Bowling, Another Dream
When you find yourself in an area that has limited possibilities for nightlife and for that matter daylife it may come up that someone will ask you to drive sixteen miles to go bowling. The first time you can get out of it by saying that sounds like fun, let's do that sometime. Sometime of course means some other time. The next time you can just be grumpy or in some other way ill of mind and simply say no I'd rather not. It is best not to play this card too often because the bowlers in your life will come to see what a loser you are before you even arrive at that bowling alley to which you know you will eventually have to arrive and of course show to them without a doubt what a bowling deficient, gutterball-throwing loser you really are. They probably won't care because they will figure it as better than bowling alone, if only marginally. When they throw strikes, or, how fantastic, a series of consecutive strikes, it will be dampened somewhat by the fact that their opponent just threw consecutive gutterballs. That you are doing your best is a pitiful excuse.
It may happen once that you will be given the gift of refusal by your bowling desirous partner. You will say, hey let's go bowling tonight (you will say this in the throes of some inexplicable burst of confidence in which you honestly believe that being a shitty bowler is not that big a deal, you have other fine qualities, a verity you cling to even if the enumeration of those qualities does not flow forth easily).
When comes the time that you are driving to the bowling alley for the first time, along a rural state highway in Virginia under a nearly full moon, it may alarm you that the thought of crashing into a suicidal deer is, while not comforting, an almost acceptable alternative to bowling. You really should not underestimate those previous periods of confidence and perhaps it may even behoove you to consider methods of cultivation.
At the bowling alley. While you can watch at night before bed graphic horror movies with nary a bad dream after, the sight of this small town bowling alley, sparsely populated with salt of the earth bowling enthusiasts, puts you in a frame of mind that will later be played out in a dream which has you walking naked in a cold rain down a busy city street.
It's league night and fifteen of the eighteen lanes are quiet, ghostly quiet, waiting for the bowlers to arrive in one hour. Some of them have on their good days bowled perfect games and you can see their names posted on huge banners along one wall, with 2 foot tall 300s emblazoned beside the names. You wonder is it too late to have a tummy-ache? You hold onto hope when the attendant says, it's league night and only three lanes are available to the public and they are all occupied. But wait, one of them will soon be available if we want to wait. Your partner does. You ask, is there beer here?
Bernadette orders a cup of watery beer and I get a Corona, keep your damn lime. We are, combined, almost a hundred years old, but get carded anyway, by a girl that to me looks twelve-years-old. Bernadette doesn't have her ID and the pre-pubescent bartender says Bernadette will have to ask the attendant at the bowling counter if it's okay. Bernadette disappears from view and comes back and says it is okay. We grab a table and wait for her name to be called. People are staring at us because we are new faces on this local bowling scene. They think--I am sure of this--that I am a world class champion bowler come to impress his woman. I am trying to telepathically communicate to these strangers, please don't hold on to your unreal expectations.
The attendant comes to our table and delivers the good news. Our lane is ready, number 17. I hope I don't have to ever find out if this comparison is accurate but walking to the counter to pick up my bowling shoes was like a walk to the gallows. I felt myself shrinking inside myself. This was it then. Had I accomplished anything? Would I be remembered any longer than I myself remembered those dead before me?
While we had waited, sipping our beers, Bernadette jabbed rusty nails into the remaining wafer of my self-confidence ( a level of confidence that had me pretty damn close to uncontrollable weeping) by admitting that she had twice in her life been a league bowler. I wanted to tell her that twice in my life I had broken a hundred, the last time perhaps as recently as 15 years ago, but I just nodded my head while feeling my lips press together in what I hoped would not be construed as a grimace.
Three of my first four balls thrown traveled happily through the gutter. They were these balls very possibly grateful for this holiday from pain, this easy and smooth path that I provided for them. I don't think anyone laughed at me. I kept my eyes averted just in case.
To our right on lane 18 played an affable father and son, of similar portliness, and complexions just slightly pitted. The young man very politely informed us at the beginning which of the balls in the return rack could be removed, as they belonged to the former bowlers. I was touched, perhaps out of proportion to the effort involved, by this simple kindness. I'm sure I was just happy to experience a bit of kindness before the probably approaching ridicule.
When Bernadette began picking up spares the father would say, nice pickup, and give her some skin, on the level, neither high nor low. If fives from the father were added together over the 20 frames we each bowled, Bernadette collected possibly 50 to my 10, which pretty fairly represents the disparity between our final scores. I did break a hundred in the second game. Unfortunately, Bernadette broke 169.
I shook hands with the kid and said goodbye and told him to go easy on his dad, who was gently beating his son each game. They both laughed. At one point during my less than illustrious play the father had offered to buy me a beer if I could pick up an almost (okay, for me, entirely) impossible spare. I didn't pick it up. We had not reached that level of friendship where he bought me a beer anyway.
Later, in the dream, walking naked through wide populated alleyways on a cold rainy night in a city I did not recognize but was probably NYC, a man came urgently running up from behind me and gave to me my old, stained, brown leather work jacket and said I had left it somewhere, but I don't remember even existing before being naked on a city street. The man exuded kindness. I put the jacket on as a jacket is worn, feeling half relieved but if possible, twice as ridiculous. It is only now, typing, that it comes to me I could have tied the sleeves of the jacket around my middle and covered that part of me that should in public be covered.
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