Amid a bevy if impressive sequences, the most significant play of the game to me (in a big picture way) occurred in the second half when Beasley caught the ball in the post against Oden.  It drives me nuts when smaller guys are in this situation and then dribble out only to fake and jab for 5 seconds before taking a step back jumper.  You see this at least two or three times a game.  But Beasley, recognizing the mismatch, dribbled out to the wing to exploit his speed advantage (Oden followed half way) and then went right at the rim.

Oden slid his feet quickly enough to keep pace with Beasley, jumped in perfect sync with him to contest the shot, and kept his arms straight up to avoid fouling.  There was contact in the air, but it was incidental, chests and shoulders, and refs typically don’t call if you keep your arms up and as long as one guy doesn’t go flying.  Oden played it just perfectly.  But Beasley scored anyway.  He took the contact in the air, switched the ball to his right hand, and finished softly over Oden.

GREG ODEN

That Oden didn’t block the shot is irrelevant.  He’s been a shot-blocking machine this season, and that alone invalidates concerns that microfracture surgery would limit his explosiveness.  No, the only thing between Oden and true greatness is foul trouble (his other injuries don’t seem like chronic threats.)  If he can limit his fouls enough to stay on the court 35 minutes a game, he’ll be a superstar.  That a goodly number people wrote him off as a bust as soon as he had knee surgery was absurd.  But I also find fault in the plethora of apologist commentary that said we need to adjust our expectations of Oden’s ceiling, to appreciate him for what he is.  For example, consider John Hollinger’s (espn insider) profile on Oden from the pre-season:

So let’s be honest here about what Oden is and what he isn’t. What he is, certainly, is an effective, slightly awkward big man who can rebound and block shots. What he is not is a once-in-a-generation center. Oden is too awkward offensively and too foul-prone to be the kind of dominator some thought he might be coming out of Ohio State.

Wipe away those expectations and it was a solid rookie season.

I wouldn’t take umbrage with this if Hollinger had spoken in the past tense and told us what Oden was and wasn’t in his rookie year, that he wasn’t a once-in-a-generation force in his rookie year.  Of course he wasn’t.  Between injuries and going one-and-done in college, Oden has played vastly less basketball than any previous NBA great center in his rookie year.  Check out this list of all time shot-blockers; it’s made up almost exclusively of guys who played three or four years in college.  And it isn’t just the all time greats and players from previous generations.  Check out the list of active shot-blockers; only the high-school kids had less experience than Oden and only Dwight Howard caught on quicker than Oden has been.  He’s much better than the others were at 21.  Really, considering the circumstances, it’s way too early to give up on hoping that Oden can be a once-in-a-generation dominating center.  I’m not saying he will, but I think he’s got a good shot.

Regarding his supposed clumsiness, so far he’s less turnover-prone than a bunch of greats at his age, like Patrick Ewing.  How else do you judge clumsiness in basketball?  Lack of obvious grace?  Whatever; Dwight Howard is somewhat less than graceful on offense.  Oden’s already got a much better shooting touch.  And how does anyone know if Oden will remain foul-prone?  What evidence is there that it’s a question of innate ability?  Frankly, the most important data I see for Oden is his free-throw percentage.  He took 200 foul shots in college, lefty, while recovering from right-hand surgery.  And he sunk over 60% of them.  So far this season he’s over 75% with his right hand.  That he picked up shooting it lefty in so little time and shot it better than a number of highly skilled alltime great bigs…  This year’s present clip, albeit a fairly small sample size, isn’t likely a clip, given that lefty shooting in college.  It’s more likely to be a result of time, practice, repetitions.  It’s evidence of his ability to improve.

Anyway, regardless of what Bill Simmons and lesser lights believe, I think the Oden or Durant argument is far from over.  But for injury concerns for Oden, they’d be neck and neck.  Durant’s a scoring machine, but he’s not yet anywhere close to the defender Oden is.  And while Oden isn’t nearly as good an offensive player, but he’s far better on offense than Durant is on defense.  Then again yesterday Durant looked like top-form Andrei Kirilenko on defense for a few plays, so who knows.  That’s the point, who knows?

