Jeu De Paume, Anyone? Poem by Morgan Michaels

'Strike! ' What began as disbelief morphed to expectation. What morphed to expectation became, well, boring. I hardly even watched, anymore, except to confirm what I already knew- Diotima, as she proved, was quite the bowler. Her strikes became routine.

Bowling is not my favorite sport. Tennis, perhaps, was. It has a certain leggy elegance, and I like the uniforms. What's more, the modern world began on a tennis court, at Paris, in June of 1789, with an eponymous oath, so the political associations were favorable. But tennis is rarely shown on TV and you have to take a hot train to Queens to see any. The 'inconvenience' factor precludes any potential favorite status. I once caught my toe in hurtling the net, and never played again.

Being from Detroit, I am also fond of ice hockey, and particularly enjoy the fights, which like most people I expect and watch for, only they don't happen often enough and are, when they do, far too short. I hate waiting. There was nothing like a Blatz, an ice fight and a little red. Sadly, the referees kept coming between perfectly qualified candidates.

But bowling...a strange and noisy pursuit probably invented by the English, who coined the term 'guttural (which itself broadened to 'gutter roll' after 1812) and has come down to us finally as 'gutterball.' Bowling, whether defined as a sport or a game, is an agenda of insomniacs, which I am. Diotima had suggested we visit some all-night bowling lanes in Chelsea, so I said sure.

'Who goes bowling at that hour? ' I joked, 'ghosts? '

'You never know, ' quipped Diotima, mysteriously, 'till you get there. Besides, this place has more celebrities than Chelsea Piers.'