A Love Letter to Ultimate Frisbee, Or: Disc is My Favorite Four Letter Word

By Lauren Picard

This all began when I thought of you in the store today. That’s an abrupt and awkward way to break the silence, I know. But I’m a firm believer in ripping off the band-aid and jumping into the deep end without checking the water’s temperature – no matter how crude the string of pejoratives that follow may be.

So look. I’m sorry that I disappeared, but there’s really only so much pain a person can willingly subject themselves to – and being around you after the break hurt too bad for too long. I still got the scars on my knee and obliques to prove it. It was never my intention to leave, but the silence was a stipulation imposed by doctors and reinforced by parents, employers, and a girlfriend. If Jeanie knew that I was writing you this letter, she’d probably kick me out on the couch tonight or call Dr. Roberts to have him strong-arm me. The world’s still against us.

But thinking of you earlier in the checkout line got my heart beating, a much needed jump-start for a rusted old battery. I guess it would be hard in a place like that to not think about you. My fingers tingled in anticipation of you, of reaching out and snatching your cool plastic exterior. I could feel the fibers of my hamstrings quiver, waking the adrenaline up in order to meet you in the cutting lane. The desire was so strong, so inundating, that my senses even tricked themselves into thinking they smelled grass.

And the pain had just started to fade away. That’s really what makes this the hardest. Rehabilitation. I had started wondering if I was ready for you again. I promised everyone that I would take some time away from you, let the scars heal, and now that everything was looking up and coming together, Jeanie goes and demands that I make the hardest decision of my adult life.

How am I supposed to give you up? You’ve been a part of my life since I was sixteen. Right? Shit. Has it been that long since Sticky Fingers introduced us? Those first moments together are still seared into my granite memory, engraved for all to see. How smooth you felt in my hands, how nervous I was trying to look good for you, how it felt like lightning bolts every time you came soaring into my arms.

You know, I haven’t seen my mother since the hospital. There just hasn’t been a need to throw salt on those wounds. But Jeanie decided to call her today after the incident at the store. Can you fucking believe that? You wouldn’t have called my mother. Well, of course you wouldn’t, my mother hates you. She never gave you a chance.

My mother had heard rumors about you, about the people surrounding you, rumors that you and I both know aren’t true. She confused you with those fucking stoners in the Birkenstocks who think that throwing around in a circle constitutes physical activity. She saw tie-dye where there were Gaia jerseys and custom made cleats. Sure, I’ve met some crunchy do-gooders who listen to too much Creedence Clearwater Revival. But every stereotype comes with its self-fulfilling prophecies.

When my mother heard about us, she asked Sticky about it. But not me. Of course not me – when has my mother ever asked how I feel? Had she asked me back then, I would have told her: “Yes, and I’m in love.” I would have stormed off and jumped in my car and gone to you, just to spite her. Or maybe I would have pulled a disc from my bag, brandishing it like a weapon, and thrive in her reaction, appalled that you had been there the whole time, under her nose, lurking in the shadows.

But none of that happened.

Before she really knew about us, back when she’d just catch me sneaking in at dinner covered in mud and grass, she’d accost me at the door: “Where have you been?” At first I told her I had joined the Italian Club, but I forgot that she spoke fluent Italian. So I told her that I had joined the football team. This got her off my back. She had been telling me to get with football since I was a kid. Everyone respected football. I could see her eyes light up when I lied to her. I felt guilty, but at least we were safe.

Until she saw us. She read my name in the school’s paper and came to watch and find out for herself. She searched my drawers and constantly checked my eyes and threw out all my Visine eye drops. That was a real bitch during allergy season. “Why not Football? Or Lacrosse? You’re wasting your time with Frisbee.” She didn’t get it – she didn’t know how we were, the thrill, the chase, the excitement. She only knew that I’d come home covered in dirt and blood, sweat drenching the Under Armour she had bought for football – the last present I would get thanks to my “sacrilege.”

Meeting you made everything fall into place – especially once I got to college. I never thought that I’d find a crowd like my college team. The companionships you build being around people who share the same zest, the same drive, as you – it was truly remarkable. They let me ditch my old identity, branding me with a nickname to complete my metamorphosis. Explain to me how a girl is supposed to compete with that?

