The Spirit Girl

"Football season," she whispered back, then nibbled my ear gently.

Dad didn't say anything further--until Sam went to take a powder. Then he turned to me and said "where did you find her?"

I shrugged; "she was a Spirit girl," I explained. That's when grandpa chimed in. "She was the one that Jacobs kept crowing about in the locker room. She dumped him when she started dating Davey, so they think he got mad and got her fired."

"Oh," dad said with a look of concern on his face.

"Now Davis, I know what you're thinking, but don't go judging the girl too harshly. She obviously knows good basketball when she sees it, right? Why shouldn't she be attracted to the best player we've got?"

"Don't give me that dad... if my sister had brought home with a colored guy back in the day, you'd have shit a brick."

Grandpa was magnanimous. "True... but times have changed, son. Back then, there was still a stigma about interracial dating. Kids today don't really seem to care as much--and I think they're better because of it. You should see the rainbow of girlfriends Ricky brings around here. Are you thinking about Sandy?"

Dad nodded, then turned to me to explain. "You remember Sandy Clark in PR? Well, we just found out she's going on maternity leave. Sandy was expecting to work through the end of the regular season, but I guess she's having problems and her doctors are making her stop working--next week. We need someone to fill in ASAP--ideally someone like Sandy, that is to say an articulate and attractive woman who knows basketball. Samantha is undeniably attractive and seems to know basketball. I don't know how articulate she is, but at least if she can get out there and dance in front of thousands every night, she probably won't be phased by the glare of the lights. I'm willing to take a chance on someone without experience if they've got the skills. But if you're dating her, that creates other issues..."

Grand-dad interjected "that shouldn't really be a problem, Davis. They'll be in completely different departments."

Dad saw the puzzled look on my face. "Dad and I were talking, and this is the plan. After you graduate in May, we want to make Assistant Director of Player Personnel for a year. Then we want you to be Assistant GM for another year or two. After that, hopefully you'll be ready to take a more active role in running the club."

I just nodded. Assistant Director of Player Personnel didn't sound like much of a job, but it would certainly help to know as much about the basketball side of the house as possible before getting into management. "Can you send... Samantha was it?... up to my office at halftime? I want to have a chat with her myself before I send her to Sandy." I nodded. He passed Sam coming back from the bathroom with a smile as he headed upstairs.

"Your dad had to leave?" she asked as she sat down.

"Whatever happens, I swear it is his idea; I had nothing to do with it."

"What are you talking about?" she frowned.

Grandpa saved me. "Mr. Rutherford was impressed by your knowledge of basketball, young lady. There is a temporary position opening in the organization, he thought you might be interested in it."

"Me? What kind of opening?"

"I'll let him explain. He asked if you could come up and chat with him during halftime," I added.

She looked at me like I was nuts; I shrugged my shoulders. Then she frowned, and said "OK, the joke is over you two. You got me."

"No, seriously," I replied. "There's a temporary position and Dad thinks you might be able to do the job. I'll take you up there as soon as the half ends."

Sam fretted. "But... I'm not dressed for an interview... I probably look a fright..."

"You look marvelous," I argued, "besides, it doesn't matter how you're dressed. He only just met you, so those are the only clothes he's ever seen you in." Still, she immediately returned to the bathroom to fix her makeup.

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting around in the lobby while Samantha talked to my dad. I was thinking about something grand-dad had said, and feeling a little ashamed of myself. I guess I had assumed that the only reason Sam had been so hot on Marshall Jacobs' and put up with his tricks for so long was because he was famous and stood to make a lot of money. Maybe grandpa was right; Sam obviously did know good basketball when she saw it. Maybe that really was what the attraction had been. He was a charming guy, especially if you didn't know it was all an act. Who knows, maybe Sam was into black guys? In which case, was our relationship doomed to failure? The bottom line was that I didn't understand why she had allowed herself to, as Jenna put it, whore herself for him. It really just didn't seem to fit with everything else I knew about her. And as long as I didn't understand, I couldn't completely shake the fear that maybe it would happen again.

