The Sh*t L*st

Many of the smaller cable channels have been asking me to comment on the Kobe Bryant case. My statement from 9 July (before Kobe went public):

He met some hot little number next to the pool at this resort where he's convalescing. They have a couple Red Bulls, do a little dance, she ends up in his hotel room. They have sex. Then, being 19 years-old and probably a Christian of some ilk, she freaks out. (Racist parents, post-coital moral relapse, super low threshold for abandonment/exploitation, psycho Sacramento Kings fan, what you will.) She talks to a friend or co-worker -- the Linda Tripp figure. The latter feeds the former's hysteria, the former the latter's bitterness. Next thing you know, Sheriff Lobo's involved.

(The other hypothesis: she tells him she's a virgin and saving it for marriage. So they have anal sex [as is a practice in cultures that place a high value on technical virginity], but, well, he's a superstar in that way to and injures her, requiring her to be taken to the hospital where, procedurally, the nurses are obligated to notify the authorities and he is charged under some old law from mining days criminalizing the sodomization of an innkeeper's daughter or tavern wench. This scenario better accords with some odd details involving a cab ride from the hospital that surfaced in a Register article today.)

In any event, I can't imagine he coerced her -- he's Kobe Bryant. Shit, I'd have sex with him, just to say I'd had sex with Kobe Bryant. (It would have been a much better story if it came out that he was gay -- perfectly timed, too, what with the recent legalization of marriage in Canada and the Supreme Court decision.) The legend is he doesn't even drink. I read that after games on the road, he goes back to his hotel room and writes poetry!

A month later, I stand by it in the main points.