Reign of Rage

[johnyandell]

Would love to hear what you thought about Barry Buss' latest "Reign of Rage"

[don_budge]

Anticipation...

Would love to hear what you thought about Barry Buss' latest "Reign of Rage"

I can't wait to read this next part of your story...Barry. Thanks for sharing in advance!

[klacr]

This article was excellent. Sadly, frighteningly and honestly, it hits a little too close to home for me. But I'll continue reading. Because I want to.

Barry, Thanks for writing this and sharing your story with us.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[GeoffWilliams]

"The battle for my soul was on." Nice piece, outside the norm for most sites. It is a battle in matches, the cheaters, ,the schemers, the psych experts, the let callers, the "you can't hit an ace on me.", types, who call every ace out on the lines. Don't we all hate those moments? Maybe that's the real reason why so few junior players compete. It's just too nasty. Win at all costs at any level, any age, and we have all seen it. The worst is losing to these guys, and you just don't want to play again.

[barrybuss]

A Wholly Unique Way to Grow Up...

One could never anticipate what the whole elite junior tennis experience is like, no player, no coach, no parent. Even if explained to one, only when one is experiencing the stress and pressure of play in real time with our full immature and fractured emotional programs firing on all cylinders can one fully appreciate the experience for how unique it really is. It's powerful stuff you just never forget.

Yeah, our sport has a history of eating up its young, but it doesn't have to be that way. Many of the negative behaviors we so quickly rail against are balanced out with opposite yet equally significant positive behaviors.

Ironically, I gained so much more from losing and how I dealt with that than I ever did from winning. Winning was the source of powerful yet fleeting elation. Losing taught me invaluable wisdom I still benefit from to this day some 30 years hence.

From the final chapter in "First In A Field Of Two"


"Two men enter...one wins...one loses..it's all or nothing..or is it..I lost a lot trying to win ...my self respect from cheating..my enjoyment of the game chasing a streak...my health in my obsession to get back to the top...my family for chasing a dream that was not completely my own...but I won a lot from losing too,,,,that fairness and dignity under duress trumps winning no matter what and that it is not the end results that really matter...but the process of trying to be one's best self each and every day...that outcomes are beyond all of our controls...that all we can control is our preparation, our attitude..our effort...and all of these lessons learned far transcend the white lines of a tennis court.."

[GeoffWilliams]

Hey, John, this guy can write.

[johnyandell]

Yes, yes he can.

[bottle]

You can tell. It happens when a guy uses precomposed triple-dot glyphs...

[barrybuss]

The unpunctuator

@Bottle...my hyper use of ellipses in the original work drove my poor editor bananas. She literally spent half her time pulling out all the dot dot dots...hence we deemed her the unpunctuator...Thanks for the kind words everybody...

[dimitrios]

"Playing tennis didn't make me angry; playing tennis provided me a place to be angry." I get it. I really do!

Barry, thanks for "Reign of Rage" and also "A Family Portrait" (from last month's issue). There's an honesty there about so many things, not least of all your upbringing, your relationship to your family and your inner workings as a young man growing up in the context of tennis with all its blessings and curses.

Looking forward to more...

[don_budge]

Fuck...a must for any "word salad"!

fuck...vulgar slang
verb (trans.)

1 have sexual intercourse with (someone)

• (intrans.) (of two people) have sexual intercourse

2 ruin or damage (something)

noun
an act of sexual intercourse.

• (with adj.) a sexual partner

exclamation
used alone or as a noun (the fuck) or a verb in a various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis

PHRASES
go fuck yourself an exclamation expressing anger or contempt for, or rejection of, someone.
not give a fuck (about) used to emphasize indifference or contempt.

PHRASAL VERBS
fuck around spend time doing unimportant or trivial things, have sexual intercourse with a variety of partners
fuck around with meddle with
fuck off (usu. in imperative) (of a person) go away.
fuck someone over treat someone in an unfair or humiliating way.
fuck someone up damage or confuse someone emotionally
fuck something up (or fuck up) do something badly or ineptly.

DERIVATIVES
fuck.a.ble adjective

ORIGIN early 16th century: of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning (strike) shared by Latin pugnus 'fist.'

USAGE Despite the wideness and proliferation of its use in many sections of society, the word fuck remains (and has been for centuries) one of the most taboo words in English. Until relatively recently, it rarely appeared in print; even today, there are a number of euphemistic ways of referring to it in speech and writing, e.g., the F-word, f***, or f__k.