This is an NBA view.  Yes of course, I know you’re more accustomed to reading NBA previews, but this is how I roll.  See, I typically don’t get much of a chance to see summer league or preseason action, (especially this year, since the sublet I occupied through Oct. didn’t have cable,) so it takes me a while to get a sense of what’s going on in the League, and provide readers with the fecund bounty of my foresight.*  I know some people might think this is somehow “cheating.”  But those people would be wrong.  I don’t make contest out of this stuff; it’s just a mental exercise for me.  (Granted, that’s mostly because I don’t have the dough to make even the mildest preseason wager, but that’s beside the point.)  And anyway, as you might know from my Finals prediction last season—Orlando winning in nine—I’m not terribly concerned with being right.  This is good, because I’m not off to a great start this year, already flubbing a number of early season micro-predictions—namely, guessing which games will be the best ones to watch.  In my defense, I’ve never faced such odds before—that is, before I purchased the almighty Season Pass, which avails a staggering number of NBA games to satisfy my basketball junkie need.  It’s been all but overwhelming, and I’ve already spent many, many hours in my living room, sitting and staring into the very glowing nexus of professional basketball—hosted by Chris Webber, and Co.  And I like it.**

The only problem with having Season Pass is that I’m missing more good games than ever before.  In previous seasons, when my hoops purview was limited to local games and whatever was being nationally broadcast, (that is to say, Lakers games,) I didn’t really miss good games, because I didn’t have the option to see most of them.  The first time I even saw Kevin Durant was when I traveled to Oklahoma City for the Freeballin’ project.  Now, with almost every game at my fingertips, if I miss a good one, it’s because I chose the wrong game to watch.  For instance, on the second night of the season I decided against the Nets/TWolves matchup, opting instead for…well, like any of six other games that seemed like they’d be more fun.  And wouldn’t you know it, the Nets lost at the wire 93–95.  I also missed the Nets losing to the 76ers, 94–97 and falling to the Heat last night, 80–81***.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched some terrific games already this season, and seen some really great stuff—like LeBron/Wade going all Corrales/Castillo in the first quarter last Thursday.  But I can only watch one game at a time (or two, actually, with DVR allowing me to go back in time,) and since there are often what five, seven games a night?  Chances are I won’t catch the best one.  So along with those Nets losses, I’ve also missed Denver 97–Portland 94; Sacramento 127–Memphis 116 (OT); Cippers 93–Memphis 90; and Boston 92–Minnesota 90, among others.

Given a plethora of options, would you really have picked any of those game as winners, except Denver/Portland?  (And I was too sleepy for a West Coaster that night.)  There’s always a chance that a lousy team like Minnesota is going to put up an usually good fight against a top team.  But you can’t bet on it, right?  Also, two crappy teams going at it can make for some close finishes—but those games are often like that movie Dogfight (with formerly alive River Phoenix and umm…Lili Taylor) where dudes compete to find the homeliest girl to bring to the party.  Games between two crap teams is a contest of who sucks worse; Minnesota only won because one team had to win.

However, every so often crappy (or just young) teams coalesce for one night and look like contenders.  That’s a lot of fun to watch.  And also, you (meaning me) have to remember that many of those great last minute finishes start as blowouts.  Who knows when Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva are going to combine for 30 points in the fourth quarter against the Lakers.  You just never know.  If you don’t sit through 20-point fourth quarter deficits, you’ll never see the truly incredible, like Tracy McGrady’s 13 points in 33 seconds, (which is easily among the Top Five All-Time Relatively Insignificant Sequences in NBA history.)  Sure it’s never likely that any given game will feature an amazing or almost-amazing comeback—that’s why they’re so thrilling.  So I just try never to quit on a game because it’s lopsided.  Mind you, I do things in my life other than watch basketball (sort of) but if I’ve allotted the time for a game, I’m going to watch the damn thing.  And these days it’s easy to catch the magic of the unlikely without sacrificing too much of your time.  I mean, I don’t always pay attention to every play in a lopsided game.  You can do other stuff with the game on in the background and check in when the telecasters get excited, to see if anything’s going on.  With DVR, you don’t miss a thing.  Me, I try to utilize a blowout by being productive, like: doing my bills, retyping old To Do lists, and writing to my hottie prison pen-pals, (which is like drafting a rookie who needs a few years to develop.)  And when the something great happens, I’m right there to catch it.  Oh, and if you don’t immediately recognize the brilliance of corresponding with hotties behind bars, you’ve clearly a) never seen Girls in Prison or b) never drafted Rashard Lewis straight out of high school.  I recommend both.

