Tonight my question to the universe is, why do men sometimes get so stupid around me?
I went to the gym to shoot around today and finally found Steve. He was playing one on one with Curtis.2, and they invited me to play 21. I’m not cleared for full contact yet, and Curtis.2 always guards me crazy intensely and goes for monster blocks, so I kind of didn’t want to, but Steve said they wouldn’t try to block me, and I trust Steve.
So we played and I was really lackadaisical, particularly because Curtis.2 was guarding me hard and I didn’t want any contact or to fall.
I made a few random baskets, mostly low post moves ending in a shovel shot. A couple of jump shots from the left. But I’m not there yet, I can feel. And he was guarding me really hard. So I mostly just worked on dribbling and changing direction without worrying about the finish. At one point, I drove from the right to the basket, and he was trailing when he suddenly yelped and crumpled. Steve stopped playing so I did as well.
“Did you feel that?” Curtis.2 asked. I didn’t feel any contact and looked at Steve who shrugged. “I didn’t even think you touched him.” He said that his hand had gotten close to my elbow and he’d gotten two static shocks that felt like lightning and really hurt like hell. Enough to stop the play.
How weird as that?
My knee started really hurting by the 3rd game of 21, and was clicking in places it didn’t usually click. I was having trouble bending it, so I just stood around and didn’t really play. I mentioned it at the end of the game and Curtis.2 thought it was a loose IT band, an injury he’d had before so he showed me some exercises he’d done in PT for it. I wanted to know the exercises but then afterwards, had trouble extracting myself because he wanted to talk to me and ended up telling me all about his family, his dog, getting drunk once and falling off his deck headfirst while trying to throw up, that sometimes he feels sorry for guys who are trying to hide a small penis, that he’s “hung like an infant squirrel. Just kidding,” and that he loves dick jokes but not really fart jokes because while he has friends who can lift a leg and let out a monstrosity, he’s not much of a farter. How sometimes he tells his dog that they should have sex, but just kidding, they’re both guys.
This guy was trainwrecking epically. I tried to be really polite, listen, and not look disturbed, but it was hard and it wasn’t comfortable. I was watching a man self-destruct. And the whole time I was thinking, MAN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING????
I can just imagine his conversation with his dog when he got home.