Jesus H. Christ. . . yesterday I found out how old I've gotten. I went to the Roller Derby early in the morning. It was quite a day. As I said, I hadn't wanted to go. I'm glad I did. It was good for me. It was fun. The people were super nice and all interested and happy that I was making pictures of the gals. I was given free rein. No restrictions at all. I could go wherever I wished, even into the center of the ring. There were a lot of people there. There were scoring officials, record keepers, six refs. . . I don't know what all. The women, the men. . . they were all lovely. The staff photographer was the husband of a woman who used to be on the team until she broke her ankle. He'd been shooting the team for years. Another woman was taking photos with a press pass around her neck. She was on the team but had torn her ACL and had surgery from which she was recovering, so she was taking photos of the matches. She was super nice as well. I tried to explain that I wasn't doing event photos, that mine were going to be a little different.
"I think I saw some of your work online," the staff photographer said. "I think someone showed it to me."
!!!!!
Probably not, though, I thought, 'cause everyone was still being nice to me. I had sent in my "credentials," and used my titles for the first time. It turned out that the staff photographer and his wife were both teachers.
"Most of the girls on the team are teachers, too."
So maybe that's why they were being so nice,
What I learned talking to the players, though, was that there are a lot of injuries. Many women were sidelined with some pretty bad stuff. As it turned out, they were trying to up their game to get into a bigger league. This day, a lot of the newbies were getting a chance to play. There were three teams, and all the players were from the same group. It was an inter squad day. The winners of the first match played the third team.
The games were long. I was there for over four hours. I took a lot of pictures. Finally, I had filled up two memory cards on my camera and I sat down. I realized I was completely exhausted. I hadn't eaten all day. Hadn't had a drink except the coffee in the morning. I was still feeling weak and a bit ill from the night before.
But we'll get to that.
First a little tech talk. I took three cameras, my trusty, faithful Canon 5D DSLR, and two Leica M10s, one with a 35mm lens and one with a 50mm. The Leicas were useless this day. I mean, in the arena lighting with people moving this quickly, manual focus was virtually impossible. I was trying out what is a new technique for me, swish panning the camera at a low shutter speed to blur the background while keeping the subject sharp. That is how I started the day. But I lost confidence in my ability with the Leicas quickly enough and switched to the big Canon. I used two lenses, the little plastic toy Holga lens and the 24-105mm zoom lens. The photo at the top is with the Holga, the one just above with the zoom. It took me half the day to figure out what I was doing. I have everything from sharp, normal images to the swirliest, blurriest things you have ever seen. Thank God I took over a thousand shots.
"What do you think?" the staff photographer asked.
"This is hard. I've never shot anything like this before. I'm hoping to get one good one at this rate."
"Yea. . . I shoot a couple thousand every time and end up with a couple I like."
I've seen his photos online, so I knew he was doing event pictures for the team.
I'd shoot and chimp and think I was blowing it. But I kept making adjustments and started having more confidence. I was learning a lot quickly.
But I had to keep my wits about me. Things were moving fast and I was trying to dance about to catch the action. At one point during a stop in the action, I walked from the center of the ring to the outside, but some of the girls were coming onto the track pretty quickly, so I instinctively made a quick, sprinter-like start. Ho! I don't have that in my bones anymore. My bad knee buckled and I lurched forward pretty certain I was going down, but instinct and adrenaline saved me. I made a few stumbley steps out of their way and to the edge of the track. Everyone in the stands saw that one, and I gave an embarrassed fuck me grimace back. I felt hideously old and crippled.
Later on, I was in the center of the track and tripped over the box of water bottles the refs and scorekeepers kept there. I felt a rifle shot of pain through my bad knee and stumbled a few awkward, arthritic steps again feeling I might go down. One of the scorekeepers looked at me sympathetically. Once again, I could only manage an apologetic grin. I could feel my knee swelling and stiffening right away. My most common mantra was on repeat in my head.
"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me."
At the breaks and between matches, though, as I walked around the arena, people would look and smile and talk. They were like a big family. And it was, pretty much. Husbands and friends came to the match. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. It was its own little community.
The hours passed, and the day wore on. By the time my camera cards were full, it was halftime of the second game. When I sat down for a moment, I knew I was done. I reckoned I hadn't been on my feet for four solid hours since. . . I don't know when. In the interim, I have fallen apart, I guess. My bones hurt. My joints hurt. My muscles hurt. WTF? How old had I become.
When the staff photographer came over, I told him I'd shot up all my memory, so I was done. I said I was sorry this was the last game of the season, that it had been crazy good fun, that everyone was so very charming, etc. He asked me if I had a website.
"No," I said. "I am too lazy."
He had one. Everyone has one. I should have one, too, but it is true. I've been trying. It takes too much of my energy to whittle down the photos I would post and then build the site. There are ways in which I am just another hobo.
And so. . . I packed my cameras into the big canvas bag and limped toward the exit.
I walked into a big, bright, glorious afternoon. The arena was inside a giant, beautiful park full of tennis courts, sporting fields, incredibly complex paintball courses, a giant, well groomed clay BMX track. . . and just plain park overlooking a huge lake. Incredible, really, as it is bordered by two very bad parts of town. On one side is a state highway overrun with hookers and crack dealers. On the other side is my old neighborhood. Once full of white crackers and hillbillies, it is now full of Blacks and poor immigrants. I came down crack alley, so I decided to leave through my old part of town.
