It All Started With a Word

“It All Started with a Word” is a series where I choose any word from Robert Hendrickson’s great book Words and Phrase Origins, 4th Edition and write, well, whatever comes to mind. The exercise is a mixture of freewriting, research, and play.

Boccie. An Italian game of lawn bowling played on a dirt court shorter and narrower than a bowling green. Boccie takes its name from the Italian boccia, “ball.” It is often played in city parks today. See SPALDING.

The old five hippies arrived at the court in Golden Gate Park in the early afternoon. They were there to do one thing — play boccie ball.

The game consists of two teams, with each team having one, two, or four players. For four-player teams, each player throws one ball. A round begins with the toss of a coin. The team that wins the coin toss can choose to either have the first toss of the pallina or the color of the balls they will use. The pallina is rolled or tossed by a member of the team having won the coin toss.

The player tossing the pallina must deliver the first ball. The other team throws until it gets its ball closer (not ties) to the pallina. This continues until both teams have thrown all their Bocce balls. After both teams have exhausted all their balls, a frame is over, and points are awarded. All balls must be thrown underhanded. The foul line is used to deliver all balls down the court with the intent of getting a ball closer to the pallina, knocking the opponent’s ball away from the pallina, or hitting the pallina so that it ends up closer to your team’s ball.

At the end of each frame, points will be awarded — only one team scores in a frame. One point is awarded for each ball closer to the pallina than the closest ball of the opposing team. If the closest ball of each group is the same distance from the pallina, no points will be awarded, and the pallina returns to the team that delivered it. Only balls that are distinguishably closer to the pallina than any opponent’s balls are awarded points. All measurements should be made from the center of the pallina to the edge of a Bocce ball. Games are played to 16 points, with the first team reaching 16 points being the winner.

That day, the park grass was a bright, lime green bespeckled by tree leaves and bird feathers and sunshine. The parakeets could be heard calling out at one another in play, yellow, red, and shamrock feathers in contrast with the milk-white clouds against the blue sky. There was traffic along Lincoln Way and some of the small roads inside the park, but the old hippies never minded it. Once you were deep in the gardens between the Koret playground, the bathroom, and Robin Williams Meadow, the body and the mind were transported to a place far different than the hustle and bustle of the city.

Seeing that it was Sunday, there were the usual sports watchers out in their red and gold. None of the hippies cared for football. It wasn’t their way.

“Barbaric,” Rick said. He owned a t-shirt store on Haight Street for the last forty years.

“Niners weren’t good since Young,” Chris groaned. He was retired for five years and used to work as a lawyer. “And that’s a fact.”

“I liked Kap, but he got screwed by the league,” Anthony, the one who claimed to have organized the first boccie ball game for their little crew, all of whom were white, said. “That was fucked up.”

Anthony was a professor of poetry at San Francisco State University.

Everyone nodded solemnly. To break the silence, Paul said, “Hey, he was alright. He did the right thing, and man, did he have a pair of legs on him.”

A pack of loosely rolled joints stuck inside a plastic sandwich bag started to get passed around with everyone in agreement.

They were old hippies, lifers of San Francisco dating back to the Haight Ashbury days, the Janis Joplin days, the “Yeah I used to cruise with the Dead sometimes” days.

Sam, a retired electrician and union man, eagerly set up the boccie game, waved away his joint with one burly hand. The other four gave each other curious glances. Sam wasn’t a pothead per se, more of a drinker, but he was never one to pass on a free joint. Rick, who held the bag, offered a second time. Again, Sam said no and showed him the unopened bottle of Sierra Nevada tied in between his fingers.

“What’s with you?” Paul said, flicking his Bic. “Don’t tell me you’re cutting with all the shit going on in the world.”

Many things were going on in the world, few of which had an immediate effect on the five of them. They possessed a multitude of privileges ranging from race to gender to the economy. They commented on these things with the vigor of someone passing a car accident on the highway, only to speed away, safe and sound.

“I just want to stay clear-headed is all,” Sam insisted. “Anyways, the doctor told me it’s bad for my lungs. Beer is better.”

“Beer is better,” Chris chuckled. “Put that on your gravestone, Sam!”

“Doctor also told me I needed to me I needed Viagra to fuck,” Anthony barked. “But I’m still getting it done without the help.”

An earthquake of fratty laughter rolled across the ground.

“Let’s play,” Sam insisted. “We didn’t come here to play grab-ass.” He turned and eyed Rick, the owner of the t-shirt store. “Come on, man. Let’s get going.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Rick said, stepping in. “The usual teams? Me and Anthony versus Sam and Paul?”

A cloud slid over the sun, casting them all in a gray shadow of darkness. The California live oaks seemed to bend in the middle toward them. Everyone shuttered as their skin grew cold, but before they could get their coats, the cloud continued, and the sun shone again.

“I pulled some shit gardening the other day,” Chris said. “Count me out. I’ll get high and watch from my little spot here.”

Chris flicked a red and black checkered blanket out on the lawn. After a long toke, he spread himself out, curling his feet together. Situated, Christ leaned his head back, exhaled, and then inhaled the sea breeze laden with sunshine. Heaven, he thought. Hopefully, this is it.

