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Showing posts from October, 2022

Chapter 2: Foosball

     "Anyone know that cute freshmen skating in the Old Gym?" I call out to the two brothers having a heated foosball match in the Delta Ep living room. "That's Freida-Mae Marzouk rehabbing a knee," observes Burkhardt while blocking a shot and flipping the little white ball out to mid-field. "Afraid-Of-Me,"grunts Pete Jyzcinski slamming a handgrip to shoot the ball toward goal. "Great name for a bossy bitch." "Might make a mean little sister," I ponder as Burkhardt pulls the shaft hard for another stop. "We could use someone to tell us what to do to clean up around here."      What I could really use was a new girlfriend now that MG was gone. Running mates with French benefits was how our relationship had evolved after the previous year's softball championship. Then she graduated a month later, leaving me to a lonely junior year so far. It wasn't in my nature to initiate a date, and the assertive coeds who might h...

Chapter 1: Oppositional

      "Need a hand?" I call to a woman-on-wheels splayed across the creaky slats of a banked wooden track circling twenty feet above the worn parquet floor of a tiny basketball court. "Never!" she fairly yells with a quick flash of anger, scrambling onto her purple-pommed skates before skidding in a flailing panic down into the flimsy railing with an ominous crack.       The Old Gym at Gibson-Henry College was being replaced in 1980 by a state-of-the-art structure replete with twin courts, olympic pool, and separate men's and women's locker rooms. The piedmont Virginia school had only started admitting girls in 1971, and facilities were slowly following suit one building at a time.      The equalizing sex ratio during my three years there was just fine for a newly trim body. I'd started out as an overweight trainer for the developing women's sports programs. Then one of the softball players, a senior exchange student from France, had all...