The Laughter of Strangers (6 page)

A mouthful, potentially impossible, but what else do they want to hear?

Producer voice in my ear asks:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

YOU ARE NOT MAKING SENSE

I don’t make sense.

As a fighter.

As a person.

I don’t make sense.

Is that the official word?

Or the word on the street?

IS ANYONE LAUGHING?

According to everyone, this is all incorrect. Does not fit with recorded history. So, then, if it isn’t true then this entire episode, this entire event, consists of lies. Seems I’m living a lie that I can’t live down.

What the hell does that mean?

I mean really…

I only know what I know, and if it happens to be wrong, a lie, then okay:

I am living a lie.

I GUESS THAT’S WHY I BECAME A FIGHTER

Everything that doesn’t make sense, I beat the shit out of me until it does.

Even if it doesn’t, the right punch will shake free the worry, the worry that’s all about how I’m nearing middle-age and I’m nowhere closer to coming to grips with who I am than when I was just starting out, burning cigarettes onto my skin just to feel something, getting into fights in front of bars in hopes of getting the chance to steal someone’s wallet.

Basically being the rebel, what I thought I should be.

Should have been.

Seemed to embody.

But no.

I was basically just lost, trying way too many paths while never actually committing to one.

Or, put more simply:

I am a fighter.

I am incapable of loving others including myself.

WHO ARE YOU BUT STRANGERS IN A CROWD?

Later, after I hear from Spencer and I hear from the world various comments and hurtful comments like:

HE’S SENILE

HE’S OUT OF HIS MIND.

HE’S ON DRUGS.

HE’S A WRECK.

Many of those from Spencer himself, I am solemn, quiet, enjoying nothing while trying my best to merge into the nothingness of the hotel room where we will stay the night, each in our own bed, not talking to each other, not talking about the incoming fight, not talking about the big problem, which has everything to do with an escaped identity.

Not talking.

Not helping.

No help at all.

Willem Floures, do you know of the man, the myth, the fighter?

I thought I did but I guess not.

CANDID

I will ask only once during the night, in the dark, lightless room, when I know that Spencer is not asleep, but has his eyes closed, trying his best to pretend that he is at rest, complete with fake snoring:

“What about training?”

He will pretend to ignore me, but the fact that I asked will bother him.

Spencer will have to answer.

And he’ll say what he always says:

“We’ll get to that.”

We always do, but by the time we hit the heavy bag, the ten-to-twenty mile run, the training routine in full, the fight can be seen, looming in the distance of next week. I’ll ask Spencer, “Why didn’t we train? Why didn’t we focus on a longer, more effective regimen?”

His response is the response of a trainer, an agent, a longtime friend that has lost confidence in his project, lost confidence in me:

CANDID

“The truth is that no amount of improvement to your body will make any difference. If you are going to win, you need to win using fight psychology.”

According to the only “friend” I have, I have a slim to nil chance of winning and even if I did, it would be less on skill and more to do with luck.

I’ll admit that this isn’t very reassuring at all.

It kind of makes me feel like a nuisance.

Makes me worry about what the world really thinks and what they will think about ‘Sugar’ in the weeks and years after my inevitable demise, my retirement from the sport.

Makes me think about how I can prove them all wrong.

All of them.

Spencer, yes, you too.

I get to thinking…

A THOUGHT

And it comes to me on that same night, dark room, the orchestration of slumber without any real truth.

And it takes me a week or two of media junkets to fathom what I need to do to begin.

And it takes a single sentence to turn the attention around onto me, limelight and thrill.

And it’s a sentence from a different kind of story:

I KILLED A MAN

And it doesn’t fit.

And that’s why it would work.

Why it would turn the fight around and maybe, just maybe, I’d have a chance to win. Like Spencer said—

Only real chance I have is to psych X out.

Yeah well, how’s this for psyching someone out?

VERSUS

A hurtful but hopeful thing to say:

THIS IS WHAT YOU DID WRONG

I’m supposed to learn from my mistakes.

I learn from the mistakes but I lose it all during the lecture. Spencer sits me down in a seat like this is Sunday school and draws on a dry-erase board to the constant playback of the fight.

The
fight.

Executioner at his prime, Sugar losing favor.

Spencer isn’t about to analyze what I looked like, or even how hard I worked leading up to the fight. No, he zeroes in on the omission.

Punches not thrown.

Punches not blocked.

This is what I did wrong, and I might have won the match but Spencer would still sit me down for an hour-long lecture. Clean KO or biggest loss, Spencer will still preach; he will show me where I went wrong.

“To start with, how many times have I said to land first attack?”

First attack meaning first jab, first impact—

Like it’s some kind of competition.

Wait a minute…

When isn’t it a form of competition?

When are we not fighting to better understand ourselves?

“I agree,” my go-to reply during post-fight analysis lecture holy-shit-how-long-is-this-going-to-take-please-blow-my-brains-out come on I understand, I understand. How is this helping?

We’re wasting time.

I should be training.

ROUND ONE

X hops forward, two-stepping around the ring taunting me.

I put my fists up.

SHELL

I play it defensively.

I do not land the first punch.

First punch is a jab.

JAB

X leads jab, jab, jab, jab, all of them absorbed. They aren’t landing clean, but tell that to the audience, the CompuBox fuckers, the crooked judges that want me out of the picture. This league needs the new and improved. I do a poor representation of myself. They want a Willem that reminds them not of the times but of the timeless. They want my prime performance.

They want to forget that we are all aging, squirming in our shells.

Try and forget that as you age so too does your personality.

You are not the same person you were when you walked into this fight.