And I’m sorry about the girls. You know that. You always came first. Sure they were fun, but they were nothing compared to those few minutes sitting on some poorly cut grassy knoll that the universities reserved for us, lacing up, taping up, preparing myself for a tussle and rumble with you. Pure, unadulterated, libidic release. Thrusting. Chasing. Throwing my body around, despite the pain, despite not knowing where or how I’d land, just to get my hands on you. And how good it felt when I got my hands on you. I was never the tallest out there, but you made me feel giant. Was it Chekhov who said that we really ought to be giants? Whoever it was, that’s how you made me feel. And when no one else could.

Remember that time one of those girls’ birthday almost made me miss being with you at Regionals? Did I let that happen? Didn’t I play my best that day? I got a Callahan for you. Didn’t that prove that all of those girls were just for show and fucking?

I picked you over them even after you started to wear me out. I picked you over everything, against the warning of my professors and parents and friends. By junior year, it was too much. I felt old. Not mentally, but physically. I’d show up to class with six or seven ice-packs duct taped to my body. By spring semester, I had shin splints. But I couldn’t quit.

Then I heard the one voice I couldn’t ignore. Although I knew she was worried about my legs, and my GPA, she didn’t really try to stop me. She came to watch us at that year’s Sectionals. She was so beautiful that day, even just in jeans and my team hoodie. Jeanie was so hot back then. I mean, she still is now, but back then she wasn’t nagging me about taxes and phone bills and her biological clock. And she wasn’t jealous of our love – the first person who understood. I think it was because she had a love like ours of her own. Alpinism. Her rock hard body felt tough and smooth under my hand, just like you. She thought the scars on my sides and elbows were sexy. I thought it was cute when she started picking up on the terminology and cheered me on for getting a D or heckled me to throw a hammer.

I don’t know what changed after graduation. She still let me be with you, but I could see – well, hear actually, she was quite vocal about this – that she didn’t approve. For some reason, to her, spending all of my money and effort trying to join a club team was immature. I knew that she wanted to spend our weekends traveling and hosting dinner parties, but she let me sneak off to you, even if it was ‘my attempt to escape responsibilities of adulthood.’ In those first few months, she’d run off to her own lover, to the mountains or to that rock gym on I-95N. I could see that my devotion to you was a lot for her to handle, but I couldn’t pick one over the other.

Sticky warned me of this – that if I got too close, too attached, I’d end up with a lover and a girlfriend and I’d have to decide which would command my attention.

I couldn’t talk to Jeanie about the stress of my job, or the lingering bitterness within my family. I never even told her how my parents kicked me out the summer before college, forcing me to sleep in the tool-bed of my brother’s Toyota. I never told her how my first boss threatened to fire me if I kept dumping my shifts to go to tournaments. I never told her about every professor who listed Ultimate as the top reason why I wouldn’t find a real job, in my real ultimate-less life.

But I could go to you, and sprint until the acid pumping through my veins replaced the chaos and resentment and frustration. I could huck upwind until my arms felt like anvils and I could jump until my calves gave out, like a star that burned too long and caved in on itself. You made everything go away.

And what does that even mean, ‘escaping the responsibilities of adulthood?’ Why does everyone think that I can’t have balance? In college, my advisor thought that you would bring me down and throw me out and leave me hopeless and jobless. You’d think that a degree in chemical engineering would’ve proven her wrong. And I don’t know what Jeanie’s problem is – I still have my job. She got upset when I took two days off in order to play in Club Nationals a few years ago. But it was Nationals. What do people want from me? I pay my rent. I contribute to society. One day, my company is going to solve the energy crisis. Maybe then everyone will get off my back.

That’s what was great about Jeanie in the beginning. Even though she never knew the world in which you and I live, she understood my passion. Over summer break before senior year, she and her housemates built a practice bouldering wall in their basement. That’s love. That’s commitment. In the same sense, I never understood her mumbo jumbo about belays and static ropes and that bullshit – but I understood the thrill of the climb. With the technical skill and pure athleticism that is demanded to challenge the mountain, she was really only challenging herself. Seeing how far she could push her body, how close she could get to the sky. In risking it all, she was committing to staying alive. She was asserting her right of being. That’s how she used to talk about it.

I asked her not too long ago what it’s like to feel something that strong, you know, that overwhelming, fade away.

