Aaron Burch
What happened was, I got divorced. You could take it back further—moving out, separation, sleeping in different rooms, therapy, affairs, fights, resentment, etc.—but none of that really matters. The divorce doesn’t matter either, if I’m being honest, but that’s how I always start the story. It never feels right to try to jump right in, to leave that out. Maybe it does matter. Maybe it all matters.
So, I got divorced, and thus was trying new things. Trying to keep myself busy. My mind distracted. Trying to find and embrace and enjoy newfound independence and opportunities; or trying on different possible multiversal versions of myself to see how they fit; or trying to grab hold of any- and everything I could, throwing it all into the new sinkhole of my existence, trying to fill back up the literalized emptiness my life had become. I was trying to build a new self up from scratch.
Which is all to say, I was frequenting botanical gardens because we’d never gone to them together; and I was going to new, different bars and restaurants and avoiding all the old, familiar ones; and I was going out on dates with anyone I matched with on the apps who was up for going out on a date with me; and I was getting high and going to movies by myself; and I was taking guitar lessons, even though I was self-conscious about it, like it felt like I was too old to be learning something new like playing an instrument; and I was playing semi-regular pickup basketball at the gym, even though I hadn’t played basketball since college; and I was less-frequently-but-still-semi-regularly trying the climbing wall at a different gym; and I was apparently becoming a guy who paid for two different gym memberships; and when I got a work email asking if anyone was interested in joining a bowling league team, instead of deleting it without reading past the subject line like the old me would have, I replied with interest and a lot of exclamation points.
Which is, whether or not any of that matters, where the story actually, finally begins.
It was Tuesday. I know, because bowling league was Tuesdays. I’d gotten there early and had a burger and a beer before we started rolling. I don’t specifically remember getting there early or the burger or the beer, but after the first week, I got there early for a burger and a beer every week. You could call it superstition, but really I just liked the burgers. Turned out, my favorite burger in town was the bowling alley burger. And a favorite burger is all the more favorite with a cold beer.
Would have been week 5 or 6. Maybe 7. Deep enough into the league that I’d gotten the hang of it. I’d found a rhythm. My form was wonky, the spin I put on my ball awkward and forced, but it was working for me. A practiced wonky and awkward and forced that came out a little controlled and purposeful and consistent.
I don’t remember the team we were playing. Doesn’t really matter. I know it was our second game of the night, but don’t remember if we’d won or lost the first one. I do remember I’d spent that first game looking at a woman a few lanes down from us who I’d gone on a couple dates with, wondering if she was going to look my way. We’d had sex in the back of her car in a dark parking lot after the second date, then not talked since. I wasn’t sure our status, in general or her perception thereof. In between those looks, I’d kept looking at another woman a few lanes in the other direction who I thought was attractive and would love to go on a date with, wondering if she was going to look my way. Weeks later, we’d actually match on the app and would go out on a date, though of course, I had no way of knowing that yet. She’d mostly be kind of boring, it would turn out, or maybe she’d think I was kind of boring and so would just be matching the energy she was getting from me. We wouldn’t have sex, in her car or mine or anywhere.
The second game though. The second game, something got into me. Took over. I could feel it from the very first roll.
Strike.
I’d thrown first frame strikes before. It always feels good. Makes you feel like it’s going to be a good game. But—right away—this one felt different. Special. Don’t know how else to describe it.
Second roll: strike. Third roll: strike.
Everyone congratulating me on starting with a turkey, while I tried to play it cool. No over celebrating. No looking down at the woman I’d gone on a couple dates with to see if she’d noticed; no looking the other direction at the woman I didn’t yet know but would in a few weeks go on a date with to see if she’d noticed. Just sat there and watched my teammates roll and tried to keep myself right there, in the zone.
Back to my turn, another strike. Another cycle through, another strike.
I was watching my teammates and the other team take their turns but had no idea how anyone was doing. No idea if either woman, or anyone at all outside our lane, had noticed my streak. No ideas about anything at all. Everything was complete and total nothing. It felt perfect.
Another strike. Another.
