This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Racquet Magazine.
To the ominous howl of wind gusting through chain link fences, the two teams lined up under a gray, overcast sky and waited for their names to be called. The coaches announced the matchups two by two, prompting a quick handshake between opponents and the distribution of a fresh can of balls. Reaching the last name on their list, the coaches paused: first, to reckon with the emaciated, metal-encrusted skeleton standing at the end of the line, and second, because my name is impossible to pronounce.
My high school tennis matches were macabre performance art, where after extending a veiny, skeletal arm for my opponent to shake, I’d slowly turn and drift to our assigned court. Clad in chains while carrying no bag, no water bottle, and no towel, I was a hardcourt Jacob Marley, and would milk the pained shuffle for maximal effect. Ambling to the net post, I’d begin a ceremony to remove my jewelry piece by piece, softly resting each ring and chain down on the ground. The performance would end with a white headband stretching over the crown of my skull, tightly-binding a cascade of shoulder-length hair dyed the color of a raven’s wing.
The match would begin and dark clouds would gather. As if possessed by an unseen force, I’d jerk around the court, flashing my long limbs to return balls hit to my side of the net. In a twisted pageant of endurance, each point would be a battle lasting dozens of shots, virtually-always ending with my opponent making a mistake. During changeovers, I’d stand motionless and stare with bloodshot eyes glaring from sunken sockets. Before they could even start to figure out what was wrong with me, my adversary would be back out on court, struggling to survive a brand of tennis they had no interest in playing.
With their hopes of winning slipping away, the opponent would then notice a group of darkly-clad spectators, gathering like crows on the bleachers. Little did they know that this group convened to witness a ceremonial kill, hastened by the ever-more-impenetrable web I was weaving over the court. By the time the hearse pulled up, they were more than ready for their body bag. This was goth tennis.
Wayne Kramer of the MC5 called Detroit “American Pompeii” for its tragic, abandoned fate in the wake of the 1967 race riots. I grew up in Warren, one of the many northern suburbs that Detroiters flocked to during white flight, but it became no less tragic by the 90s, decaying as a soulless grid of subdivisions, expressways, and depressingly-named businesses like “Crash Landing Bar & Grill” and “The Hesitation Lounge.”
My Ukrainian parents owned a small, brick house in one of these subdivisions, adjacent to a highway. My father was obsessed with the security of our house, fearing that crime would move north from Detroit, then known as “The Murder City.” His hypervigilant behaviors included insisting that the television stay on when we weren’t home, cross-checking to ensure that all the “sticks” were in the door walls (a secondary layer of protection in the event their locks failed), and displaying a garage door sign reading “Forget the dog, BEWARE OF OWNER!” emblazoned with an illustration of an outwardly-pointed gun.
As annoying as his security protocols were, far more insidious was his unpredictable rage. Its daily presence led to a turbulent marriage between my parents, and a home life dominated by violence and physical abuse. It was an unusual living situation, akin to a family being forced to cohabitate with a vicious wild animal.
I’m the middle child—the only boy—and was the target of most of my father’s abuse. A few years before, he’d slammed my head so hard into a wall that it broke my bottom two teeth in half, after which my mother pleaded with me to lie to the dentist, saying that “worse things will happen to all of us” if I told the truth of what happened. The incident left deep scars in my nervous system, and by the time I was 15, I barely ate, I barely spoke, and my tall, emaciated body was pock-marked with painful acne. After suffering through our nightly family dinners in defensive silence, I’d retreat to the backyard, where I’d beat a tennis ball against a brick wall until I fell into a sedated trance. From there, I’d crawl to my room to fall asleep to the soft hiss of the nighttime highway, and the only dreams I had were nightmares.
I attended Warren Mott— a sprawling suburban high school four miles north of Detroit. I was a sophomore coming off a freshman year where I split time at a magnet school*, so still felt like a new kid, navigating the student body with all my weirdnesses. Aside from my strange looks, which were often compared to Mitch in Dazed & Confused—“if Mitch were starving to death”—a perpetual source of embarrassment lay in how difficult it was for Americans to pronounce my last name. Correcting things only led to another indignity: In Ukrainian, “Duzyj” translates to “powerful.” In English, the pronunciation is close to “Douchey.”