You see, now the passion’s gone. She’s still a recreational climber, sure, but that enthusiasm that I loved in her is gone. “We all have to grow up eventually,” she told me. This may have been what set her off about the last time I went to Nationals. With my condition, there was no way that I could play – but Sticky’s team had made it and they had a really good chance of placing first that year. Sure, it was an expensive trip, and I should have consulted her before buying the ticket. And hotel room. And renting the car. She wouldn’t have known about it either if my intern hadn’t called the house to see how my flu was doing.

But if she can just suddenly decide that it’s beneath her to care that deeply about climbing, what’s to stop her from outgrowing me? That’s how she put it – she “outgrew” climbing, just as I was supposed to have outgrown you.

To be fair, she never said specifically that I outgrew you – my friends and coworkers and parents said that. Jeanie pretends to think that, but she knows the truth. You were stripped away from me. You were ripped from my bleeding, clammy hands as I wept like a child. At least I got the layout D on that douche bag who called three contested fouls against me. But it wasn’t the right time. It wasn’t even in the championship series – it was so goddamn early in the season. Losing you was more painful than losing my ACL. Who fucking needs an ACL? Well, I suppose everybody does, that’s why I had to get a new one, grafted from my hamstring. Aren’t scientists making clones yet? I thought that by now I could have just shown them my right ACL and they could’ve cloned me a left one. Do cripples need ACLs? I thought their issue is a nerve thing – couldn’t I just have the ACL one of them isn’t using?

Is that terrible? Oh God, that’s probably a terrible thing to say. I’m sorry. I didn’t actually mean that. But that’s what thinking about us does to me. It makes me crazy. The shock of it all. Coming to terms with the prognosis. I didn’t think I’d get over it. Sticky Fingers came to visit me soon after the surgery. “Look what they did to you,” he said. “Fucking Commie pricks.” I told him the stipulation, about the severity of the injury. “I’ll go with the Man, I’ll tell you to take it easy and maybe give it up for a few years,” he said, “But it’s on you if you actually follow that pile-of-shit advice.”

I didn’t feel as hopeful about the whole thing when my mother came to visit me. I didn’t even want to tell her, but Jeanie insisted. Lying in that bed, prodded by needles and tubes, I didn’t want to face her – I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being right. Maybe I was a little harsh when she showed up, I know that now. Let’s call it a byproduct of the pain killers. Seeing her cry was alarming, though. She told me that she’d always been proud of me, that I wasn’t a disappointment, but my recklessness was. “Didn’t I tell you this would happen?” she said. “I’ve only wanted to look out for you.”

Too many people ‘just wanted to look out for me.’ My mother. My doctors. Even Sticky’s advice was a little hard to swallow. 

Going back to work was a nightmare. My boss had called me while I was still in the recovery room, saying that he was only kidding when he said I could use my short-term disability coverage for any Ultimate-related injury. I used up all of my sick days. When I got back, I still completed all of my assignments in time, but my “attitude” wasn’t up to par. The guys in my project group held some type of touchy-feely by-the-self-help-book intervention for me in the break room.

Alright, so maybe throwing our accountant’s potted plant against the wall was a bit of an overreaction. But sentiments like “it’s not the end of the world” aren’t really helpful. Truthfully, I didn’t see anything wrong with my performance. Sure, I was drinking in the morning, but the quality of my work didn’t change.

I’ve stopped drinking in the morning, if that’s what you were wondering. It was really hard to accept the truth about us for a while. I stopped sleeping. There was a full week when I ate only those energy GU packets, the strawberry-banana ones. An unintended side affect was a sort of horrifyingly pink cleansing. Sleepless nights, I’d wander to the field where we hold practice or the park. Twice, I’ve been ticketed for trespassing. Once, well sort of three times, I’ve been arrested for public intoxication there – but the second two times they just drove me home.

The pain that creeps in when I’m not expecting it is overwhelming. You love something for so long, and you’ll never fully stop loving it. I know that I can’t have you. It kills me that others can. A giant metaphorical knife slowly eases its way into my stomach every time I see someone else with you – not the quick jab to the heart, but the slow, gruesome bleed-out.

The pain crept in today, at the store. I was in a place designed for people like me and Jeanie and Sticky – people who have fallen in love with the unacceptable ones, not the footballs and ballets and soccers. Girls like Jeanie and guys like Sticky get turned on in places like Recreation Equipment, Inc. In fact, I’m pretty sure I once caught him jerking off to the REI catalogue. The store is our Mecca, it’s our haven, it’s where we can celebrate our love.

And yet our love was mocked, ridiculed.

