Erotopia is a planet with a culture steeped in lovemaking, pleasure and connection, overseen by a clergy of sex-priests and priestesses. This otherworldly civilization is part of Kingston Alderman Carl Frankel’s novel “The Unraveling, Volume 1: The Erotopian Chronicles.”

But if Frankel was one of his three earthling characters who traveled across the galaxy to make an X-rated reality TV series and have hot sex with interstellar babes, as the book description reads, it’s safe to assume that Frankel would somehow find his way to a tennis court.

This year, the Democrat representing Ward 2 was ranked second among all tennis players in the Men’s 70s National Standings List Singles, according to the United States Tennis Association. But at age 71, he says his relationship with the sport has evolved into something much deeper than his initial appetite for success. Tennis, says Frankel, has become a tool for personal growth that regularly produces pearls of wisdom.

“Tennis, for me, is a moving meditation,” that teaches resilience and other important life lessons, Frankel explained. “When bad shit happens on the court, we get knocked down, again and again, and we have to get up.”

Frankel beat out the third-ranked player, William Rogers of Florida, by nearly 700 points, which are earned by winning matches and prominent tennis tournaments. The ranking doesn’t mean much to Frankel, though. While he says he can hold his own against just about any serious local tennis player, Frankel is humble — he realistically sees himself as a top-20 national athlete. His most recent victory came at the 2021 Ulster County Tennis Tournament, where he seized the senior men’s 45-plus title from his opponent, Richard Juman, in July. If he were to face his 16-year-old self in a legendary battle of the ages, Frankel says he would mop the floor with the teen. His technique has aged like fine wine, and he’s damn near as fast as his teen years too, Frankel added.

Frankel’s called Kingston home since 1997. Around the early 2000s, Frankel spawned “Our Community Networks,” better known as “Carl’s List,” an early community social network. As a journalist, he wrote numerous articles for Chronogram, reporting on topics like government, local culture and corporate and environmental sustainability. Frankel also co-wrote and edited a book called “Secrets of the Sex Masters,” which won the 2015 Best Book of the Year award from the American Association of Sex Educators, and other erotic-themed works through Mango Garden Press. That’s an offshoot of the Intimate Arts Center, founded by his wife, Sheri Winston, at 27 Crown St.

But Frankel’s lifelong passion has almost always been tennis. He stepped on a court for the first time at age 7 on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard with his parents. Frankel’s always had solid hand-eye coordination and quickly gravitated to the sport once he discovered his raw talent for it. Charles Frankel, his father, was a prominent philosophy professor at Columbia University; while the two shared an appreciation for deep thinking, Frankel wanted to break away from his intellectual home life. So tennis became Frankel’s “thing” — an avenue of self-expression where he could thrive, unburdened, he said, by the weight of his father’s expectations.

“The court is a never-ending geyser of learning opportunities,” Frankel said. “It keeps offering you more. You can’t figure out tennis, you have to keep learning your way into it.”

At age 14, Frankel started competing in tournaments, coming close to claiming the Rockland County Men’s Tennis Championships title, attending training camps and spending some time in the Metro New York competitive circuit. At 15, Frankel moved to Washington D.C. to play in the Mid-Atlantic League, where he soon became the number-one ranked player in the 16-and-under age category. The following year he enrolled at Princeton, mostly to try and play on their accomplished tennis team. While he never was made a starter, his freshman team beat the varsity squad in a friendly scrimmage. This varsity team was considered to be among the top 10 best teams in Division I, the highest level of college sports.

As the Vietnam War erupted, Frankel was in his early 20s and found himself more interested in women and the emerging hippie culture than competitive tennis. But he never strayed too far from the sport and later decided to move to Europe, where he was paid $35 a game to play for an Austrian tennis club. Frankel eventually settled in Munich to work as an “American professional” tennis coach. The German tennis club housed him in a dingy tavern, where a St. Bernard often roamed the building freely, to sleep in for a few nights while coaching. He would make an hour commute from his equally grubby shared flat in Munich to the tavern in Rottach-Egern, nestled in the Bavarian Alps, a few times each week. This was where Frankel first began to teach the philosophy of tennis to his students — more on that later — alongside technique.

Frankel continued to compete and practice tennis when he returned home, but his career was temporarily abandoned after he developed a debilitating case of arthritis in his knees, caused by years of bone-on-bone grinding. Frankel said that the pain was so bad that if he needed to jump out of the way of an oncoming car, he’d end up looking flat as a pancake. His hiatus lasted until 2013 when he underwent a double knee replacement surgery. That’s a hard operation to recover from, but Frankel said he bounced back quickly. He was able to walk without a cane within three weeks of hosting his new knees and finally returned to the court in 2015.

When it comes to hitting the ball, Frankel said he doesn’t miss much. Frankel's main strength is his consistency: he bests his opponents with his steadiness and physical conditioning, especially when faced with someone near his age. He’s proficient with forehand and backhand swings and likes to play an “all-court” game, instead of standing by the far edge of the outer boundaries. Frankel aspires to play aggressively, delivering powerful volleys and dominating the pace of the match.

Playing in what Frankel called the “super-senior” tennis league comes with its own challenges, mostly brought on by old age. Frankel had to tap out of a recent tournament in Philadelphia, because the grass court didn’t let the tennis balls bounce as high as it would on pavement, forcing Frankel to pivot, lunge and squat more than he usually does and causing hip-spasms. Matches between competitors in the 70-plus category often become a game of attrition: the last man standing is crowned victor, Frankel joked.

Sizing up an opponent before a match can offer useful insights into their skill and style, Frankel explained. Before a match begins, players are afforded warm-up time, where they practice strokes, volleys, serves and offer glimpses of their talent, or lack thereof, Frankel said.

When it comes to winning a match, however, Frankel says the key to victory lies within the heart and mind. High school wrestling coaches like to tell their grapplers that the winner of a match is often decided in the first 10 seconds. Something simple as plowing your opponent out of the ring, as soon as the whistle blows, can mentally cripple them and establish your dominance in the battle.

In tennis, Frankel describes a symbolic “vacuum” that exists in each player's mind. It can be filled with either uncertainty or confidence — harboring negative attitudes can make you lose a match just like a sprained ankle would. When Frankel watches world-class tennis players make dozens of errors each game, he said he notices they never lose their composure. They walk through the metaphorical door of failure, close it behind them, and move on. Confidence helps you score and spurs the momentum needed to keep scoring. This is the path to victory, Frankel explained.

Around 2017, Frankel founded a blog called “The Practice of Tennis” that served as both a personal journal and platform to share tennis tips and his philosophy on the sport. To get more kids, primarily from underserved areas of Kingston, involved and interested in tennis, Frankel has also grabbed a grant from the U.S. Tennis Association to bring a program to the YMCA of Kingston & Ulster County.

With that plan brewing, he may soon find an array of young minds to impart his wisdom from the sport on. He’s working on a new book, with the working title “Tennis as a Wisdom Practice: A Story About the Quest for Mastery,” which will continue to spread the lessons from his blog.

His experience with tennis will also somewhat translate into his job as alderman. He will have to nurture trust and relationships with the community, just as he’d done with his tennis pupils and peers for so many years.

“Every time we step on the court, we are being invited to attend a personal growth workshop,” Frankel said. “But we have to accept the invitation.”