The Enigmatic Concept of the Wet Game
Or, That Time I Took a Little LSD and Tried to Play Tennis
Aspiring Tennis Professional Coach Logan Corcoran
Section / Genre: Scholarship
The gum in my mouth was phase shifting, beginning to break down into its individual parts. Loose and chalky, a mouthfeel of sand without the crunch. I had long since abandoned the search for any remaining flavor.
I was floating. Simple boundaries such as “reality” and “the laws of man” were no longer of any concern. And the lights! Such wonderful lights. It was all revealing itself to me, whatever “it” was. I blew a bubble with the curious gum only to discover I wasn’t chewing any gum at all. Curious, indeed. I was floating.
The surface of the tennis ball sizzled into millions of tiny yellow hairs as it bounced past. Damn. I forgot I was playing tennis.
The Enigmatic Concept of The Wet Mind
Have you, dear reader, ever heard of a concept called “The Wet Mind?” It was first put forth in the mid ‘90s in a book of the same name by American neuroscientist Stephen M. Kosslyn. Devised as a novel way to approach neural processing, the core concept is that the mind is what the brain does, and that understanding the brain's "wetware" (neural networks) is key to understanding cognitive functions like perception, memory and consciousness. Essentially, we (humanity, neuroscientists, recreational tennis players) can only truly begin to understand how the mind works, i.e. the wet part, by looking beyond the biological and computational processes of cognition—the dry part, that is.
The Enigmatic Concept of The Wet Game
Always looking for ways to make thinking about tennis needlessly complicated, I applied The Wet Mind concept to the sport in hopes of crafting a unified working theory of what it means to experience tennis. I bravely call this theory “The Wet Game,” with the central concept being the experience is what the game does. Please, stay with me.
Put in tennis terms, simply understanding the components of the game—rules, technique, equipment (dry)—does not unlock the slippery experience of the game itself (wet). Can a net, doubles alleys, foot faults, and 45-lbs string tension adequately explain or reveal tennis? I don’t believe so. I’m begging you, stay with me.
“Is Tennis Inherently Psychedelic?”
When I first wrote this in the margin of my tennis journal—a notebook started with the grand ambition of unlocking tennis genius through detailed notes of how I felt after a match but currently used strictly for keeping track of how much money people owe me—it felt like the hollow-mind-grasping of someone who couldn’t even adequately describe their day. But after googling “psychadelic etomolgy” and letting the internet figure out the spelling for me, I found some truth to the question. The word “psychedelic” is derived from the Greek words psyche (self, soul, or mind) plus deloun (make visible or reveal). To be psychedelic is to manifest in your mind. And what is tennis if not constant visualization of your next move in the hopes of manifesting, say, a second serve that doesn’t make you feel like the smallest man in the world? Please keep reading. Thus, tennis is massively psychedelic, at least on paper, and proves there is a “wet” component to the game after all—at least on paper. I began to think of ways I could use this knowledge to my advantage. How could one leverage the concept of The Wet Game to hack their Wet Mind and reveal a capacity they hadn’t yet known? Then it hit me. I threw open my tennis journal and right underneath “Tony: $17 for pho OVERDUE” I wrote the following letters: L, S, D.
Important Context Re: Psychedelics in Sport
Dock Ellis was a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. On June 12, 1970, he threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres while reportedly under the influence of LSD. I learned of his exploits from a 2009 short animated documentary titled Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No. According to Dock himself, he had pitched the best game of his life because he was “as high as a Georgia pine.”
Theory Becomes Practice
It’s a lot harder to take a “tiny bite” out of a paper tab of acid than you’d think. The paper wasn’t ripping and after toothing the entire thing I figured, what the hell, might as well drop in all the way. The experiment was off to a fine start.
In order to harness the full mind-expanding potential of the lysergic acid diethylamide, I timed it so that I would be peaking at precisely the moment my match began. I arrived at the court and made niceties with my opponent. The poor fool had no idea I was at the precipice of a truly cosmic tennis event, of which he would be at the whim of very shortly. We lightly stretched, popped a can of Penns, and jumped into some short-court warmup. There was a slight tingly sensation on my skin as I began to push my way into a higher dimension, as if stepping through a wall made of oozing Nickelodeon Gak—that kids’ slime toy from the ‘90s you could make fart noises with. It felt just right.
As we expanded our rally to full court, so too did my consciousness expand. I was focused, striking the ball with an ease I’ve only dreamed of, finding joy in the vibration of the ball against the strings, against my body, against my soul and mind. Tennis, the physical game, was unfolding into tennis, the metaphysical experience. Shouldn’t it always feel like this, even without the aid of a Schedule 1 drug?
What Hath I Wrought?
While the use of psychedelics might be great for a hike or midnight bowling excursion, it ultimately turned tennis into a nightmare. I was far outside the body, watching myself, a rat scampering towards the cheese at the end of the maze. Clammy, I was clammy. Why did the lights look like that? I was perceiving colors previously unknown, and it made me sick to my stomach. God, those lights! Glowing, undulating orbs haunted me. Not to mention the uncanny sensation of chewing gum that was never really there. My mind was visualizing, all right, but manifesting the completely wrong thing. I quickly lost one of the most un-joyous tennis matches of my long career. I went home and spent the rest of the night (4+ hours) trying to eat a burrito. It tasted like sand.
My Wet Mind had turned on me. Through my own hubris, I had interrupted the intended flow and made tennis impure. The LSD made my Wet Game soaked, as deadened as a tennis ball after it rolls through a puddle. Looking back, I should have realized the drug-induced heights of Dock Ellis, a professional athlete, weren’t going to translate automatically onto a person who, say, lies about their height.
This writing is by no means meant to be a D.A.R.E. lecture, but my professional recommendation is to not do what I did. When playing tennis, let the game create the experience—let the game come to you. It’s plenty powerful. I waded too far into something that should be left to reveal itself on its own, and the depths swallowed me whole. I wasted a perfectly good can of tennis balls.
Conclusion: Why The Wet Game?
Why do we love our game with such passion? What turns chasing a fuzzy ball around on hot concrete into a lifelong obsession? This is what The Wet Game tries to explain. It’s the intangibles that make the game so mysterious and so great. The universe beyond the tissue of our physical bodies. How can something so expansive spring from such mortal elements? Maybe we don’t need an enigmatic concept to describe it. To just feel it—not every time, but sometimes—is enough. Something weird. Something holy. Something very, very wet. Got any gum?
This story originally appeared in the Portland Tennis Courterly’s Wet Issue. To purchase a copy, visit our online store.