(From the Register-Pajaronian)
The girls were all wearing shorts when it started to hail.
It was very cold on the sidelines of the University of California, Santa Cruz, rugby pitch. I don’t want to say bitterly so, because that might be exaggerating, but I had on my blue hoodie and favorite knit hat and was still unable to keep from shivering openly as the low morning rainclouds rose and lightened and eventually spat solid ice. My clothes soaked through just as a stiff breeze began whipping hail into my face. Most of the other spectators went scrambling for their cars. I thought, "The only way this could be worse is if I had to wear shorts and go crash into people for an hour."
Which is what the women’s rugby clubs from UCSC and San Jose State University were doing. My friend Emily played for San Jose State and I knew a couple of girls on the home team, and I’d been notified that only a real jerk would miss the game when he lived less than a mile from campus.
Not being a real jerk, I rolled out of bed minutes before kickoff on Saturday morning and drove like a maniac up Bay Street until I found the field.
The turnout was small. Aside from some 30 players, there were maybe six people standing around something that looked vaguely like half of a football field that had been marinated overnight in a mixture of sand, chalk and rainwater. We were high up on the hillside, and I could see clear out into the bay, which looked like a huge crescent of smoked glass. I picked a spot in the bog that I hoped was on the San Jose State side of the field and stood there, trying to look like I wasn’t dismayed at the absence of seating.
The UCSC coach, a big middle-aged guy who seemed to have surpassed solid and was approaching fat, watched me struggle with my sodden hood for a few minutes, then said, "Ah. Good day for it." He grinned and ran a hand through his damp hair. He had no hat or coat.
"It was 70 degrees this time last week," I said. I saw number 15 jog away from a group of girls doing passing drills and waved. Emily gave me a tight smile and a nod. Her movements were easy as she held her dark hair off her forehead so a teammate could tape it away from her face, but she wasn’t talking much, nor was anyone else on the pitch. Both teams looked very eager to either play or get in out of the cold.
"Hah!" the coach said. "Far too warm. This is the stuff. If you like to run early in the day, of course," he added, looking at me reproachfully.
By kickoff, about 20 people had arrived to watch the match. Most of them seemed to be regulars, and they were discussing with great enthusiasm things like tries and scrumming. I had thought I understood the basics of rugby, but after a few minutes of listening to a pair of women argue about a bogus "holdup" penalty in a previous game, I decided it would be best if I just watched and tried to piece the rules together from scratch.
Near as I could tell, there are two main positions in rugby: the, uh, rather stout forwards that wrestle for the ball and the smaller, quicker backs whose job is to snatch it up and run when it pops loose, which it did every minute or so in the wet conditions. That much was as I had expected. What I hadn’t expected was the unapologetic brawling that was part of every play.
I’m no chauvinist when it comes to contact sports. My sister played on a championship soccer team, I’ve dated a couple of moderately serious athletes and one of my best friends was the only girl on our high school wrestling team. My experience is that regular exercise and the odd body block do women at least as much good as they do men. (Incidentally, it’s also my experience that whoever decided it was socially acceptable to wear sports bras in public was a genius.)
But in rugby, when the ballcarrier falls, the play is not over like it is in football. They can still pass, so every time a player slipped in the mud, cleated players from both teams would converge on her and try to punch the ball out while she was down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sport that looked so much like a gang beating in my whole life. Still, the runners somehow kept getting back up.
After almost an hour in the cold, the game ended. I tried not to cheer, since San Jose State had lost badly and my joy could have been misinterpreted. The players were stretching out and talking loud and fast, gradually cycling from smashmouth jocks back to coeds worried about which top to wear at the bar tonight. If Kinzie were around today, I’m convinced he’d be studying that.
Emily was shaking all over when I hugged her. It looked like someone had stepped on her hand and possibly run on down her leg.
"You’re tougher than I thought," I said. "Want my coat?"
"Nope," she said through chattering teeth. "Numb anyway."
I nodded and gave her my hat, without asking this time. She gave me a look but put it on without comment.
