Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Over his shoulder he could see Perkins, whom he’d be guarding, coming up behind him…Not a good idea…asking for it…but he couldn’t resist. As Jojo turned about to take up a defensive posture and play his man, he gave Perkins a sneer and a single dismissive wave of his hand. Perkins just stared at him with his lips slightly parted. No expression…Oh, Jojo had gotten inside the dumb fuck’s head, all right, deep inside…Jay-maulllll, him and his “white ass” and “Token” and “bitch”…Jojo had invaded the dumb fuck’s head and caused him to lose it, commit a foul so flagrant no referee in the world could have missed it.

Perkins played inside, the same way Jojo did, and Jojo took up his position between Perkins and the basket while the Cincinnati point guard, a black guy, American but named Winston Abdulla, not much over six feet but with prodigiously large hands—everybody who played against him talked about his hands—Abdulla dribbled about, looking for a way to get something going. Jojo immediately bellied into Perkins’s back to reestablish dominance, get deeper inside the big fuck’s shaved head. Perkins’s delts and lats were so big, his upper back looked a mile wide through the shoulders and tapered down sharply to a narrow waist.

Jojo started in immediately. “Yo, Jay maullll…What happened, Jaymaullll? You jes’ plain-long fucking lost it’s what happened…Nome sayin’, Bluhhhhhd?…The white man gitchoo all choked, Bluhhhhhhd?”—and on in that vein.

Perkins said nothing—nothing. He, Jojo, had crowbarred his way inside the giant’s head, and the bullshit had hemorrhaged out of his fucking brain. Now Perkins was leaning back into him very hard, and Jojo began pushing back with both hands. The referees would allow that much as the big men went sumo to sumo inside. Winston passed to Cincinnati’s great shooting guard, a willowy black guy named McAughton. Both Dashorn and Curtis moved in on him. Curtis covered him, and then Dashorn moved in from the side and almost knocked the ball out of his hands. Totally hemmed in, McAughton made a desperate bounce pass inside to Perkins. Jojo was all over him. Perkins held the ball up over his head out of Jojo’s reach and seemed to be looking about to feed the other guard who was a step ahead of Curtis and cutting inside. Perkins brought the ball down and bent way over, as if to tuck it in his midsection—pushed off one foot, dribbled once, took two steps, wheeled about, and leaped as high as Jojo had ever seen anybody leap on a basketball court. Jojo jumped to block him. The next instant stuck in his mind like a photograph: the orange center of the world and Perkins’s black arm in a corona of LumeNex light at an apogee a full foot above Jojo’s own hopeless fingertips. Perkins rammed home a seemingly effortless dunk. He sailed over ::::::::::STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: the second tallest Dupont player on the floor and made it look easy.

How could it have happened? As Jojo ran back down the court, defeat registered with a pain real enough to be tactile :::::::::STATIC:::::::::: STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: didn’t want to so much as glance at Coach as he passed the bench, but his peripheral vision betrayed him. Buster Roth had his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone. He was leaning forward, a contorted figure emerging from the atomic fog of the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::::::

When Jojo got down near the basket to take up his position, Perkins was waiting for him, staring…but not saying a word. Instead, he had his tongue stuck in the big pocket of flesh between his gums and his lower lip. It created a bulge above his chin and a wholly mechanical smile in which his eyes weren’t involved at all. Perkins had a pair of mean-looking eyes. He nodded up and down ever so slightly, as if to say, “Yes, white boy, that’s how it’s going to be. Get used to it.”

Jojo felt fear. He wondered if Perkins could smell it. Jamal Perkins was not only big, he was quick and a plyometric marvel on top of that ::::::::::STATIC

::::::::::STATIC::::::::::

Perkins didn’t say anything. This Jojo took as a bad sign. It was abnormal. Jojo backed into him, and Perkins shoved back, always with the heels of both hands over Jojo’s kidneys. Not that it hurt particularly, but there was something…sinister…about it, something calculating…Out on the three-point line’s semicircle, Dashorn and Curtis and André were shuttling the ball back and forth and trying picks that didn’t work and getting generally frustrated by the Cincinnati defense. The shot clock was running down. Finally André faked a three-point jumper that was in fact a soft, looping feed to Treyshawn. Cincinnati’s big Serb, Javelosgvik, was all over him. He was so aggressive and had such long arms that Treyshawn had to try a fadeaway with a high arc from ten feet out. It clanged on the cantilever that attached the basket to the backboard and bounced. Jojo and Perkins went up for the rebound :::::::::::::STATIC:::::::::::::::STATIC::::::::::::: The ball took a lazy bounce almost straight up, and both men came back to the floor…had to jump again. Perkins shoved Jojo sideways with his forearm and beat him easily on the second jump, but the ball took a second clanging bounce on the rim and Perkins was already descending, heading back to the floor again as Jojo regained his footing and jumped up and seized the ball above the level of the rim and came down with it and, hemmed in by Cincinnati uniforms, fed it out to André, who immediately threw it back inside to him.

Perkins was all over Jojo’s back. He growled out a single sentence: “Jes’ give it up, bitch.”

Jojo saw red—a red mist before his eyes. The Congers move popped into his head. He drew the ball in close to his chest and glanced back to gauge where Perkins’s solar plexus was…yes…pivoted to his left and brought the ball up as if about to attempt a jumper—took his right hand off the ball, swung back to the right, and drove his elbow into Perkins’s midsection immediately below the sternum with all his might—

Ooooofff!

—hit home!—swung around Perkins with a bounce and three strides and soared to stuff the ball—can’t believe it! A black arm is already there, blocking the ball, which spins off his fingers. Jojo comes down off balance, stumbling away from the ball—the Serb has it, flailing his elbows back and forth and then shuttling it off to the point guard, McAughton—

What just happened couldn’t have happened! He’d given Perkins a whack right in the solar plexus—and Perkins takes it and is somehow…there…to block an easy stuffer that was as good as made—

McAughton is already racing toward the Dupont basket on a fast break, feeds his shooting guard with a pass across court. Only an incredible leap by André Walker deflecting the feed back to McAughton averts another conversion. Jojo lets out his breath and convinces himself: at least he couldn’t be blamed.

The next—what?—minute, minutes?—went by in a delirium. He managed to get downcourt in time to intercept Perkins, but the next thing he knew, Perkins was feinting this way and that until he had Jojo flat-footed, and he drove to the basket along the baseline. With a lunge and a leap Jojo managed to get his hand up at least six inches above the rim as Perkins took off. But Perkins hurtled under the basket and did a twisting fall-away layup from the other side.

Jojo couldn’t keep track of the sequences, but the same show was on, over and over. Perkins has Jojo so bottled up on offense that Dashorn, Curtis, and André give up going inside to him and seek out Treyshawn. Guarding Perkins—it isn’t guarding. It’s humiliation after humiliation. Explosions of quickness and power—and Perkins goes around him, over him, under him—three more baskets that seem to occur with such suddenness that Jojo—Jojo—Jojo—