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Ever since, Becker has tried to keep busy. He has cooked in a high hat with chef Paul Bocuse in one TV special, hung out with designer Karl Lagerfeld in another. He owns half of Völkl and is trying to expand its market share. He is doing plenty of interviews. Still, for a man so apt to see all kinds of signals of his own greatness, his world is sometimes dominated by a frivolousness that is almost painful to see.
One night in March, Becker went to a South Beach club called Bed, where dinner and drinks are served to customers as they loll about on giant beds. In walked Sean (Puffy) Combs, fresh from New York City and his recent acquittal on gun charges. Becker and Combs compared notes on their rides through the celebrity courtroom circus. "I was in bed with Puffy, actually — and a beautiful Indian girl and a Hungarian girl," Becker says. "They bring us a meal, the food, appetizers, fruit, champagne. Continental cuisine."
"In Germany there's a lot of talk that he's running to find his lost childhood," says Becker's friend Sahner. "Now he must find his way. If he continues to do what he did the last two years, it will be very dangerous for him and his image."
"He looks lost," says Haas. "He would like to have a family, but on the other hand he feels good about being free so he can do what he wants. It's tough: when you're on the tour for as long as he was, as successful as he was, as committed, you miss out on some things. Now he's really got nothing."
Yet, there are flashes. Becker is a member of the Laureus World Sports Academy, a European foundation devoted to achieving social change through sports, and when he heard about its support of the Richmond, Virginia-based Midnight Basketball program, he insisted on seeing it in action. A barely publicized event in mid-April promised little in the way of image-polishing, but Becker went to Richmond anyway, attended a workshop, gave a pep talk, borrowed some socks and sneakers and played ball — all before an audience of only 100 people. A month earlier, he had spent two days working in a Berlin program for juvenile delinquents. He still wants to make a difference. "He's taken a beating," says former U.S. track star Edwin Moses, chairman of the World Sports Academy. "But with his strength and character, he'll come back and do some fantastic things."
The same objectivity that allowed Boris to admire Barbara even as she took him apart also enables him to see that his career created an entity beyond himself — a creature of fame named Boris Becker — that threatens to trap him in a life of fraudulence. He can't decide if his life is a Wagnerian opera or a Beckett farce, so he takes himself too seriously and pokes fun at himself, often at the same time. He recently finished shooting a movie in Germany, playing himself. "Yeah, myself," he says. "Whatever Boris I'm supposed to be that day."
A few nights later, Becker is at a dinner with Völkl retailers. He poses for pictures, jokes about his woman trouble, patiently answers the same old questions. "You still have that glow," says one man. "For my wife and her friends, you still have it. It's a blessing." "And sometimes a curse," Becker says.
BECKER IS SPEEDING DOWN THE HIGHWAY, rushing to catch a flight to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, during which he'll wander about with a television crew and draw huge ratings back in Germany. Earlier today, however, at a gathering with Völkl retailers on a tennis court at a Miami resort, he picked up a racket and swung it behind and over his head, tossing an imaginary ball. "It's still there," one retailer said. Becker nodded.
He still wants to play. He has scheduled a series of seniors events in the next few months, starting with an appearance at a tournament in Graz, Austria, in mid-August. There's persistent talk about a showcase match against John McEnroe after the women's final at this year's U.S. Open. Most of all, Becker wants one more taste of Wimbledon. He wants to play doubles in the main draw — not this summer but next, when his game is in better shape. Becker knows he will never do anything as well as he played tennis. He has found only one thing that even brings him close.
"That Sunday afternoon: you're in the Wimbledon final, it's the third set, and you're about to win," Becker says. "Those 20 minutes and then that night and the next couple weeks are just heaven. This is something I miss. Because even with a great business deal, it's not the same sensation. Tennis is an art form. I feel as if I'm performing on a stage in front of millions of people, and I was sometimes able to fascinate them for two weeks. This culminates with a Sunday final, match point, and then all the celebrations. It's like a long foreplay that ends with a huge orgasm. That's what it is."
He does not laugh. Tennis is sex and sex is tennis; never mind that the last time he mixed the two, he ended up in a broom closet. Without one, life is dull for him. Without both, life is death. Becker would like to fall in love again. For now, though, he's thinking about the green grass of England, and giving the world one more big bang.