I’ve come across plenty of interesting athletes in four and a half years working at the Alligator, but one stands far above the rest.
He never gave any dramatic post-game speeches. He never had thousands chanting his name.
But I’ll never forget him, and I’ll never forget the life lesson he taught me.
It’s a story I’ve told many times to stay awake on road trips, and in my final column for the Alligator, I’m going to share the time-consuming tale of my friend K.K., the UF swimmer, with you.
I arrived at Florida in the summer of 2006, and within a few weeks, a friend introduced me to K.K., who, in the most accurate description I can give, was “the s***.”
Born in Brazil, K.K. (first name) grew up in California. He and his wealthy family split time between San Francisco and Laguna Beach, where they owned a beach house a few doors down from NBA star Lamar Odom.
Despite this background, K.K. was one of the most open, friendly people I’ve ever met, and he rarely flaunted his status — the product of an upbringing where his parents made him and his brother spend one night a week sleeping on the floor and without electricity to teach them to appreciate what they had.
Soon, K.K. and I were part of a crew that did everything together. We went to parties, ate tons of unhealthy food and played basketball at Southwest, where he’d jack up threes and refuse to play defense out of fear that an injury would get him in trouble with his swim coaches.
He was an endless source of entertainment, from his hard-to-place, laid-back accent, to his bouncy personality, to his urban slang. And he never missed an opportunity to heckle all the drunk kids as they stumbled off the Later Gator outside his dorm, Springs.
He seemed to know everyone. UF defensive end Jarvis Moss was his suite mate, and he had plenty of stories about other athletes.
And of course, the ladies loved him. One in particular had his attention, but he didn’t want to be tied down and always asked for advice on how to handle the situation. I never met her, and unsurprisingly, my advice sucked. One day, she left a six-page, handwritten letter on his door breaking things off. We all read it; she had colored in the background and listed all the reasons why she cared about him before all the reasons they couldn’t stay together.
He left us without our daily dose of entertainment twice that summer: once for a swim competition and once when his mom was hit by a drunk driver. Other than that, I spent a large chunk of my free time chillin’ with K.K.
I introduced him to my high-school friends when they visited. He went out of his way to nurse one back to health after a rough night on the town. A few of us were planning a Spring Break trip to visit him on the West Coast.
Our friendship lasted into the fall semester, where one day he told me and a friend that his parents had finally agreed to ship his Range Rover from California to Gainesville after holding it back for his first two years of college.
He’d been driving a Jetta that an uncle in Orlando had let him borrow, but now he’d have the slick whip he’d shown us pictures of, and he offered to take us for a spin.
The night his car came in, he told me and a friend to meet at his dorm. We showed up, but he didn’t answer his phone. Someone else let us in, but the shower was running and he didn’t answer his door, so we sat in the lounge.
Fifteen minutes passed, then 30, and we knocked some more. After almost an hour, the water was still running, and he wasn’t answering. Semi-panicked, we told the front desk and they called police, who made us wait in the stairwell while they entered his room.
A minute later, the cops were back and said K.K. was “totally fine.”
We left a little confused until I realized I had missed a voice mail during the ordeal.
It was from K.K.: “Yo, Mad Mike. Did you really just call the po-po on me? I had a girl in the shower with me, and the cops came in and scared the **** out of us! I left you a message earlier trying to warn you man, this is insane. Well, hit me up tomorrow.”
He was laughing, and so were we, thinking we’d just been part of an epic story. But there was more to come.
K.K. stopped answering his phone for the next few days, and there was no all-black Range Rover in sight outside his dorm. He told another friend it had been towed, but shortly after, I saw what looked like his Jetta, parked in the usual spot.
A friend reminded me K.K.’s stereo knobs were missing, and sure enough, the Jetta I saw had the same problem.
I was confused but didn’t think much of it. Then, fate stepped in when I started working at the Alligator.
My first beat: swimming.
Much to my surprise, there was no K.K. on the roster. When I finally talked to him online (his screen name: “swimdude0”), he told me he’d been injured and would be out a few months.
A mystery was growing, and K.K. was neither seen nor heard. One day, I came across his e-mail address on my laptop from when he used it to check Facebook, and I sent it to the friend who introduced us, asking what the odd-looking word before “@ufl.edu” stood for.
