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Member
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 4
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Craigo
This is my first submission. This may have too many New Zealand specific references in it but it might be worth a read.
We stood at the first tee. It was raised above the fairway which sloped gently down into a shallow basin before rising sharply up to the green. There were pohutakawa trees on either side for about half the length of it. They’d been hit by too many golf balls over the years, Craig and mine included, so they were a little ratty even though they were in bloom on this hot summer’s day.
Although it was only 9:30 in the morning, it was hot. The course looked dry and hard. There were no clouds. Craig and I were on our own that day. Neil had given some excuse about a late essay. Craig, in his naff blue polo shirt was not impressed and kept on about it as I teed up. The first shot on your average public course is usually watched by a small crowd waiting to tee off as well, so I wanted to concentrate. Golf-wise, I had a habit of fucking things up under pressure (so did Craig but he never admitted it). Despite that, Craig was still harping on about Neil as I readied myself to take the shot.
‘A B.Com’s not that hard, you and me are coping’ he said,
‘uh huh’ I responded, as I made one last scatter-brained calculation about where I was going to try and hit the shot.
‘Surprised he didn’t pull out another Gemma story,’
I found the last comment a little annoying and true to form, my shot went skimming along the ground and bounced off the trunk of a pohutakawa. It rolled onto the adjacent fairway of the ninth hole.
‘Fuck it’ I thought. It was going to be one of those rounds, where you just can’t get in the right frame of mind.
‘Fuckin Craig’ I thought as I avoided eye contact with him and the players behind the tee. It was childish to blame him but golf was annoying enough without him indulging in one of his most annoying habits-slagging off Neil. Neil was a bit of a mess. He’d told us some odd things about his girlfriend over the years, the abortion story being particularly dubious, but I liked him and he was a good golfer. Craig, however, was always criticizing the guy. Considering Craig was a big gangly, acne scarred freak, covered in body hair and completely lacking in social skills he didn’t have much of a mandate when it came to criticizing others.
Craig’s tee shot had been pretty good by our equally atrocious standards and his second shot was pretty good as well, just short of the green. Considering where I was, Craig figured he had time to chat while I hacked my way back onto the right fairway.
‘I’ve got a story to tell you man,’ he informed me as I prepared to flick my ball out from underneath another tree. My heart sank. The prospect of deciding whether to believe the latest episode in the chronicles of Craig combined with the fact that this hole was already a debacle had me all ready to give up and go home.
After I played my shot, which got me back out onto the fairway, Craig began.
‘I have had the craziest week of my life’ he said with solemnity.
‘O.K’
‘Suzy’s family has decided to go back to America,’
‘Crazy, rich one, right.’
‘Yep, cute too.’
I played my shot. For a second it looked good as it reached the green. But there was too much pace on it and it shot across the green and into the thick grass behind. It was too early in the round for a tantrum so I gritted my teeth and prepared for Craig’s next installment.
‘Anyway, she reckons she can get me a job in her uncle’s company over there,’
‘O.K’
‘and I should go and live with them’
‘and’ (this was getting stupid already)
‘well here’s the funny part, we went out to the casino,’
‘yeah…’
Craig was certainly keen on this tale. He had chosen to follow me round the edge of the green and over to my ball, even though his ball was on the other edge of the green.
‘we were quite drunk and we were playing roulette and she had been going on and on about me going to America with her..’
‘where in America,’
‘um, L.A.’ There was a pause. ‘Anyway,’ he looked slightly rattled by my question, ‘she said that if I rolled a seven I would have to go back to America and guess what,’
‘you rolled a seven,’
It was time to make my shot, a chip out of the grass onto the green. The grass was dry and short. I completely scuffed the shot. Now I was irate. The nerve of this idiot, thinking I would believe this story as well as this goddam stupid game I kept playing, always going wrong. God how did I get my self in these positions I wondered.
I brooded as we played out the hole. Craig got a bogey, I shot a nine. On the first fucking hole I muttered to myself. We headed off down the slope from the green, along the cart path to the next tee. My bag of clubs was already weighing heavily on my shoulder and my anger was weighing heavily on my mind.
‘So what do you reckon I should do?’ Craig asked as we walked.
