MurderBall

Alright, my last post may have come across as a little preachy. It more than likely came out that way because I had been drinking. Heavily. In fact, I was half way through a bottle of vodka when I posted it. Hemmingway once said ¨Write drunk, edit sober.¨ I had neglected the last part.

When I woke up the next morning, it felt like a herd of cats had nested in my mouth and had died at some point in the night. My head hurts, my muscles were weak, breathing was a struggle. What I needed was a beer and a tasty blue cheese/broccoli omelet. That was not going to be happening. Thanks to my liquored memory, I had forgotten what I promised my brother the day before.

¨Get ready man, we have about an hour drive to get to Duncan and we still need to pick up Jeff.¨ Every word that came out my brother´s mouth was a cacophony of death bells ringing out through my head. My eyes watered. I didn´t want to go. ¨Kelly, I´m not sure...¨ He cut me off. ¨Holly got called into work, so I need your help unloading the wheelchairs from the van.¨ Kelly wheeled past me, the sound of his tires grating against the back of my skull. ¨I´m gonna... I´m gonna have a shower.¨ I said, the words hardly squeaking past my lips. ¨Well hurry up fucker, we don´t have all day.¨ The water poured over my head. Standing was difficult. There was a knock at the door. ¨What is taking you so long? You´ve been in there for twenty minutes!¨ Already?

Today was not going to go well.

After the shower, we hopped in Kelly´s jeep and got some burgers. Grease was exactly what the doctor ordered. We swung by Jeff´s place, switched vehicles and headed off to Duncan. I was feeling a lot better. Definitely still hungover but recovering nicely. I had brought my laptop and was getting prepared to hammer out a little writing while these guys played their ´Murderball´. I really had no idea what Murderball was all about, except that it was described to me as ´Wheelchair rugby´.

We get to the arena and I started to unload the chairs. Whoa whoa whoa, who are you, I ask in my head as this cute woman starts giving me a hand moving the chairs. I make an introduction. This day just got a whole lot better. I walk inside. Wait a minute, there´s a few women here, two of them my age and not holding children. I walk up to my brother. ¨Hey, what are these two doing here?¨ ¨Those two? They´re doing some sort of vocational training thing through the program they´re taking. Sports Physiology or something.¨

At least I have a few people to talk to while I´m sitting around. Not to mention a couple of these girls are sorta my style. I might be hungover but that isn´t going to stop me from putting on the old macking shoes and...

That phrase in my head was cut off by a thunderous crash that rang throughout thee arena. My headache was back in full force. What the fuck was that noise? Holy shit that was noise was fucking...

CRASH!!!!!!

This time it was louder. The boys were getting warmed up. I hadn´t been paying attention until now. Shit, I hadn´t even bothered to have a good look at the chairs until now. They were flying round at high speeds crashing into each other. The chairs seemed more like little tanks than wheelchairs. Kelly drove into another player, Jordan, at full speed. Both chairs tipped up a little, the noise rippling through the air. I tried to distract myself by firing up a conversation with the girl sitting next to me. I was just about to mention something about her fingernails (they were painted) when Kelly sped up to me. ¨We need an eighth player.¨

¨What, you mean me?¨ Kelly looking right at me. ¨You heard right, get into a chair. Josh, the ref, will explain the rules to you.¨ He took off.

I was not prepared for this. Standing up straight was still taking a lot out of me. Playing Murderball? I´d be using muscles I haven´t used in a long time while sweating out the last bit of shitty vodka that was still in my system. My mouth still tasted like a dead cat orgy. This was going to be a nightmare.

I hopped into a chair. Kelly lent me some of his gloves. I started asking about rules. Josh filled me in; The goal is to carry the ball across into the endzone, you can only hold the ball for ten seconds so you either have to pass it or dribble it, you have 12 seconds to get it across the half when your team first gets possession, The ball goes in your lap when you´re moving, you can grab at this ball but you can´t grab at their hands. Those are the basics, he says.

There´s the tip off and we begin playing. Chairs crashing into each other, people chattering about positions and blocking. I was lost for the first minute or so. I tried to stop one of the guys charging my endzone, he carved around me as if i wasn´t even there. I spun around to chase him but was hit by one of his teammates. I tried to move but was locked into the chair of the gentleman who had just collided me. He was preventing me from moving so the other guy could continue flying through the endzone. Point for the other team. ¨They´ll do that, prevent you from moving. Make sure that doesn´t happen.¨ said Calen, one of my teammates.

I was starting to see the strategy in the game. They were running blocks the same way it was done in basketball. I was also starting to sweat like a clown on a hot day. My head felt spinny, my mouth still felt like a murder at the cat boudoir. Not only that, these guys were good. Really, really good. I felt like a pylon that was there to be wheeled around. I mentioned it to my brother. ¨They should be good,¨ Kelly said ¨Both Shawn and Peter play on the BC team and some of the other guys used to play on it.¨ Fuck me.

None of these guys had the use of their legs anymore but it wasn´t going to stop them from sticking their boot up my ass.

First quarter was done. I swung by the fountain to grab some water. I was about to puke. Between breaths I was trying to drink water and not throw up. Fuck you, dead cat fuck parade in my mouth. Kelly came up to me. ¨So brew, what do think so far?¨ I tried not to vomit. ¨ Good... man.  Intense ... sport.¨ He kinda laughed. ¨Struggling buddy?¨ I tried to talk but just kinda waved him off.

¨Second quarter, ball to the white shirts.¨ The ball came to me. I put it in my lap and sped off. I was about to be cut off when I saw Kelly pull up next to me so I handed off the ball. He sped off and scored a point. I was starting to feel good about this. I was getting the little nuances of the game. Comparatively I was a lot slower than most of everybody here. At the end of the second quarter I had sweat most of the liquor outta my body.

We played the last half, then another quarter for kicks. I´m not a sports journalist and because I spent a lot of the game praying for death, I can´t give you an exciting play-by-play. Check out Murderball on youtube, that will certainly give you a better understanding of the sport. One final note. As we were leaving I asked my brother if he was going to try out for the BC team. ¨Can´t man. It´s actually a sport for quadriplegics. These guys all have limited use of their arms.¨ Getting schooled by people is always a little humbling. Getting schooled by someone in a wheelchair who only has limited use of their arms?


Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. My mouth still feels a little like a dead kitten sex party. No joke people.