I mostly kept to myself, but just before classes let out the previous year, the prettiest and most popular girl in school—Jen—told mutual friends that she had a crush on me. The shock of that revelation inspired a summer of dreaming that a cool girlfriend would make all my problems go away, and now that we were back in school, winning her heart represented my life’s sole mission.
I spent much of the fall at the tennis courts, during the Girls’ tennis season. I’d played tennis the previous year, but our team had been extremely mediocre and was more or less an after-school program for outcasts, nerds, and lost souls. The coach of both the Boys’ and Girls’ teams was Larry Harte—a hardcore tennis fanatic who practically lived at the courts out of a Geo Metro packed with racquets, ball hoppers, and bulk-sized boxes of cereal. The story was that Larry worked the night shift at the Dow Chemical plant downriver, which, combined with a minimal need for sleep, allowed him to fully devote his days to tennis. Every day of the week, he’d be at the courts from 2pm to sundown, and would accommodate any student who wanted to hit balls, chart matches, or just hang out.
The courts were the perfect place for me to lay low after school, charting matches and feeding balls to the players on the girls team. Most importantly, the courts provided an ideal vantage point for me to watch Jen train on the cross-country team, where we’d exchange friendly waves as she’d glide past on the track. As much as I dreamed of getting closer, the courts were near enough for us to recognize one another, but far enough where she couldn’t quite make out the fresh acne bleeding down my face. I promised myself that I’d make a move as soon as my skin cleared up, but breakouts continued until the fall seasons ended, the school took down the nets, and the cold wind started to blow.
*it didn’t work out.
With Larry disappearing for the winter and my tennis friends dissolving into the student body, my primary social circle became the art room, where I was among another group of outcasts. The gay goths were the toughest kids in school: outspoken, creative, and perpetually dressed in black. The leader of the group was Dale—a handsome, black-ponytailed senior who also happened to be the best artist in school. Not only was Dale the first openly gay kid I ever met, but he also seemed wildly independent for someone still in high school. He owned a car, worked a job, and was the frontman of a goth band named Seraphyn, whose local gigs he would promote in class. Dale’s best friend was a tough, mohawked lesbian named Kristen- another great artist who wielded a volcanic, weapons-grade laugh. Together, they presided over the art room, looking out for a larger group of outcasts and administering swift justice to any dickhead who fucked with the vibe.
One day, a preppy upperclassman mocked the style of something I was drawing. Dale came over, asking the room if I should really take style tips from someone with a “caesar hairdo.” To the sound of laughter, the young caesar withdrew to his seat, and Dale sat down on the table in front of me. He told me that he’d actually been noticing my drawings and thought they were cool. He also asked if I wanted to come out to lunch with him & Kristen.
Despite our school being working class, many of its students had parents who worked at a nearby GM plant, leading to an abundance of freshly-leased cars shimmering in the parking lot. Dale’s car was the polar opposite: a foreign, spray-painted hatchback, dented to hell and sporting a pride sticker on the back window. Straining under the weight of three passengers, the hatchback heaved out of the parking lot and arrived minutes later at the local White Castle, which held court in the parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall. Sputtering through the drive-thru, Dale treated our group to five large containers of French fries, after which he parked the car in the middle of the gargantuan parking lot. With a sly grin, he asked if I wanted “to see something cool”, and before I could answer, he dashed out the door, dumped three containers of fries over the top of the car, and rushed back inside. He narrowed his eyes and leaned towards me. “So are you a jock or what?”, he asked. As a group of seagulls began to swirl overhead, I told him that I did play on the
varsity tennis team, but that I’d been told I was too scrawny to qualify as a jock. He found that amusing and a smile returned to his face. With the birds beginning a feeding frenzy, Dale leaned back in his seat, jammed a few fries into his mouth, and told me he was wary of jocks. To the sound of wings beating against the windows, he told a story of being jumped by a group of football players during his freshman year, where they repeatedly punched him and threw him to the ground while calling him a “faggot.” “It was the biggest story in school that year,” he recounted, “and I was so terrified that it’d happen again that I stayed in my house for a few weeks. I actually considered dropping out.” Looking into the distance through the shit-smeared windshield, Dale said the episode forced him to make a hard choice, deciding that he’d rather come back to school being the person he is rather than live in fear of a world that didn’t care to understand him. I nodded my head as if I understood, but before I could respond, he fired up the hatchback, revved the engine, and lurched forward out of our seagull sarcophagus. As we pulled back into the school parking lot, I noticed my classmates’ faces contorting in horror at the sight of the defiled hatchback. I had a new hero.
