The Meaning of Hockey, Chapter 30

As he sat on the bus Bobby wondered how he could make himself happy. Either you are happy, or you aren’t, it had always seemed to him. On the other hand, he’d always believed in working hard to make himself a better hockey player. He knew that was possible.

How the hell could you work on being happy? How did he work on being a better hockey player? Practice. Exercise. How could you practice being happy? What kind of drills would you do? What part of your body would you exercise?

You skated to improve your skating, so you’d have to be happy to improve your happiness. Crossovers, stops and starts, turning — you could break down all the elements of skating to work on your weak points. What are the elements of happiness that you could work on? Reacting to bad news. Reacting to good news. Reacting to no news. Interpreting other people’s behavior. Interpreting your own behavior. Could one practice these things?

Life is a hockey practice. My brain is the coach. Coach needs to look at my life and decide where I need work to improve my happiness. The goal is to be happy regardless of what is going on around me. No, that’s wrong. It would be okay to be unhappy if things were really terrible, like if Mike was hit by a car, or if he never could get it up again, or Anderson got control of the team. You want to be happy most of the time, not all of the time. Because if you were happy all of the time then how would you know if you were happy? Happy needs unhappy. It’s a question of balance. Just like skating. You need balance.

Happiness drills, that’s what I need. Tomorrow between noon and twelve-thirty I’ll be ecstatic. Between one and one-thirty mildly content. Between two and two-thirty I’ll think positive thoughts.

I could do this, thought Bobby. I could really do this.

He had to share this plan with Frida, so as the team slept and Max drove, Bobby took his phone to the bathroom at the back of the bus and closed the door.

“You in bed?” he said.

“I was waiting for you to call,” she said.

“We won, our third straight.”

“And you’re feeling better,” Frida said. “I can tell by your voice.”

“It’s always better when you’re winning. It’s like a drug,” said Bobby. “But it’s not just the winning. Everything about the team seems to be going well.”

“That’s great.”

“Ya,” said Bobby, who suddenly was not so happy.

“What?” said Frida.

She had heard the change in his voice.

“You were happy one moment and now you sound sad.”

“I was going to tell you about my new happiness exercises and then I thought of something that bothers me,” he said.

“About winning?”

“You think I might be addicted to it?” said Bobby. “What if all my depression, my reason for questioning my existence, was just that I was not getting my daily fix of winning.”

“An addiction?”

“The team is losing, I feel lousy. The team is winning, I feel good. How is that any different from being a drug addict?”

“I’ve treated lots of drug addicts and it is different, trust me,” said Frida.

“Winning is an addiction,” said Bobby. “It gets you high. But then, after a while, ordinary winning doesn’t get you high enough any more. It takes the playoffs, then the Stanley Cup itself. Ordinary winning doesn’t make you feel good, only okay. But if you don’t win, you feel lousy and crave it. Sounds like addiction to me.”

“Addiction models can work to describe almost any human activity,” said Frida. “Sex, eating, exercise, winning — you can be addicted to them, sure. You can be addicted to anything that gives pleasure.”

“I’m an addict,” said Bobby.

“Where is this feeling coming from?” said Frida. “What triggered it?”

“I don’t know,” said Bobby trying to retrace his thoughts. “I guess it just struck me how fragile my moments of happiness really are. A win, I feel good. We lose, I feel bad. You answer the phone, I feel good. The answering machine picks up, I feel bad. All out of my control.”

“Sounds like your insomnia talking. You can get a prescription for mood swings. Sleeping pills I would not recommend.”

“I don’t want to take drugs,” said Bobby. “I just need to know, if I can get my head together, what can I expect out of life? Just ordinary life, what can I expect?”

“Life is about what you are taught to value and what you choose to make it,” said Frida.

Max and Frida, both.

“You really think we can choose?”

“You told me this morning that you could,” said Frida.

“Maybe we just think we can,” said Bobby. “Maybe it’s all determined and there’s nothing we can do about it. This afternoon I talked to an 18-year-old genius who believes his fate is to go crazy when he turns 35. He’s pretty smart. If he believes in fate, maybe I should too.”

“Bobby, what’s wrong?”

“Maybe I should be studying religion instead of politics. Buddhism instead of anarchism?”

“And play Buddhist hockey instead of anarchist hockey?” said Frida.

Bobby was silent for a few seconds. He didn’t feel like talking anymore. “I guess I sound stupid.”

“You sound confused.”

“I thought I was doing better,” said Bobby. “Then my mood swings.”

“Doing better is not the absence of doing badly,” said Frida.

“I feel stupid,” said Bobby. “Stupid and useless.”

“Don’t,” said Frida.

“I can’t help it,” said Bobby. “Maybe it’s being around teenagers all day, you start feeling like them.”

“Maybe,” said Frida.

“Or maybe it’s because I never really grew up. I never had to because I was a star.”

She said nothing, which Bobby took to mean she agreed.

“I know you think I’m a chameleon, but I want you to promise to believe what I am about to say.”

Damn silence again.

Just blurt it out.

“I promise to be a good student. I will become the person you want me to be. I will.”

“Bobby…”

“Listen to me, please. I want to fit in your life. Your life and Mike’s life. To do that I need to learn how to act, what to think, what to believe. And I know what you’re thinking, it’s all part of my phoniness, but truly it’s not. Truly.”

“Bobby…”

“Do you believe me?”

Silence.

“Do you believe me?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I do believe you.

“No you don’t,” he said.

“I do, honestly,” Frida said. “I even told Sylvia about what we’re doing — she’s taken to calling you ‘My Fair Hockey Player’ — and we made a bet.”