As we walked to the parking lot, her sentences got less and less clipped. When we got to her car, she started rummaging around in the back seat, looking for a specific shirt among the several there.
"God, I need a shower. I have to work tonight."
I wondered how many of her coworkers, seeing her smartly dressed and carefully styled, would guess that about noon she’d been lunging through the mud for the pistoning legs of a girl built like a gun safe.
"Here, can you hold my bag?"
The traditionalism of the request, under the Title IX circumstances, made me grin.
"Sure," I said.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Thursday, February 2, 2006
Come dinnertime, it’s every man for himself
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
I am a halfway decent cook.
For some reason, that surprises a lot of people. They see a single guy who works nights and whose interests seem to center largely on pushups, video games and mild workplace insubordination, and they think to themselves, "Now there’s a Taco Bell man if I ever saw one."
Not true. I will go straight into that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans until you can’t hear yourself think. Then I’ll chug all but the last half-inch of milk straight from the carton, put it back in the fridge, stack the dishes right in the sink without a rinse and leave your wife begging me for the recipe.
While a lot of the guys I went to school with have turned out to be passable chefs (either because their parents were progressive or because they finally got sick of dorm food), I know that a lot of our peers haven’t. It seems that while the average man’s cooking skills were on the rise for a while, many young guys have once again begun to consider kitchen illiteracy to be almost a point of honor and food prep something best left to women.
I disagree with this view on two counts: Firstly, knowing how to do a bit of everything is the mark of a self-actualized person. Secondly, if I had to rely on girlfriends for my meals, my life would consist of long periods of starvation punctuated by sudden bouts of violent food poisoning that can only be quelled by drinking increasingly obscure microbrews and moving out of the state.
I truly can be trusted to make dinner, though, if you would just stop standing behind me and tell me where you keep the spatulas. I’m brilliant with pasta (carbonara, anyone?) and solid on stir-fry and stews and casseroles that don’t involve more than six or eight ingredients. Good on most slabs of meat, too. Really. Go about your business. I’ll call you when it’s ready.
The thing is, I’m not exactly classically trained, so things sometimes go awry. For instance, I am big on one-dish affairs, which means if I can somehow blend the vegetable into the main course, I will do it whether it makes sense or not, side salads be damned. That’s fine when I’m dining alone, but some people apparently have an aversion to pan-seared ahi á la frozen corn.
I’ll also occasionally make unreasonable substitutions or additions to recipes. I blame this on my father, quite a good cook who is always adding impromptu drizzles of truffle oil or handfuls of chocolate chips to things partway into the process. His stuff always seems to work out, but somehow I always wind up stirring maple syrup in at just the wrong time and spending the rest of the day chipping ash out of the cookware. Should have gone with the molasses after all.
Cooking style is one of those things that seems almost genetic in the way it passes from parent to child, and the fusion of my parents’ methods in me has been something less than seamless.
When I lived at home, my mom would often plan dinners days ahead, paying careful attention to each family member’s nutritional needs as well as the delicate balance of flavors and textures (this on top of teaching high school and authoring a successful series of children’s books). On the appointed day, she’d hurry home from tutoring a disadvantaged student and spend several hours in the kitchen.
Then, about 5:15, my dad would call and say, "Matthew, this is your father. They’re having a sale at the grocery store. I need you to preheat the oven and get out all the marmalade. Have your sister open ‘The Joy of Cooking’ to the section on shark. Your mother isn’t making anything, is she?"
I’d look at the painstakingly crafted turkey tetrazini my mother was just pulling from the oven. Then I’d consider how cool sharks were. Then I’d say, "No, Daddy."
Today, I plan out several big dishes before I go to the store. Everything goes according to plan as I load my cart with steel-cut oatmeal, crisp bunches of spinach and various lean meats. Then I walk past a display and think to myself, "I bet it’s not that hard to deep-fry a banana. I could totally do it. I wonder if you can fry hamburgers. Or burritos. Hmmmm..."