It was well into the third quarter when she came out all smiles and shaking my father's hand. It wouldn't be official until the interview with Sandy a few days later, but right there and then I knew she had the job—and I couldn't have been happier about it. We rushed down to the box to see the end of the game, but the other team had started the second half with a run and what had been a close came was now a blowout. Fans were heading up the aisles, having seen this movie before. But then Jacobs and Jefferson lit it up to start the fourth quarter, drawing to back to even with three minutes to go. The few remaining fans were in an uproar, urging the team on. But down the stretch their defense stiffened, and our guys missed too many foul shots. We came up short again, and with the loss the Jammers were eliminated from the playoffs.

After the game, Samantha and I walked hand-in-hand back to the car. Neither of us felt like going to the 5th Quarter that night, so we retrieved her bag from my office and headed home. "Do you want me to take you home?" I asked.

"I'll go anywhere you want to take me," she replied enticingly. So I took her to my place.

I hung up our coats, and found her waiting for me in the living room. We embraced naturally and easily, kissing. Then she said "I'm so excited about maybe getting to work for the team! That would be a dream come true for me. I'm just so worried something bad is going to happen and it'll all fall apart."

"I know that look... my dad wants to hire you," I said confidently. "You'd have to REALLY bomb with Sandy to not get the job now."

"I hope you're right. But even that doesn't guarantee anything. What about Marshall? He already got me fired from the Spirit; who's to say that once he learns the team hired me, he doesn't go and do the same thing again?"

"Not to worry. My dad already knows about you and Marshall," I answered calmly.

My words had the opposite effect. "He already knows?" Her voice sounded panicked.

"Yeah, he already knows. But he likes you, and he offered you the job anyway. So it's OK."

"No, it's not OK," she replied, and plopped herself nervously on the couch. "What did he say? Oh god, your father must think I'm a total sleazebag..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa... what are you talking about."

"I'll tell you what I'm talking about." She was quite upset now. "I called my mom when I first started dating Marshall Jacobs. The first thing she said was please don't tell dad cuz he'll have a heart attack. Your parents, my parents... a lot of them have major problems with a white girl dating a black guy, and for those people that girl is by definition a whore. I can't imagine your dad is too happy that his son is dating a whore..."

I sat down on the couch deliberately, and held her hands in mine while looking her in the eye. "Yes, my dad had some concerns, but grandpa put things in perspective..."

"YOUR GRANDFATHER KNOWS TOO?!?!?!" She was in full-fledged panic; if I weren't holding her hands, I wonder if she might not have fled.

"Calm down, honey, please. When you went in the hall to talk to Jenna, grandpa and I talked, and he surprised the shit out of me with all of the things going on in the organization I had no idea he knew about. For starters, he recognized you."

"Recognized me how?"

"As soon as you left, he said to me, 'I thought I recognized her. She was Spirit girl, right?' I didn't think that much of it, because you were still wearing the team warm-up. But then he proceeded to tell me exactly where on the floor you should have been."

"Get out of here," she replied in disbelief.

"He started to ask why you weren't on the floor, but then he remembered overhearing Marshall Jacobs 'chirping' as he put it about sleeping with one of the Spirit girls. Seeing as he knew you weren't on the floor when you should be, he put the pieces together on his own. He's pretty damn sharp for his age."

Sam wore a look of pure horror. "My god! The entire Jammers organization knows I'm the slut that slept with Marshall Jacobs!?!?"

I shook my head. "No, no, no, my grandfather just is really clued in to what's going on around the club. My dad didn't know anything about you, or it, until my grandpa told him."

"And what did he say when he found out?" she asked warily.

"Dad had some concerns," I said carefully. "Grand-dad was the one that had the best perspective on it. He said 'the girl obviously knows good basketball when she sees it. Marshall is our best player--why wouldn't she be attracted to him?'"

"He said that? He didn't say anything about Marshall being black?"

"My dad did, but grandpa told him that times have changed, and those things don't mean what they once did."

There was a pause, then she asked pointedly, "and what did you say?"

"I stayed out of it," I replied, not understanding the question.

"That's not what I meant. I meant, what's your take on my relationship with Marshall Jacobs? You know what happened; you know I bailed on you a bunch of times because of him." She snorted a bitter laugh. "I feel like such an idiot about it anyway; now that I know who you really are, I feel like the biggest idiot in the whole fucking world!"