After a few miss calculated coin tosses, Sam and Paul won and decided to be the ones to throw the pallina. Paul was usually more laid back when it came to his boccie’s placement, believing it was better to let the other team make the mistakes. Rick and Anthony were always on the offensive. Where the pallina went, they went after it. Sam was secretive and rarely spoke during the game, acting as if every match were a part of some more massive tournament. No one knew why, but everyone speculated.

“Maybe because he doesn’t have much after he retired?” Chris suggested one afternoon Sam blew a gasket after losing.

“The union was a brotherhood for him,” Paul sighed.

“We all got shit missing out of our lives,” Anthony spat. “You deal with it, like men. You don’t pout and shout about every goddamned thing.”

Rick nodded, mulling over what he wanted to say, but decided against it. “Some things are better left alone.”

After rounds of battling for the pallina and playfully tormenting one another by knocking each other’s boccie’s out of the foul line, Sam and Paul won.

“Hard-fought,” Rick smiled.

He put his hand out to shake Sam’s. Sam did not offer his. The four hippies looked at each other with trepidation.

“Let’s go again,” Sam said. “But let’s make it more interesting.”

“Interesting how?” Chris laughed. “Not much one can do to make this game of throwing balls around anymore enticing!”

“What do you have in mind?” Paul asked.

“We talking money, a week in our timeshare, or what?” Anthony looked around with one eyebrow cocked. “All of a sudden, you a betting man Sam? You got something you want to win? Something you want to lose?”

Sam shrugged. “Why not make the day more interesting?”

“Alright,” Rick said. “I could be enticed into a bet. What should we bet?”

“A secret,” Paul suggested. “We should be the loser tells a secret, one that no one here knows about.”

“Ooo!” Chris laughed, clapping. “I like that! I like that! Take it out of the realm of the physical, out of the monetary, and make it personal!”

“What kind of secret?” Sam asked. He had a boccie ball in his hand. At the idea, he tossed to the other, then back again. “I don’t have any secrets.”

“Everybody has secrets,” Anthony said. “I like it. Loser tells a secret.”

“You alright with that?” Paul asked Anthony and Rick.

They both nodded with approval.

“What about you?” Paul looked at Sam. “I wouldn’t mind hearing something these two dingbats have done in the past.”

Sam looked up at the sky, yearning to be enveloped by the ever-expanding blueness of it. He envied its emptiness and lack of responsibility. People expected very little from the sky. Sam remembered his morning, spent alone while he made eggs, black coffee, and rye toast. This was normal. He thought today would be like any other typical Sunday with the boys.

Now, there was this bet. Sam knew if he didn’t take it, the boys wouldn’t let up. That’s what the old hippies did — they were relentless. However, chill they appeared to be; they were still human. Humans were always looking for a way inside. If allowed to solve a puzzle, they would crack it eventually. That’s what they did.

“If these two play as they did just now, we’re about to hear some dark tales about them,” Sam said confidently. “Let’s do it.”

Again, Sam and Paul won the coin toss. They chose to place the pallina, luckily getting it in the back corner of the court. Paul smoothly put his boccie about six inches away on the off-chance Anthony, and Rick decided to barrel and knock his ball closer. They did just that.

“Goddamn!” Rick snorted. “I’m always throwing it too hard.”

“You never learn!” Chris shouted. He was on his second beer and getting loose.

“Watch and learn,” Sam snickered.

Sam tossed his boccie ball high up into the air as if he were aiming for the sun, and it came crashing down only to strike something and roll past the foul line suddenly.

“What the hell was that?” Sam demanded.

“A bad toss,” Anthony said. “Out the way.”

Anthony underhanded his ball perfectly, smacking Paul’s ball out and getting his right next to the pallina. Paul and Sam’s next throw was merely efforts to make up for their losses. Every ball went out of the foul line or was knocked out by the other two. Chris hooted and hollered at them as a few passerby’s asked what they were doing.

“Well,” Chris smiled. “Those two are losing,” he said, pointing at Paul and Sam. “And those two are winning.”

“Quiet over there!” Sam snapped.

Chris threw up his hands in mock apology.

Sam readied himself with his last boccie. He exhaled, stared at the ground, and whispered something underneath his breath. No one heard what was said. In the distance, somewhere on Lincoln, a car horn blared, followed by some mild screams. A dog barked as a mother calmed down a crying child. Someone’s cell phone rang. Sam tossed the boccie in the air, watched it land, and realized he’d put too much spin on it as it rolled out of bounds.

They had lost.

“Well then,” Anthony smiled. “Time to fess’ up, boys.”

Sam immediately started packing up his boccie balls. Paul and the rest of them looked at him silently. The weed had taken its natural effects of heightened wonder and hesitation; everything felt like a huge deal, yet they were all useless to do anything at all. Sam, fueled by beer and competitive rage, handled the complete opposite. The Sierra beer was nothing but ammunition for his ego-driven tantrum. Anthony and Rick, both holding a boccie ball, did not give them up when Sam went to take them.