The roadways have changed. What was the main artery through it has become a four lane road. I thought I might drive by my old house, but I couldn't figure out onto which road I should turn. There were barriers separating me from many of them. When I realized I had gone too far, I decided to keep going, telling myself I'd come back another time. Indeed, I was thinking that I would try to get in with some paintball team or do some BMX stuff, and there was a great, giant flea market just made for my Leica cameras if I didn't get beaten, robbed, and killed.
I drove past my old high school, now grown giant in size looking much like a state prison, past the home where Jack Kerouac once lived with his sister who died there, where once there was a small zen garden Kerouac had built to memorialize her, past the citrus juicing plant owned by one of the wealthy families I had come to know, past the Frito Lay plant where, when I was still young and had friends who worked in such places, a man had fallen into the vat of cooking oil. Those vats are shallow, as it turns out, only inches deep, but the man died of his viscous burns nonetheless. The plant shut down for a few days and my friends stayed home while they drained and cleaned the vat. At least that was what the people said.
And then I was crossing the highway where I worked in a gas station for a little while when I was in high school. It is long gone, as is the old RC Cola bottling plant that once employed many other people I knew. I drove on, down the streets I used to take once I had a car to go to what is now my own part of town, past the Jr. High School that was then named Robert E. Lee, past the big high school that was my own school's rivals, and back into the parts of town I still go, the lawns becoming green, the cars newer and more expensive, the houses larger and the properties landscaped.
I was famished. I wanted to stop at some deli pub and get a sandwich and a good beer more than anything I could think of. And then I realized--I no longer knew where to go. My own village now had only expensive fu-fu restaurants. The old deli where my old friends used to meet every Friday afternoon at sidewalk tables was long gone. What had become of me? How had I become so insulated, so isolated from the good old common world?
It was almost time to visit my mother when I got home. There was no way I would make it. So I told her. Then I dropped into an Epsom salts bath to soak. A shower. Then. . . fuck it. . . a Campari cocktail and a cheroot. That is what I wanted. So I sat out on the deck and thought back over the day. I had downloaded the images from the two memory cards and was encouraged that there might be something there. At least a couple. I was tired, I was hungry, and I was curious to eat somewhere out of my own village. All over town that night, things were going on. There was a big Cows and Cabs event in the park off the Boulevard where tout le monde, or at least the socialites of the area, would be paying large bucks to mingle and eat the foods prepared by the "most famous" chefs in town. There was once a time when I would have been at such a thing, back when I was an aspiring hillbilly with Gatsby-itis, but those days are long gone. There was a street jazz festival in one direction and something called The Electric Daisy Concert at the pro soccer stadium downtown featuring all sorts of bad music.
And more.
But I wanted to eat like I used to with my adventurous friends who after drinking Friday afternoons would all head off to dinner at a little Cuban restaurant connected to the Cuban grocers, or to one of the good Greek restaurants in town. Yea. . . that's what I wanted, a Greek dinner. I knew where one was, not in my part of town but close enough, so I put on a decent t-shirt and headed out into the night.
And boy. . . it was crazy busy. Every street, every bar, every restaurant was hopping. This is what's going on while I sit in my home alone?
I pulled into the parking lot of the Greek place and took a table outside. The waitress was Greek, of course, young, and she spoke a beautifully shy and accented English. She had soft eyes and a warm smile. She wasn't glamorous but simply plain and pretty. I liked her right away. I ordered a gyro and a Greek beer. And holy moly, the sandwich was huge and great as was what passes in the U.S. for a Greek salad. Why, I wondered, didn't I get out beyond the confines of my village? Sure, people annoyed me, but I'd get used to it again and even come to enjoy the milieu.
A couple came to sit at the table next to me. Oh, Christ, they were a show, he small with a narcissistic gym build, lean and vascular, tats over his arms and legs, a small one on his neck, she in a white skirt and a white midriff top made to show off her giant breasts. He was noticeably older than she but trying hard not to show it.
Good God, this was fun. But I wanted a dining companion. And therein lie my quandary. I used to have friends who would go out for dinner or drinks without planning. Not so now. My world has changed for the worse.
I need to make new friends.
When I got home, I was beat, but I wanted to try to cook up a few images just to see. I started with the first ones which were all on the front end of the learning curve. I didn't want to start with the better ones. But there are so many. . . and it takes me sooo long to cook one up. I am a bit overwhelmed.
But here are a few I took in the first few minutes before the matches began, when skaters were preparing and just warming up. There will be more. Many, many more. . . until you get sick of them. It is good for me, though, so.
I think I'll contact the little league banked track stock car people now and see if they will let me shoot. I may be old, but goddamn. . . Big Balls in Cowtown. . . y'know?
Here's a song that came on when I was working on the images just before I went to an early bed. What the fuck. . . the music always gets me when I am working on the images. And sometimes. . . it just kills me. This one killed me bad.
I am going to get a life. . . if there is still one left to get.
To get me good and gone
In the morning light I can see you in my memory
And still hear the remnants of your song
Left a record turning on the table
That old soft familiar hum
I still hear the echoes of your silence
When I said tomorrow I’ll be gone
If you felt the weight of the words I am saying
You would not wait you’d just pull me back home
But you always wait yeah you’re always late
Cause you know I’ll come right back to your arms
Your dresser’s still filled with all my clothing
My shoes still lined up by the door
Will I be back someday to collect them
Or just stay away and buy some more
You would not wait you’d just pull me back home
But you always wait yeah you’re always late
Cause you know I’ll come right back to your arms
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