Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto by Eric Luper

it.” He thumps his tee into the ground withthe head of his five-iron like he’s driving a railroad spike into concrete.
    â€œIt was a good shot,” I say.
    â€œIt’s on the upper tier, a two-putt at best.”
    â€œAt least it’s on the green.”
    I tee up my ball and take a few practice strokes. I swing. My shot flies higher than I wanted. It’s a towering shot that might have been all right if the wind wasn’t cutting across the tops of the trees. My ball begins to drift.
    â€œMotherf—”
    â€œWatch your mouth,” my father warns.
    It’s hard to watch your mouth when you’re busy watching your ball sail away and plummet into a sand trap with a distant thump .
    There are so many variables in golf: wind, slope of the ground, length of grass, thickness of grass, height of the landing surface relative to the hitting surface, and so on. And that’s just the external variables. You also have to think about the internal stuff: type of grip, where the ball sits in your stance, the width of your stance, the angle of your downswing, and all sorts of other crap.
    And I always seem to forget a few dozen of them.
    â€œTeed it up too high,” my father says.
    â€œGuess so.”
    â€œWant your mulligan?”
    â€œNah, I never use my do-over on a par three.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” he says. “That’s a deep trap. I got stuck down there once and…” I let him go on with his story, but I completely tune him out.
    One of the things I like about golf is that there’s so much to concentrate on that there’s never a lot of pressure to talk about anything beyond the game. Most of the time you’re thinking about your last shot or your next one. Between holes, you talk about your clubs, the weather, the time you hit an eagle at some tournament someplace. Whatever. But there’s never any pressure to talk about personal stuff. At least it’s been like that for the first four holes. Now it all comes to a screeching halt.
    â€œSo what’s been bothering you?” my father asks.
    I slide my club into my bag and take a seat behind the wheel of the golf cart. “I hit into the stupid trap.”
    â€œNo, I mean over the past week or so. You’ve seemed real bent out of shape. Your mother and I, we’re sort of concerned.”
    If I were a girl, I’d be able to blame it on cramps and that would shut him up. What do guys get to blame things on? “I’ve just been down in the dumps is all.”
    â€œLook, Seth, I had my fair share of girlfriends. I know what you’re going through. This sort of thing will pass. You just have to buck up.”
    â€œBuck up? Sounds like something from a cowboy movie.”
    â€œYou know, take a deep breath. Move on. You need to find another girl and get back in the game.”
    Just what I need, a string of clichés. “You sound like Dimitri.”
    â€œWell, maybe your friend isn’t as dumb as I thought.”
    I’m glad Dimitri wasn’t around to hear my father saythat. He’d gloat about that back-handed compliment for weeks.
    I stomp on the pedal. The golf cart whips forward, and I steer us down the path that runs along the right side of the hole. I hook around the sand trap to the gravel walkway behind the green. “It’s different nowadays, Dad. Dating is different.”
    â€œHow is it different?”
    â€œThis isn’t the cheeseball seventies.” I step from the cart and pull my sand wedge from my bag.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œThis isn’t the age of polyester shirts with wide lapels. This isn’t the age of gold medallions and hairy chests. And this sure isn’t the age of partner-swapping free love.”
    I glance at my father to see if he has any sort of reaction, but he just laughs. “I was born in nineteen sixty-nine,” he says. “I wasn’t a teenager until the