* – Ever write a sentence and then have an urge to replace one word that would make the sentence entirely incoherent, but also kind of cool or bizarre?  Me too!  At some point in my life, be it tomorrow or ten years from now, I’m going to find a way to fit, “…to provide readers with the fecund bounty of my foreskin,” into a piece of writing, such that it makes complete sense.  It will be a work of fiction, I promise.

**- I should mention that Webber’s commentary is no small bonus, to me.  I actually didn’t care for him for a long time; ever since his rookie year, when he complained and pushed for the Warriors to switch from white sneakers to black sneakers, I knew he was going to be a jerk.  Rookies shouldn’t complain about anything unless they’re hemorrhaging.  But at some point he started dating Tyra Banks—in her prime—and since then I take his thoughts on all matters very seriously.  The man knows what he’s doing.

*** – I’m also due to miss the Nets losing to Indiana 84-87 on the 17th, and a heartbreaker to Milwaukee 94–95 the following night.  Finally, giving in, I will watch the Nets/Knicks game on Nov. 21^st–because watching a fake grudge-match between two awful teams is a surefire winner–in which the Nets blowout the Knicks for their first win of the season.  Meanwhile, I will be missing a 3OT game on another channel.

I should mention, sometimes I’m not quite connected to what’s…going on.  It isn’t that I don’t pay attention; I just pay attention to what’s important and fliter out some/most of the other stuff.  I came to Miami to write about the Heat (important) and meet their fans (important), especially the ones in string bikinis (imperative).  That the popular tourist city of Miami might be booked the f#ck up for the week of New Years didn’t occur to me until I found out that almost every hostel bed in Miami was booked for days.

I finally found a bunk, on Miami Beach, for $24—but for just one night; they were all booked up for the 29th-Jan 2nd.  That was fine, because I’d find a couch to surf.  But I didn’t, and before I went to sleep on the 28th, I booked the only hostel spot I could find for the 29th.  They also had an opening for the 30th, but thaat place charged $45 a night—double their normal rates—through the 5th of January.  I needed it for one night, but just couldn’t stomach it for two.  I figured I’d give myself another chance at couchsurfing for the 30th and after.  And if that didn’t work I’d sleep on the beach and cover myself in patchouli oil to keep away the muggers.

My spirits were bolstered when I received a couchsurfing confirmation from Brian, for Jan 4th, 5th, and 6th (and we later added the 7th).  Then, after some craftying, I found a place in the interim. There was a couchsurfing New Years Eve outing that I said I would attend, but I wrote on the event page that I didn’t have a place to stay yet.  That’s how I met Agata (and Jamil, her boyfriend), who agreed to host me through the 3rd.

I have couchsurfed every night since that first with Agata and Jamil—74 straight nights.  Until tonight.  Alas, I’m in a Comfort Inn, now, in The Dalles, OR.  It was a crappy day for hitchhiking, including a late start and persistent rain.  And there was no couchsurfing available tonight.  Tomorrow is Sunday, so I don’t know what kind of luck I’m going to have.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, if I can piece it together before I fall asleep, I thought I’d list the Dates, Locations, and (first) Names of the people I’ve stayed with, during the streak:

12/30 – 1/3 – Miami Beach – Agata and Jamil

1/4 – 1/7 – Miami Beach – Brian

1/8 – 1/13 – Orlando – Alex

1/14 – 1/15 – Atlanta – Jarrett

1/16 – 1/18 – Atlanta – Kimbi and Karl

1/19 – 1/24 – Atlanta – Ehsan

1/25 – 2/2 – Asheville – Patrick and Johanna

2/3 -2/4 – Charlotte – Robert and Sassha

2/5 – Charlotte – Jason

2/6 – 2/7 – Charlotte – Robert and Sassha

2/8 – 2/16 – Little Switzerland (NC) – Susan

2/17 – Eli’s car, passing through Nebraska – Eli

2/18 – 2/21 – Salt Lake City – Travis and Wendy

2/22 – San Francisco – Alana and Michael

2/23 – 2/27 – Los Angeles – James

2/28 – 3/1 – Mountain View – Brent

3/2 – 3/5 – Sacramento – Charlotte and Caleb

3/6 – 3/13 – Portland – Sarah

~ Fin ~

***

Nobody wants to take the 1:25 AM Greyhound from Orlando to Michigan. Some need to; others have to. This dude behind me, across the aisle, is definitely a ‘have to.’  He moves back and forth between Florida and Michigan, but, unusually, prefers summers in Florida and winters in Michigan, for his skiing and his ice-fishing. Skiing?  I always think of skiing as a sport of the affluent, and this guy is not affluent.  He doesn’t look healthy enough to ski, either.  He’s got gray brown teeth in all directions and looks like he hasn’t changed his skin in too long. He doesn’t have time for the skiing and ice-fishing, this time around; he’s heading up tonight, Tuesday, and back Saturday. He’s said it a few times, now, not having time.   Definitely not a visit.  Don’t know why, then; he’s not saying, and I’m too tired to get into a conversation with him.  But there’s just something to it; it’s the difference between having compelling interests and being compelled.  This cat is compelled to take this bus.

I don’t know what he’d be doing, in my story.  Some writers might have him going up for a funeral, or because someone was sick, or to borrow money, or to deliver a bag of crack he’s swallowed.  If he didn’t look so used up and smile with those wretched teeth, he could be a Louis Lamour character, going up to Michigan to kill a man, with justification, a thing that needs doing.  He’s going to say it, at some point.  He can’t poke at it for all 9 hours of this trip without spilling it.  If I could stay awake and eavesdrop all the way through the conversation he’s having (more of a monologue) I’d know.  Sorry, I’m shot.  I’m so tired.  I’m going to sleep as soon as I finish typing.  And there’s always another guy on another Greyhound.  More and more, there’re so many stories, like those movies where they find the buried treasure and it’s a room’s worth, clearly more than they’ll ever be able to carry.  I just have to fill my pockets with these stories and go to sleep when I need to sleep.  But I always feel irresponsible when I don’t follow a conversation with something in it, like I’m slacking off on the job.

***

Thelma from a few weeks ago had needed to take the 2:45 AM out of St. Louis to Oklahoma City. She wasn’t compelled, but she was kind of sneaking away, in her own head, at least. Poor Thelma, she was a pretty unhappy lady, and I didn’t help, at first.

I suppose that the empty seat next to me looked like her safest option—I was the only one with an available seat who wasn’t wearing prison-issue sweat suit (yes, I’m serious) but lord was she big, she was bigger than I was, and I’m freakin’ big. The only reason we fit next to each other is that my hips are actually pretty narrow for my body.  But my shoulders go half way into her space unless I’m pressed against the window like one of the girls in the “Put Em on the Glass” video. Thelma had me pretty smooshed up against the window.

I had been talking quietly to my father on my cell, sort of whining (but in a manly way) about being on a Greyhound for almost 36 straight hours. I knew some of the people on the bus were going on longer trips and had done it before, and were, for the most part, poorer than me and more downtrodden.  Because I’m really not downtrodden, unless you compare my situation with that of a European whose unemployed rambling is government subsidized.  My poverty is mostly a sacrifice I choose to make, so I don’t complain.  I just whine (but in a manly way) to a few choice allies.

This time, on the bus, so I didn’t sound like a complete prick to the other passengers, I justified my whining (but in a manly way) by saying the Greyhound trip would be totally fine, except the buses had not been built for me-sized people.  They aren’t.  I was sore and stuff and cranky (but in a manly way.)