Usually I was quite civil in the face of such stories, like the girl he met in Rotorua or his sister’s friend who stalked him or the girl who liked to bite him when they had sex or the girl he rescued from the surf at Pauanui.
But today it was too much, I was tired, it was really hot, I didn’t want to be out here playing terrible golf listening to a lot of rubbish and pretending to believe it just because I didn’t have the guts to put this fool in his place.
‘I dunno, get a normal girlfriend or something,’ I snapped.
‘Well your girlfriend is normal and look how boring your life is’ he snapped back.
That was it. A) my girlfriend was real and he had met her at uni and B) she and I were both far more interesting people than him, we had friends, went to parties and concerts and plenty of unboring stuff. I just didn’t take it upon myself to regale others with endless stories about such things.
Naturally we had to wait at the second tee and as we did I continued to seethe. I also decided that I was going to show young Craig that I knew he was a fraud.
“So what kind of job is her uncle going to get you?’ I asked as Craig placed his tee in the ground.
‘Human resources or something,’
‘No degree and you’re going into human resources, eh.’
‘Well that’s what she said.’
His tee shot was awful. Mine wasn’t too bad and I finished with a double bogey, the same as Craig.
The third hole was long and tricky. There were two slightly brown looking hills between the tee and the green and if you didn’t make the first hill off the pin you were in trouble.
‘So, what about a green card,’ I enquired as he bent down to place his tee. He stared at me as if calculating my intentions before he replied.
‘Well, his uncle’s got a business, he must be able to get me one, why else would he ask?’ He seemed a little annoyed.
‘Of course, I was just asking out of concern.’ I said politely. Craig had covered himself there. Craig’s tee shot fell short of the hill.
The next hole was a very short par three. We were near the motorway and we could hear the drone of the city’s traffic. I had won the last hole so it was my turn to tee off. As I bent down to place the ball Craig asked ‘how long have you been playing this course for?’ Fire with fire.
‘Three years,’
‘Best score?’
‘You know as well as I do,’
‘Just checking in case it had changed,’
My best score was 107, pathetic, his was 102. I’d obviously touched a nerve but he had touched one as well. My tee shot was a ground clipper.
His was even worse right over the back of the green, into the long grass and macrocarpa trees. My question about how his ‘girlfriend’ from Rotorua had been able to run a business and sell artwork and be a drug addict may have been the cause.
At the next tee the silence was deafening. I had crossed the line with the last question, there was now no doubt that he knew that I thought he was a fabricator. I felt bad as he was obviously panicking. I’d always known that all those stories where there to cover up for some serious inadequacies. If Craig couldn’t hide behind his stories the flawed little man that he was would soon be exposed, but he was so fucken annoying.
This hole was a rather long par five. There was a thick stand of pine trees along one side with a large mesh fence behind it. It was the mark of someone playing really badly if your ball hit the fence. My first shot went straight down the middle, Craig’s hit the fence.
Halfway down, my cell phone went off. I fished it out of one of the pockets of the golf bag and read Neil’s name off the display.
‘How’s that essay,’
‘Finished and handed in, daddy’s just about to tee off on the first hole,’
‘sweet’ Neil was the perfect solution to the problem of the growing tension between Craig and I. I told him that we would wait for him by the sixth.
It was a long, awkward wait. We sat on a bench beside the tee for the sixth which looked down on the right to the slope that lead up from the fifth fairway to the green. The drone of the motorway was slightly louder here.
Craig tried to show he wasn’t worried by my interrogation by bringing up topics like the cricket and the Asians spitting in the cafeteria at Uni. I on the other hand was in half a mind to hit him with a few more leading questions about his mysterious love life. Just to remind him who was on top. Instead I decided that Neil and I might have a laugh behind his back and leave it at that. Annoying as Craig was, I knew that he was suffering.
Finally I spotted Neil. He had two of his mates with him-Nick and Dean. Nick was at Uni doing Engineering, Dean was a mechanic and he had that look about him, a skin head, boots, baggy t-shirt and shorts. I could easily imagine him sliding out of the blue overalls and driving over to the course. He was a funny bugger though and I was pleased when I saw him. Nick, in his jock like way was good for a laugh as well. It occurred to me that those three as well as Craig had all gone to school together, so the rest of the round would definitely be more jovial.