"Stop it," I argued. "You didn't know who I was because I didn't tell you. I could have told you sooner—thought about it, actually, but that's not the way I wanted it to be. If I had, I would have always wondered if you were really interested in me, or my name."

"It must have hurt to see me running after Marshall all the time."

"It was hard because I kept wishing it was me instead." I kept steady eye contact while I spoke. "I never felt like you didn't like me. It was just pretty obvious that you liked Marshall more. That was just a fact; no point in getting upset about it. I mean, I could certainly understand; he's famous and I'm not, he's rich and I'm not yet, he's a lot smoother than me...

"Honey, I always thought you were a nice guy. I remember that you and I were having a nice little chat that night right before Marshall came into the bar. I had been hoping to meet him, just because he's the best player on the team. When he came in, I jumped at the chance, figuring he'd be moving on in just a few minutes; you saw how he was talking up every girl in the joint. It must have looked to you like I was waiting in the weeds just hoping for a chance to seduce him, but I swear, I just wanted to introduce myself. I had NO intention of hooking up with him. I thought I'd just say hi, then go back to talking with you. But as you know, that's now how it happened. I was so shocked that he kept talking to me, and seemed so interested in me... I completely lost track of the fact that we had been in the middle of something. I'm sorry."

"You know, I understand all that. I guess what bothers me more is that you kept running back to him over and over again even after it was clear he was just using you. That's the thing I really couldn't understand."

She shook her head sadly. "I wish I could give you an answer, that I could explain to you why I did what I did--but I can't. He just seemed to have a way of manipulating me. I put up with stuff that I never thought in a million years I would have put up with from anyone."

"Something must have remained attractive about him," I suggested.

"Oh sure," she agreed, "part of what I liked was that he was a 'bad boy.'"

"A bad boy?"

"A lot of us girls seem to grow up with this fantasy that we'll find a bad boy and turn him good with our love," she explained. "Our mothers warn us that we're fooling ourselves, but we don't want to believe them. We're enticed by the aura, the excitement, sometimes even danger. It's almost like a drug--we know it's bad for us, be we do it anyway, again and again."

"I'm certainly not exciting like Marshall Jacobs," I mused sadly, looking away.

She touched my cheek gently, turning my face back to hers. Her eyes were earnest. "I don't mean exciting as in fun. I mean exciting as in dangerous, forbidden even. And I mean exciting as in wrong. Deep down, I knew all along that all I ever was to Marshall was his booty call girl. The only thing he ever wanted to do was have sex, and as soon as he was done he was trying to push me out the door. He wasn't rude, but he made it pretty clear he had no further use for me. I've had a lot more fun with you than I ever did with him. The sad part is that was probably true even while we were going together. You remember that night, after the concert, when we went to the bar and got so drunk?" I nodded. "If Marshall had ever agreed to go out afterwards, which I doubt, he would have made us leave in a half-hour so he could get his freak on. More likely he'd have left the concert early--or better yet, tried to talk me into sneaking into the bathroom with him."

"And would you have done it?"

She looked away now. "I'd like to say no. But truthfully, I don't know--Marshall got me to do a lot of things I never thought I'd do. Maybe because he was treatin' me like a 'ho, I let myself act like one." She squeezed her eyes tight, fighting tears.

I now stroke her cheek gently. "Hey, hey... it's done. You're with ME now."

"Maybe," she sniffed. "But this Marshall Jacobs thing is always going to be there. If you and I fall apart BECAUSE of my stupid affair with HIM..."

I put my arm around her gently. "Honey, please. It's not like any of it come up as an unpleasant surprise one of these days. I already KNOW about, and I want to be with you anyway."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive," I said firmly. She squeezed me, but her head was still buried in my shoulder. I wanted to understand why she had been such a pushover for Marshall Jacobs... but did I really NEED to know? Why did it really matter? At one point she chose him over me, but now she was chosing me over him. As long as I made her happy, she should continue to choose me, right? Unfortunately, here was where the ghost of Marshall Jacobs cast a long shadow over my insecurities. "The question is, do I satisfy YOU?" I asked hesitantly.

