The Gyrel

There’s a certain sense of dying as you grow older—as though the pieces come apart like a puzzle in reverse, scattered on a dirty floor. You begin to realize that the hopeful shit force-fed to you throughout your adolescence isn’t true, and that some people—most people, in fact—don’t amount to shit over the course of their lives. That’s why we worship those who do.

But I remember being a kid, and I remember the town—the smell of the pulp mill, the sounds of trains being shunted in the yard along the river’s edge. I remember the bridge that took you to the reserve, where the women were beautiful and the men were half-crazy. And so you were tempted to chase after girls with thick, long black hair that flowed down to their asses, smiles that weakened your knees, and tanned skin like cream you just wanted to eat. But there was a price to pay for those girls—a price that not many were willing to pay. Thus, the divisions of town and communities, of ethnicities and cultures, remained intact, even though many wanted to pretend otherwise. And the parents on both sides were subtly racist—and many not so subtly. White parents called them savages, injuns, and redskins, while the natives called them the devils—the devils who steal land, rape, pillage, burn, and destroy natural beauty. The devils and the injuns.

And then there was Trevor Caissy. He was a tall, albino, blonde kid with arms that reached his knees and acne scattered across his face in bright red, laser-point dots. They seemed even more noticeable and grotesque against his pasty white skin, making you feel as if the pus from his pimples was touching you even when he stood ten feet away. You felt icky, and you wanted to rub your skin as if the pimples were contagious, but you didn’t want him to feel bad—so you tried your best to think about something else and look elsewhere, not directly at him, because he was self-conscious, as were most teenagers, even though they pretended to know shit about shit.

He spent his days at the gyrel, shooting hoops and pretending that his home—which was only a block away—didn’t exist. He shot through the pain of his father dying in a crack house on Lansdowne, where they fought over a dirty syringe and a can of soup. He shot to pretend that his mother wasn’t a born-again lesbian and that his sister wasn’t suicidal. He shot to pretend that the acne on his skin wasn’t repulsive, and he shot to pretend that Destiny Anderson hadn’t laughed in his face when he finally mustered the courage to ask her to the Spring dance.

Trevor had no money, and so the ball became a destination. It became a vacation; when he dribbled it, the sound of rubber on asphalt transported him. He imagined playing on a big stage to a sold-out crowd—the fans cheering, holding signs adorned with hearts, and girls looking at him with dreamy eyes. The pimples were gone, his skin was clear, and his spaghetti arms were bulked up. He was strong, confident, and he was out of town. He was in a big city. What city? He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care—the point was he was in a big city, far from the devils and the injuns.

Sometimes the gyrel would invite a few skaters who tried moves on the half-pipe but spent most of their time smoking joints on the edge and drinking energy drinks in cans as large as king-size beer cans. They laughed as clouds of smoke evaporated a few feet above their heads.

Sometimes, guys from across the river would play 3-on-3 games, and for a few moments—as the summer sun beat down on them and burned their skins—there was a genuine sense of community and belonging, all because of the ball. Because the truth was that, although there were some differences, they still suffered in many of the same ways. They still dealt with poverty, drugs, alcohol, anger, shattered dreams, and the realization that many of them weren’t getting anywhere—that the best this world had to offer was fenced-in asphalt, a net without mesh, and a ball with no fucking grip whatsoever. Many times, they wanted to say that to each other, but they didn’t know how; instead, they exchanged nods with smiles that revealed no teeth—just slightly upturned lips—and hoped the other could piece together the rest.

The gesture meant that the natives knew the white guys weren’t the ones who stole their lands—that issue had nothing to do with them—and the white guys knew that those natives didn’t hate them; maybe their parents and grandparents did, but they didn’t. They were just victims of a small-town mentality determined to carry the sins of bygone eras to ensure that positive change never came.

Because once the ball began to bounce, you weren’t judged on your looks, how many girls you fucked, how much you could bench press, or how much money your folks made; you were judged on your ability to put that ball through the hoop. The rest of the town was an illusion, and the gyrel was a fenced-in world of its own. There was nothing but sweat, competitions, dreams, and the slightest hope that if you put the ball through that net enough times, somebody would pull up in a Mercedes-Benz and say, “Hey kid, are you interested in playing Division 1?” And you’d smile, barely even say goodbye to your friends and that town before hopping into the back, pressing your hands against the leather seats, inhaling the new car scent, and watching the smokestacks and mountains fade in the rearview like a bad dream. Siyonarra, see ya, never.

And that dream lived in the minds of all six guys who made up the 3-on-3 match. There was Otis, whose father—already in his late 60s and dying a slow death from alcohol and cigarettes—was a fisherman, as were his father and his grandfather. He told Otis he was a fisherman too, and despite his good grades and athleticism, the choice of leaving and chasing a different life was never an option. There was Spencer, a 16-year-old with a pregnant girlfriend named Chelsea, who was only 15, and his older cousin had hooked him up with a construction job starting the following fall. It paid alright, so he didn’t have to finish school—and his days of playing ball were nearly over. There was Chris, who lived in a trailer park fifteen minutes outside of town. He was bipolar, and his mother was a whore—a reputation that spread around town like a bad disease. He fought at school, at the gyrel, and down by the train tracks, all to defend a mother who never cared much about defending, nurturing, or making him feel like he mattered. And, of course, there was Trevor—with a dead dad, a lesbian mom, a suicidal sister, and albino blonde hair.

Their heads were filled with poison—a certain I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude toward life. Without hope, there was no need to hold back your animal instincts. Holding back the wolf was reserved for people who had something major to lose if they unleashed the worst parts of themselves. There was the man with a corporate job, two or three kids, and a wife waiting for that outburst so she could sue him for every red cent in his name. That man had to keep it together. Perhaps he dreamed about stuffing a pillow over her face; maybe he went to the gym after work, found a room off to the side with a heavy bag, put in his earphones, went to town on that bag, and screamed until he was too tired and weak to care—but he couldn’t unleash it in front of his family. That much he understood.

But the guys at the gyrel were already expected to be the worst versions of themselves. They were already expected to be fuck-ups, so if they smashed one of the white kids’ heads off the steel pole that held up the net, what would happen? What would they lose? Sometimes the kids thought jail actually sounded better than the path their lives were headed on. And that’s why short tempers were the norm. Say the wrong thing or look at each other the wrong way, and fists flew—sometimes, kids got seriously hurt.

But Trevor didn’t have that anger in him. He was too tired to be angry, too lonely to be angry. His anger would isolate him, and he was scared that if the games stopped, if the ball was taken away, his life would end—in some ways, if not in all.

So he kept to himself, and he didn’t care who walked through that gate—a woman, a man, an 80-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 35-year-old, whether white, indigenous, black, or Mexican. It just didn’t matter, because if they wanted to share the ball, then they wanted to share the dream and the escape. And if they wanted to do that, then they were a friend of his. No questions asked.

And that was the beauty of the court—the ball, the asphalt, the mesh, the iron, and the half-pipe. Everyone was welcome inside the gate to dream and escape, if only for a little while.