Читать книгу Open: An Autobiography - Andre Agassi - Страница 12

THE AIRPORT SHUTTLE pulls into the compound just after sunset. The Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, built on an old tomato farm, is nothing fancy, just a few outbuildings that look like cell blocks. They’re named like cell blocks too: B Building, C Building. I look around, half expecting to find a guard tower and razor wire. More ominously, stretching off into the distance I see row after row of tennis courts.

As the sun sinks beyond the inky black marshes, the temperature plummets. I huddle into my T-shirt. I thought Florida was supposed to be hot. A staff member greets me as I step out of the van and marches me straight to my barracks, which are empty and eerily quiet.

Where is everyone?

Study hall, he says. In a few minutes it’ll be free hour. That’s the hour between study hall and bedtime. Why don’t you go down to the rec center and introduce yourself to the others?

In the rec center I find two hundred wild boys, plus a few toughlooking girls, separated into tight cliques. One of the largest cliques is pressed around a Nerf ping-pong table, screaming insults at two boys playing. I press my back against a wall and scan the room. I recognize a few faces, including one or two from the Australia trip. That kid over there—I played him in California. That evil-looking homey right there—I played a tough three-setter against him in Arizona. Everyone looks talented, supremely confident. The kids are all colors, all sizes, all ages, and from all around the world. The youngest is seven, the oldest nineteen. After ruling Las Vegas my whole life, I’m now a tiny fish in a vast pond. Or marsh. And the biggest of the big fish are the best players in the country--teenage Supermen who form the tightest clique in a far corner.

I try to watch the ping-pong game. Even there I’m outclassed. Back home, nobody could beat me at Nerf ping-pong. Here? Half these guys would cream me.

I can’t imagine how I’ll ever fit in at this joint, how I’ll make friends. I want to go home, right now, or at least phone home, but I’d have to call collect and I know my father wouldn’t accept the charges. Just knowing I can’t hear my mother’s voice, or Philly’s, no matter how much I need to, makes me feel panicky. When free hour ends I hurry back to the barracks and lie on my bunk, waiting to disappear into the black marsh of sleep.

Three months, I tell myself. Just three months.

PEOPLE LIKE TO CALL the Bollettieri Academy a boot camp, but it’s really a glorified prison camp. And not all that glorified. We eat gruel—beige meats and gelatinous stews and gray slop poured over rice—and sleep in rickety bunks that line the plywood walls of our military-style barracks. We rise at dawn and go to bed soon after dinner. We rarely leave, and we have scant contact with the outside world. Like most prisoners we do nothing but sleep and work, and our main rock pile is drills. Serve drills, net drills, backhand drills, forehand drills, with occasional match play to establish the pecking order, strong to weak. Sometimes it feels as though we’re gladiators, preparing underneath the Colosseum. Certainly the thirty-five instructors who bark at us during drills think of themselves as slave drivers.

When we’re not drilling, we’re studying the psychology of tennis. We take classes on mental toughness, positive thinking, and visualization. We’re taught to close our eyes and picture ourselves winning Wimbledon, hoisting that gold trophy above our heads. Then we go to aerobics, or weight training, or out to the crushed-shell track, where we run until we drop.

The constant pressure, the cutthroat competition, the total lack of adult supervision—it slowly turns us into animals. A kind of jungle law prevails. It’s Karate Kid with rackets, Lord of the Flies with forehands. One night two boys get into an argument in the barracks. A white boy and an Asian boy. The white boy uses a racial slur, then walks out. For a full hour the Asian boy stands in the middle of the barracks, stretching, shaking out his legs and arms, rolling his neck. He runs through a progression of judo moves, then carefully, methodically tapes his ankles. When the white boy returns, the Asian boy spins, whipsaws his leg through the air, and unleashes a kick that shatters the white boy’s jaw.

The shocking part is that neither boy gets expelled, which greatly adds to the overall sense of anarchy.

Another two boys have a low-grade, long-running feud. It’s mostly taunts, teases, minor stuff—until one boy ups the ante. For days he urinates and defecates into a bucket. Then, late one night, he bursts into the other boy’s barracks and dumps the bucket on his head.

The jungle feeling, the constant threat of violence and ambush, is reinforced, just before lights out, by the sound of drums in the distance.