This is what they really want.

I land my first.

JAB

Round one starts slow, feeling out X, waiting for his strategy to present itself. I know it can only be one of four possible plans. When I was his age, I didn’t have a whole lot of patience. I had to outbox everyone.

Spencer scowls, “What is this passive bullshit?”

And:

“That’s not you!”

Actually, it is.

Who else would I be?

JAB

ATTEMPTED HOOK TO THE BODY

Not my best. I lead with the right not quite sure of what I’m thinking. It’s because X had me down for the ten count long before this fight. I had psyched myself out of the dance long before sole met canvas.

Spencer cups his hands, “My god, why didn’t you block any of those jabs?”

JAB

JAB

JAB

JAB

STRAIGHT TO THE CHIN

I didn’t see them coming.

But don’t tell him that.

“I was buying an opportunity.”

My excuse.

Spencer rubs his eyes, “You can’t afford to do that any more, you understand?”

Again, this time louder, writing on the dry-erase board:

CONSERVATIVE

BOXER-PUNCHER

“This is what you need to be!”

He circles it once, twice…four, five times.

“This is what you need to be!”

Louder this time.

Back to the fight.

Round two is about to start.

ROUND TWO

As he said, round two is where I got it all wrong and I’ll admit that it’s true.

“My fucking god, what the hell were you thinking?!”

Spencer is starting to sweat. I played right into X’s plan and what hurts the most is that I came up with this tactic. It’s mine, all mine, and yet he uses it and worst of all, I let it happen. I fell into line and blocked the jabs.

BLOCK

SUDDEN IMPACT

Problem is the jabs were ploys for the cutting shot right to the body.

He lands three well-formed punches, all of them straight shots, to the body where I hadn’t been prepared to take a three-punch flurry.

I narrowly block the uppercut X continued to use throughout the fight. The uppercut that would eventually end the fight in round eight, sending me to the ground where for a brief moment I lost sight of where I was and all I wanted to do was sleep. Take a nap. The ring might as well have been a queen-sized bed.

I was out cold.

But round two, I was a little more active.

JAB

JAB

STRAIGHT

JAB

STRAIGHT

JAB

JAB
STRAIGHT

BLOCK

DUCK

TO THE BODY

JAB

JAB

HOLD

“Why are you holding?”

Spencer widens his eyes, “Explain that to me because I’m dumbfounded.”

“Explain why…”

“Why would you hold? You should have used the goddamn left hook!”

I watch the footage. I avoid scrutiny with a yawn.

“If you weren’t that lax in the ring, you might have won this!”

Another combination, attempted, alongside with notice of which punches actually landed:

JAB (miss)

JAB (miss)

HOOK TO BODY (miss)

HOOK TO THE FACE (miss)

BACKPEDAL (to avoid X’s own jab)

BLOCK (wait for it)

JAB OUT OF POSITION (fight out of it)

JAB (miss)

JAB (impact)

STRAIGHT TO FACE (impact)

I tell Spencer, “That wasn’t so bad, right?”

He watches, silent for a moment, as X follows it up with a combination that turns into the first flurry that stuns me. I am able to fight out of it, holding once or twice, not that anyone noticed.

Spencer sighs.

Except for Spencer.

“It’s bad.”

Solemnly, he returns to the dry-erase board and writes down a phrase to be further explored later, “Footwork & energy management.”

I think my footwork is fine.

Not that I say anything.

Round three is about to start.

ROUND THREE

I do better this round but what the audience doesn’t realize is that it’s not because I stunned X or even managed to hurt him.

It’s because he took the round off. I should have identified that he was merely resting, saving it up (much to his dismay, because I know how little patience I have for that kind of thing) in order to send me down to the canvas in round four, five, and for good in round eight.

Spencer writes on the dry-erase board, “Round management.”

Management.

He might as well just write that on the board and save some time.

Manage this old, confused fighter. Help me figure out why the moment I step into the ring, I feel gassed, completely absent, detached from my body.

Seeing this should make me feel better. I land a classic combination, not that it does anything to X. He takes it in stride, trading shots with me until I reach out and clinch, because truth is I’m winded, I’m hurt, I’m tired, and most of all, I’m confused.

The combination:

JAB

JAB

NOTICE AN OPENING TO THE BODY

JAB TO BODY

HOOK TO LEFT SIDE OF FACE

HOOK TO BODY

STRAIGHT

STRAIGHT

JAB

SHORT CROSS TO THE BODY

LEFT POWER SHOT (MY BEST)

I give him my best combination, finishing it off with a clean power shot to the body, something that should have at least registered but X, as I had said earlier, follows up with a combination of his own.

I shut my eyes, not wanting to see it.

I hear Spencer breathing heavily, “Unacceptable! You are falling into your own traps!”

I am.

Yes.

I know that I am.

How can I avoid the past’s snares and spikes if I forget where I had left them, and moreover, what can you do if every time I look in the mirror I see someone new, someone older, someone that I’m not at all familiar with?

This is me, I say.

But I don’t believe it.

ROUND FOUR

X uses this round to catch up on the cards.

The round is a mess. I am stunned early and I hold.

Much of round four looks like this:

BLOCK

X LANDS A COMBINATION

COMBINATION CONSISTS OF:

JAB

LEFT HOOK

JAB

LEFT HOOK

RIGHT HOOK

JAB

STRAIGHT

TO THE BODY:

JAB

JAB

POWER SHOT STRAIGHT

POWER SHOT STRAIGHT

UPPERCUT (impact, stun)

My best bet is, of course:

BLOCK

HOLD

BLOCK

BRACE FOR IMPACT