Anyway, after I got off the phone line, Thelma whispered to me that she would switch to another seat as soon as there was room (all the other seats were taken at that point) and it just made my heart bleed. I felt really bad, hadn’t even thought about her sitting beside me, listening to my whining (but in a manly way,) Oh, no, no, not her at all; I wasn’t speaking about her, had been uncomfortable without anyone next to me, the seats, the hours, yadda, yadda. I think I actually convinced her, and I changed the subject, quickly enough, made her laugh, chatted the rest of the way to OKC.

Thelma was going to visit her daughter, who was living with some guy in OKC, and whom she hadn’t seen for six years.  She had been taking care of her disabled mother for ten years. She wanted a break. Her siblings resented her for it, had the fucking gall to say “what about Mom?”

I got the impression Thelma didn’t have enough money to take a Greyhound back.  But I guess she needed to leave more than she needed to be able to come back.  She didn’t come out and say it, but though her trip was three weeks, she didn’t want to go back, ever.  She was running away.

****

My favorite Greyhound compatriot was actually only taking an 11PM out of D.C., but she still badass, because she was riding all the way to Trailer Park, CA.  And she was first class material.  The first night on the trip, she had sat in front of me and provided a helping hand for the guy who sat next to her—whom (she told me later) she had never met until they sat down together. They were still sitting together the next morning, providing me with some high comedy.

They napped, his back to the window, her back to his chest, her feet on the edge of the seat, knees bent. I was doing some work on my laptop that morning and noticed, glancing in their direction from time to time, that the position of his hand would change slightly. The seat, her hip, her stomach, her thigh.  Seat to thigh took over an hour.  Then, at some point, when I looked back, I didn’t see his hand for a second, until I noticed just the tips of three fingers poking out from between her fast-locked knees. Denied! Defied! It was awesome. They held that position for hours, eyes closed, serene. Poor guy, just looking to return her favors from the previous evening, and his arm must have been ready to fall apart by the time the bus stopped for McDonald’s. Awesome, awesome. So awesome, in fact, that when nobody was looking, I fished my camera out and took a few covert shots to put up on the blog—faces obscured, of course. I can’t find them now, damnit, but if I do, I’ll post them under the title, “The Locked Knees And Swollen Fingers of Despised Love.” Oh, for the record, I’m not a peeping tom except in the way that any responsible writer is a peeping Tom. And I’m a consummate professional.

Anyway, this chick may have needed to stop those ambitious fingers, but she had to be on that Greyhound as much as anyone I encountered. She started chatting with me when she woke up and saw my laptop, “oh isn’t that cute,” but the dude with the sore fingers was jealous—he was kind of hugging her, trying to pull her back into his lap–she said, “you’re jealous,” jackass said, “uh huh”—so she waited until he got off the bus, in Ohio, to tell me all about her life and transgressions. Like Thelma, she was on her way to see her (four-year-old) daughter, for the first time in more than a year. Unlike Thelma, this girl had used a fake ID when she bought the Greyhound ticket, to avoid the D.C. sheriff who was after her. Escape made her cheerful, and chatty. She never said exactly what she was wanted for, but probably for something not dissimilar from previous difficulties she’d had—at least half of which were totally bullshit charges. How was she supposed to know that the girl was going to stick her head right where my Greyhound friend had thrown the chair? (And yes, that was her excuse.)

She’d always liked to move around, got uncomfortable living anywhere for more than four months or so. It was also a good lifestyle for avoiding arrest, I guess.  But considering the number of different prisons she commented on, when chatting with some of the other recent convicts on the bus, she wasn’t terribly successful.

***

And me? I took this Greyhound because I couldn’t find a ride-share and (as previously noted) Florida ain’t so cool about hitchhiking. I’m taking the 1:25 AM bus because I’d rather give up my night and sleep like shit than wait 7 hours to get up and kill my day. Also because the late night Greyhound is a 9-hour trip and the daytime Greyhound was a 13-hour trip. So I suppose you could say I need to take this Greyhound to avoid feeling cheated for time, as well as fucked for $72. However, there’s one benefit. Along with the exhaustion of a sleep full of awareness, there are periods of dark, beautiful silence, which I couldn’t purchase anywhere else, for any price. Yes, I can hear wheels turning on wet roads, cars passing, being passed, the occasional spattering of rain against my window, but silence isn’t the absence of sound; it’s the absence of noise, the absence of all but breathing from every living thing around me.