I ask one of the boys: What the hell is that?

Oh. That’s just Courier. He likes to pound a drum set his parents sent him.

Who?

Jim Courier. From Florida.

Within days I get my first glimpse of the warden, founder, and owner of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. He’s fiftysomething, but looks 250, because tanning is one of his obsessions, along with tennis and getting married. (He’s got five or six ex-wives, no one is quite sure.) He’s soaked up so much sun, baked himself so deeply beneath so many ultraviolet sunlamps, he’s permanently altered his pigmentation. The one portion of his face that isn’t the color of beef jerky is his mustache, a black, meticulously trimmed quasi-goatee, only without the chin hair, so it looks like a permanent frown. I see Nick striding across the compound, an angry red man in wraparound shades, berating someone who jogs alongside, trying to keep pace, and I pray that I never have to deal with Nick directly. I watch as he slides into a red Ferrari and zooms away, leaving a dorsal fin of dust in his wake.

A boy tells me it’s our job to keep Nick’s four sports cars washed and polished.

Our job? That’s bullshit.

Tell it to the judge.

I ask some of the older boys, some of the veterans, about Nick. Who is he? What makes him tick? They say he’s a hustler, a guy who makes a very nice living off tennis, but he doesn’t love the game or even know it all that well. He’s not like my father, captivated by the angles and numbers and beauty of tennis. Then again, he’s just like my father. He’s captivated by cash. He’s a guy who flunked the exam for Navy pilots, dropped out of law school, then landed one day on the idea of teaching tennis. Stepped in shit. Through a bit of hard work, and a ton of luck, he’s turned himself into this image of a tennis titan, mentor to prodigies. You can learn a few things from him, the other kids say, but he’s no miracle worker.

He doesn’t sound like a guy who can make me stop hating the game.

I’M PLAYING A PRACTICE MATCH, putting a fairly good whooping on a kid from the East Coast, when I become aware that Gabriel, one of Nick’s henchmen, is behind me, staring.

After a few more points Gabriel stops the match. He asks, Has Nick seen you play yet?

No, sir.

He frowns, walks off.

Later, over the loudspeaker that carries across all the courts of the Bollettieri Academy, I hear:

Andre Agassi to the indoor supreme court! Andre Agassi, report to the indoor supreme court--immediately!

I’ve never been to the indoor supreme court, and I can’t imagine there’s a good reason for my being summoned now. I run there and find Gabriel and Nick, standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting.

Gabriel says to Nick: You’ve got to see this kid hit.

Nick strolls off into the shadows. Gabriel gets on the other side of the net. He puts me through drills for half an hour. I sneak occasional glances over my shoulder: I can vaguely make out the silhouette of Nick, concentrating, stroking his mustache.

Hit some backhands, Nick says. His voice is like sandpaper on Velcro.

I do as I’m told. I hit backhands.

Now hit some serves.

I serve.

Come to the net.

I come to the net.

That’s enough.

He steps forward. Where are you from?

Las Vegas.

What’s your national ranking?

Number three.

How do I reach your father?

He’s at work. He works nights at the MGM.

How about your mother?

At this hour? She’s probably at home.

Come with me.

We walk slowly to his office, where he asks for my home number. He’s sitting in a tall black leather chair, turned almost away from me. My face feels redder than his face looks. He dials and speaks to my mother. She gives him my father’s number. He dials again.

He’s yelling. Mr. Agassi! Nick Bollettieri here! Right, right. Yes, well, listen to me. I’m going to tell you something very important. Your boy has more talent than anybody I’ve ever seen come through this academy. That’s right. Ever. And I’m going to take him to the top.

What the hell is he talking about? I’m only here for three months. I’m leaving here in sixty-four days. Is Nick saying he wants me to stay here? Live here—forever? Surely my father won’t go for that.

Nick says: That’s right. No, that’s no issue. I’m going to make it so you won’t pay a penny. Andre can stay, free of charge. I’m tearing up your check.

My heart sinks. I know my father can’t resist anything free. My fate is sealed.

Nick hangs up and spins toward me in his chair. He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t console. He doesn’t ask if this is what I want. He doesn’t say a thing besides: Go back out to the courts.

The warden has tacked several years to my sentence, and there’s nothing to be done but pick up my hammer and return to the rock pile.