I decided to dye my hair black on Halloween. Kristen did it for me in her basement, and I was immediately enamored with how pale and sickly it made me look. Darkness fell over my wardrobe next, narrowing my choices of clothing to the colors of scabs and bruises, and accessorized by an ever-increasing number of rings and chains. I began spending my evenings with a new group of friends. Chuk was a photographer who drove a decommissioned hearse and took photos of graveyards. Charlotte introduced me to weed, which we’d smoke in the back of her ancient station wagon as she’d idle through subdivisions. Many nights, our group would end up at the center of the goth universe—The Gotham City Cafe—either to watch Dale’s band, enjoy a new art show (black & white photos of cemeteries, mostly), or just to hang out on decrepit sofas while drinking black coffee.
My parents were less than thrilled at my new lifestyle, but there was little they could do to stem the black tide. My bedroom was transformed into a dungeon of darkness, with tall bookcases dragged in to block the view of my bed and my furniture draped in yards of black rayon. Just inside the door was something my mother woefully referred to as my “satanic altar”- a fish-tank stand repurposed into a platform where I burned drip candles next to a plastic skull. I came and went through my window.
One night, I was alone in the family car with my dad. He took a long drag from his cigarette and asked if it was true, as he’d heard, that I’d gotten into a car with a “rainbow” sticker on it. I told him it was. His eyes bulging, he screamed, “SO ARE YOU GAY??” These were the first questions he’d asked me in years, but the most I could muster in reply was a soft “no.” “GOOD,” he shouted, flicking the cigarette onto the highway and viciously stepping on the gas.
Each spring, at the precise moment the thermometer hit 40, Larry would magically appear back at the tennis courts. He read somewhere that 40 degrees was the threshold where racquet strings would no longer shatter from the cold, so even though springs in Detroit are notoriously windy and wet, he was back out on the courts everyday, conducting drills in a full sweat.
Despite many idiosyncrasies and a bizarre appearance,* Larry was widely respected as a coach. A few years before, he’d led a local underdog to the State championship, and was known to insist that all his players abide by a strict code of ethics. There were many parts to it, but the basics were extremely blue collar: Nothing will ever be handed to you. What you put in determines what you get out. If you want something, you’ll have to earn it. You’re to hold yourself to high academic standards. You will not poison yourself with alcohol or cigarettes. Bad sportsmanship will not be tolerated. And above all else, you will not cheat the game.
I showed up to spring conditioning looking terrible. After a winter of smoking weed, drinking coffee, and sleeping horribly, I was a gaunt, veiny cadaver with sunken eyes and translucent skin. Larry noticed my ghoulish new appearance, but beyond commenting that the large, metal rings on my swinging hand might give me calluses, he didn’t seem to mind and welcomed me back into the fold.
After an exhausting session of running and skipping rope, I caught my breath on the bleachers and looked out to the track. Beyond the five pounds of jewelry I was wearing, something else was weighing on me: Jen, a prodigious pole vaulter, was training for track season, but she wasn’t waving to me anymore. Over the winter, her best friend had told her that I was now a “pothead” and that associating with me would be social suicide. As I watched her jam her pole into the ground and catapult majestically through the air, I knew I was dead to her.
Laden in jump ropes from practice, Larry came over to where I was sitting. He asked how my winter had gone, and after telling him a bit about my new friends in the art room, he asked if I’d been listening to any new music. Assuming he’d never heard of any of the bands I was being introduced to, I told him that I was really into The Sisters of Mercy. “Oh, they’re incredible,” Larry said. “You know, I actually used to follow them out on the road.”
