Mind of an Outlaw (72 page)

I happened to be next in the ring with Ryan, which proved to be my good luck. After every discharge of mean feelings, Ryan would turn angelic. A little ashamed, I expect, of what he had just done to the pornographer, he was not now boxing like a movie star—he certainly did not protect his face. Since the man he had hurt happened to be a sweet guy, extraordinarily optimistic about life (which is probably how he had gotten into pornography in the first place), I liked the editor. When I saw him take this beating, I recognized that I saw him as a friend. If this seems something of a digression, let me say that it helps to carry the auctorial voice around the embarrassment of declaring that I boxed better on that day than I ever did before, or since. I was in a rare mean mood myself, mean enough not to be afraid of Ryan, and—it is very hard to do any kind of good boxing against a superior without some premise to carry you—I was feeling like an avenger. And here was Ryan boxing with his face. It was hard not to hit him straight rights, and he reacted with all the happiness of seeing a beloved senior relative get up from a sickbed. In our first clinch, he whispered, “You punch sharper than anyone here.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I told him.

We fell into a mutually pleasing pattern. He would give me his face for a target, I would bop it, and he would counterpunch. He hit harder than anyone else in the club, but that was the day when my two systems of anxiety were in quiet balance, and I never enjoyed boxing as much.

Following that Saturday, Ryan and I took up predictable weekly behavior. I would invariably be the first to box with him (mainly, I think, so I could enjoy watching the others now that I was done) and he would continue to spar with his hands low, daring
me to catch him. I would, often enough, and he would counterpunch. How much he took off his blows I do not know—at whatever level he gunned down his motors for me, his punches still took your head half around, or left a space in your gut, and I, in turn, reduced my punches very little for him. Whatever the equilibrium, we had found it, and it was as close as it ever came for me to gain some knowledge of how a professional might feel in a real bout for money with a hard-hearted crowd out there and the spirit of electricity in the ring lights. Damn, it was exciting. I even came to understand what it was to feel love for the man you were fighting because he had forced you to go a little beyond yourself, and I never took as many good punches or threw as many as in those one or two rounds each Saturday with Ryan O’Neal.

Life, in the form of Luce publications, caught up with this romance. Ryan, having produced my Saturday illumination, would then box with another three or four of us and kept to his habit—I always thought it was penance for having become a movie star—of showing that good-looking open face, so relatively easy to score upon.

There came a day when I popped him in the left eye a few times running and the boxers who came after me did approximately as much in the same place, and when he was done, he had a mouse. That little animal got into the papers. One of the gossip columns recounted how Norman Mailer had given Ryan O’Neal a shiner.

People
magazine called up. They were ready to do a story. The dangers were obvious. We would all be famous for too little. So I turned the reporter from
People
over to José Torres. José would know how to protect Ryan.

He did. For my money, he protected him too well. “Ryan could have easily beaten Norman up,” said Torres for publication—which was exactly true. I understood that it was true with all the hard objective core of my pride in being a writer who would always look into the eye of the truth, that severe gray lady, gray as the Gramercy Gym, but, José, José, I whispered within, how about a little transcendence?

Torres was much too agile, however, to sacrifice one friend altogether in order to protect another. So, for
People
magazine, he added: “Norman could whip Sly Stallone in one round.”

“Yes,” I said later to José, “and what happens when I run into Stallone?”

José shrugged. More immediate problems were usually waiting for him around any corner.

I do not recall if it was one year or two or three before I encountered Sylvester Stallone, but it did happen one night in a particularly dark disco with a raked floor.

“I understand,” said Stallone, “that you’re the guy who can beat me in one round.”

He had never looked in finer shape.

“Yeah,” I said, applying all the thickener I could muster to my voice, “I remember when José said that, I said to him, ‘Yeah, swell, but what happens if I don’t knock Stallone out in one round?’ and José said, ‘Oh, then he will
keel
you.’ ”

Stallone gave his sad, sleepy-eyed smile. “Mr. Mailer, I can assure you, I don’t go around killing people.”

It was gracious. One could only respond in kind. “Mr. Stallone,” I said, “I don’t go around getting in the ring with people who can do one-arm push-ups.”

“Ah,” he said sadly, “I can’t do them anymore. I hurt my arm.”

We grinned at each other, we shook hands. I think we were in silent league (for the modest good it could do) against the long reductive reach of the media.

Afterward, I would smile at the cost of such knowledge. It had taken me ten years of boxing to come up with a glimmer of pugilist’s wit—what if I don’t knock him out in the first round?—yes, one boxed for the better footing it could offer in the social world, and one could even believe, yes, absolutely, that boxing was one of the sixty things a man should learn if he is to get along in this accelerating world, so farewell, Gramercy Gym, gray lady of my late middle age, I will always be loyal to you.

THEY WERE THE SAME AGE
—which might be about all they had in common. Still, Norman did remember their one meeting. It had only lasted a couple of minutes, but sometime in the early nineties, as one of the perks after a Folger Library gala, he was ushered with a couple of authors into Dole’s Senate office, a predictable domain. It could boast of a gracious chamber, large windows, a commodious balcony. On the instant of their meeting, he had, however, been surprised. Expecting an encounter with a stern and somewhat wooden figure—the senator certainly looked no less on television—he was taken aback. When they said hello, Dole’s eyes danced with private humor, as if he were ready to say: “You don’t know the first thing about me, Mailer.” It worked.

Novelists live for the moment when their imaginations come alive, since such a moment can feel as good as a match being
struck in the dark. Afterward, he never discounted Dole. There had been too much light in the eye.