EVERY DAY AT THE BOLLETTIERI ACADEMY starts with the stench. The surrounding hills are home to several orange-processing plants, which give off a toxic smell of burned orange peels. It’s the first thing that hits me when I open my eyes, a reminder that this is real, I’m not back in Vegas, I’m not in my deuce-court bed, dreaming. I’ve never cared much for orange juice, but after the Bollettieri Academy I’ll never be able to look at a gallon of Minute Maid again.

As the sun clears the marshes, burning off the morning mist, I hurry to beat the other boys into the shower, because only the first boys get hot water. Actually, it’s not a shower, just a tiny nozzle that shoots a narrow jet of painful needles, which hardly gets you wet, let alone clean. Then we all rush to breakfast, served in a cafeteria so chaotic, it’s like a mental hospital where the nurses forgot to hand out the meds. But you’d better get there early or it might be worse. The butter will be filled with everyone else’s crumbs, the bread will be gone, the plastic eggs will be ice.

Straight from breakfast we board a bus for school, Bradenton Academy, twenty-six minutes away. I divide my time between two academies, both prisons, but Bradenton Academy makes me more claustrophobic, because it makes less sense. At the Bollettieri Academy, at least I’m learning something about tennis. At Bradenton Academy, the only thing I learn is that I’m stupid.

Bradenton Academy has warped floors, dirty carpets, and a color scheme that’s fourteen shades of gray. There isn’t one window in the building, so the light is fluorescent and the air is stale, filled with a medley of foul odors, chiefly vomit, toilet, and fear. It’s almost worse than the scorched-orange smell back at the Bollettieri Academy.

Other kids, non-tennis kids from town, don’t seem to mind. Some actually thrive at Bradenton Academy, maybe because their life schedules are manageable. They don’t balance school with careers as semipro athletes. They don’t contend with waves of homesickness that rise and fall like nausea. They spend seven hours a day in class, then go home to eat dinner and watch TV with their families. Those of us who commute from the Bollettieri Academy, however, spend four and a half hours in class, then board the bus for the long slog back to our full-time jobs, hitting balls until after dusk, at which time we collapse in heaps on our wooden bunks, to grab a half hour of rest before returning to the original state of nature that is the rec center. Then we nod over our textbooks for a few futile hours before free hour and lights out. We’re always behind on schoolwork and falling ever further behind. The system is rigged, guaranteed to produce bad students as quickly and efficiently as it produces good tennis players.

I don’t like anything that’s rigged, so I don’t give much effort. I don’t study. I don’t do homework. I don’t pay attention. And I don’t give a damn. In every class I sit quietly at my desk, staring at my feet, wishing I were somewhere else, while the teacher drones on about Shakespeare or Bunker Hill or the Pythagorean theorem.

The teachers don’t care that I’ve tuned them out, because I’m one of Nick’s Boys, and they don’t want to cross Nick. Bradenton Academy exists because the Bollettieri Academy keeps sending it a bus full of paying customers every semester. The teachers know that their jobs depend on Nick, so they can’t flunk us, and we cherish our special status. We feel a lordly sense of entitlement, never realizing that the thing to which we’re most entitled is the thing we’re not getting—an education.

Inside the metal front doors of Bradenton Academy stands the office, the nerve center of the school and the source of much pain. Report cards and threatening letters emanate from the office. Bad boys are sent there. The office is also the lair of Mrs. G and Doc G, married coprincipals of Bradenton Academy, and, I suspect, frustrated sideshow performers. Mrs. G is a gangly woman with no midsection. She looks as if her shoulders have been set directly on her hips. She tries to disguise this odd shape by wearing skirts, but this only accentuates the problem. On her face she wears two gobs of blush and one smear of lipstick, a symmetrical triad of three circles that she color-coordinates the way other people do their shoes and belt. Her cheeks and mouth always match, and always almost distract you from the hump in her back. Nothing Mrs. G wears, however, can distract you from her gargantuan hands. She has mitts the size of rackets, and the first time she shakes my hand I think I might faint.

