Michael had just beat Tom: thin, white-haired, sweet-spirited. They had returned to the half-circle of chairs near the fire pit discussing their game.
“What sport?” I asked.
“Ping pong,” Michael said. “You play?”
I do.
“Want to play a game?”
I did.
We set off, leaving the fire pit and the patio and the indefatigably stick-chasing German shepherd, Susan, past the fresh-spring pond on the property’s southern border to where a table stood amid clouds of mosquitoes. The table, flecked with tree detritus and insect wings, was perched on a mildly sloping patch of muddy lawn fronting a narrow street a few miles north of Route 28. Guests flowed naturally from the street to the patio and fire pit near the kitchen door, past the outdoor shower and north-facing octagonal wing with its first-floor bathroom crammed with paintings and paint cans and cartons and sharp-edged metal advertisements for departed circuses and brands of soda pop and a walnut roll-top desk and a wheeled walnut slat-backed office chair which held the toilet paper roll and with uncurtained windows through which patio denizens could peer and with a second-floor I didn’t see -- the master bedroom, I’d guess. If the house had a front door I never saw it.
“World’s greatest bathroom,” I said to Jon: tall, with wide eyes and a sharp nose that reminded me of middle-aged Philip Roth and thinning hair curling sloppily down his neck and a host’s way of placidly affirming all his guests said.
“Come use it any time,” Jon said.
“I might,” I said. “It’s worth the trip.”
Michael and I warmed up, he lobbing shots with an underhanded waist-level flick. A vulnerable backhand, I guessed. Our pace quickened. He could hit but showed no evidence of being able to slam.
We started. I made mistakes, acclimatizing. He made mistakes, too. I kept score out loud. We talked: California, San Francisco, the Central Valley, my childhood home. I edged ahead. His serve.
“Nine-six,” Michael said.
“Six-nine,” I said. “I’m up.”
“I had seven,” he said.
“No,” I said. “It was 8-6, and you hit into the net.”
“Right,” he said. “Nine-six.”
“Six-nine,” I said. “It’s your serve.”
“Right,” he said. “Too much wine. Too much pot.”
“I get it,” I said. “I just got here.”
We talked less. I kept score. I started to hit the ball where I wanted.
“Twelve-seventeen? Really?” he asked. He blew out his cheeks. I won the next point, then the next two. He won three. I closed it out.
“You’re good,” he said. “You’re the best I’ve played today.”
“Let’s go again,” I said. “Switch sides.”
“I’m pretty tired,” he said. “OK.”
I asked questions: his seven grammar schools in three years, back and forth, Minnesota, France, Minnesota, France. Our mutual love of Montreal. His daughter graduating from college, maybe McGill? A joint degree in something: human engineering? My game got sharper, his fell apart. I ended with a couple of forehand slams: 21-3.
“Wow,” he said. “I’m done.”
We walked back to the fire pit.
“You beat Michael?” someone asked. “21-3?”
“The first game was close,” I said.
“If you beat Michael, you’re the king,” someone said.
“I’ve had too much to drink,” Michael said.
“Have you played a lot?” someone asked.
Our house in Stockton had a table we unfolded on the back patio. My father played us left-handed until we beat him once; then he switched to his right hand. By the time I was 12 I could consistently beat him and my brother, four years older.
“In high school we went to my brother’s friend’s house,” I said. “We’d smoke pot and drink beer and play for hours. He always had on Bob Marley and Little Feat. Rastaman vibrations. If you’ll be my dixie chicken, I’ll be your Tennessee lamb.”
“I like that,” said Chris. Chris, who made art of some kind, had a black cowboy hat, a shaven head, and a handlebar mustache curled with precision. “I’ll be your Tennessee lamb.”
Peter asked, “Have you ever beaten me?”
I laughed. I had come with Peter, my friend of 30-odd years. The hosts, Becky and Jon, knew Riley, Peter’s partner of six months. Riley had recently moved in with Peter. This weekend was partly about me getting to know Riley. I liked him. Riley had convinced me to ignore pending obligations and stay for the party: “You’ll have fun. Very cool people. A lot of artists, people doing interesting things. Kids running around. Wine, beer, pot. Good food. Very relaxed. Come.”
Peter can beat me at Scrabble at least half the time. He’s stronger; we wrestled once, in college, to my humiliation. We’ve never played ping pong.
“I’m sure I’ve never beaten you,” I said. “Should I try?”
At the table, a father (Brad? Tall, wispy beard, relaxed vibe) was playing his teenaged daughter. We strolled back to the pond, where Peter joined Riley with a bucket of soap and a rope contraption making impressively large bubbles. I chatted -- about journalism, the inescapable Trump -- with another soft-voiced man and a spirited French woman (not Valerie -- Valere?). Valere was with Michael. The party’s heterosexual component was all soft-spoken middle-aged men and their more vivacious partners.
Brad lost to his daughter, who didn’t want to play a stranger. Peter and I began knocking it around. Play intensified. I had forgotten the depth of his competitive spirit. He won a string of rallies. “Let’s play a game,” I said. It was close for a while, then I pulled away: 21-13, or something.
We went back to the fire pit. A half-dozen kids from 9 to 14 sat on the ground making S’mores.
“I kicked his ass,” Peter said.
“Really?” someone asked. Peter shook his head.
A man (Alan? Maybe from the Pacific islands? A broad face, punctuated with thick black-framed glasses) said he’d lost to Michael but that Michael had already played several games.