Through eight cities in nine weeks, late-night Greyhounds are the only places where I can achieve this particular peace. My face gets a rest, for one. I don’t smile, I don’t crease my brow or raise one of them, squint slightly to show elevated attention, shrug or frown in agreement, or shrug, palms up, in gentle disagreement, or form any of numerous stupid expressions that (I have been told) are distinctly mine. It isn’t that I’m faking it; I’m a fairly genuine guy. It’s just that I know I have a tendency, sometimes, to be kind of hard to read, maybe very hard to read. I think I actually have a pretty animated face, when it’s animated, but I guess sometimes, maybe a lot of times, my expression and inflection don’t really change much. All I can say is that I recognize it enough to be careful with people I don’t know well. I mean, I’m staying on generous people’s couches and if they say, “It isn’t much, but I think it’s pretty comfortable,” and I say, “No, not at all, it’s great,” in deadpan baritone, people are going to think I’m an asshole, right? Sarcastic maybe? Unappreciative? Mononucleotic? I don’t know, but I make an effort to make myself understood. Well, over nine weeks, I’ve shaken some seventy-five new hands, couchsurfed in fifteen different households, and that doesn’t include the endless polite interactions with bus drivers, cashiers, bartenders, hookers, etc.. It can get a little tiring, being polite.

I have no idea if my poker face tendencies have any impact on my friendships or romantic endeavors, though I wonder. I’ve never conducted a regression analysis of my relationships, but maybe I should. I know it’s definitely part of why I haven’t always had the most luck with office jobs. They love me in interviews, love me at the start of the job, but eventually (what feels like) the Chotchkies waiter routine is impossible for me to maintain, especially when I hate my job—and I’ve almost always hated my jobs—and can’t nod enough in a thirty second span to please a micromanaging supervisor—I almost always have an unpleasable micromanaging supervisor. It’s not that I’m ignoring them, not registering them, not understanding them; I’m just not doing so in a demonstrative fashion.  It’s not like I’m any less competent than I was when they hired me.  I try to give them what they want, but if I slide, if my reponsive expression goes from attentive gopherness to…blank, well, being sort of poker-faced is better than saying to them, when they’re being incredulous, “Hey, remember when you studied all week for that exam and got a B+ on it? I slept through that class and got an A on the final, so stop worrying, leave me the paperwork and go manage your fucking Skype account.” Nope, never did that. I performed all of my tasks with crystalline subordination. Well, now I like my profession—one from which, of course, I derive no income—and I really like the people I’m meeting, the friends I’m making, and after a year and a half of couchsurfing, I remain surprised, each stop, at how awesome and generous these people are.  But they’re all new, so demonstrative cordiality is my job, or at least the lingua franca. Yeah, gets a bit wearying now and then, and then again.

So as much as I hate these awful late night Greyhounds; I do so enjoy the privacy, and as uncomfortable as the seats are, it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about them. I don’t flop down on people’s couches, I don’t swing my legs over the arms or remove the pillows from the back, to give myself more room, without asking, and I try to be careful not to dislodge the sheets when I sleep (I am quite the sheet dislodger and hosts surely don’t want a bunch of people sweatying up their couches.)  And I’m fairly sure I’ve never accidentally (or otherwise) exposed myself, but it’s something I do keep in mind. But I could give a fuck about whether I rest my shoes on the godawful seats on a Greyhound. And if I feel like exposing myself, well why not? I haven’t, yet, but as everyone else on the bus is regularly stripsearched by prison guards, I can’t imagine it would be a big deal to them.

