You Can Get There from Here
Part 3

Barry Buss

At the end of Part 2 (Click Here), I had been suspended from the Junior Davis Cup team and it was agreed I would play the next event on my own, though not entirely on my own, for my JDC teammates and coaching staff would also be there watching my every move.

A moment of crisis. It's unimaginable in this day and age that a talented troubled teen like myself wouldn't have a single adult to turn in a crisis for guidance. But I didn't. My JDC Coaches had a team to manage and my parents and I weren't having such heart to hearts. In my upside down shame-filled thinking, I made the calculation long ago the less my folks knew of my problems the better.

Seventeen and messy, I was a box of red flags screaming for help. For staying sober the night before an important match should not have been a hard decision. In a situation where there were no options, I somehow manufactured one, rationalizing and bargaining my way into making the absolute worst decision imaginable for my life in the most emphatic of fashions.

Was this a momentary lapse of reason? Or had the encroachment of addiction eroded my ability to make sound decisions about what was best for myself?

But this was the year of 1982. Today such lapses in judgment demanded attention, a circling of the wagons for an all hands on deck quasi-intervention. Yet tennis was still years away from understanding what to do with kids like myself.

Pacific Coast Championships

My coaching staff had a team to run, the USTA was not in the business of foster parenting up and coming players, and my problems were already way above my parents pay grade. The only people with a working clue what was going on with me were my friends, the same friends that handed me the beer and told me to get in the car for a night on the town, the same friends that drove me to the picturesque town of Belvedere on the Tiburon Peninsula in Marin County California to watch me play the next event, the prestigious Pacific Coast Championships.

After checking in at the tournament site, it was off to my next housing with all my same partners in crime from Burlingame. Trying to settle in at night, but my mind was a-racing. I knew I was fucking up, yet all I felt was a gnawing desire to get fucked up. The all too familiar battle with myself, the ass kicking machine turned up to max. Such a punishing voice. Fuck up, screw up, loser. Raining down barbs on myself just like Dad used to. Except he wasn't there. But that didn't seem to matter anymore. He'd taught me well. I'd learned exactly what he'd say.

Those first quiet moments, lights out, dark room, getting comfortable in bed, then right on cue, my conscience would jump to life. And it could get viscous. I'd do anything to avoid those quiet moments alone. Sleep with the lights on, or the TV blaring, drink and drug til I would pass out. Anything to drown out that voice in those moments.

But not that first night in Belvedere. I couldn't avoid myself forever. And in the late evening hours in a strange town in a stranger’s home in a bed not my own living this odd junior tennis life I was living, I lied awake to the wee hours of morning trying to nurture myself right.

But I knew little about self love, its language a foreign tongue. All I knew was a punishing kind of love. Chastise to reform, piling on with some robust self loathing. After beating myself to a pulp, I would make the pivot.

Every session always ended with a plan. Make a plan. That's what addicts do. Planning. As I entered solution mode, the conversation would lighten. I would start making promises to myself. Anything to provide a little hope, that if I tried harder, everything was going to work out alright. That somehow I could change the course I was on and my fate would end differently.

I needed to change, but could I change quickly enough? Could I respect authority figures? Could I follow orders? Could I accept being coached? Could I train the USTA Player Development way? Could I detach from my party friends for the summer and embrace being part of a team and see how successful I could become?

The Cruise

And most of all, could I stay clean and sober for a whole summer in the shark-infested waters that was elite junior tennis? That was a lot to change, change being more a process than an event. But with my first week an unmitigated disaster, I needed to straighten out immediately or there wouldn't be any more weeks.

I got through the first day of the tournament, playing well, winning my singles and doubles matches. That evening, the tournament hosted a boat trip for all the players and their parents through the picturesque San Francisco Bay. All my party friends as well as my JDC teammates and Coaching staff were to attend, yet I wanted nothing to do with any of it. It had all the makings of an uncomfortable evening as I knew I'd be watched.

Returning to my housing, I came upon a familiar scene. My SoCal party friends throwing down, pre-gaming for the liquored up boat trip to be. I declared myself out of the fun, saying I'll have to live vicariously through them this week. Yet my crew paid me little heed, carrying on without a worry in the world, having all the fun I wished I was having. The laughter, the joshing, soon their cajoling found its way to me.

"Come on Buss, have one…he’s not gonna give you a breathalyzer."

"Come on Buss, can't kick you off the team when you're not on the team. Yeah Buss. If you think he's on to you, just jump overboard. Wash the scent right off you." Yet I held strong. Told them I couldn't, had to be cool this week.

Yet the quarters game continued. And the girl I liked was there drinking. And another car of party friends rolled up, music blaring, screams of laughter as people spilled from the car. And more beer appeared with someone firing up a joint. Then the cloves came out, filling the air with their pungent fragrant smell.

With every beer drank, it got louder with laughter and music and someone tried to hand me a beer but I said I couldn't. And people began to wrestle and stumble as the laughter became heartier yet I held my ground.

Stuck in the middle. Unable to party with my JDC team, trying to stay sober among my party friends. I kept my distance, watching all the fun unfurl from afar. Then the girl I liked asked me to sit next to her at the quarters table, and of course I did. Then they asked me to play and I agreed, but would only drink water. And the game grew, and the fun grew ever louder, myself white knuckling my way through it all as everyone was having way more fun than myself.

With still an hour to go before the boat trip, I was getting water logged as the pressure to drink mounted, one part from my friends, the other part from that gnawing voice inside me that so wanted to be having all the fun my friends were having. Then the quarter came to me. Unsure what to do, I so wanted to be good, yet equally wanted to share in the fun.

The peer pressure was real. Succumbing, no longer able to abstain, I stood up, threw the quarter as far down the hill as I possibly could, grabbed the nearest beer to me and chugged it all in one gulp, letting the foamy liquid spill all over my face and shirt screaming...