“Exactly,” Peter said, in mock dudgeon. “Totally unfair. You can’t come in cold and win under those conditions.”
“Plus I was on the low side.”
“Don’t forget the cross breeze,” I said. “The way the light was glinting off the pond. And the mosquitoes are way worse on the far end.”
Peter laughed. Alan smiled thinly.
Dinner: pulled pork, fresh bread, cheeses, a couple of potato salads, green salad, carrot salad. I was ravenous. The pork was terrific.
Riley introduced Peter and me to our co-host Becky: raven hair flecked with grey, dark eyes attractively lined, no makeup, whiskey voice. She was a costume designer. She and Chris had a space (not exactly a gallery, not exactly a performance space) in the East Village whose name I was expected to recognize, where Riley had shown up and instantly connected with both. Everything with Riley was contingent, serendipitous. He had done work in their space, maybe painting. Maybe he lived there. I couldn’t figure out anything.
“I make commercials for money,” Becky said. “Everything else I do for other reasons.”
“For art,” I suggested.
“For love,” Riley said.
Becky had a great laugh. I decided she would be relaxed but brook no bullshit: exactly the energy I sought. I decided to wander before my need became too naked.
I played another game against another tall, calm male (Richard?). It wasn’t close.
The late May sky, overcast all day, darkened. Chris’s partner, Anthony, roamed the grounds barefoot picking up kindling to stoke the fire. Desserts: a chocolate torte, Becky’s pineapple-upside-down cake.
“My dad’s favorite,” I said. “This is amazing.”
“Caramelized fruit and cake,” Becky said. “The perfect dessert.”
I found Peter and Riley inside, Peter lying on a pillowed window bench looking beat. I decided to take the 8 o’clock bus from Phoenicia. We could leave at 7:40, Jon said. I decided to use Peter’s one-hitter for the road and went searching for a lighter.
I didn’t want to ask anyone but had no choice. On the patio, in a group of five men on two chaise lounges, Chris handed me a heavy silver lighter studded with turquoise and red stones I couldn’t identify. The one-hitter was tiny, the flame near my eyes. I focused, inhaled. The one-hitter was awkward; should I offer it?
“You beat Michael,” said Anthony, languid on a lounge chair with Tom.
“I think he was high,” I said.
Sitting beside Chris, Michael -- had he been there the whole time? -- said, “I get tired more easily. I’m older. I’ve had to focus a lot at work -- on the computer, but focusing for hours, where I can’t fuck around. I’ll be glad when this job is over.”
The wind shifted, blowing wood smoke. The pause was awkward maybe only in my head. I asked what Michael did but got distracted by how the etched lines around his mouth moved in concert with those between his brows. His affect was less exhaustion than anger.
The party fringes stirred. A couple of nice men came to hug goodbye.
“I have to take off,” I said.
Chris said quietly, “Can I have my lighter back?”
As I hastened Anthony said, “Your precious lighter!”
Chris had inherited it from his uncle, having admired it for years. The uncle, his father’s brother, lived in the desert southwest: an important figure in Chris’s life. He didn’t know where his uncle had got it.
“You would have tackled me before I got 10 feet,” I said.
Beneath cowboy hat and tinted glasses Chris’s face was unreadable.
“Great to meet you all,” I said.
In a cluster near the kitchen stood Becky.
“You throw a great party,” I said.
She touched my arm.
“Come back for more ping pong. I played myself out against the kids earlier. But I hear you’re the guy to beat.”
“Oh, you know,” I said, looking down. “People talk.”
“No,” she said, serious. “Fuck that.” I looked up. “You’re the best player here. Own it.”
We looked at each other. I was in high school, she my coach.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s true. Anyone who wants to win has to come through me.”
Did I step forward and hug her? I know I said, in earnest, “Thank you.”
“And when you come back,” Becky said, “I’ll kick your ass.”
“The fuck you will,” I said. “Go fuck yourself.”
Laughter floated with the wood smoke as I turned. Her words echoed: through a walk to the car and a hard hug for Riley; a 15-minute car run down the hill and a harder hug for Peter; a 5-minute sidewalk wait for the Trailways; a chat with the driver (six days a week and double shifts Fridays and Sundays, 5 kids between 18 and 6, new wife, strict rules on screen time); a stop in Woodstock that picked up Al, a Brooklyn streetwise petty crook returning from a Sunday drum circle who told stories nonstop; a 50-minute wait for the 9:30 p.m. southbound from Kingston featuring a walk to the 24-hour CVS to replace forgotten glasses (“Real glasses or readers?” Peter had texted, four words that, I decided, sum up too much of middle-aged existence); two more southbound hours beside Al, who worked on the fringes with Wise Guys none of whom I knew and who shared his dark chocolate and who had written a screen play now a movie for which he had a laminated postcard with his name credited three times and who asked, as the bus wheezed through the Lincoln Tunnel, “So where would you rank my stuff? On a scale of 1-10?” and who seemed pleased with the honestly given grade of 8; through a Times Square platform wait for a southbound C and a slow haul to Brooklyn and a misbegotten transfer to a G at Hoyt-Schermerhorn; through that night and the next morning and the days and weeks and months that followed. “Fuck that. Own it.” They dripped through accumulating layers of work and tedium and depression, continuing, with surprisingly little diminishment, to make my spirit percolate.
Clearly, I need to play more ping pong.