This was by far the weirdest thing any adult had ever said to me, and as I looked over at my bizarre jock coach who followed a band with songs like “This Corrosion” and “Amphetamine Logic,” I noticed a look on his face that said he may have revealed something he hadn’t actually wanted to. “I’ll see you back here tomorrow” he said quickly, and scooping up the rest of the jump ropes, he hurried off to his car.
*A reedy scarecrow of a man, Larry had thick, coke-bottle glasses, cartoonishly-large false front teeth, and shoulder-length curly hair that was perpetually topped by a cheap, foam trucker hat (which, whenever removed, revealed a completely bald, pale head.)
The team had a one month preseason before matches started, and we were all determined to avoid the humiliation of the previous year, when Romeo High—the school Kid Rock went to—won the division title on our courts, celebrating by spraying cans of root beer all over our stuff.
As part of our training, Larry handed out stapled packets of tennis strategy articles, photocopied from various magazines. Sifting through the packet while stoned one night, I zeroed-in on two articles that vibrated with a dark energy. Emboldened by the strange connection we shared about our favorite goth band, I caught Larry after the next day’s practice and told him that I saw a way to reinvent my game around the two articles. I gave a brief overview of what I was thinking, and agreeing with the premise, he said that he’d be willing to train me if I were willing to put in the work. I said that I would, and agreed to be back at the courts the next day.
Thus began my transformation. The first article was titled “Make Them Hit the Ball One More Time.” It made the case that amateur matches are won more by managing errors than by hitting winners, concluding that a consistent, defensive gameplan holds an advantage against error-prone opponents. I’d always been a strong defensive player—my limbs are extremely long and I showed flashes of quickness—and I’d also been losing to players who seemed terrible. The second article was “Play The Percentages,” and made a statistical argument that the amount of risk a player takes in shot selection should coincide with the score of the game being played. If a player is up 40-15, they should feel more free to try for lower-percentage, winning shots, knowing that they have a bit of a cushion in the event they miss. In situations where the same player is down 0-40, they should avoid playing low-percentage shots that risk losing the game, favoring higher-percentage shots to keep the point going. The overall lesson: Force your opponent to beat you rather than beating yourself.
Through the midwestern spring’s wind & rain, Larry taught me how to keep points alive. Step 1: Develop an ability to hit 100 balls in a single rally. I achieved this fairly quickly, mostly due to what I’d been doing against the wall in my backyard. Step 2: Evaluate the risks associated with each of my shots, favoring ones I hit at the highest percentages. Step 3: Learn to neutralize my opponent’s biggest weapons against me.
We started with a technique to diagnose an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses during warmups, after which I’d relentlessly hit balls at their weaknesses. In the event they didn’t have a conspicuous weakness, I was taught to keep the ball deep in the middle of the court to make it more difficult for opponents to hit severe angles against me. In moments when opponents would move into the net, I was taught to either hit a heavy topspin shot to their feet, or to softly lob a ball over their heads, forcing them to retreat and restart the rally.
My lung capacity increased week to week, and despite the fact I was still skeletal, my rallies with Larry could now extend to 200 shots. As my legs churned and lungs ached, a long-repressed rage burned through my insides, drowning all my emotional pain—my parents, Jen, the disgusting body I saw in the mirror—leaving me only with a capacity to focus on the neon ball in front of me. The longer the points lasted, the deeper the burn penetrated, and in moments when I’d notice Larry weakening, a predatory extra gear would engage to extend the rally and our shared misery. We’d continue these sessions well after sundown—reacting mostly to the sound of the ball off one another’s strings—and while spinning the ball back again and again, I’d catch myself smiling in the dark. Tolerating pain had become my superpower.
By the time the season started in April, I was ready to fuck some kids up. I didn’t *just* want to win—the perverse scoreline I dreamed of was to lose 0 games, commit 0 errors, and hit 0 winners. I wanted my opponents to be so demoralized by my playing style that they’d utterly unravel in front of me. I wanted them to know and be haunted by the knowledge that they’d actually played, and lost, a match against themselves.
