Final Four Fiction

For your reading enjoyment: an excerpt from a story I'm reworking called "You're So Wonderful." Middlebrow might remember reading a draft of this many, many, many years ago (pre-Dr. Write even). My decision to excerpt this was more about the basketball element and less about steering the Front Porch toward the Blog of Humiliating Singledom that it is becoming. And remember kids, this is a work of FICTION.

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In spite of this I ended up falling for a girl at work. She worked in the cube next to me and we passed emails back and forth and gossiped about the personal lives of everyone in the office. She could put her whole fist in her mouth and could write backwards in cursive with either hand. Her teeth were kind of crooked and screwed up, but in a good way like Isabella Rossellini. I thought she was beautiful. I was completely in love before we ever even went on a date. It was really painful. Suddenly I understood the characters in Dostoevsky novels who paced around shouting all the time, because this is what I would do when I got home.

In March I was spending less time at the house and more down at the bar getting drunk and watching college hoops. I had a serious time investment going in the NCAA tournament—it reminded me of that auction in game theory where a person is unable to quit bidding higher and higher because of the amount that he’s invested already. Really I should have just stopped and done something else with my life, but that would have been like throwing away all of those dedicated hours that came before it.

I will never forget what happened next. The Final Four came around and on that Monday, the Monday of the championship, the woman in my office—the woman I was crazy about—asked me to drinks after work.

I didn’t know what to do. Over the previous couple of months my unrequited interest had worked its way into a quite a lather. Something had to happen. I was sick over this woman and we had never even kissed. The decision was going to be monumental; I knew this. If we went out I would miss the final. Her timing seemed cruel, sadistic almost. I was torn.

In the end I decided to forgo basketball for the possibility of love. It was the romantic decision, I think, and one I wouldn’t make today. The woman took me to a bar where the game was on. She liked sports but she didn’t really have an interest in the game and I kind of knew it would be bad form to ignore her. So I looked into her eyes and made conversation.

There were two monitors on either side of her head--back in the middle distance--with the game on. This was the year UCLA had the O’Bannon brothers and Corliss Williamson was playing for Arkansas. I didn’t even watch. This is the state I was in.