Open: An Autobiography

Inside the metal front doors of Bradenton Academy stands the office, the nerve center of the school and the source of much pain. Report cards and threatening letters emanate from the office. Bad boys are sent there. The office is also the lair of Mrs. G and Doc G, married coprincipals of Bradenton Academy, and, I suspect, frustrated sideshow performers. Mrs. G is a gangly woman with no midsection. She looks as if her shoulders have been set directly on her hips. She tries to disguise this odd shape by wearing skirts, but this only accentuates the problem. On her face she wears two gobs of blush and one smear of lipstick, a symmetrical triad of three circles that she color-coordinates the way other people do their shoes and belt.

Her cheeks and mouth always match, and always almost distract you from the hump in her back. Nothing Mrs. G wears, however, can distract you from her gargantuan hands. She has mitts the size of rackets, and the first time she shakes my hand I think I might faint.

Old Doc G is half her size but has just as many body issues. It’s not hard to see what they first found in common. Frail, gamy, Doc G has a right arm that’s been shriveled since birth. He ought to hide this arm, keep it behind his back or shoved in a pocket. Instead he waves it around, brandishes it like a weapon. He likes to take students aside for one-on-one chats, and whenever he does so, he swings his bad arm up onto the student’s shoulder, setting it there until he’s said his piece. If this doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, nothing will. Doc G’s arm feels like a pork tenderloin lying on your shoulder, and hours later you can still feel it there and you can’t help but shiver.

Mrs. G and Doc G have instituted dozens of rules at Bradenton Academy, and one of the most strictly enforced is their ban on jewelry. Thus, I go out of my way to pierce my ears. It’s an easy show of rebellion, which, as I see it, is my last resort. Rebellion is the one thing I get to choose every day, and this rebellion comes with the added bonus that it represents a neat little fuck-you to my father, who’s always hated earrings on men. Many times I’ve heard my father say that earrings equal homosexuality. I can’t wait for him to see mine. (I buy both studs and dangly hoops.) He’ll finally regret sending me thousands of miles from home and leaving me here to be corrupted.

I make a feeble and insincere effort to hide my new accessory, wrapping a Band-Aid around it. Mrs. G notices, of course, just as I hoped she would. She pulls me out of class and confronts me.

Mr. Agassi, what is the meaning of that bandage?

I hurt my ear.

Hurt your - ? Don’t be ridiculous. Remove that Band-Aid.

I pull off the Band-Aid. She sees the stud and gasps.

We do not allow earrings at Bradenton Academy, Mr. Agassi. The next time I see you, I will expect the Band-Aid gone and the earring out.

By the end of the first semester I’m close to failing all my classes. Except English. I show a strange aptitude for literature, especially poetry. Memorizing famous poems, writing original poems, it comes easily to me. We’re assigned to write a short verse about our daily lives and I set mine proudly on the teacher’s desk. She likes it. She reads it aloud in class. Some of the other kids later ask me to ghostwrite their homework. I dash off their assignments on the bus, no problem. The English teacher detains me after class and says I have real talent. I smile.

It’s different from being told by Nick that I have talent. This feels like something I’d like to pur-sue. For a moment I imagine what it would be like to do something besides playing tennis - something I choose. Then I go to my next class, math, and the dream dies in a cloud of algebra formulae. I’m not cut out to be a scholar. The math teacher’s voice sounds as if it’s coming from miles away. The next class, French, is worse. I’m très stupide. I transfer to Spanish, where I’m muy estúpido. Spanish, I think, might actually shorten my life. The boredom, the confusion, might cause me to expire in my chair. They will find me one day in my seat, muerto.

Gradually school goes from being hard to being physically harmful. The anxiety of boarding the bus, the twenty-six-minute ride, the inevitable confrontation with Mrs. G or Doc G, actually make me ill. What I dread most is the moment, the daily moment, when I’m exposed as a loser. An academic loser. So great is this dread that over time Bradenton Academy modifies my view of the Bollettieri Academy. I look forward to all those drills, and even the high-pressure tournaments, because at least I’m not at school.

Thanks to one particularly big tournament, I miss a major history test at Bradenton Academy, a test I was sure to fail. I celebrate this dodging of a bullet by eviscerating my opponents. But when I return to school my teacher says I have to take a makeup.