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Lets Play!!!!!"

And one led to two, for I had some catching up to do. Time to go, out came the gum, the Dynamints, the Visine, the sunglasses, and as much Polo cologne as I could stand. Anything and everything to avoid detection.

Arriving at the boat, the whole plan was try to hold it together. Within minutes, I saw my JDC team and the coaches doing what people do on boats; walking around in circles, just as I was doing.

Coach Louderback and I exchanged pleasantries and little else, me holding my breath every one of the dozen times I passed him on the God awful boat trip, now regretting terribly my breaking down and imbibing, just dying for the cruise to be over as we twirled around the picturesque Bay for what seemed forever.

Cruise over, we drove back home to our housing. On my own a whole two days now, I was right back to the behavior that got me in this jam in the first place. I had spent half the prior night awake admonishing myself, knowing I needed to change, vowing and promising to be better and do different. And boom. Not even 24 hours later and I'm drunk again, breaking all the rules and putting my summer on JDC in further jeopardy. What was it going to take to get me under control?

I survived the week, playing well, winning the doubles, beating several of my team mates along the way with my JDC coaches actively coaching against me (strange game, this tennis). I took the next week off, coming home to a deservedly icy reception from the folks. Yeah, sure, I messed up, that was easy to see. But it was apparent to anyone paying attention not all was right with me. I had lost control, getting worse and not better. What forces were driving me to fuck up so?

Muncie

I rejoined the team the following week in Muncie, Indiana for the Westerns on the shortest of leashes, knowing full well any more antics and my JDC summer was over. First couple days back I played my part on the squad. But by midweek, all the changes I struggled with mere weeks before I started struggling with again. Embedded with tennis all the time, I started getting antsy. I loved the idea of being on JDC, the stature, the aura of being part of something historic, but the moment to moment intensity simply wasn't me. I missed the levity of my own way.

I tried recruiting some of my party-curious team mates over toward my way of life. Sneaking a fifth of vodka back to our rooms (less smell, easier to hide and dispose) we had a fun night. Except my lightweight team mates got way too hammered. The yelling and screaming led to pillow fights and broken hotel lamps. A Hall of Fame bad idea, putting myself and my team mates inches from getting ourselves thrown off the team for good.

Better Players

The next day, in the obscene Midwestern heat and humidity, I lost a bruising three setter to future UCLA teammate Michael Kures. Though I played well, I was starting to find that there were players out there who were simply better than me at my one dimensional style of play. Lonely feeling, battling on a tennis court not having a plan B. Even worse, the guys I was finding were better than me were all part of my recruiting class entering UCLA, Kures, Jim Pugh, Blaine Willenborg. Combined, that year I was 0-6 against them. Just terrible match-ups for me.

And my head started running again. Were my parents right? Did I make a mistake choosing UCLA? They were the defending NCAA Champions, and being last of a strong recruiting class, I couldn't see how I was going to improve enough in the next few months to give me any chance of playing.

Was I going to have to change how I played? Or how I trained? For I was at a level in tennis where I'd have to work extremely hard to get just a little better, and maybe a little worse first if any changes were in the offing. Did I have that level of commitment in me? I was just starting to bare the fruits of my way of playing. But was my ceiling too low my way? And worst yet, why was I the one trying to figure all this out by myself at seventeen years old.

But one worry at a time...

Later that evening. Stressed from losing a rough match, stressed about my future, I lay alone in the dark with my thoughts in another strange bed in a town far far from home. After my loss, I was supposed to drill for a couple hours with another teammate later that day. I quit after 10 minutes, getting me another earful from the coaches that I wasn't taking JDC seriously enough. Debatable. I mean, who goes and drills for two hours after a tough loss?

What was not debatable was I couldn't drink anymore on the road, or at least with anybody else around. Too risky. But there comes a point in every alcoholic's life where choices get made. Where the once unimaginable becomes commonplace. To the outsider, these decisions can appear incredulous. To the outsider, it appears there is some degree of self-control and agency and reasoning involved in these choices.

To the alcoholic though, there are no quiet moments alone, weighing the pros and cons of what course of action to take. There is no reaching out to people for advice, to people in a similar place in life going through the same experience. There's literally no one to bounce your incredibly bad ideas off.

No, addiction is a very private place. And the disconnect between what I was trying to accomplish with my tennis to having to feel a certain way everyday was confounding. Insane even. But that's what makes it addiction. Being powerless not just over alcohol but the decisions made pursuing alcohol, regardless of their fallout. I had to feel a certain way. And it was becoming increasingly clear no human power could relieve me of that.

Later that evening, still lying in bed with my head spinning hard again, I listened to my roommates fall asleep easily and peacefully. All out of ideas, I settled in for another long lonely night with the committee. Seated and ready to pounce, the committee just couldn't wait for me to close my eyes. Physically exhausted, I needed sleep terribly but that wasn't about to happen and I simply wasn't in the mood for another long torturous battle with my not so beautiful mind.

So I got up, dressed quietly, and snuck out of my room to a destination unknown.

I wanted the tennis life, but I needed to get high. And need trumps want every time. Against all reason and rationale, I went out in to the night to walk the streets of Muncie, IN, looking for an open store, any store, money in hand, nervous, anxious at the risk I was taking, equally anxious at the specter of a sober summer embedded with tennis all the time. I scoped out a liquor store, nervously waiting to ask any other late night drinker if he would buy me a bottle. Now the unimaginable was ordinary. Knowing full well it was my fourth day back of trying to do it their way, the right way, but that I was too far gone to do it any other way than my own.

And that I had a secret habit that had taken over my life, a habit that would not remain a secret very much longer.