“A bet?”

“I bet her that you can do it. Change. Fit into our left wing feminist circle by Christmas.”

“You didn’t?”

“I did.”

“By Christmas?”

Anxiety and exhilaration made a two-on-none rush from his stomach towards his brain.

She thinks I can do it. She bet on me. What do I have to do for her to win the bet?

“What do I have to do for you to win the bet?” he spoke slowly, trying to regulate his speeding heart.

“Come to dinner with us again and impress my friends.”

Ah geez.

His breathing sounded like the time he went scuba diving.

“It’s no big deal.”

She must be able to hear my breathing, too.

“The loser has to pay for dinner, that’s all.”

“Ain’t no fucking way you’re going to be a loser,” Bobby said, an older version of himself talking.

“I know,” she said. “You’ve been making so much progress. That’s why I bet on you.”

Concentrate on her confidence. Focus.

“But you shouldn’t feel any pressure.”

He’d never accomplished a single thing in his life without feeling pressure. That’s it. It’s a challenge. Focus on that.

“Do you have another lesson for me?”

“Sure,” she said.

“You’ll have to make it quick because someone is knocking on the door,” said Bobby. “I’m in the bathroom.”

Another sleepless night on a bus. Thoughts flew at Bobby’s brain like pucks hitting a goalie in a pre-game warm up.

A need to succeed. Good, because it gets you places. Bad, because it gets you places.

He would succeed and Frida would win her bet.

Bobby would become the perfect left wing feminist boyfriend.

He always succeeded.

The team was short at least four players, even assuming Mike would eventually decide to play. Buckinghorse and Vicente, at a minimum, would need some creative attention. A new captain needed choosing. Or should an anarchist team have a captain? How was he going to explain the concept of anarchist hockey when he didn’t have a good idea of what it meant himself? One thing was certain — in hockey terms it meant the absence of rigid systems. It meant old style hockey before coaches ruined it with the trap. It meant valuing creativity over conformity. It meant wide-open, entertaining play.

How could he understand anarchist hockey if he didn’t understand anarchism? What was the difference between anarchism and libertarianism? Both seemed to be enemies of government. Frida had told him that some Marxists liked to insult libertarians by calling them right-wing anarchists, but Bobby was not sure what that meant.

The debt payment to Anderson — could he get the crowds back to the Coliseum? What would it be like to have a relationship with his son?

Could he perform with Frida in the sack? He longed to make love with her, but he was scared … not stiff.

Lust is a strange thing, thought Bobby. Sometimes it will not leave you alone and other times it just disappears. Maybe lust is just hormone level, if you had a certain amount of it in your bloodstream, you felt it. And because of their hormone levels some people felt it all the time.

That made Bobby think of Peter Hayward, a goalie he roomed with for most of his second season in the NHL. Peter would have been about 25 at the time and if hormone levels controlled sexual appetite, he must have had a four-barrel carburetor lust gland. Hayward’s nickname was Hard-on, because he always had one. A road trip rooming with Hard-on was an experience. One time, when the Canucks had two days off in Montreal, he claimed to have fucked nine women. And Bobby, as his roommate, could pretty much personally vouch for six of them.

Hard-on claimed to have learned, from his pet terrier when he was thirteen, how to smell a woman in heat. His favorite saying was: “Your nose and your prick are the two most important parts of your body.”

Taking in the bar scene on Montreal’s Crescent Street with Hard-on was an education in how human beings can be like other animals. “Sniffing the snatch” was what he called his initial walk through. He’d enter a bar and make a route around every table, past every woman in the room. Didn’t say a word. In fact, he’d get pissed off if you said anything to him. Said it interfered with concentrating on the aroma. Said all the beer and smoke and perfume made it difficult enough.

First time Bobby saw him do it, he thought Hard-on was just another purveyor of male sexual bravado, but the proof was there. When Hard-on Hayward found an unattached female who “smelled right” his “fuck rate” was better than ninety per cent, significantly higher than his save percentage in net, the main reason he was a roommate for only part of one season.

What Bobby found even more incredible, was that Hard-on never seemed to have “women problems” like so many other “Don Juan” teammates. “The secret is female sexual fulfillment,” Hard-on used to say. “The sex is what they want from me, nothing else. They’re content when they leave me.”

Bobby discovered that was only part of the reason for his success at one-night stands. The truth was most women, after doing it, were embarrassed about having had sex with Hard-on. He was not good looking. His personality could only be described as lacking. He was a marginal NHL player at best who earned the league minimum for one season and minor-league pay for a few more years. He did not finish high school and came from a family of modest means. He was a master of only one thing.

Superb at one thing, that was supposed to be better than decent at everything. Superb at one thing, just like the great Bobby Benoit. He was a stickhandler, the best ever. Maybe Bobby, like Hard-on, was destined to have success only at that one thing. Forget coaching, business, being a parent, romance, relationships.

Perhaps the problem with being superb was that once you had that feeling, there was nothing left to strive for.

Bobby stared out the window as the bus traveled east along the Trans-Canada. If Hard-on Hayward had been like a wild dog, always looking for a bitch in heat, Bobby was the Canada goose that mated for life. He knew now that he had had a relationship with Frida all these years, even if he wasn’t conscious of it. Like the Canada goose, his brain had imprinted on her image that first day thirty-five years earlier. She was destined to be his one true love.

“You make me want to be a better man.” He’d heard Jack Nicholson say that, in a film, years ago, but only now did he understand. Frida made him feel like striving for the superb once more.

Next Chapter: Wednesday

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