The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Sherman Alexie

Jason Collins Is the Envy of Straight Men Everywhere

Sherman Alexie — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:27:00 -0700

MARK KAUFMAN
If Collins does play in the NBA next year, I’m sure certain teammates might feel threatened by his presence in the locker room. I’ll be the straight boy who’d love to have a fraction of his physical near-perfection.

As a straight-boy jock, I have been showering with large groups of naked men for decades. And these showers have not taken place in bathrooms where we straight men yell at one another from modest private stalls. No, we athletes clean ourselves in large, communal Roman gladiator bathhouses. My high-school locker room's showerheads were placed so that we boys soaped up while facing one another. And we did this soaping while standing two feet apart.

In other words, I, Sherman, a heterosexual lifelong basketball player, have seen a lot more cock and man-ass than many gay men.

As I age, my cock is essentially the same one I owned in 1983. But my balls and ass are loosening and threatening to avalanche down my body. I think I'm an attractive man wearing clothes, but when I'm naked... well, let's just say that I'm grateful I have a pleasant face. And, grading on a curve, I'm actually a relatively fit middle-aged man. All around me in the health clubs, I encounter mountainous guts that make my chubby belly look like a foothill. I see butt cheeks that look like two Sasquatches playing tennis. I recoil from feet so gnarled, hirsute, and abused that a hobbit would suggest a pedicure.

So why do certain homely straight men worry that gay men are even remotely interested in sexually harassing their concave asses? If strange women don't amass in large numbers to jump your bones, then why would packs of gay men hunger for you?

And, hey, I don't mean to punish those folks who are not hot, hot, hot. The plain and the lovely deserve equal amounts of love. I am only talking about sexual objectification.

Jason Collins Is the Envy of Straight Men Everywhere

Sherman Alexie — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:00:00 -0700

Jason Collins Is the Envy of Straight Men Everywhere by Sherman Alexie

In other words, I, Sherman, a heterosexual lifelong basketball player, have seen a lot more cock and man-ass than many gay men.

And, hey, I don't mean to punish those folks who are not hot, hot, hot. The plain and the lovely deserve equal amounts of love. I am only talking about sexual objectification.

So how do these dynamics change when it comes to the relationship between gay men and beautiful straight men? Does it mean gay men might sexually harass beautiful straight men?

I've never been beautiful, but gay men have hit on me, especially at gay film festivals where my movie The Business of Fancydancing played to slightly interested audiences. More than one man whispered his room number to me while handing me a hotel key card, which isn't nearly as romantic as handing somebody an actual, old-fashioned key and would have also relied on me being able to remember a hotel room number. When I travel, I have to take photos of the room numbers so I can refer to them when I find my way back. If I had wanted to have a one-night stand with a gay cinema fan, I would've been forced to wander the Hyatt hallways chanting, "I'm a straight Indian filmmaker looking to explore other options," and hoping that my admirer heard me from inside his room.

Once, in a private box at a Mariners game, a dude (married to a woman, who was five feet away) stealthily pushed his crotch against my blue-jeaned butt. That guy wore his closet like it was a pair of khaki pants with an open fly.

How do I react to these sexual advances? My first thought is "Men are boundaryless animals." My second thought is "Women have to deal with this shit all the time." My third thought is "How flattering." My fourth thought is "I wish this dude hitting on me was cuter."

So who are the best-looking men in the USA? The answer, obviously, is professional athletes. I mean, Jesus, Google-Image Adrian Peterson. Study how cut, shredded, and jacked he is.

Cut. Shredded. Jacked. Those are violent straight-boy adjectives that mean "beautiful." But we straight boys aren't supposed to think of other men as beautiful. We're supposed to think of the most physically gifted men as warrior soldiers, as dangerous demigods.

And there's the rub: When we're talking about professional athletes, we are mostly talking about males passionately admiring the physical attributes and abilities of other males. It might not be homosexual, but it certainly is homoerotic.

So when Jason Collins, an NBA basketball player, announced this week that he was gay and became the first active athlete in the four major professional American sports leagues to come out of the closet, I was proud of him. And I was aroused, politically speaking.

He's the Jackie Robinson of homosexual basketball big men.

He's seven feet and 250 pounds of man-loving man.

And he's an aging center in the last days of his professional career who might not be signed by a team next season.

Homophobic basketball fans will disparage his skills, somehow equating his NBA benchwarmer status with his sexuality. But let's not forget that Collins is still one of the best 1,000 basketball players in the world. He has always been better than his modest statistics would indicate, and his teams have been dramatically more efficient with him on the court. He is better at hoops than 99.9 percent of you are at anything you do. He might not be a demigod, but he's certainly a semi-demigod. Moreover, his basketball colleagues universally praise him as a physically and mentally tough player. In his prime, he ably battled that behemoth known as Shaquille O'Neal. Most of all, Collins is widely regarded as one of the finest gentlemen to ever play the game. Generous, wise, and supportive, he's a natural leader. And he has a degree from Stanford University.

In other words, he's a highly attractive dude.

If he does play in the NBA next year, I'm sure certain teammates might feel threatened by his presence in the locker room. I imagine that homophobic fans will hurl insults at him. But I'll be a fan who will see him sitting at the end of the bench, maybe getting to play a few minutes every other game, and still be jealous of his athletic gifts.

I'll be the straight boy who'd love to have a fraction of Jason Collins's physical near-perfection. And other straight-boy fans, homophobic or not, admittedly or not, will also be jealous of Collins's status among the basketball elite.

Gay folks and straight supporters have had much to celebrate recently. I am happy that gay marriage is legal in Washington State. I am happy that an exclusively heterosexual institution is admitting my gay brethren. But I'm overjoyed that an ostensibly straight-boy activity like basketball, my greatest love, is now being recognized as the homoerotic extravaganza that it is. After all, aside from swimming, diving, and water polo—the Holy Trinity of Way Gay Sports—basketball is the sport where men wear the least clothes. When playing ball, we're essentially just in underwear. Hell, even among us pathetic hoopsters, we usually play shirts against skins. Yep, one team is always topless.

I recently saw video of my topless body jogging down the court. It was a tragic version of Bo Derek running down the beach in that movie about being a perfect 10. I look like a figure eight. So I've been eating better and exercising more because I, the basketball player who loves vaginas, want to be sexually objectified by women. And men. Truly, when it comes down to it, don't we all want to be universally desired?

