Davis Cup

A week ago now, last Sunday, I went with my friend Brian to watch the finals of the Davis Cup at the Memorial Coliseum. It was right in the middle of that big storm that everyone but me knew about, and the pleasant surprise of steadily falling rain put me in a good mood for the whole day. However, every time there’s a serious deluge here in town, it washes all the oddballs out of their caves, and this was no exception.

When I got on the mostly empty bus to the arena, there was a woman “of a certain age” in a full-length fur coat sitting alone, staring out the window. There’s something extra ghetto about wearing a fur coat on the bus in the first place, but then in Southeast Portland, it’s also like wearing a yarmulke in Afghanistan. You’re askin’ for trouble. So imagine my surprise when a hipster dude got on with a giant fucking fur hat. (It was rabbit, aka chinese alley cat.) I know it was intended as irony, but even so, I wanted to say, hey, this ain’t Siberia, people. It’s 50 degrees out.

 Fur hat & fur coat on the #4 Division bus

Later while I waited for Brian at the lovely Rose Quarter Transit Center, more beautiful even that its name, a hot young stud (with bloodshot eyes) walked up and offerend me a “full suspension Diamondback,” which, alas, is not a sexual act. It’s just a mountain bike, and I took one look and thought, poor thing, you’re so behind the times. You should be stealing road bikes.

 The flowery vistas and azure skies of Portland’s Rose Quarter

Once inside the coliseum, Brian and I settled in to watch the pre-game show, if you can call it that. It was a girl band. Literally. They were little girls, dressed in leather jackets, strumming electric guitars, and growling out House of the Rising Sun, Bad Moon Rising, and some other CCR classics. (I pictured the tennis players sitting backstage wondering “Where in the hell are we?”) The kids were back announced after their performance, and the oldest of the group was just 13. The youngest, Desmond, the drummer, was just 7 years old.

The tennis commenced directly, and first up were Bob Bryan and Igor Andreev. The rah-rah, pro-America crowd would shout out the single sylable of Bryan’s name almost constantly. “Bob!” “Bob!” “Bob!” (Not “Bob, Bob, Bob.”) I wanted to effect a heavy Soviet accent and belt out “Igooorrrr!” to support the Russian underdog. Instead I focused on his form (and by “form,” I mean butt) and his interesting stance while waiting for the serve.

 Igor awaits. I wanted that guy’s view.

During the short breaks between games, where viewers around the world would undoubtedly be treated to sponsorship messages, two squads of entertainers would rush out onto the court. There were jugglers, and there was a crew of cheerleaders. They’d all hurry through couple of impressive tricks, and then time would be up. In, say, one minute, the “impartial Swedish judge” with the handsome voice would call “time;” and instantly the floor would clear, and silence would fall. It would be so quiet you could hear the balls gently bounce as the players prepared to serve.

In some of these brief intermissions, one of the beefier of the male cheerleaders would walk around with a big gun. It was for tee-shirts, and he would insert a rolled shirt into the wide barrel and fire it off into the stands with perfect aim. (Not a skill, I imagine, that’s highly transferable.) People stood and raised their arms plaintively, begging for a shirt with who knows what written on it (but FREE!). Then time would be called, and quiet would descend in just one brief second. During one of those breaks, I turned to Brian and observed, “Just think. Somebody out there invented the tee-shirt cannon… and then perfected it.”

 Twenty-five other people on the court. (I missed two.)

One thing that I noticed about the match was how many other people were involved besides the players. The black-clad “ball persons” were all over the court and were far more active and compelling to watch than the competitors, at least at first. Eventually though, they and the innumerable line judges simply blended into the background, as though they were the hooded puppeteers in traditional Japanese theater, controlling the action in plain sight yet, with the complicity of the audience, somehow invisible.

The second match of the afternoon had me and Brian on opposite sides. He thought the dark and ever-smiling James Blake was hotter, and I thought the blond and stern Dmitry Tursunov was. Since this was a decidedly biased forum (for the US, that is), Blake’s face was plastered on the big screens almost constantly, whereas Tursunov’s was rarely seen. Every time the American was shown, the crowd went crazy, and Brian let out a deep, deep sigh. Birds chirped in a flowery meadow, and Bambi grazed in a mountain glade. Ah, love. Blake, for his part, played to the fans and flashed an aw-shucks grin, a little shy, a little flirtatious. He was like Princess fuckin’ Diana. But male. And black.

 Davis Cup Final: Tursunov serves Blake

During one enbarrasingly long session of Blake worship, he smiled really big, and the crowd thundered applause. Brian, overcome, let out a loud, womanly scream and fainted dead away. I swear! At least he didn’t throw his frilly panties onto the court, which is what I was really afraid of.

Alas, Blake ultimately prevailed, not that it mattered. The cup had already been decided, with the US winning for the first time in more than a decade, and as this was the final match, the award ceremony followed. A red carpet was rolled out on the court, and a dignified procession unfolded before out very eyes. The Russian coach, whose accent was utterly indeciferable, thanked Portland and America and the fans. I think.

 No expense spared for the awarding of the Davis Cup

Brian and I were back on the street by 5 p.m., but the sun had long ago set. We went to a vegetarian Chinese place for dinner and gossiped about our friends’ sex lives. (“You saw him where?” What were you doing there?) Then I walked to catch the bus, water sloshing around inside my left boot, which had begun to leak for the first time on that very night.

Guess What I’m Thinking
In the last week after the event, I’ve spent some quality time googling Dmitry Tursunov. (I’m such a sports fan.) He has his own website, complete with abundant hunky photos, and one gallery of all shirtless pictures, which is actually titled with the word “shirtless.” His bio lists his interests as knitting, collecting walnut shells, electonic dance music, and listening to Barbra Streisand. Plus, he lives near the Bay Area. Now guess what I’m thinking. Three letters, begins with “g.”

If only I hadn’t googled so agressively. I also found Tursunov commenting in wonder at how people actually believe that stuff in his profile — you know, about walnut shells and Streisand. Oh well, at least he has a healthy sense of humor.