Old Doc G is half her size but has just as many body issues. It’s not hard to see what they first found in common. Frail, gamy, Doc G has a right arm that’s been shriveled since birth. He ought to hide this arm, keep it behind his back or shoved in a pocket. Instead he waves it around, brandishes it like a weapon. He likes to take students aside for one-on-one chats, and whenever he does so, he swings his bad arm up onto the student’s shoulder, setting it there until he’s said his piece. If this doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, nothing will. Doc G’s arm feels like a pork tenderloin lying on your shoulder, and hours later you can still feel it there and you can’t help but shiver.

Mrs. G and Doc G have instituted dozens of rules at Bradenton Academy, and one of the most strictly enforced is their ban on jewelry. Thus, I go out of my way to pierce my ears. It’s an easy show of rebellion, which, as I see it, is my last resort. Rebellion is the one thing I get to choose every day, and this rebellion comes with the added bonus that it represents a neat little fuck-you to my father, who’s always hated earrings on men. Many times I’ve heard my father say that earrings equal homosexuality. I can’t wait for him to see mine. (I buy both studs and dangly hoops.) He’ll finally regret sending me thousands of miles from home and leaving me here to be corrupted.

I make a feeble and insincere effort to hide my new accessory, wrapping a Band-Aid around it. Mrs. G notices, of course, just as I hoped she would. She pulls me out of class and confronts me.

Mr. Agassi, what is the meaning of that bandage?

I hurt my ear.

Hurt your--? Don’t be ridiculous. Remove that Band-Aid.

I pull off the Band-Aid. She sees the stud and gasps.

We do not allow earrings at Bradenton Academy, Mr. Agassi. The next time I see you, I will expect the Band-Aid gone and the earring out.

By the end of the first semester I’m close to failing all my classes. Except English. I show a strange aptitude for literature, especially poetry. Memorizing famous poems, writing original poems, it comes easily to me. We’re assigned to write a short verse about our daily lives and I set mine proudly on the teacher’s desk. She likes it. She reads it aloud in class. Some of the other kids later ask me to ghostwrite their homework. I dash off their assignments on the bus, no problem. The English teacher detains me after class and says I have real talent. I smile. It’s different from being told by Nick that I have talent. This feels like something I’d like to pursue. For a moment I imagine what it would be like to do something besides playing tennis—something I choose. Then I go to my next class, math, and the dream dies in a cloud of algebra formulae. I’m not cut out to be a scholar. The math teacher’s voice sounds as if it’s coming from miles away. The next class, French, is worse. I’m très stupide. I transfer to Spanish, where I’m muy estúpido. Spanish, I think, might actually shorten my life. The boredom, the confusion, might cause me to expire in my chair. They will find me one day in my seat, muerto.

Gradually school goes from being hard to being physically harmful. The anxiety of boarding the bus, the twenty-six-minute ride, the inevitable confrontation with Mrs. G or Doc G, actually make me ill. What I dread most is the moment, the daily moment, when I’m exposed as a loser. An academic loser. So great is this dread that over time Bradenton Academy modifies my view of the Bollettieri Academy. I look forward to all those drills, and even the high-pressure tournaments, because at least I’m not at school.

Thanks to one particularly big tournament, I miss a major history test at Bradenton Academy, a test I was sure to fail. I celebrate this dodging of a bullet by eviscerating my opponents. But when I return to school my teacher says I have to take a makeup.

The injustice. I skulk down to the office for the makeup test. Along the way I duck into a dark corner and prepare a cheat sheet, which I stash in my pocket.

There is only one other student in the office, a red-haired girl with a fat, sweaty face. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t register my presence in any way. She seems to be in a coma. I fill out the test, fast, copying from my cheat sheet. Suddenly I feel a pair of eyes on me. I look up, and the redhaired girl is out of her coma, staring. She closes her book and strolls out. Quickly I shove the cheat sheet into the crotch of my underwear. I tear another sheet of paper from my notebook and, imitating a girlish handwriting, I write: I think you’re cute! Give me a call! I shove the paper in my front pocket just as Mrs. G storms in.

Pencil down, she says.

What’s up, Mrs. G?

Are you cheating?

On what? This? If I were going to cheat on something it wouldn’t be this. I’ve got this history stuff down cold. Valley Forge. Paul Revere. Piece of cake.

Empty your pockets.

I lay out a few coins, a pack of gum, the note from my imaginary admirer. Mrs. G picks up the note and reads under her breath.

I say, I’m thinking about what I should write back. Any ideas?