And then the lights in the alley flashed off, then quickly back on. Everything paused, got quiet. Everyone looked around at everyone else. The lights went off again, and stayed off. We all stood there in silent darkness.
Some kind of light started blasting in from outside, bursting in through every window and door and any small opening it could get through. Like some kind of lightning storm. Like some kind of impromptu outdoor rock concert. Like I don’t know what exactly.
I’m not entirely sure why, I can’t explain it, but we all started moving toward the exits. Not like an evacuation though. More like something we wanted to see. Like something outside was drawing us out there. Pulling us to it.
Once we were all outside, the whole sky went black. Like an eclipse. Like the bowling alley before it, only moments before.
And then, the brightest white I’d ever seen. A perfect beam of light shooting up from the ground. My eyes followed it up, as I can only assume did everyone’s, as we all gasped together.
Hovering in the sky. Floating there, hummingbird still.
A UFO.
Time froze. It felt like it froze, but I swear it actually froze, too. Did it advance in normal time for the rest of the world, all while we stood there, time standing still? Have I—have all of us who were there in that moment—lived the rest of our lives a few minutes younger than everyone else around us? Than the version of ourselves we would have been, had this never happened? Some days, that possibility feels as true as anything else.
And then it was gone. Shot off at a speed I couldn’t comprehend, or teleported through space or time, or just disappeared. The night returned to normal. Life returned to normal.
We all returned inside and continued our games. No one said a single word about what had just happened. What was there to say? Why ruin it with words?
Maybe it was my turn, or maybe I sat there waiting for my turn, I don’t remember. Whenever I went next, I rolled an eight. My bowling game—like the night, like life—had returned to normal.
I picked up the spare, but the magic was over. My streak had ended, but also I could feel that that whatever had taken over was gone.
Another 8, and I missed the spare, and then finally a strike, a seven, and I missed all of the final three.
241.
A good game. A great game, even. Best I’ve ever rolled.
My team cheered me, the other team congratulated me. No one mentioned the lost opportunity of the perfect game. No one said out loud anything about how my concentration and rhythm had been broken. No one mentioned, even in a passing or roundabout way, anything at all about what had broken it.
That was all years ago. The league and the alley both closed down during those early days of lockdown. I think it re-opened at some point, but the league never picked back up. One day I drove past and there was nothing there. The building had been demolished. It’s a Tesla dealership now.
Over the years since, I’ve told this story a bunch, a handful of different ways. I never tell it exactly as it happened. I don’t know why.
There’s the version that never mentions the UFO. A story about the time I almost bowled a perfect game, in the bowling league I’d joined in the wake of divorce, and then the nostalgic sadness of the alley now being a Tesla dealership.
There’s a few different versions where I describe the lights going out and all of us going outside.
If they perk up and I can tell they believe in UFOs, I tell them all about it. The beam of light, the freezing in time. They tell me their own stories. We never really come back from that and get back to the bowling. That’s okay though. The bowling wasn’t really the point. I like hearing all about their own experiences. No one has ever told me they felt the same freezing in time, though no one has ever been surprised by it either.
When I get the sense they don’t believe in things like aliens, the supernatural, UFOs, I describe it like we thought we saw a UFO. It was a car crash, a lightning storm, just one of life’s weird nothings. I say how we all came back inside, picked our games back up where we’d left off. In these versions, I rolled a perfect game. I describe a strike, and another strike, and then a turkey of strikes in the tenth frame. I’ve told that version so many times, I can see it all just as I describe it happening. And no one has ever doubted the story. To them, I become the guy they knew who bowled a perfect game. They congratulate me, cheers me. I don’t know that they believe me though. Why would they believe in a perfect game but not a UFO? It perplexes me, though that’s okay, it doesn’t really matter. Belief is never really what the story is supposed to be about anyway.
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Aaron Burch is the author of an essay collection, A Kind of In-Between, and a novel, Year of the Buffalo, among others. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and HAD. He grew up in Tacoma, lives in metro Detroit, and his next book, Tacoma, is forthcoming from Autofocus Books. He recommends “Web of Coincidences” by Z.H. Gill in the archives.