Soccer Mom - Chapter Nine
By Pac (pac)
Things go awry with Terri and Eric's little competition

After that, the dam broke, so to speak.  We did any number of competitive things:  
batting cages (where she blasted the balls practically into orbit!), swimming (she lapped 
me after about ten laps), running (I lost sight of her after a mile:  her casual run was my 
all-out race pace!).  

I don't even want to get into details about the outcome of our only one-on-one 
basketball game.  Thankfully it was early in this sporting phase.  The sex after that one 
was legendary.  I'm not if I had more aches and pains from the game of the after-game.

You name it, and, true to her word, she kicked my ass!  Not just beat, but utterly 
crushed.  If the competition had a score, it was always astoundingly high for her and just 
as astoundingly low for me.  Shut-outs were commonplace.  And it's wasn't arrogant or 
taunting... just incredibly... perfect.  Perfectly competent.  Perfectly precise, measured, 
and controlled.  Intense, definitely, but not fanatical.  She was just overwhelmingly good 
at EVERYTHING!

I was okay with it at first... and, like I said, I'm not an intensely competitive person.  I 
like to work hard, but I play more to have fun.  However being totally crushed and 
humiliated, not just beaten, in everything we did was starting to take its toll.

I started looking for things that didn't rely on athleticism, but it didn't matter.  We played 
chess and she won every game decisively.  We went to a shooting range, and she outshot 
me by so many points it was sad, scoring ten-rings almost every target... and so on, ad 
nauseum.

I think the most maddening thing about it was that she just did it with perfect calm and 
control.  She was so totally convinced of the outcome that she expected it.  Sometimes, 
she would even sigh, like she wished she hadn't won.  I could tell, though, from the fire in 
her eyes, and from the usual enthusiasm when she won that she was enjoying it.  I 
continued to bite my tongue, and her exuberance after the events made it not hurt so 
much... for a while.

The thing that was getting to me at the end of our little competition mania was that Terri 
had realized that not only did she enjoy competing with me, but that she wanted to try 
everything.  After so many years of not being able to experience all of these different 
things for fear of intimidating her partner, she realized she had a person who was okay 
with being humiliated at every turn (or, at least I was that way at the beginning).  She 
looked in earnest for things she wanted to try, and, as usual, I was thoroughly defeated at 
them all.  When I had some previous experience it would sometimes get into the realm of 
me giving her a little challenge, but when we were both neophytes, it was invariably a 
crushing rout.

The funny thing was, it seemed her self-consciousness wouldn't allow her to latch onto 
one sport or competitive event that she liked and wished to stick with.  She would give it 
a shot, kick my ass, and then that was it.  It was like she was checking off some sort of 
bucket list created by Bryant Gumbel.  Sometimes I consoled myself by thinking that 
each ass-beating I took was one less I would have suffer through the next time.  
Unfortunately, there never seemed to be an end to the new sports we could try.

The detached part of me assessed her incredible ability, and it seemed to boil down to 
several things:  her supreme confidence, her preparation before engaging, her sheer 
awesome athleticism, and her absolute brilliance.  I guess I never really talked about that, 
but she had to be one of the smartest people I had ever met.  Valedictorian of her high 
school, magna in college and top of her class in law school... I mean, she WAS perfect, 
by any contemporary definition of the term.  I was starting to find it intimidating... and 
irritating.  She wasn't bad at anything, and she simply did not make mistakes.  I never 
saw anything like it in my life.  Her execution in everything was flawless.

She was so nonchalant and modest about it, and not arrogant at all.  It got to the point 
where sometimes I wished she would jump up and down and yell 'in your face!' or 
something, but no, she was just humble and calm and such a good sport... it was simply 
infuriating after a while.  I know in hindsight it was my emasculated ego, but after a while 
I started thinking I would see a brief, smug look on her face after our matches.  That 
imagined look felt like she was kicking me when I was down when I "saw" it, or thought 
I saw it.  My head told me she would never do that, especially given her trepidation at 
even thinking about competing, but my wounded pride wouldn't listen.  My mind's eye 
saw that smug little smile, that 'told you so' smile.  Later on, I found any smile she had 
when we played together was just plain happiness, but at the time, it was just a smug 
look that I wanted to smash with whatever sporting implement I happened to have at the 
time.  I remember once lining her back up with a freaking bow, and then realized what 
the hell I was doing and about shot myself in the foot with the arrow.

About three months into our relationship was when it finally happened.   We went golfing 
at a public course, and the day went downhill from the first stroke.  I was playing like shit 
anyway, but, of course, she didn't ever fucking have days like that.  She was just flawless 
in execution and everything just seemed to go her way.  Hell, it even felt like the goddamn 
wind would change favorably for her when her shot was up!  