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Fame

Sherman Alexie — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 04:00:00 -0700

Fame: A Short Story by Sherman Alexie by Sherman Alexie

You've seen the viral video of the zoo lion, golden and impatient in its enclosure, trying to eat a toddler girl through the observation glass, right? I was at the zoo and watched it happening.

Three million online people think it's the cutest thing ever. And the toddler's mother, as she filmed the scene, laughed and laughed.

I didn't think it was funny. I kept thinking, Shit, that lion truly wants to eat that kid's face. But, yeah, yeah, laugh at the big cat. Laugh at the apex predator trapped behind glass.

I hate zoos.

I was only there to court a woman and take her out after work. She made balloon animals part-time at the zoo, but I'd met her when she entertained my niece's birthday party.

Her giraffes were great, her elephants were passable, her tarantulas looked too much like tarantulas so nobody wanted them.

She made 50 bucks for each party she worked. The zoo paid her minimum wage plus commission. But who comes to the zoo for balloon animals? If you're going to buy something for a kid at the zoo, then you're going to get a stuffed animal.

So she was a beautiful woman with an eccentric skill who was financially unsustainable.

I liked her well enough to think about being in love with her. We'd been on two dates.

Later that afternoon, over coffee, halfway through our third date, she told me I had a great face but weighed 30 pounds too much.

"Get skinny," she said. "Like we could wear each other's jeans, and then maybe I'll have sex with you."

She said it like she was kidding, but I knew I'd never be thin enough for her.

I walked her home. We didn't talk much. It was a security building, so we said good-bye on the sidewalk.

She apologized for rejecting me.

"It's okay," I said.

I said, "Apologies offered and accepted are what make us human."

I said, "It's only those damn balloon animals that hold grudges."

She laughed and hurried into her building. Through the lobby window, I watched her step into the elevator and disappear behind the closing doors.

I wasn't angry. I was lonely. I was bored. And I half-remembered a place and time when I'd been young, and lean, and feared.

Nostalgic, I pressed my mouth against the glass and chewed.

If somebody had filmed me and posted it online, then I would have become that guy with the teeth. I would have become a star.

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Unkissed

Sherman Alexie — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:00:00 -0800

(Hell Has Frozen Over: The Stranger Publishes a Poem) by Sherman Alexie

1.

Who
Knew
The man
Would jackknife,
Leave his lovely wife,
And abandon his preschool kids?
He told me once, "I hate my life." So who knew? I did.

(I am vaguely Catholic, so I am prone to believe that any confession, however casual, is a Holy Confession. Isn't every secret a sacred possession? Shouldn't I honor any intimacy with my silence? Or am I just defending my friend? But, damn, what kind of man leaves his family without kissing them good-bye? And what's more, he left them not for another woman or man, but for a studio apartment with a big-screen TV. Should I feel guilty for remaining friends with this bastard? Do I become a liar whenever I conceal the lies of another man, no matter how much I love him like a brother?)

2.

"Meet
Me
At noon,"
X said. She
Waited for fifty-
Six minutes then sent X this text:
"I love your forgetful ass, but we'll never have sex."

(There was a time, twenty-one years ago, when X romantically loved her—when he drunkenly waded through a shallow pond in his haste to get to her. He could have walked around the water, but that would have involved a deviation from a direct line. He pursued her like this despite the fact that she was—and is—a lesbian. Romance has always been an impossibility. And yet, these days, whenever she flirts, he remembers exactly what it felt like to want her so much—to dream of kissing her beneath a streetlight while unkissed strangers wander past them.)

3.

He's
Free
But served
Thirteen years
For rape and car theft
Before a new DNA test
Exonerated him. He says, "Freedom hurts my chest."

(The prosecuting attorney still believes the right man was convicted. "I have no doubts, none at all," the attorney said to a documentary crew. "And I will go to my grave knowing that a guilty man has been set free." The case depended on eyewitness testimony. The rape victim, an eight-year-old girl, first told police that she was attacked by a man who looked like her neighbor. After hours of questioning and coaching, she changed her statement and swore that it was "actually" her neighbor who raped her. Another witness, a different neighbor, swore that he saw the accused man steal a car. The witness was allowed to make this claim despite the fact that he was extremely nearsighted, it was nighttime, and the suspect was sixty feet away. The nearsighted man swore that he recognized his neighbor's "eccentric gait." The jury took only three hours to deliver a guilty verdict, and the judge sentenced the accused to seventy years. But all of them were wrong. They convicted an innocent man. Does that make them liars? Must one purposefully lie in order to be called a liar? Or can a mistake—an accidental misidentification—also be a form of lying? And whom do we become when we are confronted with the truth—with a direct refutation of our closely held beliefs—but still refuse to admit to our wrongs? During a press conference the day after his release from prison, the innocent man swore that he held no grudge. He said he just wanted to get down and kiss the ground, though the ground remained unkissed. He said he forgave everybody and that he wished all of them his best. But he kept repeating—said it three or four times—that freedom was hurting—was killing—his chest.)

4.

I
Sighed
When she
Passed by my
Desk. I wanted her;
She wanted me. We never kissed.
Twenty years later, I still dream about what I missed.

(She loves her husband and sons; I love my wife and daughters. Neither of us wants to change our lives. I don't want to kiss her now, except, I suppose, in my fantasies. But I am still curious about all the reasons why we never acted on our passions. Why didn't we ever take that first step toward removing our clothes? Were we afraid? Were we in denial? Perhaps we just didn't want it enough. Or is there a larger question? Do all of us become liars when we don't kiss those people who make us tremble and who tremble for us?)

5.

"Whites
Lie!"
My dad
Drunkenly
Shouted to the sky
Then madly climbed into his ride
And promised us that he'd only drink a few. He lied.

(My father only talked about broken treaties when he was drinking. He died six years ago of alcohol-related kidney failure. But I was not at his bedside. I'd never promised him that I would help him die, so, technically speaking, I didn't lie, but whenever I talk to my mother about my father's death, I have to avert my eyes. I also had to avert my eyes when I first saw my father—no, my father's body—lying in the coffin. My sisters—twins—leaned over to kiss my father, but I could only imagine the coldness, the taste of absence, so I did not kiss him. I only held his hand, and only for a moment, before I fled back to my chair in the front row, where I grieved alone and yet so publicly.)

Sherman Alexie won a Stranger Genius Award in 2008.