I think I’ve even begun to unconsciously anticipate the easy slide into Greyhound sloth because I find my demenor sagging into I Could Give a Fuck mode as soon as I purchase the tickets—making only an exception to muster some neighborly gratitude for the “thanks” I give the baggage handlers, to whom I trust my pack, hoping against hope that they won’t lose it between the time I hand it to them and they put it under the bus (ten seconds later) as is their custom. I have nothing left for the bus drivers though, unless it’s the one who isn’t an asshole. I know what you’re thinking, but there is one, the Highlander of late night Greyhound drivers. I encountered him in Ohio.

***

So I had nothing, tonight, for the girl behind me, when she tried to start a conversation. “Excuse me, is this the right line for this bus?” Smiles, shows me her ticket, “It’s my first Greyhound.” I could approximate the conversation, how it was to unfold, right then; I’ve had it ten times in the past two months. But she’s beyond me. She floats by me. I answer her question. It is, the right line. And that’s it. She seems perplexed that I don’t say more. She says something else I forget even before I reply, “Oh yeah, first class all the way.” She tries again, or twice, before giving up when my responses are entirely devoid of flirtation, of playful irony, of anything. I am beyond flirting. No, flirting is beyond me.

She is a few years younger than I am, blond by choice, her face only beginning to fall, her tone still something of unabashed expectation in it. Sorry darling, it isn’t that I don’t find you lovely—though in fact, I don’t—I’m just beyond pretending that our exchange might end up in something meaningful for either of us. I don’t mean I’m beyond flirting as in I’m above it; I mean I’m useless for intelligible conversation, tonight. I don’t have it in me to charm you, kiddo, and you don’t have it in you to inspire me to charm you. If I were the type, I could tell her that if cared about what she was talking about, or pretended that I cared, I wouldn’t be worth her time anyway. But I’m not.

Maybe I sound bitter, but I’m not.  It’s not that I have (complete) contempt for the process; I play the stupid game all the time, and I’m pretty good at it. I’m not claiming Casanoval success or anything; I find legendarily creative ways to trip over myself on the way to a pretty girl’s bed. But I can talk. I can discuss just about anything with a pretty girl, almost regardless of my condition (we all have our limits.) And I have a remarkable ability to sound like I’m not bullshitting, whether or not I have a fucking clue what I’m talking about. Seriously, I can chat engagingly with a pretty girl about Turgenev, photonics, Goodie Mob, energy efficient windows, or yarn if there’s a chance the conversation will end with my hand on her breast. The only time I can remember being totally stumped was when I was introduced to this pretty girl who told me she was in dental school. All I could think was, “Why?”

No, even tonight my brain wasn’t quite formaldehyde enough for me to totally break form, just enough to do some basic calculations as we took our seats: she started the conversation with me (plus); she’s going to where I’m going (plus); meeting people there (unplus); other girls (plus); including older relatives (unplus); doesn’t have a place of her own in Atlanta (ununplus); and (glancing over) she has a bible on her lap, which borders on kinky for a secular Newyorker like myself, but contextualized (her formless PJs/sweats, minimal makeup) it adds nothing to the equation. No, it would take a lot to make me care enough to even give it a shot, and she doesn’t have it.

Maybe, if she wanted the silence as much as I did, I would find her alluring; I would wonder what noise she was leaving behind in Orlando. If she were uninterested in company, soul drawn, needing of quiet, expressionless, contemplative (and much prettier) I might have…nah, OK, I’d definitely have been interested; fuck it, I’d've been putty. But she wants to chat and smile at the newness of Greyhound at almost 2 in the fucking morning and tell me about the something or other she’s attending in Atlanta—which I gather, from her brief pause, was worthy of comment from me—followed by the vacation she’s taking.  She doesn’t mention any definite vacation plans, which means “hey, anything is possible.” Maybe, but I’m not a kid anymore, and I know this isn’t a freethrow. It isn’t even a three-pointer. This is 8 points down with 11 seconds left, without possession of the ball. Sure it’s possible, but there’s a reason they’re still playing clips of Reggie Miller doing it, fourteen years after the fact: because it’s really fucking unlikely.