Just as that thought occurred to me, Craig suddenly stood up. ‘I gotta go,’ he said.
‘Eh?!’
‘I think I forgot to hand that essay in yesterday,’- an astonishingly bad lie.
Suddenly from down on the fairway Dean’s unmistakeable voice cried out ‘Craigo! Sexy, sexy Craigo!’
Panic flashed across Craig’s face. ‘See ya.’
‘I was with you when you handed it in’ I said,
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied sheepishly. For someone who lied so often that was appalling.
‘What was he up to now ?’I thought.
Although he was bent over preparing to putt, Dean was singing ‘Craigo, you sexy beast, Craigo,’ and when Nick saw Craig he also chimed in as he walked up to the green.
Craig obviously hadn’t been one of the cool kids at school and Dean and Nick were obviously the type who hadn’t moved on from being the cool kids at high school.
‘Craig, Craig, Craig,’ Dean said as the three guys arrived at the sixth tee. Craig looked as if he was going to cry.
‘How’s life?’ Nick asked sarcastically,
‘O.K’ Craig muttered,
Neil and I were standing there feeling rather awkward. As annoying as Craig was, Dean and Nick’s approach seemed a little nasty.
‘Suzy Hayden?’ Dean asked. Neil repressed a chuckle, Nick clapped his hands with delight, his baseball cap almost fell off, Craig turned white. Then I asked ‘the American?’
‘What?!’ Dean exclaimed, ‘she wasn’t American! She was this sixth former he said he‘d kissed and then she found out and beat him up! Actually beat him up!’
Nick guffawed.
‘You’re such a fucking liar, Craigo. What have you told Dave?’
‘Whatever guys,’ Craig said through gritted teeth.
It seemed my efforts had only touched the surface. Dean and Nick had humiliated him for me in the space of five minutes. Poor Craig.
Desperate to save some face and to pretend it never happened. Craig forgot about his exit plan and teed off with us. It was another diabolical shot. In fact the rest of that hole was diabolical. For the first few holes every awful shot of his was accompanied by whoops and cries of mock encouragement from Dean and Nick. Between shots they also took great delight in recounting how Craig had told them all about this girl Suzy at some party. She was a year younger than them and supposedly gorgeous. It was the only party he ever went to at high school. They said he’d even said the word pash. The actual description of her finding out at school the Monday afterwards and kicking and punching and scratching him till he fell on the floor and supposedly even cried had the two of them almost in hysterics. It was a challenge to put the details together in fact. Neil, to his credit, kept giving me looks which hinted at the combination of mirth and pity that he felt for poor old Craig.
Poor old Craig. His round was a disaster, every hole went badly. I caught sight of him smashing a club into the ground after one of his shots had failed to get out from behind some trees. After his shot on the fourteenth went in the water, there was a lump in his throat. Nick and Dean got bored of taunting him after about the eleventh but the damage was done. His score card added up to 134. Mine was a solid 112. But worse still the veneer Craig had created in his own mind about how I, and possibly other people, perceived him had been completely cracked. The pit I always knew I could partially see into had been exposed.
Just to make matters worse, Craig had to give me a ride home. What to say, what to say, I thought for most of the round. I decided halfway through the back nine what I wanted to say. As we headed off in his mum’s red Honda City, the tension was almost tangible. We rolled through the suburb in silence. But as we pulled out onto the main road I said it,
‘we’ll that Suzy sounds like a bitch, thank god your new Suzy likes you so much eh. Do you think you will go to America?’
With a touch of vulnerability, he looked at me for any more signs of sarcasm. I did my best to hide them and a button inside him clicked back on.
‘It’s not an easy decision you know……’ the tale became more and more elaborate the further we drove but by the time he dropped me off he was happy again and to some extent so was I. I went in and called my girlfriend.
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The world is a harmless engima made terribleby humankinds flawed attempts to understand it
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) I didn't particularly see a kiwi slant to your writing...way too many bogey references though. 
. actually, I think it would make a good short story. Nah actually not. Too mean.
What will it take to show you that it's not the life it seems? I told you time and time again, you sing the words but don't know what it means
