SB Tennis Misadventures

"C'mon, let's do this David Wells-style," I said to myself, trying to get pumped up for my imminent match with Marcus. I was in the car, driving over to the courts for our 1pm match, severely hungover.

The night before I had gone to an Oktoberfest party, and one of the activities was a beer-tasting contest. There were 11 beers listed, and they came out with a tray of paper cups for each round. You had to name the beer as it came out. Now, those who know me know that I'm no Joe Sixpack. More like Jesse Onepack. I have a high-performance system, people! You can't just be throwing crap into this body and not expect bad things to happen! Anyway, I know my limits and am usually pretty good about staying within them. I had one beer with dinner before starting the contest, and all told, the taste tests added up to maybe half another beer.

By the time I got back to my apartment I knew I was going to be in trouble. Apparently the mixing had done me in (I maintain if I had even 2 beers of the same kind, I would have been fine). I wrapped a kitchen trash bag around my trash can and went upstairs to bed, hoping to take my punishment like a man. Sure enough, I spent the night calling Ralph on the porcelain telephone, and not sleeping soundly. The times that I did sleep I had some crazy dreams. Doesn't alcohol always give you the weirdest dreams? I had this one recurring dream that I had gotten in touch with the host of the party, and had boiled down my condition to a small chromosome in the beer that was giving me trouble. I learned that the host of the party also had a problem with this chromosome, and that she had thrown up one more time than I had, and I was convinced that I had to throw up one more time "just to get it out of me". Sure enough, I woke up and booted one final time.

I woke up for good around 10am, wondering if I was going to be able to make my match with Marcus. In my current state I was in no condition to play, but I didn't want to let Marcus down, and I thought if I could hydrate myself that getting on the court and sweating this out might be the best thing for me. Taking a sip of water just reminded me how sore my throat was. You know those spikes that some parking lots have, where you can safely roll forward on them, but DON'T EVEN THINK about backing up over them? That's what my Saturday dinner turned out to be; smooth on the way down, incredibly slasher-esque on the way back up. Toast was worse, but I forced myself to eat a slice and a half. An hour later I ate a baked potato and decided that I'd be able to make the match after all.

Marcus was mercifully late and I got to spend a little time sitting in the shade before we started our warm-up. Usually when I'm sick at night I wish that it were daytime, and that I were somewhere else instead, a soccer field or tennis court, as if puking onto a chain-link fence would be somehow more acceptable to me. For whatever reason, the tennis court is very comforting to me, and I was able to forget my recent tribulations in the repetition of hitting balls. We moved to the baseline and I cautiously opened up a bit more, hitting out on my shots and testing my stomach to see if it would hold up to sudden starting and stopping. It did.

Three quarters of the way through the first set I could feel myself start to flag. My explosiveness was gone; my first step just wasn't there. Balls that I normally could dig out and force Marcus to hit one more shot were flying by me. I could feel myself mentally checking out. "There's no shame in losing today," the voice in my head said. "You're sick, why even bother running for that?" I fought hard against that mentality, and pushed myself to try and win the 1st set. If I could do that, I would consider it a moral victory. I pushed the set to a tiebreaker, but that was as far as I was going to get that day - Marcus pulled away 7-4. I mentally checked out in the 2nd set, and although it was fun to just blast with abandon, Marcus wrapped it up 6-3.

Oh and next time? No Spaten Optimator for me, kthxbai.