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Sixty-One Things I Learned During the Sonics Trial

Sherman Alexie — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:00:00 -0700

A Sonics Love Story by Sherman Alexie

These are the last 61 things that I will say about the Seattle Sonics. No, that's a lie. These are the last 61 things that I will say until I think of some other things a few months down the road:

1. I've given thousands of speeches, readings, and interviews, and once gave shit to then president Bill Clinton for claiming Cherokee heritage when we appeared together in 1998 on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. But the trial testimony in Seattle vs. Sonics was by far the most terrifying and stressful public speaking gig I've ever had to endure.

2. There are many Sonics fans who think they could have done a better job than I did testifying. To that, I say: ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ninety-seven percent of you would have folded like an origami crane, two percent would have crapped your pants, and that magical one percent of more- effective witnesses would have worn a light-blue button-down shirt and khaki pants.

3. Sometimes, after testifying, one will weep in front of sports reporters.

4. The sportswriters who hated my testimony or press conference subsequently overwrote their stories in cute attempts to outwrite me. Relax, guys, you ain't ever gonna be better than me. Or I. Or me. Or I. Shoot, I can never remember which pronoun I'm supposed to use.

5. The sportswriters who liked my testimony and press conference, or felt rather neutral or only slightly negative about it, were happy to note that I introduced emotion into the trial. Isn't it strange that we have to highlight the introduction of emotion into a gathering?

6. There are sportswriters who love their jobs. There are sportswriters who have obviously come to hate their jobs. This trial has made it easier for readers to tell the difference.

7. I know that I touched the hearts of every man in that courtroom when I talked about my late father. I know that each son remembered a gorgeous and/or ugly moment with his father.

8. I realized that Clay Bennett probably bought this basketball team in order to impress his father, father figures, and all of his buddies. As angry as I am with the man, I also understand his motivations. At heart, he's a boy who bought the best toy imaginable—a professional basketball team. But like some preschool tyrant, Bennett ripped that toy out of the hands of the kid who had it first.

9. Clay Bennett is huge—as in heart-attack huge. I wonder if he's a stress eater like me. If so, I would strongly urge him to consult a nutritionist if all of these trials move into appeals.

10. I strongly urge myself to consult a nutritionist if all of these trials move into appeals.

11. I'm actually not that big a fan of cucumber sandwiches.

12. For those of you who think that sports doesn't matter as much as literature, at least in Seattle, please count the column inches devoted to my Sonics testimony as opposed to the inches devoted to my recent National Book Award win.

13. When I think of Howard Schultz, I hear Jewel singing, "Who will say-aay-aave your soul?"

14. More than anything else, I hate Howard Schultz for making me think of Jewel.

15. In writing, thinking, and talking about the Sonics' possible relocation to Oklahoma City, I shuffle like an iPod through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and Hall & Oates.

16. And, yes, it's true: During a season-ticket holder relocation party at KeyArena five years back, I played a little one-on-one with a tall Sonics employee, a young man three inches taller, 20 years younger, and 30 pounds lighter than me, and I head faked left, spun right, and hit a 25-foot fadeaway three-pointer on him.

17. And, go ahead, ask my basketball buddies: I hit that crazy shit all the time. I am sure that all sorts of readers out there think they could take me on a basketball court. But most of you couldn't; I'm better than at least 90 percent of you.

18. In the days leading up to and following my testimony, my friends told me amazing and poetic basketball stories about their fathers, sons, and jump shots. These were love stories. My detractors can give me all the shit they want. I welcome their shit. But I am trying to write a love story. I did introduce "love" as evidence into a federal trial. Call me what you will. Accuse me of any and all clichés. And so, yes, I admit that the "professional basketball players as Greek gods" argument might have been a tad hyperbolic, but please remember that I was not motivated by hate, rage, or condescension; I was motivated by love. God, it sounds stupid to type that and read it aloud. But, damn it, I am a silly, romantic shithead.

19. Here's an obvious news bulletin: A whole bunch of males are very uncomfortable in the presence of masculine love, whether expressed romantically or platonically. I am often uncomfortable in the presence of my own gushing emotions. Did I really need to opine that the love of NBA basketball is at least partially homoerotic? Yes, I did. Of course, I did. LeBron James is indeed the basketball equivalent of Michelangelo's David.

20. And how pathetic was the local television coverage of my testimony and press conference? Instead of focusing on the serious issues that I raised—race and class among them—the local news led their stories with clips of me saying, "And, yeah, that's homoerotic, but that's okay." Yes, our local TV news folks giggled like adolescents at the mere mention of homoeroticism.

21. Yeah, I cuss a lot. Get over it. In writing about basketball, it would be utterly hypocritical to abstain from cursing. Did you catch the last four minutes of the Boston Celtics game six tap-out of the Los Angeles Lakers? As they danced together on the sidelines and celebrated their world championship, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce danced and sang so many "motherfuckers" that the bleeped-over broadcast turned into a John Cage sound collage.

22. In order to explain the previous punch line and to bring two worlds together: Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce are African-American basketball players who were employing a poetic obscenity closely associated with black culture; John Cage was a Euro-American, avant-garde, and mostly unlistenable musician and composer.

23. "Motherfucker" is, of course, the purest distillation of mama insults. Since single mothers are sadly common and sweetly revered in black culture, mama jokes are ironically hilarious. However, I've always wondered why the term "fatherfucker" is so rarely used as an insult. I think it's far more original, powerful, and disturbing than "motherfucker." I assume that "motherfucker" is an insult borne of misogyny, so wouldn't "fatherfucker" be a more egalitarian, homoerotic, and therefore more disturbing obscenity? Wouldn't we all be challenging the patriarchy if we adopted its use?

24. Kobe Bryant is one mean and gifted fatherfucker. Does that work for you?

25. Ray Allen, one of my favorite players and Sonics of all time, just won a championship with the Boston Celtics, my most hated franchise of all time. According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the sign of a superior mind is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time." Well, I possess only a slightly above-average mind, but I decided that I loved Allen enough to also be happy for the hated Celtics. Crazy, huh? Who ever heard of a compassionate sports fan? But let's not get too misty here. I also loved Allen's epic and recording-breaking performance in the NBA Finals because it made the Oklahoma City guys look like fools. In order to make the Sonics a supposedly better basketball team, Clay Bennett and the gang traded away a champion who hit a record- tying seven three-pointers in the clinching game and a record-breaking 22 three-pointers in the entire championship series.

26. On defense, Ray Allen also spent most of his time making life incredibly difficult for Kobe Bryant, the so-called best basketball player in the world. In playing defense and offense with such passion and accomplishment, and by breaking himself out of a horrid slump leading up to the championship series, Allen become one of the greatest stories in NBA Finals history.