Sam sat for a moment, then raised her head to study my face. It seemed she was trying to understand the question. "Honey, you make me very happy," she protested.

"And you make me very happy," I agreed.

"Then why did you just ask me that?" she wondered.

"I guess I just wonder if... Marshall... you know..." I hemmed and hawed, but she didn't know. "I just can't help but think he's better than me at things besides playing basketball."

It took her another second yet to catch my drift. But then she understood. "Ah, now I get it. Are you asking if Marshall was a better lover than you? Or if he was better equipped?"

I flushed slightly with embarrassment, but that was what I was asking. "You know what they say, once you go black..."

"Bullshit," she interjected firmly. "You guys are so concerned about size. It's not size that determines if she's going to be satisfied anywhere near as much as it is how she feels about her partner. As far as I'm concerned, you're ten the times the man Marshall Jacobs was." I think my face looked skeptical, because she continued: "I'm not gonna lie and tell you you're bigger than he is. You wouldn't believe me anyway. But it's not as big of a difference as you probably fear it is. More importantly, you satisfy me on a whole other different level than he did. It's hard for a guy to understand; all of your orgasms seem to be more or less the same, so it doesn't matter how you get them. It's not like that for us, or at least not for me. If you stimulate me long enough in the right places, yeah, I'll have an orgasm--but it'll just be a physical reaction. Hollow, almost like a reflex. But if you really LIKE a guy, orgasms can be much, much more. It's like your body and soul are in harmony, responding to your partner in unison. It's strong; it's emotional; it can be almost spiritual. And you can't just make them happen by rubbing the right spot for a certain amount of time. Emotional orgasms come from somewhere deep inside you, and you have no control over if and when happen. But I'd trade a hundred physical orgasms for one good emotional one."

There was silence for a moment, then she added quietly, "A selfish lover like Marshall Jacobs isn't capable of giving a girl an emotional orgasm." She hugged me tight, seeming to want to hide her face. "But I had one on our very first night together."

I remembered how she had curled up like a ball to me, shaking like a leaf as the orgasm rumbled through her body. I hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head. "Honey... thank you. I know that wasn't an easy thing to say. It really helps set my mind at ease." She peeked up at me, then seeing my face felt safe enough to kiss me.

After the kiss, we studied each other. Then it was her turn to ask the difficult question. "All that time I was chasing after Marshall--why did you put up with me? The way I treated you--why didn't you just write me off the first I stood you up?"

I shrugged. "We'd hung out together plenty of times, so I knew I liked you. And it wasn't like I did nothing but sit around hoping you'd notice me. I hung out, talked to other girls, that sort of thing. I knew the thing with Marshall couldn't last forever; I just tried to stick around and hoped you'd notice me when that time came."

"But why " she persisted. "There are always lots of pretty girls at the bar, and you got to know some of the other Spirit girls as well as you did me. What made you stay interested in me, when all I did was reject you."

Her eyes locked in on me like lasers. I decided my only choice was the truth "I wish I had a more noble answer, but I don't. I refused to give up on you... because you looked so absolutely amazing in your Jammer Spirit uniform. Especially the little white one. Yes, there were other pretty girls, and other girls I liked. But none of them could hold a candle to you."

She shook her head, not understanding what I saw in her, but believing I was telling her the truth. "I'm not even the prettiest girl on the team..."

"Wanna bet?"

"Oh come on. Look at Jenna, for instance..."

"Very pretty," I interjected. "But... not as nice as you. You know how I know that? Because my grandfather said so. "

"What?" she asked incredulously.

"I told you that when he saw you he knew exactly where you should have been on the floor. He didn't know that about everyone; he only knew that about you, because you were his favorite girl on the squad. He told me so."

"Get out of here."

"Honest to god," I protested. "Not only that, he remembered that you were on the squad last year, and you his favorite then."

She looked at me in disbelief. "I don't know whether to be flattered or creeped out."

"I'm telling you Sam, you make quite an impression in that uniform."

"This one I'm wearing now?" She unzipped her warm-up jacket to reveal the top underneath.