It’s basically just unreal, at this point. But it was last Friday, a week ago today, that I quit my job during a panic attack, attempting to talk with masked customers under a boisterous, crowded din, and all the basketball games got cancelled.
I think they’d already slated the NCAA’s to be played in gyms empty of fans, but I’d gone into a bar eager for at least one night of conference tournament action. Then there on my phone was the surreal sight of the word “Cancelled” next to every game on the schedule on espn.com. Sure enough, there was no basketball on any of the TV’s at Wings Etc.: they were still holding some golf tournament and on another TV I think I watched monster trucks for about two hours.
The bartender in there didn’t even look old enough to drink, but she had her routine down pat: friendly, knowledgeable service and little quips to certain patrons like “I’d never call YOU gentleman.” These bartenders sometimes are the cinematic epicenter of American culture. This one portly dude I always see at this other pub sat about four stools down from me, with a group, periodically pressing his face to his black girlfriend’s and making a giant farting noise with his mouth on it. For a while, it seemed like this precious world were still turning.
But now even the libraries are shut down: though I couldn’t get a card, sitting in there and reading the new book Smash! about Green Day and The Offspring seemed like something I could do that would make me feel like I were living life, to any extent. But now the March 28 date of the libraries reopening is starting to look even a little tenuous, with my hometown of South Bend, Indiana having been declared a state of emergency by the new mayor (whose name seems to matter at this point insofar as it’s not Pete Buttegeig anymore).
This past week has brought the funeral of my father, which to be clear was an undaunted event, save for maybe a couple people leaving an hour early to beat any travel madness. Then, it’s brought endless hours sitting on my bed, thankfully enjoying what was a free gift of hot spot Internet (I’m lucky enough to be living rent-free at my Mom’s right now), a video of Reggie Miller shooting threes contemporarily in an empty gym, an entrance into a contest for a signed Clyde Drexler poster, and a lot of staring out the window. And a lot of music doesn’t even seem to work anymore, like John Lennon’s “Imagine,” especially since that optimistic strutter emphasizes “sharing all the world,” which obviously we can’t do during this pandemic.
And today, Friday, March 20, another day of pi**-poor weather in Michigan and empty schools, bars and libraries, was the first day I really FELT the ghost of March Madness, an angry scepter scaling the walls of my room which holds a bunny ears antenna at attention, aghast in disbelief before its own indefinite earthly obliteration. Like I said, though, otherwise this experience is just unreal. The feelings aren’t even there, as these tulips outside my window hazard a maligned attempt at germination on the 38-degree, cloudy day. All I have is a bunch of left-brain memories, one of which will probably never leave me.
It was downtown Denver, 2006 and I was on my spring break from IU watching my Hoosiers take on San Diego St. in the first round at ESPN Zone, which at the time was probably my favorite bar on earth. There was this dude at the table over watching the game who I found a tad bit annoying, but who must have struck up a conversation with me in an amiable enough way, for which a lot of Coloradoans had a knack, actually. Somehow, we just got to talking endlessly: about basketball itself, about gambling and strategies surrounding it and everything else under the sun, our conversation getting at one point interrupted by this Californian asking me a question to which the dude I was talking to interjected “Don’t ever say anything to a dipsh**,” pointing straight at the subsequently tacit Californian. At one point the dude’s girlfriend would show up and he’d shove her barstool up against mine, as if he wanted me to make an impression on her. Then he’d do this amusing three-activity loop of kissing his girlfriend, initiating this goofy sort of flowery hippie dance around our area and staring at me while pointing at my beer, implicitly offering me another one (which I couldn’t accept ’cause I was driving). At another point he told me “You got a good head on ya.” And all my life I guess I’ve taken pride in the fact that I had such a good interaction in a bar watching March Madness, but this experience of having what I consider pretty much a national holiday taken away from me has made me realize how selfish and oafish I was to not recognize that it was HIM who just as much was gyroscope of true human spirit, something that definitely doesn’t come guaranteed all the time in everyday life.
I mean look: I don’t know why I’m saying all this. It’s just something that happened in my life. This is obviously hardly a time for “moral of the story” platitude. It’s a time when we’re all apprehensive, looking ahead to the future. But the NCAA basketball tournament had a power about it. It brought out the most robust personalities in humanity and the most spirited declarations, both good and bad. That night in that bar watching IU-San Diego St. was of a keen amount of poignancy, like the first time you hear “American Car” by Mike Doughty or taste cheesecake. And make no mistake: I’m still biting on it to this day.