So he was not startled when surprises popped up in the last week before the San Diego convention. Indeed, he blessed the gods for having made him a writer of fiction. It might be that only a novelist could hope to understand this particular Republican candidate.

His confidence was that he was ready to make a few guesses concerning that inscrutable inner life Dole would hardly bring to an interview. Did one desire to comprehend the senator’s motives? That seemed an effort worthy in itself. Be brave enough to divine him. What else, after all, was the domain of the novelist? So, he would write about Dole as if he understood him well.

All right, then. A plunge. One night in the mind of Bob Dole as he approaches San Diego in July 1996 to accept the nomination for president of the Republican Party.

They kept saying, “Character. Bring up the issue of character.” Win on character? Didn’t think you could. Didn’t like politicians who looked to impress with character. Grated on him. Besides, certain things—damned if he would discuss them. Nitty-gritty of nursing. Being nursed. Pretty degrading.

Wounds of war come down to being helpless. Couldn’t take care of himself for close to three years. Why talk about that? Shipped home in a body cast, lost one kidney, lost more than seventy pounds, lost control of this and that, whatever. Didn’t look into a mirror those years. Hell of a cadaver looked back. Thirty-nine months to put hospitals behind him. His right arm would never move well. Never again. Had to keep a black pen clutched in his right fist so you wouldn’t try to shake hands. Everybody knew that. Except they didn’t. Always trying to shake hands.

Somebody told him of a writer named Ernest Hemingway who said, “Don’t talk about it.” He wouldn’t. Keep what virtue you can retain. Don’t put it on the air. Certainly nothing good. A man lies wounded. In real pain. Gets to know the air. All the air
around him. Knows that forever. Air is as alive as you and me. So, keep what you have learned. Don’t put it on the air. Keep that secret chamber. If no one knows your next move, your surprises can pick up some smack. But what surprises? Problems do not guarantee a solution. Still, the idea of Clinton beating him. That would be awful. Sweet Billy Clinton didn’t have enough ethics to worry that he was betraying his ethics. Trouble was, Billy had one positive quality: his heart was in the right place. And it was big. Big as a field of cowflop. Hang around him, you take off your shoes, you put on boots. Billy could cry for others as quickly as another man zips up his pants. Of course, Billy’s butt was owned by fat cats. Probably why his other part got inflamed so often. Heart and the other part were all that was left to him. Corporate suits owned Clinton’s nuts. Dole was sure he could do better. Had lived with the big boys for a long time, and they didn’t own his testicles. Just held a mortgage on them.

Unkind thoughts about Billy weren’t going to get him anywhere, however. Not with people these days. They want you softhearted. Back to first principles. It’s basic. Use an oxymoron. Put opposites together. Art of politics. Use every oxymoron you can get away with. Marry incompatibles. Get twice as many votes. Speak of family and freedom as if they are one. The virtues of the family are many, particularly at Christmastime. What isn’t said: family happiness is obtained by losing a considerable amount of your freedom. Of course, there never was a dictator who failed to talk up the virtues of the family. But then fascists were emperors—emperors of the oxymoron.

Trying to copy Clinton might be an infectious disease, but he had caught Billy’s bug. The kind of light you get from fever, he had it now. Wanted to win. Could do it if he played a good game. Had to keep telling himself: think it through.

After all, Republicans had one real achievement: They had made it impossible for that old Democratic Party to survive. Survive, that is, as their old Democratic Party. Reagan had run the debt up. Then Bush. Now it had gotten to where every Democrat who got in had to work to reduce debt. Had to dismantle their Great Society. Couldn’t afford it anymore. Law of reversal. Now,
a strong Republican could get away with running up a new deficit. Could claim it was the Democrats’ fault. After all, wasn’t it always Democrats who went to war? Then it took Republicans to make peace. Couldn’t be otherwise. No Democrat can end a war. How could he? Republicans would beat him to death for lack of patriotism. For cowardice. By contrast, no Republican president could go to war without half of America getting full of distrust. Democrats, anyway. Look at Bush’s trouble getting into war with Iraq. So, there’s an edge. Only a Republican can run up a new deficit. Could be his surprise. Get elected on tax cuts. Extra money is as valuable to the American people as elixir of libido. Great stuff, elixir of libido.

Of course, they would say he was helping to bring about breakdowns in family values. Extra money could certainly lead to more infidelity. Well, you get elected and that gives you a bully pulpit. Try to undo the damage done getting elected. First things first.

Daring idea. But feasible. Larger your oxymoron, more chance it has. Cut taxes. Insist you can balance your budget. Brings the two halves of the Republican Party together. Certainly has to stimulate curiosity. People will ask, Does Dole succeed or fail on this promise? People want to know what happens next.

Of course, you don’t want to get into details. Can’t speak of cuts in Social Security or Medicare. Equal to being dead in the water. Only other real solution: end corporate welfare. Something to consider. It would take Dole to do it. Just like Nixon was the one to make peace with China. But you can’t mention corporate welfare. Just say: I have the will. I have the will to do it. Trust me. When the debates come, look Clinton in the eye. The fat boy might melt. Nothing lost for trying. Will try it.

Well, tried it, announced it. Didn’t work. No credibility. Not even for Dole. War wounds worth less these days. Credibility has to be reinforced. Buttressed. Consider it. Jack Kemp for running mate. Will guarantee credibility on your tax cut. Kemp’s been talking about it for years. So, Dole-Kemp could wake this convention up. Tantamount to Mae West strolling down center aisle stark naked.