Monday, March 27, 2006
Not me, you say, never. You are faithful. But your will, regardless of its strength, bows to cupid’s arrow, just as everyone else’s. One day you may find your heart prone on your Macroeconomics textbook, your Dr. Grip shooting out of your sweat-soaked fingers like a watermelon seed. There- perhaps to your left or maybe in front of you- you’ll see them. The love of your life. The love of your semester, at the very least.
Within their ethereal features you’ll find lust, longing, a reciprocal desire to explore you and your life, and an inner beauty. What you won’t find however, is one shred of a clue as to what the fuck you’re talking about every time your heart races, your voice accelerates, and you breathlessly start to tell them of a great mark, long pulls, and spirit-crushing Callahan scores that lifted you over your sectional rival and into the most competitive regional tournament since the redraw. You will find a vacant look trying to escape detection between polite nods, hmms, and ahas.
But you’re not discouraged! You will persevere! No, no! You accept your loved one’s ignorance as a challenge, an opportunity to create a new convert, and blissfully daydream through your accounting classes of the day they’ll throw their first I/O flick, catch their first layout goal, and embrace you on the field as you celebrate your first coed summer league championship.
Then, the bell rings, you press the blank pages of your notebook together, and head off to practice. Your dinner plans are pushed back, as you work the logistics of your upcoming tournament weekend. And they wait, hungry, rinsing the pasta and refrigerating it until you come home. When you arrive, you’ve brought a couple of teammates eager to carbo-load together, and before your loved one’s pulled the food out of the microwave you and your teammates have begun parsing the pools, analyzing (nearly) every possible bracket match-up, discussing your plans to contain players that are hot and ragging on those that are not. They eat their pasta with a smile adhered to their face, turning their head to whomever holds the conch, and feeling very much the same way they’d felt several hours earlier in French class as they tried to make out the words in L’Argent du Poche.
You throw around with them, but can’t really enjoy it. Sometimes they complain you throw too hard, others you tire of throwing the same fifteen yard flat backhand over and over. You want to run around, catch one deep in stride, jump and catch a nice hammer at the peak of your leap! You love them, but, damn. If they could throw a disc well, that’d be something, wouldn’t it?
Your weekends are booked. They’re looking forward to the summer when the series ends and you can finally spend some weekends together. You’re wondering how to mention that tryouts for the club team are at the beginning of June. You’re helping run your team’s tournament, then heading to sectionals, and hoping to squeeze studying for finals in the time between practices and regionals. They’re hoping you're going to squeeze them in the time between practices and regionals. Something has to give. After nationals, when you receive the club team’s schedule and they read it over your shoulder, something does.
They’d never ask you to give up ultimate for them. Inside, they hope you’d do that on your own. But this year the club team is really coming together, many of your college teammates are playing together for the experience to make a deeper run during the college series, and you’re finally taking the leadership roles you’ve been craving since you learned what a stack was. They should understand. If they really cared for you they would understand. But it ends. You go your separate ways, each with two pieces of the same truth- neither of you understood.
7 comments:
Hh,
I met my wife-to-be in a Micro-economics class in 1983. I stopped playing Ultimate for a while in the 80's, so perhaps that eased the burden. When I came back to the sport, my now-wife was very supportive and understanding. Perhaps she just wanted me out of the house. I have always felt that our interests outside of the relationship made us stronger.
Thanks, G
My exwife always said she would change and instead of fighting with me before every practice. She said it was because she didn't like sports/competition but eventually it became apparent that she just wanted me to be with her 24/7.
Finally, after giving up ultimate for 4 years and rec basketball, I couldn't deal being home all the time and never going out. So, I started slowly with basketball once a week for like 2 hours and when the fights started again, I knew I would be miserable if things did not change. So, now I play ultimate when I want and no longer with her. Compromise is good to a degree but you can't totally change what truely makes you happy without resenting the other person.
jt
i only wish the selection of eligible ultidudes was larger; sometimes us chicks run out of options in our tight-knit ulti-communities. :'(
but i agree. dating non-ultimaters just isn't as fulfilling. especially when they want to argue about how golf and baseball are better "sports" than ultimate. idiots.
- m
as one of my girlfriends asked me going home to fools fest this weekend: "where do you meet non-ultimate players?"
well, we've decided to now whore ourselves out at floor hockey, rugby and now hip hop/salsa dancing to meet new guys. seems like everyone around here has already dated curtis manning so you've gotta go outside the "circle". i think that alot of what attracts me to a duder (such as dar - remember our brief courtship?) is their competitive nature, intelligence and of course not being so bad on the eyes. ultimate definitely gives you a good gene pool to swim around in.
crushing hard on circus...
kk
I fell in love with ultimate for a number of reasons. I was tired of hard-hitting sports that were focused on harming another person, I love a challenge, and there was this beautiful woman. She was older, and I never really had a shot, but that was the first time a female literally took the breath from me. There are those that would say that she's not quite the looker that I relentlessly claim she is, but it was more than that. It was how she played the game, how she embodied the spirit of loving competitiveness that so many of us are starting to forget, and the way that she poured her whole heart into her game. She also had a long lefty backhand that made my knees buckle whenever I saw it. To look for a woman outside of our growing ultimate subculture not only seems like a heartbreak waiting to happen, but like robbing my first true instinct of lustful infatuation of a second breath. I'm not saying I've had any real success with women of the disc, and I'm a youngin' - But I don't see myself trying anywhere else.
-Bucket
as long as the other person is just as passionate/obsessed/etc with a sport or something, don't you think it can work out? as long as you both have that extreme drive the non-ultimate someone can still relate to your high after a sick layout D on universe point of the final game?
I don't know, it's not all bad. At least when you are a lady, the non-ulty guys you date are just in awe of what you can do on the field. With the ulty-dudes, they know what is a real play at what isn't!
Honestly, I really like being with a non-ulty player. It's made me appreciate other sports- squash, golf, tennis, running...wait a minute- he doesn't run with me. I also really value our time alone.
Ah well.
-Mint
Post a Comment