27. For Ray Allen, the Oklahoma City guys got Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West, and Jeff Green. Later in the season, in a three-team trade, the Okie guys sent Szczerbiak and West to the Cleveland Cavaliers and we received Ira Newble and Donyell Marshall. We soon released Newble. So, in sum total, the Okies traded a world-champion all-star for an ancient power forward (Marshall) and a rookie (Green) who was the 278th best player in the league this past season. In professional basketball circles, this is known as "rebuilding." In the real world, this is known as "wild-ass guessing."

28. To add insult to amputation, I must also remind you that we traded Gary Payton, the Sonic of all Sonics, for Ray Allen. So the generational timeline is Payton to Allen to Green. Let me repeat that: Payton to Allen to Green. Man, oh, man, do you think Jeff Green thinks about his (mis)place in Sonics basketball history? In order to make the world whole, Jeff Green will have to become the third or fourth best small forward in the league. Will Green become that great? He has enormous potential. I will be praying for him. Yes, I pray for professional basketball players.

29. One last thing about Ray Allen: He was participating in the Celtics championship parade through the streets of Boston at the exact time I was testifying in the Sonics trial. Ain't coincidence a fatherfucker?

30. If a country were governed like the National Basketball Association, we'd be sending in UN peacekeeping forces.

31. Oklahoma City is slightly more racially diverse than Seattle. My dear hometown white liberals, how does that statistic sit with you?

32. The original sin remains the signing of free agent big man Jim McIlvaine in 1996. And for that legendary mistake, the Sonics have been punished with a series of Gordian knots named Jerome James, Calvin Booth, Vitaly Potapenko, Robert Swift, Johan Petro, and Mouhamed Sene. When a Sonics fan is forced to fondly look back at the Peja Drobnjak Era, then that Sonic fan tends to repeatedly smash his or her skull against the wall.

33. After my testimony, I jumped into my car with my family, completely forgetting that I had scheduled a lunch with the editor of this newspaper. I'm always forgetting shit like that. Two years ago, I stood up a friend for lunch, and she wrote me an e-mail that said, in part, "If you had been courting me, then this would have been your death. As it is, you are still my friend, but you're an inconsiderate asshole."

34. I know my readers want me to go into detail about my conversations with the city's lawyers, and about strategies and secrets and such, but I am not always an inconsiderate asshole. I will say this: Nobody likes to lose.

35. But man, oh man, you can certainly do your best to pretend that a loss is a win. Did you see our mayor and his cronies yukking it up during the press conference to announce the Sonics' departure? At least Clay Bennett had the decency to take his press conference seriously, to admit that the trial and stress had taken a serious toll on his health.

36. So, when it comes to the settlement with the Oklahoma City guys and the NBA, let's get a few things straight: The NBA has not expressed any interest whatsoever in expansion, except internationally, so it is not going to drop some newborn team on our doorstep. And, more important, if we are to get an NBA team anytime soon, it will happen because our local rich guys bought another city's team and moved it here. And wasn't that the same battle we Sonics fans just fought and lost?

37. Hypocrisy is an airborne contagion.

38. I feel like a failure because I couldn't, with my testimony, single-handedly keep the Sonics in Seattle. I have been punishing myself for my courtroom failures of nerve, imagination, and poetry.

39. I should have said, "But my father didn't live in Minneapolis, he wasn't a season ticket holder, and nobody in Los Angeles ever lied to him."

40. I should have said, "I wrote those articles before the Oklahoma City guys started lying to me."

41. I shouldn't have said anything about those fucking cucumber sandwiches.

42. Of course, there are plenty of things that I wanted to say—I tried to get the city's lawyers to let me say them—but I would have been objected clear out of the courtroom. If I had tried to speak as I actually speak—with a whirling and spinning and beautiful and ugly and intelligent and stupid stream of metaphors, profanity, dick jokes, insults, Whitman and Dickinson quotations, Hall & Oates lyrics, the lifetime statistics of my favorite 127 NBA players of all time, and aching grief songs for my father—I would have been held in contempt and tossed into a holding cell.

43. But my lawyer friends were shocked that I was allowed to say as much as I did. One friend said, "The judge gave you a lot of room." Yes, she did. Thank you, Judge Pechman.

44. I've always thought of myself as a vengeful person. I always thought that if we lost the Sonics, I'd only feel rage at the Oklahoma City guys and at the city itself. But I don't. Oh, I'm pissed at Clay Bennett and his right-wing posse. But I'm not angry with the citizens of Oklahoma City. I'm not even angry at the trash-talking jerks who found my e-mail address and sent me insults, porn, and metaphorical threats to remove parts of my body and place them inside other parts of my body. Instead, I find those Oklahoma City fans to be very cute and innocent. You see, they think they're getting an NBA basketball team.

45. Well, okay, Oklahoma City folks, you are getting an NBA team, but it is going to be the worst team in the league for the next three years. Over the next three years, your new team will lose somewhere between 160 to 180 games. That's going to be tough for you because, frankly, you don't love the Sonics. You love the idea of professional basketball being played in your city. But once reality sets in—once you realize that you have a horrible team coached by an incompetent and unpleasant man featuring an offense that puts your superstar into a dozen different places on the floor where he should not be—you are going to lose that glow. Your initial infatuation will end and then the hard work of being a fan will begin: You will have to learn how to love a loser.

46. And I have to be honest about something else, too. I like your city. I've only had positive experiences in your town. But I am not a twentysomething newly minted millionaire (and especially not an African-American newly minted millionaire). I guarantee you that the best players on your new team—along with their agents, business managers, and lawyers—are already strategizing about how to get out of your town. Seattle is a gorgeous, cosmopolitan city and we had difficultly keeping and signing big-time free agents. How do you think Oklahoma City is going to do?

47. As I write this, the general managers and owners of every other NBA team are making plans to clear their cap spaces so they can offer massive money to Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, and Nick Collison.

48. And don't go telling me about how small-market teams like Salt Lake City and New Orleans are doing well and winning games. If you can find a great coach like Utah's Jerry Sloan, then you can talk. If you get lucky with your draft picks and end up with a player as great as Chris Paul because a number of other teams were too idiotic to draft him, then you can talk.

49. Oh, to make you happy, I think your new draft pick, Russell Westbrook, is going to be an amazing player. I don't think he'll be as good as Chris Paul, but he's going to be close.