Our school nickname was “The Marauders,” and its pirate energy meshed well with my freshly dark vibe. The same couldn’t be said of our school’s maroon & gold color scheme, especially on the day when a pile of oversized maroon t-shirts was revealed to be our uniforms. Sensing our disappointment, Larry somehow unearthed a decade-old box of ratty Warren Mott Tennis polo shirts, which, while still not ideal, at least bore a retro, striped aesthetic and a slimmer fit. A few of the guys joined me in opting for the tattered polos, and combined with the dudes who had opted for the generously-cut maroons, our band of pirates was ready to take on the world.
The season started well for our team and we won our first half-dozen matches. I was getting what I wanted from my results as well, and began to mentally collect a gallery of pained expressions from opponents. Back in the art room, I’d regale the goths with stories of thrown racquets and punched fences, and fill the margins of my notebooks with drawings of tombstones inscribed with opponents’ names. My ultimate victories would come during afternoon announcements, when the “cool kid” student broadcasters would be forced to read off yet another dominating “pothead” victory. As surprised classmates turned their heads my way, I’d give them the same thousand mile stare I’d give my opponents across the net. For a world that could only see skin deep, I was disorienting, indecipherable, and unknowable. I was a human black hole.
We reached the regional tournament, the winner of which would go to States. Our team came in with a great record, but no team from Warren Mott had ever won our very-competitive region. The perennial powerhouse was a team from Grosse Pointe: the richest, whitest suburb of Detroit, home to yacht clubs and private events. I was sure these guys would pound us, and be royal dicks while doing it.
The tournament was between 10 teams, and was three rounds of single elimination. Each victory from a team’s 8 rungs would score a point, and the team with the most points at the end of the day would win. I was uncharacteristically nervous that morning, sure that we’d end another season losing to jerks, so was relieved to see that my first round opponent was a kid from a weak local school who I’d already beaten twice that season. At the end of our previous match, he’d been so angry that he screamed “YOU HAVE NO CLASS!” at me while refusing to shake my hand, and that unhinged energy continued as I easily rolled him 6-0, 6-0. I carried momentum into my second match, which I also won easily, setting up the final against Grosse Pointe North.
As I sat on the bleachers waiting for the final’s court assignment, a parent who’d been watching the tournament came over with a scouting report. “Sorry to say, but I don’t think you’re gonna win this one,” he said, pointing out that the Grosse Pointe North player Andrew made a habit of hitting service returns hard, low, and to the corners. I’d only lost 4 matches that season, but all were to players who could hit this shot, keeping the points in my service games short. Adding to my stress was the fact that the afternoon sun had come out from behind some clouds, and all my jewelry was getting uncomfortably hot.
When we finally took the court, I was in a full sweat, scrambling to summon dark energy. I went into my usual jewelry-removal and thousand-mile-stare routines, but Andrew, who wore a monogrammed tracksuit and carried a large-capacity racquet bag, gave me nothing to work with. No sideways glance, no dickish smirk. He was all business and ready to go.
Still, the sheer oddity of my game took him by surprise, and I took the first set 6-1. The second set was completely different- he began to play much more aggressively, and as I felt my advantage quickly slip away, Larry met me at a changeover and told me that if I wanted to win, I’d have to change tactics to match his aggression, get to the net, and put balls away.
I did my best to implement the new strategy, but I was extremely uncomfortable and things remained close through the set. On another changeover, I noticed black splotches on my shoulders and on the neckline of my polo. Turns out, I’d been sweating so much that my hair dye was dripping down and staining my uniform.
I took a narrow 5-4 lead, but Nosferatu was fading in the sun. I knew I didn’t have anything left for a third set, so using the last of my energy, I forced myself into the net again & again, desperate to finish. At 40-30, I hit a hard approach shot and watched him throw a high lob up into the sun. As I craned my neck to find it, pupils shrinking and vision flooding white, I jumped back, stretched my limbs as long as my tendons could bear, and swung on instinct. I felt the ball catch just inside the frame and watched it land cleanly into the open court. It was all over. And I was a wreck.