She scowls, walks out. I pass the test and chalk it up as a moral victory.

MY ENGLISH TEACHER is my only advocate. She’s also the daughter of Mrs. G and Doc G, so she pleads with her parents that I’m smarter than my grades and my behavior indicate. She even arranges an IQ test and the results confirm her opinion.

Andre, she says, you need to apply yourself. Prove to Mrs. G that you’re not who she thinks you are.

I tell her that I am applying myself, that I’m doing as well as I can under the circumstances. But I’m tired all the time from playing tennis, and distracted by the pressure of tournaments and so-called challenges. Especially the challenges: once a month we play someone above us in the pecking order. I’d like any teacher to explain how you’re supposed to concentrate on conjugating verbs or solving for x when you’re steeling yourself for a five-set brawl with some punk from Orlando that afternoon.

I don’t tell her everything, because I can’t. I’d feel like a sissy talking about my fear of school, the countless times I sit in class drenched in sweat. I can’t tell her about my trouble concentrating, my horror of being called on, how this horror sometimes morphs into an air bubble in my lower intestine, which grows and grows until I need to run to the bathroom. Between classes I’m often locked in a toilet stall.

Then there’s the social anxiety, the doomed effort to fit in. At Bradenton Academy, fitting in takes money. Most of the kids are fashion plates, whereas I have three pairs of jeans, five T-shirts, two pairs of tennis shoes—and one cotton crewneck with gray and black squares. In class, rather than thinking about The Scarlet Letter, I’m thinking about how many days per week I can get away with wearing my sweater, worrying about what I’ll do when the weather gets warm.

The worse I do in school, the more I rebel. I drink, I smoke pot, I act like an ass. I’m dimly aware of the inverse ratio between my grades and my rebellion, but I don’t dwell on it. I prefer Nick’s theory. He says I don’t do well in school because I have a hard-on for the world. It might be the only thing he’s ever said about me that’s halfway accurate. (He typically describes me as a cocky showboater who seeks the limelight. Even my father knows me better than that.) My general demeanor does feel like a hard-on--violent, involuntary, unstoppable—and so I accept it as I accept the many changes in my body.

Finally, when my grades hit bottom, my rebellion reaches the breaking point. I walk into a hair salon in the Bradenton Mall and tell the stylist to give me a mohawk. Razor the sides, shave them to the scalp, and leave just one thick strip of spiked hair down the middle.

Are you sure, kid?

I want it high, and I want it spiky. Then dye it pink.

He works his shearer back and forth for eight minutes. Then he says, All done, and spins me around in the chair. I look in the mirror. The earring was good, this is better. I can’t wait to see the look on Mrs. G’s face.

Outside the mall, while I wait for the bus back to the Bollettieri Academy, no one recognizes me. Kids I play with, kids I bunk with, they look right past me. To the casual observer I’ve done something that seems like a desperate effort to stand out. But in fact I’ve rendered myself, my inner self, my true self, invisible. At least, that was the idea.

I FLY HOME FOR CHRISTMAS, and as the plane approaches the Strip, as the casinos below the canting right wing twinkle like a row of Christmas trees, the flight attendant says we’re stuck in a holding pattern.

Groans.

Since we know you’re all itching to hit the casinos, she says, we thought it might be fun to do a little gambling till we’re clear to land.

Cheers.

Let’s everybody take out a dollar and put it in this airsick bag. Then write your seat number on your ticket stub and throw it in this other airsick bag. We’ll pull out one ticket stub, and that person will win the jackpot!

She collects everyone’s dollar while another flight attendant collects the ticket stubs. Now she stands at the head of the plane and reaches in the bag.

And the grand prize goes to, drumroll please, 9F!

I’m 9F. I won! I won! I stand and wave. The passengers turn and see me. More groans. Great, the kid with the pink mohawk won.

The flight attendant reluctantly hands me the airsick bag full of ninety-six ones. I spend the rest of the flight counting and recounting them, thanking my lucky stars for this horseshoe up my ass.

My father, as expected, is horrified by my hair and earring. But he refuses to blame himself or the Bollettieri Academy. He won’t admit that sending me away was a mistake, and he won’t stand for any talk of my coming home. He simply asks if I’m a faggot.

No, I say, then go to my room.