50. Westbrook is going to be a free agent in 2012, I believe.

51. When the mayor's press conference was over, I screamed. And my scream was immediately answered by thunder and lightning. My friend Aaron e-mailed me and said, "Can you believe it's fucking RAINING right now?" Distraught, wanting and needing my family's attention, I drove home. As I walked up the front steps, as I began to cry, as I touched the doorknob, it thundered so loudly that car alarms went off. Then, as I stepped into the house, closed the door behind me, and fell onto the floor and loudly wept, the wind blew open our back door. That's the power of grief.

52. I don't believe in magic. But I do believe in interpreting coincidence exactly the way you want to.

53. Do you know why Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.

54. The last time I fell on the floor and cried like that, it was the day my father died. These two events are not unrelated. I bought Sonics season tickets for my father, and though he only went to a few games before he died, his ghost was always sitting between me and my guest.

55. A few folks, including one who writes for this paper, think I'm naive for my faith in and love for professional basketball. Well, I am a reservation Indian who has never once believed anything a white man in a suit has ever said to him. It is historically, politically, and culturally impossible for a reservation Indian to be naive.

56. Don't you wish Howard Schultz were a reservation Indian? A rez Indian would have never signed that deal with Clay Bennett.

57. Ah, who am I kidding? Reservation Indians are still signing treaties with lying, evil white guys (and also with other Indians who are evil liars).

58. My love of the game has not diminished at all. For those Sonics fans out there who are threatening to give up the game because of this trial, I only have this to say: Fuck you and your fake-ass love; I'm happy that I'm not married to you.

59. Okay, well, my love has been tested. So I take back the previous insult. I understand that many Sonics fans are speaking out of genuine pain and heartbreak. I respect that. So I'll give you a year to mourn, and then you better get your ass back on the NBA wagon.

60. I just bought a 10-game package for the Portland Trail Blazers. My two best basketball buddies and I are planning our road trips. We kind of feel like the bastard widower who married the hot twentysomething a few months after his wife died. But it's ball, man. It's pro hoops.

61. And hey, I live just a few minutes from Brandon Roy's childhood home and high school, and I taught the man in college, so I think I can justify rooting for him and his Blazers. And Portland is coached by Mr. Sonic, Nate McMillan, and owned by Paul Allen, and—ah, hell, I'm a hoops junkie, man, and I need my fix.

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Making Out with Portishead

Charles Mudede — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:00:00 -0700

Miranda July, Gary Shteyngart, and 11 Other Writers on Portishead by Charles Mudede

Let's think about this. Why the need to make out to Portishead? What is it about the trio's music that makes it the ideal background for the experience of eyes meeting eyes, lips meeting lips, organs meeting organs? We have been there, you and I. That moment of desire. We need it to be perfect. The city lights, the booze in the blood, the smell of flesh. What shall we play on the stereo? Whatever it is, it must enhance the mood. If the music is too angry, too happy, or too heavy, it will ruin the moment. Let's not expose, dampen, or evaporate our desire. We need this madness of lust to be complicated by greater obscurity, more mystery. And Portishead's music does just this.

There's a girl in my past. She was strange. She was short. She would not let me touch her unless we were alone. No public affection from her. And if I wanted to go beyond touching her when we were alone, I needed to play the right music. The right music was Portishead. I remember her belly button: a ring attached to it. I remember her wrist: a bracelet around it. And we would kiss and kiss. And the voice of Beth Gibbons would sing and sing. And it was not what she was saying but how she was saying it. Beth was about one thing: longing. Lovers, even if they are together, even if they are locked in a kiss, still want this feeling of longing. Why? Because, after this kissing, touching, fucking—this experience shall pass. When your lover is there, you know they will in time be gone. And the music of Portishead speaks to this understanding, this passing from being there to not being there. "Please could you stay awhile to share my grief/It's such a lovely day to have to feel this way." How I loved the ring in your belly button, Tammy.

I wrote this while listening to Portishead's new CD, Third, which is growing on me. CHARLES MUDEDE

There was a time when we were at it like bunnies. The "modern rock" station played Portishead nonstop. It was the time of roommates and thin walls, and radios turned up to mask. And Portishead were more to mood than the Sundays (too cute) or My Bloody Valentine (too noisy) or Blur (charming beat and accents become annoying during sex, like someone playing with your nipple post orgasm). Portishead were a good indicator that I was knocked up. Suddenly I could not bear that repeating dunda-dah dun-dun. Morning sickness and Portishead were one. Trying to quickly twist the radio knob away from the sound was like trying to scratch an itch while hang gliding. My arm was stretched out as if in petition, my fingers grazing the globular button, when something came shooting out of me, an ooze of warm spittle that bubbled over my swollen belly as the song played on. Now they are back and my son is a 10-year-old drummer. Long may they both play on. LAURA ALBERT

I never made out to Portishead, but I once used Portishead, on a Walkman with the volume up, to block out the sounds of my ex- girlfriend and ex–best friend having loud, weird sex in the apartment next to mine. I always imagined there was a rattan cane involved. MIRANDA JULY

After dropping out of college, I embarked on a cross-country Greyhound bus trip and found myself eating Thanksgiving dinner at a mansion in Southern California. My aunt had recently married and we were spending the holiday with her husband's wealthy relatives. It was never clear to me who exactly these people were, what shape their family tree took, who had raised or divorced whom, but I was pretty certain that the sexy 19-year-old seated across from me was, one way or another, now a cousin of mine. The next night, this cousin and I went out driving in an SUV. Pretty as she was, I didn't much like talking to her, so I blasted Portishead's Live NYC album as we drove the coast, the sea breeze blowing in my face. Then we pulled into a parking lot and we just sat there. I asked to kiss her. She said okay. CHRIS WEEG

Carrie (not her real name) was beautiful and her hair was short and brown. Everything she said was understated and subtle and I acted like a hyperactive monkey around her; she drove me fucking nuts with her quiet dignity. One night, at a party, we got really drunk and made out. I remember "Glory Box" was playing. Actually, now I can't recall whether Portishead were playing or my brain superimposed the song onto the memory. Something about the plaintive horniness of "Glory Box" speaks to the kind of raw-nerve longing that's only felt by the very young or the profoundly creepy. If it was really playing, that was a moment as epic and alive as any I've ever experienced. If my mind inserted the song, then it's another in a series of maudlin memories I've learned from the movies. I'll never know for sure. Carrie left town and Google can't find her. PAUL CONSTANT

