Free Losing My Cool by Thomas Chatterton Williams Page A

that I was the most conspicuously dressed player in the room, with my patent leather Air Jordans, black Nike socks and matching shorts and shirt—matching everything, Nike everything, from head to toe—and this made me self-conscious. The other boys mostly were dressed in old maroon-and-maize St. Anthony gear and the sneakers they’d been given, which made me think that clothes either were the last thing on their minds or a luxury they couldn’t afford, or both. I was running in the off guard position now because the point guard of the team was on my squad. He was this short, thick, almost eggplant-black boy (“blurple” was Stacey’s term for the color), with a squarish head. He reminded me of one of the scowling members of Full Force, those bullies Kid ’n Play were always fleeing from in the old House Party movies. The boy had declined to speak to me when I introduced myself to him, which didn’t especially bother or surprise me; I figured he was just focused—everyone in this gym was so damn focused you got the impression that were they to apply similar effort to, say, the study of medicine, they’d find the cure for cancer or the secret to immortality.
    On the first play of the game, my man, who I had inches on, took the ball directly at me, hard, leaned me on my heels, then stepped back for a mid-range jumper. He missed and I boxed him out for the rebound, which was coming directly at us. I assumed I would grab it over him with ease. I kind of half jumped for the ball and, anticipating myself, began to turn my attention toward the other basket and to offense. I had one hand on the ball when suddenly it began to lift itself up. In a flash, I saw the crotch of one of the forwards from the other squad in my face as he hammered the pill back through the net and swung from the rim. “Let’s go!” he shouted, and sprinted back on defense, squatting at half-court to slap the ground. I went to get the ball and inbound it to the point guard, who was staring right through me.
    â€œD the fuck up, nigga,” he said as I trotted back behind him.
    My team got run off the court that game . I managed to get through it without any egregious mistakes. I hit a jump shot, guarded the rock, didn’t commit any turnovers. My man scored on me several times, which was a problem, but all in all I didn’t feel so bad—you win some and you lose some. I sat down on the sideline thinking about what to do better next run but not displeased, when the point guard with the quadrilateral headpiece walked by. He was still breathing pretty hard, harder than I was. I looked up at him and he looked down at me, and just when I thought he was about to speak, he began to clear his throat, really clearing it out, from somewhere deep down in his esophagus or even deeper. He looked me in the eye and then he spat, emphatically, hawking what turned out to be the single largest gob of phlegm I have ever seen onto the floor beside me. It hit the wood almost with a splash and formed a kind of jiggling, glossy puddle there. What the fuck—does this guy have emphysema or something? I thought. Before I could register a reaction of any sort, though, he turned his back on me. This exchange ( exchange? no,“exchange” is not the word—complete dismantling is more like it; I think my mother was in the stands) rattled me to the core. In one bold stroke, he had established his territory and annihilated my confidence, snapping that shit in two like a stalk of celery.
    The second time I went to St. Anthony, a week or so later, was much easier simply because on a certain level I had stopped caring. I found myself on Perry’s squad. At game point, I caught the ball at the top of the key, pump-faked, and drove past my man for a quick pull-up jump shot. In the air, I spotted Perry on the baseline drifting to the basket and dumped the ball down to him with both hands. He caught it and flipped