[bottle]

Pretty good.

Especially at a time when freedom of expression in the United States is coming to an end with the pivotal ruling in the Bradley Manning case that saying "boo" to yourself in the mirror is aiding the enemy and treason punishable by death...

Guess we'll all have to move to Sweden. I've heard there are other freedoms there too.

Thanks for your amusing reply, Barry.

No more muckraking in America, just muck. No more Upton Sinclair exposing the meatpacking industry in his book THE JUNGLE. No more David Halberstam revealing the Gulf of Tonkin hoax. Or Seymour Hersh outing the My Lai massacre and what it says about all the Sergeant Calleys on this earth. No more dissent of any kind. Just sheeple in muck.

[don_budge]

"just give me a stage...where this bull can rage." barry buss? john mcenroe? ferris?

"Just give me a stage...where this bull can rage."-Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in the 'Raging Bull'

barry...

well...there’s lots to scream and shout about these days. there’s lots to be angry about. i myself got so sick and tired of it that i am living the life of a quasi hermit on a farm in a foreign country where there aren’t so many people.

“it’s not that i don’t like people...it’s just that i feel a whole lot better when they aren’t around”...mickey rourke in “barfly”.

i live pretty isolated these days...with a bunch of animals, domestic and wild, that i have come to know as my friends and family. with a swedish wife. but still you can’t get around it...you just take a look around when you set foot in town you can practically smell it. the bullshit. the nonsense. why wouldn’t one scream?

"i'm mad as hell...and i'm not going to take it any longer!"- howard beale in "network".

as a boy you were like mozart. you were a child prodigy. insightful and sensitive of the things to come. word salads composed of "expletives" to communicate a vocal protest to the nonsense that you perceived. it wasn’t only junior tennis i’ll bet you that egged you on...although it's a great microcosm to begin with and to practice in. it wasn't just the parents. it's the whole nasty business...of life. you were old enough to see the boys marching off into the rice paddies of southeast asia on the evening news. there was lot’s of swearing going on down there...among other things. it's getting worse.

“For to express that degree of anger, with that intensity and frequency, in the real world, where life is not a gentleman's game, would have had dire consequences for myself and likely many others who crossed within my orbit. So in a very convoluted way I may very well have gotten lucky to have found tennis as a place to exorcise my rage, for society is not kind to those incapable of self-control.”

society is not kind to those capable of telling the truth either...it’s an interesting dilemma. hold your tongue...or speak the truth and risk drawing fire. yeah...it’s a great training ground. you were lucky.

your story doesn’t shock me in the least. it validates what i have known for a long time. i hope that you have left yourself off the hook. freed yourself of all those things that bothered you. i know the score too. i don’t regret any of my “performances” in rage. people never forget stuff like that. i'm infamous. the performances get more blown out of proportion as time goes on. they get better as time goes by. it give people something to talk about. it gives them someone to point their finger at. deep down inside everyone likes a good blood letting. the spectacle of someone blowing their top. that's why mcenroe was so popular.

tennis is a complicated game...it teaches us about such things such as engagement and emotions. it’s not always pretty. no easy lessons either. nothing is for free...it’s all blood, sweat and tears. unless of course you are a blue blood. but even then...it can get dicey. there's loads of hypocrisy involved.

the fact that you said something like...”the battle of my soul was on”...leads me to believe that you felt something really deep. deep inside of your being. deeper than the heart lies the soul. it’s a special feeling. not for the feint of heart. i remember a line in a movie called “angel heart” where robert deniro (mephistopheles) is speaking with mickey rourke (johnny angel) and he says to him in a voice that hauntingly goes on and on through eternity like a litany...”the flesh is weak, only the soul is immortal”.

you’re a heavy guy, barry...extraordinary article! i love it...it’s thought provoking. it's outrageous. i guess everyone has a story to tell. not too many have the balls to do it. bravery is putting your ass on the line and letting every tom, dick and harry have a peek at you. naked and baring your soul...basically not giving a fuck.

the tennis court certainly gave you a safe place to rage a bit...the court really puts you out there. all alone boxed in between the lines. talk about being naked. but it helps to clean out the system of toxic anger...even purging the annoyance. it helps to soothe the soul...just a bit. then you go home...and the wife says something that you don’t understand. oh boy, the rage...it continues. ahh shit...better to keep the mouth shut.


peace and understanding. thank you for your honesty and thank you for sharing.

...don_budge