October 1997. West Philadelphia. We climbed out my window to balance on the tiny roof over the entrance to Cafe Trio, the coffee shop on the first floor. It smelled like real Northeast autumn, coffee grounds, and our half-empty forties of OE. Portishead's Dummy was playing from the stereo in the living room. We totally made out. It was a little cold. And messy. Lots of things to balance—bottles, cigarettes, lighters. The cinders from the roof tiles stuck to the palms of our hands. Later we had a spitting contest. I won. MARYA SEA KAMINSKI

I do have a drunken memory of having sex with someone for the first time and Portishead coming on and feeling a little weird about it, like I should probably pull out and go turn it off, just not wanting that energy anywhere near my booty call. But I know that I didn't, even though the girl (boy? don't think so) is lost to memory. I do recall 10 years ago when I was the doorman for the winter in the brand-new Baltic Room, and Portishead played at the Paramount just down the street. Cover was $7, I think, and these British folks kept showing up without money or ID, and one after another, as if the hipness cred of it were enough, would flatly say in a woofy London accent, "We're wif PortisHEAD." Portishead were the shizznatch at the time and the bar hoped they would show up there, so I let them in. For years afterward, my best friend and I (we grew up together in London), when we would witness ourselves make some slightly overbearing demand without really justifying it, would say in that accent as if at last resort, "We're wif PortisHEAD," and crack up. GRANT COGSWELL

Who the fuck is porridgehead? GARY SHTEYNGART

During my clichéd '90s college makeout sessions, the problem with Portishead, or rather, playing all the music in my "Portishead" folder from Napster, was that while the mood would be set, I was invariably left thwarted by my own Pokémonesque "download 'em all" mentality. Gathering every single, B-side, cover, and remix known to man left me with dozens of copies of tracks, turning them from aural Spanish fly into a distracting annoyance, even when played on "random." Trust me when I say that neither willfully ignoring the music nor repeated interruptions to skip tracks helps to make an already awkward situation less so. Damn you, "Glory Box." DONTE PARKS

I've definitely done S&M with Portishead playing. It's kind of a standard dungeon track. Either Portishead or Dead Can Dance. Usually, when you meet with a dominatrix, she'll ask you to get undressed and leave you in the room with music playing. This is often true even if the dominatrix is your girlfriend, or wife. But if you're in an actual dungeon, the music is more important because there are other rooms so it's considerate to cover the screams. Some dungeons have thinner walls than others and my apartment has particularly thin walls. It seems obvious that Portishead would be a common soundtrack in this situation—the slow, mysterious groove; one foot in front of the next; the steady tap of the boots approaching the door; the drawn-out synthesizer peaking then fading with anticipation; the knob turning. You can't see the door open; you're always facing away when she walks in. You relax when she strokes your neck, and the lyrics, if you're listening—"Inside your pretending/Crimes have been swept aside/Somewhere where they can forget." Her grip on your neck tightens as she reaches for the volume. STEPHEN ELLIOTT

A certain mood overtakes me when I think about Portishead. I know exactly which apartment I lived in when I was listening to their self-titled album over and over: crappy duplex in Fremont, raccoons coming through the window all the time, Peeping Tom regularly lurking in the neighboring parking lot. Also: I had been dating a stoner who lived in his VW bus and I was finally—no really this time!—determined to extricate myself from the relationship. So there was plenty of Portishead-toned drama around. The soft burbling of his ever-present bong nicely complemented all those scratchy moans. Since he wasn't "into monogamy," I never knew exactly when his van would cough him out onto my stoop. Sure, I may have spent some late evenings alone but for Portishead, my ears pricked for the rumbling arrival of the VW. I may have stared at myself in the mirror and felt the lyrics urging me toward—then away!—then back toward the entanglement. I don't know. But I do know that after the night he leapt up from the futon, shouted, "Dude! What the fuck!" and chased the Peeping Tom away, I couldn't break up with him. Not yet. BRANGIEN DAVIS

I couldn't know whether Eugenia asked me to the prom because she couldn't bear not to have a date or whether it was some kind of dare. I was just a fidgety sophomore and Eugenia was a gloomy, elegant, dark-haired senior—like a porcelain doll wrapped in black velvet—I barely knew and could barely talk to. I think we were both relieved when I finally got too tipsy and tired at the afterparty to do anything but fall asleep on the living-room couch. I woke up in the dark to the sound of people fucking just behind the couch. I'd never heard anybody fucking before. I wondered if we were all supposed to be fucking, wondered if I was supposed to go upstairs and try to lose my virginity to Eugenia, but was too ashamed to let Phil and whoever-it-was know I could hear them. So I lay on the couch, wakeful and worrying, listening to Phil and whoever-it-was and the music—gloomy, elegant, and dark. Then the CD player switched from Portishead to Enya, carrying the three of us from the streets to the sea. BRENDAN KILEY

My wife doesn't like music at such times. So I have not made out to anything since Guns N' Roses. SHERMAN ALEXIE

Laura Albert has published two books of fiction—Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things—as JT LeRoy. Miranda July is a filmmaker, an artist, and the author of the short-story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You. Chris Weeg is a person. Marya Sea Kaminski makes theater in Seattle. Grant Cogswell is in Mexico. Gary Shteyngart is the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan. Donte Parks is The Stranger's electronic-music columnist. Stephen Elliott has written half a dozen books, including the novel Happy Baby and the story collection My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up. Brangien Davis is the editor of the journal Swivel. Sherman Alexie still puts Hall & Oates's "Sara Smile" on every mix CD and playlist he makes. Portishead are a band; their new album is out April 28.

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Net Profit

Sherman Alexie — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 04:00:00 -0800

Pro Basketball is good for Seattle, good for fathers, good for sons. Save the Sonics. by Sherman Alexie

After Howard Schultz sold the Seattle SuperSonics to Clayton Bennett of Oklahoma City, I boycotted Starbucks.

For approximately three hours.

Yes, I am a leftist Democrat who likes Starbucks, and might even love the Northgate 24-hour drive-through and the University Village store that serves as a UW study-hall annex.

I'm an insomniac, so it makes sense that I'd need a highly predictable cup of coffee at any and all hours. And Starbucks coffee tastes exactly the same whether I buy it at 3:00 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. And it also tastes the same in Seattle, Des Moines, Manhattan, Tucson, and Bismarck, North Dakota.

A few years ago, during a room-service breakfast in an Oklahoma City hotel, I drank Starbucks coffee and can assure you that it tasted absolutely familiar.

In fact, it tasted good.

Yes, I said it.

And I'll say it again: Starbucks coffee is good.

I'm sure that many of you readers—especially the coffee purists and lefty peacemongers—think that I am a tasteless and immoral supporter of economic imperialism, charred beans, callous gentrification, and Mitch Albom books.