Andrew approached the net, saying “nice finish” and shaking my hand with a smile. Aside from exhaustion, the overwhelming feeling I had was shame. I’d spent my entire day hating this guy and using my pathetic psy-ops against him, but in the end the judgment I’d been looking to provoke was a judgment I myself had made of him. He was a good dude. And seemed to live by the code.
By the end of the afternoon, our band of pirates had pulled off the unthinkable. Our team had scored 20 overall points, winning the tournament and toppling Grosse Pointe North. The Marauders were going to States.
During a celebratory team dinner at Larry’s favorite pizza place,* my shame took on another dimension. Looking around, I realized that I’d been so trapped inside my own head during the season that I’d failed to appreciate how incredible my teammates were, how much they had never judged me, and how so many of them had fought through their own demons to become champions. This realization revealed Larry’s master plan, and as we watched him fold a giant pile of pizza slices between two paper plates, tuck them under his arm and head out to his car, it was hard not to see our strange-but-principled coach for who he really was—the king of the underdogs.
*$5 a head, all you can eat.
We rolled into States like the Bad News Bears invading a country club. With an impressive array of unathletic body types draped in ill-fitting clothing, we stood in contrast to the sea of toned bros wearing matching tracksuits and wraparound shades. The courts in Midland were by far the nicest any of us had ever seen, but after witnessing about 10 minutes of competition, it became clear that we were vastly out of our league.
We all lost in our first rounds—I was shellacked 6-1, 6-2 in about 30 minutes—but after the year we’d had, we were determined to not let the losses spoil our weekend away from home. With the newfound interest and affection I had for my teammates, I took a personal gamble to do something that could bring us all closer together.
With Larry at a nearby bar to watch the Red Wings, I threw a makeshift hotel party, covering the smoke detectors in damp towels and lighting up the weed & cigars I’d stashed in my bag. The plan was just to cut loose for a couple hours, but as stoned teenagers, we lost track of time and then saw, to our horror, Larry standing in the doorway. He leered at us with a wide, penetrating gaze, not saying a word but not needing to. As we all sat frozen in place, he stormed down the hall to his room and slammed the door.
The sobering verdict came an hour later: We were all kicked off the team, and we’d all have to find our own rides home since we weren’t allowed back on the team bus. I had ruined everything.
The school year was ending, and the goths were cleaning their cobwebs out of the art room. Dale was graduating, and he gifted me with a headshot inscribed with the message: “To Mickey- you’re the biggest, most beautiful babe!!” I was happy that he’d soon be free to pursue his stardom, but something nagged at me that my art room friends couldn’t help with.
I’d see my teammates in the hallways, and most were still bitter about getting kicked off the team. “Good riddance,” one of them said, slamming his locker shut while saying the whole thing was “Larry’s loss.” For me, it all felt much more unresolved, especially after school one day, when I saw Larry packing the team gear into his car.
As I walked through the parking lot, I thought about the year, about my life at home, about the code, and about Larry. He’d shown me that no matter what things look like on the outside, that being accountable for one's own effort and discipline could create miracles in the most unexpected of ways. That accountability led to the beginnings of a self-esteem that freed me from the defensive crouch I’d been living in. And it opened a door to highs that could feel well earned. But true accountability also extends to things that happened in the past.
As I approached his car, Larry looked up from the chaotic pile of racquets and hoppers spilling from the hatchback. I told him that I wasn’t there to be reinstated to the team, but to say that he deserved better than how selfishly we’d acted at States. I told him that I couldn’t take back what I did, but that I was sorry for betraying him and the code, both of which had given me so much. He listened to what I had to say with the same penetrating glare he’d given us all at States, but after a few seconds of silence, he pursed his lips, nodded his head, and looked back towards the car. Exhaling deeply through his nose, he said with a smile “So, are we gonna hit some balls or what?”
As the neon orb streaked back & forth across the net until the sun set over the trees, my season in hell was over and a little light crept into my heart.
Mickey Duzyj was reinstated to the Warren Mott Tennis team and was part of a group that went to States again the following year. Despite cutting his hair and retiring his jewelry, he continued a dominant high school career, winning the MAC Conference’s Most Valuable Player award in 1999. He still holds the school record for career double bagels (13), 11 of which came in the year of goth tennis.