Whoa, Nelly!

Check it - ever since friend and ex co-worker J.M. transferred jobs and moved, I have become tennis partner-less.

So I did what any conclave (?) would do, and I went online to see if I could find local people who are interested in playing on a regular basis. Naturally, I checked out the ‘activities’ section on Craigslist – there were a few listings but like everything on Craigslist; the listings were oozing with shade and sketch. No Thanks. One posting read:

SWM looking for SW female tennis partner, 28 years old, 6’2”, 185 lbs. Very talented in many ways. Get in touch.

Ok, so I don’t know what this dude really has in mind – The posting definitely sounds very sketchy and that it should belong in ‘Casual Encounters’. Talented in many ways? What the hell does that entail? Forehand, Backhand, Serve and … Oral? Whatever it may be, I am hereby advising him that should any ‘SWM females’ reply to his post I’m pretty sure an on-court orgy would not fly with anyone (and at the least might get you a ride to your local Po-lease station). So Craigslist, as always, was a disaster.

I then found Tennis Tip, a very cool site that basically has a bunch of tips from tennis legends. Here is one I particularly enjoyed:

"Ladies, here's a hint. If you're up against a girl with big boobs, bring her to the net and make her hit backhand volleys. That is the hardest shot for the well endowed." - Bille-Jean King.

So, Tennis Tip also has this new feature called ‘Find a Tennis Partner’. You basically search your state and it brings up people who are signed up and you can invite them (or vice versa) to play. A couple of interested players (guys around my age) here and there – emails back and forth but no play because of some serious schedule conflicts.

And THENNNNNNNNNNN … came Nelly.

Nelly sent me an invite to play. Nelly was listed as a 46-55 year old Female at 3.5 (amateur rating) – which is not too bad and she “enjoys single and tennis double”. It took me all day long to figure out whether or not to ‘ACCEPT’ – Honestly, my main concern was an unredeemable Ego bashing.
Eventually, I accepted the invite, and thought that playing some tennis would be better than nothing (I know, it sounds terribly desperate).

The agreed court-time was 5:30, so we get there and everything is cool. Nelly is a very nice lady (46-55 yrs old) – Good experience, solid groundstrokes and you can tell she’s been playing regularly for quite a while. That’s great, I won’t feel awkward about blasting shots or going for big first serves at all, we ended up warming up for about 30 minutes or so. Nelly had 2 friends playing on the court next to ours, two older gentlemen. After the singles warm-up the consensus is that we would all play doubles and at least free-up one of the courts since people were waiting.

Everything is cool. Until …

Nelly’s husband shows up and things start getting strange. I should have mentioned that Nelly is of Arabic background, but she didn’t know that I spoke and understood Arabic as well (this isn’t heading anywhere good). Nelly’s husband is apparently a very funny man; he walks onto the court’s sideline and the first thing he yells in Arabic “Nelly, Teezik Bayna” (Nelly, your ass is showing) and erupts in uncontrollable laughter. It took everything for me not to just break out and laugh right there.

During our match, the husband would make (adult-ish) stabs at her (in Arabic) the whole time, and she would stab right back at him … there was something very open in their sexually-natured banter (but then again, I’m sure they didn’t think anyone was listening).

This was too awkward now, I can’t go up to them and tell them my secret – that would just embarrass the hell out of couple. So I stayed quiet.

The tennis fest was over, and the evening was winding down, and then came The Mossad/ Scotland Yard and downright KGB portion of the evening. As we’re packing up our stuff, I get BOMBARDED with questions from Nelly. I wouldn’t even finish my answer and then BOOM, next question – it was unbelievable.

Where did you go to school?
How long have you lived here?
Where do you work?
Where did you live before?
Where in town do you live?
What street Address? (!!?!?!?!!?)
You live alone?
What did you study?
How much do they pay you? (!?!?!!?)
and many, many more...

I swear to god, some of these questions my MOM doesn’t even know. What the Fuck are we doing here, let’s stalk the boy from the internet ?!?!? My street address? What the hell do you want with my street address? And NO, I’m not telling you how much I’m getting paid – How much are YOU getting paid, driving that hot Audi? AND … yes, I live alone but I have bodyguards, so don’t try shit. I actually wrote some of it off as OK, she’s trying to get to know me, but for fuck’s sake let me get a question in too.

The annoying part is that she kept relaying my answers to her husband (in Arabic) – and adding “witty” editorials to them. Very disrespectful, but I understood it all, every single word ... Nelly (and I got to see your exposed ass – so WHAT, how you like me now?)

When it came to what I studied and what I do, I said Industrial Design. I guess deep down somewhere, Nelly is not fond of Industrial Designers “Industrial Design? My daughter wanted to do that and I said NO WAY! No! Never!” she went on to add “Yes, my daughter is in Mechanical Engineering now, a REAL profession”.

I decided to fire back: That’s nice - considering that about 50% (not the exact percentage, but definitely a substantial number) of Industrial Designers are Mechanical Engineers who realized how boring their REAL profession was and switched to this one (The Hotness).

Nelly: “Yes, well, because it’s easier, it is an easier major, it’s art-based – You draw a lot right?”

Me: I was just flabbergasted. Stayed totally silent. Not that there is anything wrong with Art, and yes, I do draw a lot (but it’s not ‘easy’ – Perspective is a science of its own) but she seemed to be confused somewhere.

I should have said: Art-Based? First of all, it’s a BS and I’d like to see you try figuring out things such mold tapers, thickness, draft angles, creep, co-moldings, flammability and a barrage of other headaches. Or better yet, how about you figure-out how to lay Carbon Fiber (probably on top of a Titanium skeleton), Co-mold it with Santoprene, Machine the whole thing and then cast on top of that to make that pretty little racquet you have.

The husband even tried to remedy this now terribly awkward conversation and said (in Arabic) “Nelly, you’re wrong.”

So, it’s cool. I had fun hitting around, but didn’t particularly enjoy the career counseling section of the day.

Note: Even though I wrote this post, I sort of dismissed the whole evening and haven’t sat down to think about what just happened - there’s probably little details of the tennis-date (Interrogation) that will come back to me, I’ll add them as they get refreshed in my memory.