Philly follows. He compliments my new look. Even a mohawk beats bald. I tell him about my windfall on the airplane.

Whoa! What are you going to do with all that cash?

I’m thinking about spending it on an ankle bracelet for Jamie. She’s a girl who goes to school with Perry. She let me kiss her the last time I was home. But I don’t know--I desperately need new clothes for school. I can’t make it much farther with one gray-black sweater. I want to fit in.

Philly nods. Tough call, bro.

He doesn’t ask why, if I want to fit in, I got a mohawk and an earring. He treats my dilemma as serious, my contradictions as coherent, and helps me work through the options. We decide that I should spend the money on the girlfriend, forget about the new clothes.

The moment I have the anklet in my hands, however, I’m filled with regret. I picture myself back in Florida, rotating my few articles of clothing. I tell Philly, and he gives a half nod.

In the morning I open one eye and find Philly hovering over me, grinning. He’s staring at my chest. I look down and find a stack of bills.

What’s this?

Went out and played cards last night, bro. Hit a lucky streak. Won $600.

So—what’s this?

Three hundred bucks. Go buy yourself some sweaters.

DURING SPRING BREAK my father wants me to play semipro tournaments, called satellites, which are open qualification, meaning anyone can show up and play at least one match. They’re held in out-of-the-way towns, way out of the way, burgs like Monroe, Louisiana, and St. Joe, Missouri. I can’t travel by myself; I’m just fourteen. So my father sends Philly along to chaperone me. Also, to play. Philly and my father still cling to the belief that he can do something with his tennis.

Philly rents a beige Omni, which quickly becomes a mobile version of our bedroom back home. One side his, one side mine. We log thousands of miles, stopping only for fast-food joints, tournament sites, and sleep. Our lodging is free, because in every town we stay with strangers, local families who volunteer to host players. Most of the hosts are pleasant enough, but they’re overly enthusiastic about the game. It’s awkward enough to stay with strangers, but it’s a chore to make tennis talk over pancakes and coffee. For me, that is. Philly will talk to anyone, and I often have to nudge and pull him when it’s time to go.

Philly and I both feel like outlaws, living on the road, doing whatever we please. We throw fast-food wrappers over our shoulders into the backseat. We listen to loud music, curse all we want, say whatever is on our minds, without fear of being corrected or ridiculed. Still, we never mention our very different goals for this trip. Philly wants only to earn one ATP point, just one, so he can know what it feels like to be ranked. I want only to avoid playing Philly, in which case I’ll have to beat my beloved brother again.

At the first satellite I rout my opponent and Philly gets routed by his. Afterward, in the rental car, in the parking garage beside the stadium, Philly stares at the steering wheel, looking stunned. For some reason this loss hurt more than the others. He balls his fist and punches the steering wheel. Hard. Then punches it again. He begins talking to himself, so low that I can’t hear. Now he’s talking louder. Now he’s shouting, calling himself a born loser, hitting the steering wheel again and again. He’s hammering the wheel so hard that I’m sure he’s going to break a bone in his hand. I think of our father, shadowboxing the steering wheel after knocking out the trucker.

Philly says, It would be better if I broke my fucking fist! At least then it would all be over! Dad was right. I am a born loser.

All at once he stops. He looks at me and becomes resigned. Calm. Like our mother. He smiles; the storm has passed, the poison is gone.

I feel better, he says with a laugh and a snuffle.

Driving out of the parking garage, he gives me pointers on my next opponent.

DAYS AFTER I RETURN to the Bollettieri Academy, I’m at the Bradenton Mall. I take a chance and place a collect call home. Pfew: Philly answers. He sounds the way he did in the parking garage.

So, he says. We got a letter from the ATP.

Yeah?

You want to know your ranking?

I don’t know—do I?

You’re number 610.

Really?

Six-ten in the world, bro.

Which means there are only 609 people better than me in the entire world. On planet earth, in the solar system, I’m number 610. I slap the wall of the phone booth and shout for joy.

The line is silent. Then, in a kind of whisper, Philly asks, How does it feel?

I can’t believe how thoughtless I’ve been, shouting in Philly’s ear when he must feel bitterly disappointed. I wish I could throw half of my ATP points on his chest. In a tone of supreme boredom, stifling a pretend yawn, I tell him: You know what? It’s no big deal. It’s overrated.