“What are you doing?” Anthony asked, play in his voice, as he pulled away from his boccie ball.

“Sam,” Rick said. “Are you alright?”

“I’m leaving,” Sam said coldly. “Bullshit plays, bullshit game. Give them to me. I’m out of here.”

“You need to chill over there!” Christ shouted. There was a loud crack of another beer being opened.

“I had sex with a guy in a college,” Paul said, stepping forward in front of the noise. “It was nothing. I was drunk, and we walked home to our apartment that both of us lived with five other guys. Just a sex act, nothing more. Fucking young, we were and didn’t even sleep with each other after if we’re sincere. No one was home when we got there, and I remember he — Hank — kind of brushed my hand when he handed me a beer, our last beer for the night. From there, it just happened. Of course, we were ashamed and all because fuck we were straight, I’m straight, he’s straight and married with kids and a wife, and we never talked about it again because, well, there was nothing to talk about. We knew after that, so in that way, we helped each other with any questions we might have had to prevent any personal troubles in the future.”

The four hippies, brothers really, were silent. None of them had ever experienced anything sexual with another man, and they would never have given a damn if either of them had. A bet was a bet, though, and the chance was a secret. Paul, as Paul was one to do usually, kept his word.

“Sam?” Rick said. “I think you’re next.”

“Don’t you do this to me,” Sam snapped.

“What do you mean?” Rick asked. “Why me? Everyone else is here.”

Sam tried to continue gathering the game up, but there was nothing left. There was nothing left to do. He wanted to run, but he realized there was nowhere to go but home, where only he would be. He felt his breath grow shallow, and then every beat of his heart. The wet on Sam’s eyes suddenly dried up. Everything around him sharpened, the present moment stripped away of all distraction, pains, joy, or task. All there was in front of Sam was what was happening right now, and that was the task, no, the opportunity to tell the truth that, for years, had been hidden in the dark.

“We know,” Chris said, sitting up. “We’ve all known.”

“Sam,” Rick insisted. He tried to take his hand, but he swatted it away.

“You don’t know what it is,” Sam muttered. “You don’t know what, what we have. I swear to God, you don’t.”

Anthony came up behind Sam and bear-hugged him. Anthony, ever since he was an undergrad, lifted weights and kept his body tight. Sam struggled and wriggled, kicked, and writhed until his old body could do nothing but gave out. Anthony shook him once hard, then another softly, like a brother in a fit that wouldn’t let up. Sam stopped. Anthony loosened his grip.

“It’s alright, brother,” Anthony whispered. “Let us know, man.”

Paul looked into Sam’s erratic eyes. “Today is the day.”

“We’ve known,” Chris said, standing up. “For years.”

“I should have confronted you about it sooner,” Rick said. He took Sam’s hands in his. “It’s my fault, brother.”

Sam looked into Rick’s soft eyes and saw nothing but love. That’s all he had ever wanted to give to her, to Rick’s wife, Susan. At parties, the two always conversed about simple things like movies, easy dinner recipes, and places they both wanted to travel to. To Sam, these flashes of connection, however shallow, flicked on a relationship within him, something Sam had not experienced for as long as he could remember. Not once had Susan said anything to her husband Rick, not once had she ever said anything to Rick other than small quips of amusement about how Sam was extra friendly that night or how she noticed his eyes on her at a barbeque for the Niners game. It was nothing but a quaint annoyance, oblivious to the constant push Sam was burdening his heart with.

“You knew,” Sam muttered. “All this time?”

The four of them circled Sam and brought his arms up and around their shoulders. They intertwined their limbs in a kind of natural vine, connected and interweaved and impenetrable. With their heads dipped to the earth, the flash of lime green grass now darkened by their shadows, they breathed together as men, as one, as brothers.

“Yes,” Rick said. “But matters of the heart need time to figure their shit out.”

“It happens in one way or another to all of us,” Paul assured Sam. “I had my best friend’s sister in college on time and lied to him for two years until he knew. The only thing he was mad at was that I never told him that I lied.”

Anthony cleared his throat but said nothing for once.

“Let it be,” Chris advised. “And let it go. The heart doesn’t age. You can if you will it. Trust yourself to move on.”

Their bodies rocked back and forth as one as the sun warmed their backs as the Pacific fog, way off on the western horizon, advanced.

“Who will I be without my love for her?” Sam asked.

“Yourself,” Rick told him. “It will take some time, but you’ll be back again. You didn’t go anywhere.”

After, they cleaned up the boccie balls and got a beer down at Shamrock. Unfortunately, the Seahawks were playing. They didn’t mind. They watched the traffic in quiet contentment, admiring the way the young kids came in and tried to play chess, falling in and out of love with life and all of its adversities. They would be where the five old hippies were in no time at all.

*

Mitchell Duran is a writer of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He has been published in Free Flash Fiction, Black Horse Review, Drunk Monkey, The Millions, BrokeAssStuart, and more. He lives in San Francisco, California. Find more work at Mitchellduran.com