I was stoic about it until the back nine, but it was building like this inevitable force, a 
volcano that had yet to blow its top from the build up of pressure.  She was way under 
par on her scorecard, and I had been fuming all morning.  I tried my damnedest to not 
show it and to keep it bottled up, but I was mad as hell at myself for being off my game 
on top of getting outperformed so dramatically.  She had a 24 after nine holes, all birdies 
and eagles (and even a hole in one!), and I had bogeys on three holes, and a double on 
the ninth.  The anger that had been simmering over the past few months was boiling to 
critical, and I tried desperately to push the anger away, but there was just no stopping it 
at that point.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when my ball went into the water hazard on 
hole ten.  I let out a roar of rage and flung my driver as far over the little manmade pond 
as I could.

"FUCK!"  I howled.  "AAARRRGGH! FUCK FUCK FUCK!"

It was one of my most shameful moments as an adult.  I had about two minutes of 
profanity laced yelling and stomping around.  I kicked my golf bag, spilling clubs and balls 
all over the fairway.  I kicked them, and tripped over one, and got up madder than hell.  I 
took the bag and threw it into the water trap, too, swearing like mad.  Looking back, I 
was a total baby.

I finally finished my tantrum, huffing and puffing from the exertion, and realized what I had 
done.  I immediately became embarrassed, and looked back at Terri, who stood near the 
golf cart.  She had a look like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car:  eyes 
wide as saucers.  She looked like she was ready to turn and run away.  It looked like she 
hadn't moved a muscle since I started flipping out.  She had a water bottle half raised as 
if she had been ready to take a drink when my fit had begun.  Some of it actually had 
spilled out onto her spikes.

"Terri..." I started, and I saw her eyes had welled up with tears.

"Oh no..." I heard her whisper so faintly that for a second I thought I hearing things.

The bottle fell from her hand.  She started packing her clubs into her bag and turned 
away from me, lifting the heavy bag easily onto the back of the cart.  Even in this dreadful 
moment, my eye was drawn to her beauty.  

She looked radiant in her white skirt and polo shirt.  After months of convincing, I had 
finally talked her into wearing clothes that flattered her upper body a bit, since I was so 
terribly attracted to it.  She was still modest in her dress, but had started wearing short 
sleeves finally, and she was surprised at how few comments were actually tossed around.

"I'm so sorry," I said to her, feeling like a total ass.  "I've just been having a bad day."

What she said next made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

"Would you like to hit me?" she said.

"What?!?" I cried, shocked.

She had such a sad look on her face, it made me sick to my stomach.

"Bill used to take out his frustration by hitting me," she said.  "He never hit me in the face, 
but he would hit me on my body, because he knew it wouldn't hurt me.  I was okay with 
it, too, but in retrospect, it just seemed to make him madder sometimes, but I love you, 
Eric-" at this point the tears started streaming "-so you can hit me, too, if it will make you 
feel better."

She ended the sentence with a little sob that wrenched at my heart, and I realized that 
there were several times that morning that I wanted to take one of my clubs and brain her 
in my fury.  That made me feel even more shitty.

"Wha-?  No... Terri, no!  I would never do..." I stopped, totally overcome with what I 
just set in motion.

She now looked so forlorn.

"Bill used to say that I always seemed so smug to him, like I was rubbing it in his face, 
any time I did anything better.  Honestly, I swear I wasn't!  He was a good man before I 
came into his life, and I really think it was me that made him want to cheat to win, to 
finally beat me at something, and we paid the price for it.  He turned into such a horrible 
person, and most of the time I think it was my fault.  It's like I destroyed him... and now 
I'm doing it to you!"

She was crying outright, now, and her words were slurred with her sorrow.

"I don't want to do this to you, Eric!  You're such a good man, you're so wonderful to 
me, you're so great with Jordan... and you actually like my horrible deformed body!  
Maybe I was just seeing things, or feeling something that wasn't there, but I thought it 
was so perfect, and I was terrified to think this would end up like every other 
relationship." she said, and wept so bitterly.  "I begged you not to compete with me, 
begged and begged you!  I tried!  I tried so hard!"

I tried to come to her, but she just seemed to shrink into herself, hugging her body so 
tightly with her big arms that I thought she was going to hurt herself.  Her shirt actually 
ripped at the shoulders from her squeezing herself so hard!

I just didn't have any words to even begin to explain....  I wrecked this beautiful thing 
that we had begun to have.  Shit was too nice a word to explain how I felt.  It definitely 
qualified as an epic fail.

I don't remember walking away until I saw the clubhouse.  She had driven us both there 
today, so I had to catch a cab to get home.

Shit.