Schmuck

Notes on Male Friendship, Bad Tennis, and What We Don’t Say.

One of my best friends regularly calls me a snob. It only bothers me when he’s right, which is less than half the time.

He also calls me “schmuck,” but that’s when I beat him in tennis. When we’re doubles partners, he’s nothing but gracious.

The two of us and four other friends rented a house with a pool in Palm Springs for a three-day adult tennis camp.

My kids thought it was hilarious. “Be respectful to your counselors,” they said. “Make good choices.”

The six of us acted like high schoolers at the house, smoking weed and drinking wine, pushing each other into the pool, and singing to Pearl Jam at the top of our lungs. That last part was probably just me.

No one asked a serious question the entire weekend. If someone had said, “How are you really doing?” we would have assumed he was having a stroke. Or called him “Mr. Feelings.”

At camp, we got worse. We made fun of the head counselor, who introduced himself by listing every semi-famous tennis player he’d ever coached. We also skipped the mandatory morning stretch sessions, which was a terrible idea for a bunch of stiff old guys.

We had the big championship on the last day of camp. There were around thirty pairs of campers, and the head counselor put the six of us friends in three pairs. The guy who calls me a snob was paired with a buddy in finance. I was paired with a guy I didn’t know as well. We’re on different sides of the political aisle, but sitting in the hot tub in our bathing suits, we agreed on pretty much everything.

We had never partnered before, so I wanted him to like the way I played. But he played so badly in the first game that I briefly wondered if I didn’t like him after all. Then I realized how stupid that was. And anyway, if one of us had to suck, I was glad it was him.

Then I fell apart. The new serve they taught me wasn’t working, and one coach watched my backhand and said, “What the hell was that?” My partner started making his shots, and I started missing all of mine, especially the easy ones.

Oh shit, I thought, now he hates me. Now I’m the weak link.

It’s a ridiculous conclusion from a missed backhand, but the feeling goes back to high school, when you could break one unspoken rule and end up banished to the theater geeks or stoners.

I spent time with both. Mostly the stoners after I lost the lead role in The Rainmaker to a senior named Norman Gorman. Not that I think about that forty years later.

It was our last match, and we had to win. We played against a husband-wife duo dressed in black. The wife didn’t hit hard, but she never missed. The husband was a beast, crushing his shots, but only making about half. “Keep hitting to the husband,” my buddy whispered. “He’s all over the place.”

We were just a game behind and we worked the husband, who kept overhitting. Then it was the wife’s serve. The lighter she hit, the harder we missed.

We lost.

“You played great today,” my new friend lied. “I sucked.”

“No, it was all you,” I lied right back. “I couldn’t hit shit.”

We both knew what we meant.

I’d hang out with him again.

The guy who calls me a snob and the finance guy won the camp championship. I was happy for them, mostly. We all fist bumped and man-hugged before we went our separate ways. It was a three-hour drive home and we each drove separately. It wouldn’t have occurred to us to drive together. Asking to ride with someone seems needy.

Guys drive alone.

A couple days ago I phoned the buddy who calls me a snob. I had no particular reason to call, and he seemed happy to hear from me. I’m not sure how we became the kind of guys who do that. We just call if we haven’t seen each other in a while. We talked about work, his daughter’s company, and my wife’s new job.

We never say we miss each other. That would be insane. We just check in about nothing and stay on the phone a little longer than we need to.

We eventually said goodbye, but before we hung up, he reminded me about tennis camp. “You really sucked out there.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Schmuck.