And soon my shopping list has been abandoned in the produce aisle and my cart is filled with things I’ve never made before that require superheated oil or a creme brulée torch to be cooked properly.
Nature or nurture? One never knows with these things. In any case, you may want to stand back. I’m not sure what will happen when I put this on the fire, but with luck, we’ll be having Bananas Foster and blackened halibut for brunch.
I am a halfway decent cook.
For some reason, that surprises a lot of people. They see a single guy who works nights and whose interests seem to center largely on pushups, video games and mild workplace insubordination, and they think to themselves, "Now there’s a Taco Bell man if I ever saw one."
Not true. I will go straight into that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans until you can’t hear yourself think. Then I’ll chug all but the last half-inch of milk straight from the carton, put it back in the fridge, stack the dishes right in the sink without a rinse and leave your wife begging me for the recipe.
While a lot of the guys I went to school with have turned out to be passable chefs (either because their parents were progressive or because they finally got sick of dorm food), I know that a lot of our peers haven’t. It seems that while the average man’s cooking skills were on the rise for a while, many young guys have once again begun to consider kitchen illiteracy to be almost a point of honor and food prep something best left to women.
I disagree with this view on two counts: Firstly, knowing how to do a bit of everything is the mark of a self-actualized person. Secondly, if I had to rely on girlfriends for my meals, my life would consist of long periods of starvation punctuated by sudden bouts of violent food poisoning that can only be quelled by drinking increasingly obscure microbrews and moving out of the state.
I truly can be trusted to make dinner, though, if you would just stop standing behind me and tell me where you keep the spatulas. I’m brilliant with pasta (carbonara, anyone?) and solid on stir-fry and stews and casseroles that don’t involve more than six or eight ingredients. Good on most slabs of meat, too. Really. Go about your business. I’ll call you when it’s ready.
The thing is, I’m not exactly classically trained, so things sometimes go awry. For instance, I am big on one-dish affairs, which means if I can somehow blend the vegetable into the main course, I will do it whether it makes sense or not, side salads be damned. That’s fine when I’m dining alone, but some people apparently have an aversion to pan-seared ahi á la frozen corn.
I’ll also occasionally make unreasonable substitutions or additions to recipes. I blame this on my father, quite a good cook who is always adding impromptu drizzles of truffle oil or handfuls of chocolate chips to things partway into the process. His stuff always seems to work out, but somehow I always wind up stirring maple syrup in at just the wrong time and spending the rest of the day chipping ash out of the cookware. Should have gone with the molasses after all.
Cooking style is one of those things that seems almost genetic in the way it passes from parent to child, and the fusion of my parents’ methods in me has been something less than seamless.
When I lived at home, my mom would often plan dinners days ahead, paying careful attention to each family member’s nutritional needs as well as the delicate balance of flavors and textures (this on top of teaching high school and authoring a successful series of children’s books). On the appointed day, she’d hurry home from tutoring a disadvantaged student and spend several hours in the kitchen.
Then, about 5:15, my dad would call and say, "Matthew, this is your father. They’re having a sale at the grocery store. I need you to preheat the oven and get out all the marmalade. Have your sister open ‘The Joy of Cooking’ to the section on shark. Your mother isn’t making anything, is she?"
I’d look at the painstakingly crafted turkey tetrazini my mother was just pulling from the oven. Then I’d consider how cool sharks were. Then I’d say, "No, Daddy."
Today, I plan out several big dishes before I go to the store. Everything goes according to plan as I load my cart with steel-cut oatmeal, crisp bunches of spinach and various lean meats. Then I walk past a display and think to myself, "I bet it’s not that hard to deep-fry a banana. I could totally do it. I wonder if you can fry hamburgers. Or burritos. Hmmmm..."
And soon my shopping list has been abandoned in the produce aisle and my cart is filled with things I’ve never made before that require superheated oil or a creme brulée torch to be cooked properly.
Nature or nurture? One never knows with these things. In any case, you may want to stand back. I’m not sure what will happen when I put this on the fire, but with luck, we’ll be having Bananas Foster and blackened halibut for brunch.
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