I am a Native American, so I have personal experience, of course, with hardcore American gentrification.

When Starbucks built a shop at 23rd Avenue and Jackson Street, many folks cursed and condemned that development as gentrification.

How's that store doing now?

Tonight, I walked inside and approached an elderly black man in a tweed suit.

"Excuse me, sir," I said. "Do you think this store is an example of gentrification?"

"What?" Tweed Suit asked.

"Do you think Starbucks gentrified the neighborhood?"

"You some kind of politician?"

"Nope, I just want to know what people think about the social and economic impact of this franchise on the Central District."

"I'm sitting in this here store, drinking this here coffee. What do you think I feel about it?"

I feel good about the store. It's near my office, so I visit on a daily basis.

And the place is always filled with elderly black guys, especially on weekend mornings.

They're often playing backgammon, and they're always talking shit.

Last year, as I waited for my Americano, I heard this conversation between a mustached black man and a bald black man:

"You remember when you could get a hooker on this corner?" the mustached man asked.

"Man," the bald man said. "I remember when I got a hooker on this corner. I must've been 20 years old."

"There ain't no hookers out there anymore."

"The diseases they got now, you wouldn't want a hooker out there."

"Don't matter anyhow. All I got left is my memories and this coffee."

How often do you hear that kind of conversation in the Madison Park Starbucks?

I've visited that upscale store a few dozen times, and I've occasionally seen KING 5's Jean Enersen drinking her nonfat something-or-other.

And I've admired her biceps. The woman might be overly styled and tan, but she is cut.

So why the hell am I talking about Jean Enersen's sinewy muscles and the sexual nostalgia of local black men?

Well, first of all, I love to watch stories happen. And secondly, I know that Starbucks is certainly a huge and generic conglomerate, but each store itself contains multitudes.

And with multitudes come interesting conflicts.

Last week, at the 23rd Avenue and Jackson Street store, I waited behind two white women, a blonde and a redhead. Three black women worked the counter.

"Can I help you?" the cashier asked.

"Yes, I'd like a green tea," the redhead said.

"You want honey with that tea?"

"I need a honey," the redhead said. "I haven't had a honey in a long time. You got a honey back there for sale?"

The cashier politely laughed and made the sale. But when the white women walked away, the black women rolled their eyes.

"That white woman was horny goofy," the cashier said.

The other black women laughed. I laughed, too.

"Oh," the cashier said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to hear that."

"It's okay," I said. "She was horny goofy."

She laughed, relieved that I wasn't offended. I can't remember the last time I was offended. In fact, I prefer offensive human beings. They make for better stories.

Trust me. I am the great-great-great grandson of a man who was killed by a Ninth Cavalry soldier, so short of genocidal murder, it's very difficult to offend me.

I have a high tolerance for shit, in solid or liquid form.

I have swallowed gallons of truly horrible coffee at various powwows, bingo halls, casinos, and grange-hall meetings, so I know that, in comparison, Starbucks brew is liquid sex.

I grew up dirt-ass poor, so drinking Starbucks feels like a privilege, like something I've earned through luck and hard work.

And for those of you who think that Starbucks coffee is pond water, I suspect that you're elitist bastards who also attend wine-tasting parties and have pledged allegiance to a favorite microbrew.

As for Mitch Albom, well, fuck him and his sentimentalism.

As for my sentimentalism, well, I say fuck me, too.

You see, I admire Howard Schultz. I think his rise from a humble Brooklyn, New York, housing project to head of an epic coffee dynasty is a romantic story.

Yep, I am a believer in that sentimental crap known as the American dream.

Why do I believe in it? Because I am the American dream.

I am a reservation-raised Indian boy, whose mother and father barely graduated high school and never went to college, and I have grown to become a very successful writer. I win awards, draw huge crowds, sell tons of books, and make much money by telling stories. Isn't that crazy and magical?

At least once a day, I laugh in wonder at my great fortune and greater luck.

And while I'm arrogant about my skills, I'm also relatively modest about my exact position in the literary world.

I'm not the best writer in the country. Not even close. I'm not in the top 10. No way. And I'm probably not in the top 50. But I'm certainly in the top 100. In fact, for the sake of argument, let's say that I am the 78th best writer in the country.

According to ESPN.com, the Seattle SuperSonics' Luke Ridnour is the 78th best basketball player in the NBA.

Yep, Luke Ridnour is the Sherman Alexie of the NBA; and I am the Luke Ridnour of the literary world.

Of course, Ridnour's rise to fame and fortune is even more unlikely than mine.

Jesus, he's a six-foot, 150-pound white kid competing against the best athletes in the world. Do you know how many great white point guards there have been in the NBA?

Well, off the top of my head, I can only think of Bob Cousy, John Stockton, Mark Price, and Steve Nash.

That's four in the last 40 or so years.

And many people think that Luke Ridnour might have the tools to become that great. He has so much potential that the U.S. Olympic Committee named him as an alternate for the national team.

What do I think of Luke Ridnour? I think he's the primary reason why the Sonics were a crappy team last year and will be a crappy team this year and every other year until we find a better point guard.

I hate Ridnour's game.

Of course, since Ridnour and I occupy similar positions in our professions, this could be a form of self-hate.

And since I am now and have always been an offensive-minded basketball player who can't guard anybody, just like Ridnour, I'm pretty damn sure it's a form of self-hate.

Among my basketball friends, I am vilified for hating Ridnour. My basketball friends defend Ridnour like they are married to him. They think it's love; I think they're battered spouses.

We spend inordinate amounts of time during our weekly pickup basketball games, e-mail conversations, and phone calls arguing about Mr. Ridnour.

We care about Ridnour's failures and successes more than we care about most everything else in our lives.

Isn't that pathetic?

Well, yes, of course it is, but it's also the most common way in which a particular kind of male expresses love for himself, for other men, and for the world.

While my father was dying, he and I talked basketball. Three days before he died, my father still had enough will and character left to deride Kobe Bryant for being a rotten smallpox wound on the game of basketball.

"I know," I said. "I can't stand him."

That meant I love you, Dad.

"I still can't believe they traded Shaq instead of Kobe."

That meant I love you, too, Son.

Of course, no matter how much I hate Kobe, I still love to watch him play. He's a ferocious poet on the court. And I most especially love to watch him lose.

I hate Kobe like other people hate the New York Yankees. And, man, it feels good to hate like that because I won't start any wars because of it. I get to hate without fear of violence.