Standing in line at REI with a pair of Black Vipers ice axes to give Jeanie for Valentine’s Day, I passed the ‘family recreation and dog’ aisle. And there you were, packaged in that goofy ‘Life is Good’ bubblegum crap next to leashes and discgolf sets. Fuck those granola-crunching yuppies who associate you with dogs and leisure. Fuck them all. If they had been talking about the team, Death or Glory, I would have cheered. But they were talking about Cockapoos and Labrador retrievers. They had debased you, stripped you naked, and called you a whore. That’s what they did. How dare they treat you like that?

Some large Brawny Men escorted me from the premises after I kicked over the display racks and called them all Northface-loving assholes. One of the guards approached me from behind. I swung and got him in the neck. I called them all sell-outs. Communists. I don’t know why, but it felt like something Sticky would have yelled if after defending his true love he was knocked unconscious with a kayaking oar and dragged to the curb. I kicked the display rack with my good leg, but somewhere in the scuffle I heard my knee pop and I haven’t exactly had a full range of motion since. That’s what I do for you, still, even now, when I’m supposed to have “outgrown” you.

I couldn’t even look Jeanie in the face, and it wasn’t because of the icepack or the black eye. She started crying, something about a personality disorder or psychotic behavior. It was hard to make out, between her tears and my concussion, but I got the gist of it. Ditching work. Being cut off from my family. Failing to have any meaningful relationship with a girl before she came along. She’s tired, she said, of pretending that I don’t need to be fixed.

She didn’t make the ultimatum until later, until the swelling had gone down and I had calmed down from my mother’s phone call. She yelled and cried and recovered well enough to lecture as Jeanie silently leered from the other side of the room. Ma said that I’m still not a disappointment to her, but she didn’t pretend to be proud of me. She and Jeanie were just relieved that REI didn’t decide to press charges.

Two women in one day stop pretending, two women gave up on me. That’s not really fair – I’ve done the best I can by both of them. I can only be so much, I can only sacrifice so much. And within two hours, I need to pick Jeanie or you. She’s packing my bags right now, she doesn’t trust me anymore. She doesn’t think she’s number one.

Fuck.

Now I feel awful. I didn’t even believe it as it came out. What have I sacrificed for Jeanie? How could I have put Jeanie through that after all that she’s done for me? She really was incredible after the injury – I don’t think anyone else would have put up with me. I had spiraled down into a depression. Maybe I wasn’t completely honest about what a mess I was at work – the mood swings did get a little out of hand. I just felt so cheated, so confused and angry. A few of my friends stopped talking to me. Sticky refused to let me go out drinking with him, he told me to get a grip first. And through it all, Jeanie was there to comfort me, to let me know that things would eventually get better, that people can almost fully recover from knee surgeries. To distract me, she used to take me on “light to moderate” hikes as the doctors told me to avoid “moderate to severe” activity. I wonder what the doctors consider “light to moderate” activity? (Jeanie strained a ligament in her knee and figured sex was still a “light to moderate” activity until she got on top and I had to take her to the ER.)

Lately, I’ve been trying to make it up to her, thank her, you know? A few weeks ago, I took her back to the restaurant where we had our second-year anniversary. As a surprise, I bought her tickets to some Off Broadway show that she won’t shut up about. I can’t give them to her now, the spontaneity is ruined – she’ll just think they are my way of apologizing. No matter what I do, I’m gonna look like the bad guy. The girl I love has just walked in on me with my adulteress, pants down, lies exposed, and she knows that I need to redeem myself.

Oh, God. What have I done? I’ve just jeopardized losing the two best things that have ever happened to me. It’s not as simple as girlfriend and lover. I tried to have it all. How am I supposed to pick? If I pick Jeanie, I’ll always resent her for taking you away from me. If I pick you, I’ll always wonder if I threw away the love of my life. Jeanie makes me feel desirable. You make me feel alive.

Maybe I don’t have to decide just yet. Maybe Jeanie will cool down and this will all just blow over. She has to come around, she has to understand. She’s the person who knows me the best, the only one – other than you – that’s seen me at my lowest. That’s gotta mean something, right?

So I just won’t tell her about the spring league I’ve signed up for, or the physical therapist I’m going to see after work. She’ll come around. That, or you and I will have to end it all in a blaze of glory, as everything I know and depend on burns to an ash. Part of me still believes that it’d all be worth it.