seen that one coming,” I told him.
“If I were younger, that would’ve gone on a lot longer.”
This was true, I realized. A handful of years ago he probably would’ve asked the two women for strip club recommendations, not caring about (1) their potential reactions, or (2) the fact that I loathe those establishments and have never been to one in my life.
It’s not about moral high ground, though, yes, I do find the idea of going to a strip club while my fiancé is out of town repugnant, and, yes, I do think strip clubs encourage and reinforce toxic male behavior, and, yes, I was raised in a Southern Baptist household (though that’s one of the reasons I left and never returned to Oklahoma), but the larger reason is that I’ve simply never been interested. I eventually came to understand I’m somewhere on the asexual spectrum, but my confusion as a young man created a complex layering of shame, guided me towards faking my way through basketball locker room banter and behavior. The shame lasted far beyond the basketball locker room, too. Even after I quit the team in college, which triggered a mini-rejection of the overall athletic culture I found so problematic and led to my master’s thesis describing as much, when it came to the “bachelor party” before my first wedding, I still felt the underlying pressure that I was expected to want to go to a strip club with everyone.
It’s one of the reasons, all those years later, why I tucked tail and ran against the very suggestion of this weekend being a bachelor party. The term so freighted with connections to a culture I reject, a culture I want nowhere near my second marriage.
With Gio and I, the ribbing is a part of it, but we often go much deeper in our conversations, especially over the last few years. He was the person I talked to first about my first wife’s affair, the reality that we were probably headed for divorce. While I didn’t reveal all the layers of why that affair and impending divorce was so difficult to work through, it was immensely beneficial to discuss the parts I was willing to reveal. It was around that same time Gio began seeing a therapist and he’s been gently pushing me to do the same ever since. At that time, I knew I needed therapy, but I told myself it was a financial decision. My insurance was shit when it came to mental health, and so I white-knuckled through the issues the same way I’d been raised and trained as a young basketball player: alone on the blacktop, no one’s gonna help you but you, bootstraps, bootstraps, bootstraps.
The time alone balanced with important conversations forced me to face questions I’d otherwise buried. Like why was my wife’s affair so disabling when I was the one avoiding sex for nearly a decade?[5] Sometimes finding excuses like being tired, other times not offering any explanation at all, and others simply saying flat out that I wasn’t interested in sex, wasn’t in a good place with it overall, but doing so in that same combative tone of my father, who I swore I’d never be like.
And, in fact, the issues did go all the way back to the earliest memories of my father (surprise!), a toxic dynamic that lasted well into my thirties – the shit so deep and compacted it was hard to see the origin, find the way in, even more difficult to see the way out. Because of the foundation that relationship established, I fell victim to an experience with someone who I first met as a teammate, then knew as a close friend, which led to knowing him even more deeply as a roommate, before ultimately knowing him as a predator.
The experience led me to isolate myself in a dorm room the final two years in college, denying the existence of any significant event, shutting myself out from the world, only drifting out to sleepwalk through class, pick up food from the student union, before retreating to my dorm room to sit in front of the glow of my tv, and, if he was available, text Carter about the NBA.
All the while, but especially after I finally graduated and said goodbye to that campus forever, I told myself I was fine. I had white-knuckled it, developed a routine, a training regimen, and hooray for me, now I was free. Perseverance. Determination. Take adversity by the horns and kick its ass. All those good life lessons basketball taught me. But, of course, all the ways I wasn’t fine spilled into my first marriage in ways I couldn’t see – completely blinding myself not only to my avoidance of sex, but also the subconscious lengths I’d go to in order to blame that aversion on my wife. Until I figured it out much too late.
But hey, rather than living in denial forever, at least I did figure it out, even if it happened fifteen years and one marriage later. Like a puzzle that I solved. When it came to the divorce, instead of hibernating in my dorm and misidentifying myself as a misanthrope, I actually talked it through with other humans, not only Gio and Carter, but also my soon to be ex, and these conversations with her, in particular, were crucial to my personal growth. So once I was in a better financial situation, I figured I didn’t need therapy anymore. Because thanks to my own grueling hard work and determination when it came to self-reflection, I understood everything about myself now.