And my father hated Kobe like that, too.

When I look back at my relationship with my father, when I put a narrative to it, I realize that every plot point, every surprise, and every tender and/or painful moment has something to do with basketball.

My father was a great basketball player. I was a very good small-town hoopster but I couldn't beat him one-on-one until I was 16 years old.

And I have never felt better or worse than the day I finally defeated my father.

My father haunts every basketball game.

Luke Ridnour's father was his high-school basketball coach, and the Sonics' power forward Nick Collison's high-school team was coached by his father.

Talk about haunted.

I'd rather my father had been my priest or my doctor than my basketball coach.

Small forward Damien Wilkins's father is the NBA journeyman Gerald Wilkins and his uncle is the all-star Dominique Wilkins.

Imagine pursuing a profession where your uncle is known as "The Human Highlight Film."

We currently have a U.S. president who followed his father into the most highly stressful and public profession in the world and look what happened to him—and us.

When I watch a Sonics game, I certainly see the players as athletic competitors, but I also see them as human beings, as fathers and sons and husbands.

I don't know them personally, of course, and I only know the barest details of their biographies, but I like to guess at their motivations.

It's my job, you know, as a writer, to guess at motivations.

And so I see every basketball game as a chapter of the novel known as a season. And I see each season as another volume in an unending series of mysteries.

I don't watch the Sonics because of their wins and losses on the court.

Of course, I'd much rather see them win every championship for the next 10 years, but I am not going to give up on the Sonics because they've had one bad season. Or two. Or three. Or eight.

Shit, I'm not going to give up on the Sonics if they move to Oklahoma City. I'd fly to Siberia to watch Rashard Lewis shoot a turnaround. And I'd fly to, well, Oklahoma City, to make bets with my friends on how soon Danny Fortson picks up his first foul. Hell, I might even become a fan of Clayton Bennett if he proves to be a smart owner.

And I'm not going to give up on the Sonics for being a poor defensive team, or a team that can't seem to win close games, or a team that can't seem to draft anybody other than extremely tall and mostly useless guys.

Instead, I choose to love the Sonics holistically. Yes, you read that correctly.

I am a holistic basketball fan.

I love the wins and losses. I love the spectacular assists and idiotic turnovers. I love the poetry of teamwork and the pornography of jump shots taken too early in the shot clock.

And, yes, I love Luke Ridnour. And I hate the little fucker, too.

I hope that Earl Watson (or anybody else) will soon replace Luke Ridnour at point guard, but I also hope that Ridnour proves me wrong and becomes the 33rd or 21st best player in the league.

I am obsessed with Luke Ridnour.

I think about Luke Ridnour nearly every day of my life.

If my father were alive, he'd be calling me to talk about Ridnour.

"Jesus," he'd say. "I can't believe they're still playing the little shit."

"I know," I'd say. "I think it's because he's a white kid in a very white city."

"That's a racist thought."

"It's a racial thought."

"There's no real difference between racist and racial. Don't be such a writer."

"Well, okay, then, I think that Luke Ridnour's fans, no matter what color they are, root for him because they see this tiny little guy running around the court and they secretly think they are better basketball players than him."

"That's bullshit."

"Of course it is. Ridnour is the 78th best player in the NBA, which means he's probably the 128th best player in the whole world. But you know how people are."

"Yeah, people hate greatness."

Of course, my father wouldn't have said any of that. He was a fairly simple man. But I put the words in his mouth because I wanted to put the words on the page.

I think that certain people do hate greatness. And I most definitely know that certain American leftists absolutely despise capitalistic greatness.

Can you imagine hating Howard Schultz simply because he's the greatest coffee seller in the history of the world?

Think about it. There has never existed another human being who is better at selling coffee than Mr. Schultz.

He is the Einstein of coffee.

The Michelangelo of coffee.

The Meryl Streep of coffee.

The Emily Dickinson of coffee.

The Oprah of coffee.

The Michael Jordan and/or Larry Bird of coffee.

Yes, Schultz is that good.

He is proof that, once in a while, the United States is a meritocracy. And so I feel like his American dream brother because I think I am also proof that the United States is a meritocracy. And Ray Allen and Luke Ridnour and Rashard Lewis are proof of that, too.

Can you imagine hating Ray Allen (or Alex Rodriguez) simply because he gets paid millions to demonstrate his greatness?

I admire the poverty-stricken greatness of saints. But I also admire the well-compensated greatness of basketball players.

I admire the greatness; the money is incidental.

So, yes, I admire Howard Schultz's greatness.

I also hate him because the fucker gave up on the Sonics. And I hate him for trying to blackmail the city for an arena. And I hate him for selling the team to a boring red-state millionaire named Clay.

And I have wept at least 20 times since the Sonics were sold.

Yes, I wept because I know the Sonics will be leaving us. I don't want them to leave us. But leave they must.

And I know that plenty of you are happy that the Sonics are leaving. And that plenty of you don't give any kind of shit at all.

I know that a few of you, like Seattle City Council Member Nick Licata, think that the Sonics in particular and professional sports in general have negligible cultural value.

Well, I say this to Mr. Licata and to all of you who agree with him:

Fuck you.

I know more poetry and more basketball than any of you do, and both pursuits are equally valuable to me.

I can quote by memory a few hundred poems and I can quote by memory the lifetime statistics of a few hundred basketball players.

I've had Sonics season tickets for 10 years and I've read approximately 1,000 books during that same period.

So, okay, do you understand now how much I love the game and how much I love the Sonics?

Do you love anything in your life that much? Do you love rock climbing that much? Or running? Or yoga? Or gardening? Or football? Or baseball?

So, do me a favor right now, and think of the thing you love most, and imagine that it has been taken from you. Imagine yourself so bereft. And imagine that you live in a city where most, if not all, of the citizens don't care about your loss.

"But, Sherman," you might say. "It's just basketball. It's not as important as feeding the poor or educating our children or providing affordable housing."

And, of course, basketball is not as important as those other social issues. But the health and pride of a city depends on more than its politics. It also needs art and, yes, it needs athletics.

A great city needs to work on its soul, mind, and body.

A great city needs to embrace as much greatness as it possibly can.

And we need to keep the Sonics, or at least remember them fondly, because Ray Allen is the greatest shooter in the world. Maybe the best shooter in the history of the world.

Imagine that.

Yes, right now, in this city, lives the Emily Dickinson of jump shooters. The Michelangelo of three-pointers. The Meryl Streep of the pump fake and fade away. And most of you have never seen him play.

That's a shame.

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