He checked that address against the roster of a class they shared, then sent me the most jarring text message I’ve ever received: “His real name is [something completely different from what he said it was].”
I ran home and searched public records for this highly unusual last name and found no results in San Francisco. Then I checked Orlando and found that uncle. And I found his parents.
Turns out, he wasn’t a swimmer, wasn’t from California and wasn’t extravagantly wealthy, and his family’s origin was a few thousand miles away from Brazil.
I tried to call him and find out what was going on, but he ducked me until we crossed paths online. I asked him questions, sent him links and tried to understand, but he piled on lie after lie and eventually got angry.
That’s the last time we spoke, and since he wouldn’t talk, I started messaging people on Facebook to piece it together. What I heard back ranged from “I can’t believe it” to “I always knew he was full of it.” One girl told me stories of him trying to pass himself off as a UF athlete to team trainers.
Eventually, I found people who went to high school with the kid later known as K.K.
And his on-again, off-again girlfriend? Turns out the closest they came to dating was living in the same dorm once. Now, I went from confused and hurt to disturbed. That six-page, handwritten letter with the shaded-in background and deep feelings was written by K.K. to K.K.
At this point, any thoughts of salvaging a friendship were gone, and I felt upset and betrayed.
He had constructed a fake persona to make friends, and I’m willing to bet there was no girl in the shower with him that night. He was hiding.
The tragedy was that K.K. was an awesome person to be around.
Money, swimming and country of origin aside, he was just cool. But he wasn’t confident enough in himself to just be him.
Other than an incredibly awkward bus ride we shared in silence a year later, I never saw him again. But I’ve seen similarities to K.K. almost every day I’ve been in college, to a lesser extent.
People are desperate to be liked, and they spend countless amounts of time, energy and money chasing that goal. The nauseating conformity some of our Greek brethren cling to is an easy example, but there are other cases around you all the time.
I struggle with it too, but the K.K. saga taught me that we have to be confident enough to really be ourselves. Odds are, there’s something unique about you, and that’s what attracts real friendship.
True friends are the ones who care about the real you, not the dressed-up fake version you want them to see, and you have to embrace yourself before others can.
If you aren’t the funniest, most interesting, most attractive person you know, then you have serious issues to sort out.
Once you get that straight, if people can’t see that, they aren’t worth your time. As a wise man once said to me: “If she doesn’t want to jump my bones every day she’s around me, then I don’t need to be with her.”
That gem came from a drunken White House employee discussing his relationship on the rocks with a few friends, two sheriff’s deputies and me five feet off the track at Martinsville Speedway the night before a NASCAR race. And that, by far, is the best source I have ever cited.
And his point is correct. Whether it’s friendship or romance, if someone can’t see the positives in what you have to offer, don’t waste time trying to change their mind.
I tried to apply that approach to this column during the past four years. This may sound selfish, but I never wrote what I thought you wanted to hear; I wrote what I liked and hoped you’d agree.
To those of you who did agree, thanks for the e-mails, Facebook messages and for coming up to me in public (I’ll never forget being spotted in line by a misguided soul at Chipotle and praised for my “great insight” or the five seconds of fame you gave me for an appearance on ESPN).
To those of you who can’t stand my corny column name and terrible writing, thanks for reading anyway.
To all of you: Thanks for putting up with my often incoherent thoughts, lame attempts at humor and completely unnecessary references to my favorite football team, the East Carolina Pirates (one more!).
To the athletes and coaches I’ve covered: I wouldn’t have a job without your hard work, and though I often lose sight of that, I try not to.
To my parents: Thanks for reading a grand total of four things I’ve written and for checking this out two weeks after I tell you about it. And for paying for everything and raising such an impossibly handsome and charming son.
To Nick, Joe and Bryan: Thanks for hiring me and teaching me how to write. I’m sorry for failing, but you tried. If I make anything of myself, the three of you are huge reasons why.
To Kyle, thanks for inspiring me to write this column. At least the two of us enjoyed it. Anthony, thanks for dedicating a massive chunk of space in the paper for it.
To everyone else I’ve had the pleasure of working with at the Alligator: You were my fraternity, minus the initiation by penetration. We shared some amazing experiences, and I’ll try real hard not to forget you when I blow up.
It’s been real y’all.
Goodbye.