But like basketball, it’s not a skill you master once and then let slide.
*
Gio’s one of those people who wears his interests on his sleeve. Whether it be video games, professional wrestling, or the horror of Italian fascism in the 30s, if he’s into it, you’ll know about it, and you’ll probably get a little interested, too. It’s another reason our NBA discussions go on and on, his infectious passion aligns perfectly with that shared interest of mine. And it’s the reason therapy, or what he’s learned through therapy, has come up in our conversations the last few years. Yes, he’s always thought it would be good for me, but it’s also just something he’s interested in for himself, and because of that, he likes to talk about it.
That was why in the Chophouse, in a way I wasn’t prepared for, he asked this question:
“So did you pick these two stools because it allows you to see the whole bar?”
I rambled through my explanation about the awkward kneecap bulbs, how even though the server station next door isn’t great, it’s still better than those round knobs. But instead of having another chuckle about my particularities like I expected, he nodded, then added: “Because that’s a sign of trauma – the not wanting anything behind you, needing to have everything in front of you.”
In the moment, I thought I understood the question for what it was: Gio attempting to apply something he learned in therapy to an observation he made.
But beneath that, I also felt discerned. Studied. Surveilled in an unhealthy way.
Through shame I’d learned the necessity to conceal. Hide anything and everything about myself. And while I laughed it off in the moment, trying again with my explanation about the kneecap knobs, Gio’s observation had triggered a scattershot of memories and connections. Like the last morning I slept in my old bed at home before getting up to drive back to College for my senior year. After going through a full year of self-isolation during my junior year, I came back home to the safety and comfort of Carter and my high school girlfriend. Even the dysfunctional family I ran away from now felt safe to return to for that summer.
But early that last morning, perhaps only an hour before I would rise and begin packing up my car for a return to a campus I despised, my father entered my room to say goodbye before he left for work. The creak of the door hinge woke me, and having been in the deep fog of sleep, I think the first image I saw was a figure’s shadow in the doorframe of a darkened room. But these are things I could only process afterwards. In the moment the reaction was blind and instantaneous: bolting upright in bed to cry out, or wail or blubber in a fit of pre-hyperventilation, before my father had me in his arms, like I was five-years-old again, cradling me to his chest and neck, though I was now a full seven inches taller than him, as he softly whispered in my ear that everything was okay, it was just him, he only wanted to say goodbye.
In the Chophouse, the conversation moved on and the beers kept flowing, the alcohol doing its insidious work of offering solace while turning me against a close friend. I did, eventually, gain self-awareness about this moment, too, and it allowed for a healthy, sober conversation with Gio about therapy. But it took longer than it should have for me to see how his comment planted a kernel deep inside me, one that remained there the entire weekend, germinating, spreading bitter roots through those long afternoons spent numbed and hazed by the perilous comfort of a pint glass in my palm, as the yield slowly crept to the surface, waiting for its time to emerge, again, in misplaced anger.
A reminder that the work isn’t done, that it never will be.
[1] “Foundation laying” for a new era of the NBA. Bird and Magic are obviously indebted to Dr. Julius Erving, the Logo Jerry West, Kareem, Wilt, Russell, Oscar, and all the other players who built the league during much harsher times for black athletes.
[2] Non-NBA footnote/voice in the back of my head: Because the talk is about the NBA. The beautiful game. The beautiful distraction. As Gio often points out, any direct question about me gets a two-to-three word evasive answer. But this game? This game you can talk about forever.
[3] Definitely
[4] Only slight hyperbole
[5] Like, hello, shouldn’t I have seen this coming?
GRAHAM HALL lives on Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He tries to make it back to Oklahoma for at least one Thunder game a year.
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