Me and Mike and the Gaping Gulf
Mike is my tennis partner. I like Mike. Mike likes me, undoubtedly. What’s the problem?
If it were fifty years ago, not much. Mike and I, both of us getting our news from pretty much the same sources, all mostly scrupulous, would have gotten along just fine. In 1961 John (Jack) Kennedy had just assumed presidential office, most Americans liked him, and virtually no one thought he was the ringleader of a blood-drinking cabal of child traffickers. Perhaps issues like school integration would have led to a small spat between us during a changeover — but with our kids all grown up and done with school, it’s doubtful either of us would take an emotional stance on the issue.
In these troubled times, however, Mike and I have to be careful not to let our small talk slip into big talk about big lies. We know this because the one time it did, we ended up screaming in each other’s faces. The argument came to a close when I threw my racquet against the fence, stomped to my car and left.
My town teeming with middle-aged tennis hackers, I could have found someone else with whom to hit. But I quickly realized I would miss Mike, and not just because I beat him every time we play.
Mike, in stark contrast to the narcissistic leader of his cult, is generous and compassionate and funny. His tennis etiquette? Impeccable. So impeccable is his etiquette that he often reverses my “in” calls of his shots.
Liberals are known for their curiosity, but Mike is one of the few people I know who always asks how my two adult sons are doing in their lines of work, and then listens to my answers and asks follow-up questions. This happens as we stretch and warm up for our match, which is laden with compliments on each other’s shots and laughter after a particularly goofy rally.
Eight years ago I finished writing a novel that about twenty people read. Mike was one of them. (Hell, even my three siblings didn’t do that.) Throughout the month it took him to read it, he’d comment on some zany character or embarrassing transgression committed by the lead character, whose name is Lenny Payne and is a big Beatles fan and ends up accidentally going back in time and meets Phil Spector and….
Sorry. Back to Mike.
While most of my court opponents over the years have bristled at any suggestion concerning their strokes, Mike listens intently, thanks me and even puts it to use.
We usually play on Sunday mornings, but when we play on weeknights, we each bring a cooler of beer. “Second Set” is my made-up brand name for the beer I start drinking on the bench as we recover from the first set. We like to create jingles for the fictional ads, and because we grew up in the same era, they sound like circa-1970s Miller or Pabst commercials.
One of those nights, four months ago, I drank too many of those beers. Maybe Mike did too. We were talking about our families and, in my case, stepfamilies. My eldest stepchild’s gender had recently become fluid, and that night the news was still very fresh. I was trying to process it.
I said something about the climate of small, insulated liberal colleges, and the lack of dissenting voices. Looking back, I don’t know if I had momentarily forgotten Mike’s political affiliation when I blurted, “It’s an echo chamber. There’s no truthteller there, no Liz Cheney to offer a differing opinion.”
“What do you mean, no Liz Cheney?” asked Mike, suddenly grave.
“You know, someone who’s not afraid to speak the truth.”
“How does Liz Cheney speak the truth?”
“Well, she calls the Big Lie a big lie, for one thing.”
“You mean that the election was stolen?”
A chill passed through me as it dawned on me that Mike could be more entrenched than I’d thought.
“Right, since there’s no evidence — “
“No evidence?”
Oh no, I thought. He’s got what he’s been told is evidence.
Mike had four or five documented incidents of voter fraud on speed dial in his brain. As he reeled them off, I walked to the center of the court’s net, bent over and pressed my face into its cord.
“You know this is bullshit, right?” I said when I finally had a chance. “You know Trump never conceded defeat in anything his whole life. Golf, Parcheesi, elections, whatever.”
The rebuttals came hard and fast. Mike went on. And on, like an orator on meth who’s been just waiting for an audience to appear. He was on a mission, and didn’t seem to notice my groaning and rolling my head back and forth along the net cord.
He’d mentioned once he was a Libertarian, and this night he, as Libertarians often do, reiterated that. All the etiquette drained out of me, I spat, “Libertarian. Did you ever not vote for the Republican? Did you even know who the Libertarian candidate was?”
“Didn’t need to,” Mike replied, and then went on to list in alphabetical order all the Trump policies that were Libertarian in spirit and how they had benefitted the nation.
It went downhill from there, ending with some oblique reference to Biden and pedophilia. “Fuck this shit,” I muttered, and grabbed my racquet and cooler. “Fucking ridiculous!” I yelled, and threw the racquet (rather than the cooler, whose contents I’d be needing later) against the fence.
Later, after recounting the brouhaha to my wife, I wondered why I felt such despair. Was it the loss of a longtime friend, or the realization there’s no hope for this nation — and, it seems to follow, the world — if someone as reasonable and decent as Mike believes this crap? I’d long given up on reasoning with Trumpers online, but this seemed like the last, most painful straw.
Somehow I slept, and the next morning, after coffee, I felt a glimmer of something resembling hope. Maybe the political divide doesn’t need to be spanned with discourse. Maybe simple courtesy, and selective, avoidant conversation, is enough — or at least a start. “Okay, I’ll say it first,” I texted Mike. “Sorry I lost my cool.”
Mike responded in kind. The following Sunday, we had someone take the above photo. (I’m the lefty.) And we still meet once or twice a week for tennis. I always win.
It’s just not quite as fun now.
