Open: An Autobiography

Win? What’s the point? Why should winning change people’s minds about me? Win or lose, I’ll still be the same person. That’s why I need to win? To shut people up? To satisfy a bunch of sportswriters and reporters who don’t know me? Those are the terms of this negotiation?

PHILLY SEES THAT I’M SUFFERING, that I’m searching. He’s searching too. He’s been searching all his life, and recently he’s stepped up the search. He tells me he’s been going to a church, or a kind of church, in an office complex on the west side of Vegas. It’s nondenom-inational, he says, and the pastor is different.

He drags me to the church and I have to admit, he’s right, the pastor, John Parenti, is different. He wears jeans, a T-shirt and he has long, sandy-brown hair. He’s more surfer than pastor. He’s unconventional, which I respect. He’s - no other way to say it - a rebel. I also like his prominent aquiline nose, his sad canine eyes. Above all, I like the casual vibe of his service. He simplifies the Bible. No ego, no dogma. Just common sense and clear thinking.

Parenti is so casual, he doesn’t want to be called Pastor Parenti. He insists we call him J.P. He says he wants his church to feel unlike a church. He wants it to feel like a home where friends gather. He doesn’t have any answers, he says. He just happens to have read the Bible a few dozen times, front to back, and he has some observations to share.

I think he has more answers than he’s letting on. And I need answers. I consider myself a Christian, but J.P.‘s church is the first one where I’ve felt truly close to God.

I attend with Philly every week. We time our arrival so that we walk in just as J.P. starts talking, and we always sit in the back, slouched low, so we don’t get recognized. One Sunday Philly says he wants to meet J.P. I hang back. Part of me would like to meet J.P. too, but part of me is wary of strangers. I’ve always been shy, but the recent avalanche of bad press has made me borderline paranoid.

Days later I’m driving around Vegas, feeling gutted after reading the latest attacks on me. I find myself parked outside J.P.‘s church. It’s late, all the lights are off - except one. I peer in the window. A secretary is doing some paperwork. I knock at the door and tell the woman I need to speak with J.P. She says he’s at home. She doesn’t say, Where you should be. With a shaky voice I ask if she could please phone him. I really need to talk to him. To somebody.

She dials J.P. and hands me the receiver.

Hello? he says.

Hi. Yes. You don’t know me. My name is Andre Agassi, I’m a tennis player, and, well, it’s just -

I know you. I’ve seen you in church the last six months. I recognized you, of course. I just didn’t want to bother you.

I thank him for his discretion, for respecting my privacy. I haven’t been getting that kind of respect lately. I say, Look, I wonder if we could spend some time together. Talk.

When?

Now?

Oh. Well, I guess I could come down to the office and meet you.

With all due respect, can I come to wherever you are? I have a fast car, and I think I can get there faster than you can get here.

He pauses. OK, he says.

I’m there in thirteen minutes. He meets me on his doorstep.

Thanks for agreeing to see me. I feel like I have nowhere else to turn.

What is it you need?

I wonder if we can just, um, get to know each other?

He smiles. Listen, he says, I don’t do father figure real well.

I nod, laugh at myself. I say, Right, right. But maybe you could give me some assignments? Life assignments? Reading assignments?

Like a mentor?

Yeah.

I don’t do mentor real well either.

Oh.

Talking, listening, fellowship - those things I can do.

I frown.

Look, J.P. says, my life is as screwed up as the next guy’s. Maybe more. I can’t offer much in the way of shepherding. I’m not that kind of pastor. If you’re looking for advice, I’m sorry. If you’re looking for a friend, that we can do, maybe.

I nod.

He holds open the door, asks if I’d like to come in. But I ask if he’d like to go for a drive. I think better when I drive.

He cranes his neck and sees my white Corvette. It looks like a small private plane parked in his driveway. The color drains a bit from his face.

I drive J.P. all over Vegas, up and down the Strip, then into the mountains that circle the town. I show him what the Vette can do, open up the engine on a lonely stretch of highway, then open up myself. I tell him my story, in a ragged and disorderly fashion, and he has Perry’s knack for saying it all back to me, artfully reworded. He understands my contradictions, and reconciles a few of them.

You’re a kid who still lives with his parents, he says, but you’re known around the planet.

That’s got to be hard. You’re trying to express yourself freely and creatively and artistically, and you’re slammed at every turn. That’s very hard.