Of course, it isn’t her; it’s me. It almost always is. I’m sure she’s a very nice…whatever, I don’t care. I’m tired. I’ll save it for another day, maybe take a few three-pointers in Atlanta, on inauguration night, during that champagne burst of possibility. “Hey, who knows?” is the optimism that got a Black man elected President of the United Sates; maybe it will get me laid.

Nah, I’m not worn thin. I’m not contemptuous. I’m just tired. Or maybe after two months on the road, interrupted briefly by a trip home that left me feeling much loved, but homeless, loneliness is starting to creep in, foxing around the edges of my pages. I think the only thing that makes me think I can do this for five more months is that I really ought to move forward, because I have nothing behind me to which I can return. People are wrong. This trip takes no courage, just a paucity of alternatives. But I know I’m still not old, because that’s enough for me to be hopeful, and because I have conviction that there’s something here that’s worth my efforts, if I can get at it. Worth what wells of pride I will dry between now and whatever I’m looking for. Worth something, anyway.

Did I mention it’s Dec. 31st? Boy do I have a knack for…well, I’m not sure what I want to say here, being on the road in a popular place on a major holiday? Eh, I was traveling from Dallas to San Antonio on Thanksgiving, not exactly vacation hotspots—just inconvenient to need to go a few hundred milse on Thanksgiving when you don’t have a car. Miami, now, it turns out they enjoy a party down here from time to time. Would you believe it? A drink or two? Or twelve? Any, as I’ll note later, in some ways it’s quite inconvenient to travel on pennies in a party town at the partiest time of the year. Of course…there are benefits too, as I’ll also discuss.

I didn’t plan to be in Miami for New Year’s Eve because it’s Miami; I planned my rough season-long itinerary (which I will post, soon) around the weather. I’m carless, houseless, and all-but-penniless, so it made sense to start my project in the South and the West Coast, during the coldest months of the year; hitchhiking in Toronto in December is a poor idea.

After the weather, my itinerary is based on trying to follow something like a linear path, if only for traveling convenience. It doesn’t always work. I went from San Antonio to New Orleans, skipping Houston, because the Rockets were on a road trip at the time.

My final consideration is the games, the match-ups. That the Cleveland LeBrons were in Miami to play the Heat this week was a convenient confluence of circumstances that would allow me to see two of the three best players in the NBA (LeBron and then Wade/Chris Paul) live. Argh, not live.

I wrote the Miami Heat media relations department several weeks ago, but they turned down my request for credentials and/or tickets. Actually, they first turned me down for the LeBrons/Heat game:

“Unfortunately, this is one of our bigger games and we do not have space left.”

That was really surprising to me. The Spurs and Mavericks both draw more than Miami (Dallas is 4th in the league in attendance, the Spurs are 14th, the Heat are 16th) and they had extra tickets to the games I was in town for, and were generous enough to help me out. The Hornets (17th) also came through, and they draw almost as much as Miami does. That there wouldn’t be any extra tickets to all three games in the first third of the season…well, seems mighty unlikely, especially since the Heat average over over 17,000 fans per home game, with a stadium capacity of 19,600. He just decided not to give me tickets. So be it; the Heat certainly don’t owe me tickets. It’s disappointing after getting hooked up by the other franchises, but what am I going to do? Buy tickets, of course.

That wasn’t to be either, at least not for LeBrons/Heat. The under $20 seats were sold out and they did have $45+ tickets available on game day, but that’s over my head. So I watched it on television, which isn’t as fun, but it was still a great matchup to watch, and they didn’t disappoint—as I’ll discuss soon. I’m going to go by the Arena in a while to try and pick up cheapies for the NJ game.

I wrote one more to the Heat guy. Having entirely given up on getting help for tickets, I thought he might still be able to give me some advice on getting info on the local basketball culture. I wrote:

“I appreciate your consideration and perhaps you could help me figure something else out; who are the Heat’s biggest fans? A significant component of my project is talking to fans about how they follow their team. Who are the supreme Heat fanatics?
Also, I’m not familiar with Miami, so if you could give me an idea for a good local venue (sports bar, etc.) to watch the Heat and interview those fans, that would be terrific.”

His reply:

“Most of the fans will be in attendance at the game.