The Laughter of Strangers (4 page)

Spencer on the recovery.

Wish he could take a punch or two for me. Even with a good chin, even with the gloved up hands, the cushioning and conditioning, those damn things still hurt. Like right now, I feel like someone’s punched me.

Dazed and confused look on my face…

And I hear what I fear most.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

This is why Spencer usually does all the talking.

I won’t be able to take that one back.

This is the laughter I fear most.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

They are laughing at me, and we all know it—the people in attendance, the people watching at home. X and his camp.

Everyone was listening as I said it. You don’t come back from something like this. It’s out there, in the open, material like getting stunned by a haymaker punch; I have to be extra careful, guarding every action, every idea, every step, until I shake free of the humiliation.

Humiliation hurts more than any swift strike to the stomach.

You can absorb those with a clench of the abdominal muscles, letting muscle protect ribcage and organs from the impact, but something like this, words said that cannot be unsaid, are beyond protection.

They exist, hanging there.

Hear it?

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

I am stunned.

I fear it. I am afraid, but I cannot let it show or else it will be far worse than I would ever be willing to face.

The audience is my opponent.

The audience looks nothing like me.

Do I have room to say anything else?

I probably shouldn’t.

Clam up, sweating, looking down at the mug full of water.

Wait until it ends. Ignore the host’s voice.

Spencer, say what you need to say.

I won’t be saying another word.

CARE TO EXPLAIN…

Three words from the host’s mouth that slip through my defenses.

It gets me to thinking:

If they want my defeat this early in the prefight festivities, the long routine of venue to venue, meet and greet and gloating, I have one thing to say:

Why am I the main guest of this show?

Why am I the guest if they want me to grovel?

Why do they see me as this, when I still have a few fights left in me?

I want to fight.

I need to fight.

I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself that I need to fight to get back.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

Why don’t I tell them that?

Yeah, but it’s too late.

Spencer explains our basic strategy, something we shouldn’t really talk about but because I said something I shouldn’t have, he is doing his best to cover up the error. It’s not like it’s a strategy I’d use anyway.

He’s just pulling something out of the air, pure hot air.

BASIC STRATEGY,

ACCORDING TO SPENCER MULLEN:

1)
Keep your form tight, punches sharper but not necessarily cast in power. Too many power shots gasses you early.

2)
Hydrated before, during, and after fight—a cup of water every hour at the very least.

3)
Emphasis on shorter hooks and uppercuts leading with, of course, the jab. The slower the punch, the harder the impact. Sit on your punches whenever necessary; power shots used sparingly.

4)
Can’t stress it enough—lead with the jab. Long jabs rather than short create distance and control. Save short jabs for testing the waters, searching and sifting for an opportunity.

5)
Focus on chopping the opponent down to size by working the body. Jab to the head, right hook to the body—a sound two-hit lead on a potential flurry of shots.

6)
Flurries should be at most four shots. Odds are only half will connect; rest are at the expense of landing at least one. Most flurries work against conserving energy; use sparingly.

7)
Remember that every punch is about creating an opportunity, identifying your opponent’s weak spots, and consistently going for the body.

8)
Fight conservatively while avoiding excessive defense; that ploy tends to work against you on the judges’ cards.

9)
Establish your ground and keep it; no backpedaling.

10)
Time your punches right and you can block a punch with another punch.

AUDIENCE’S ATTENTION SPAN

Satiate the masses, the audience. The host nods and turns to the camera, “There you have it: Straight from the source, we have a sound strategy and one hell of a fight to look forward to.”

There will be a fight, sure, but will it consist of looking forward or looking back? I see X and he reminds me of how fast on my feet I had been before hitting thirty.

Looking forward is the same as looking back.

If I fight the past, I wonder if I can improve the future.

AUDIENCE APPLAUSE

Spencer waits until we are back in the dressing room to call me out on yet another error.

That error, yes, and I deserve it.

Not going to let you hear what he said but, more or less, he says what he always says—one eye closed, sighing, shaking his head, mid-shout he discusses how it makes me look. Fodder, more fuel for the promo machine.

I could explain myself but he’s not looking for explanations; Spencer explains how my comment is already spreading like wildfire, trending across social media sources; they have a snippet of the interview where I look like I’m under the influence of some kind of medication. Superimposed are my words, I THINK SO, in bold white. Five-second intervals repeated, I THINK SO.

I look like a wreck.

I THINK SO

Spencer explains how it’ll take two weeks to get this meme to die.

“Another fight we don’t need!”

And another thing he makes sure I recognize after every interview, every forsaken media spectacle, “It took us ten years to get them used to having me in the spotlight with you, holding your hand like you can’t think for yourself!”

Progress made seemingly shatters with a single error.

I THINK SO

It lingers like a stillborn thought.

And then Spencer repeats, “I think so!” in unison with the echo localized in my mind.

I hear it even though it’s no longer mine to have.

I fucked up. Yeah, I get it.

It’s just another fight, after all.

Spencer shouts, “What the hell is wrong with you, Willem?”

If I told him the truth, what I really fear, he would join in on the laughter. If I told him the truth, what I really want to do, he would figure me for an ungrateful client. He used to treat me like an equal, a friend; these days I will admit to having fallen off, momentum lost.

He carries me.

I used to carry him.

“I’m tired,” is all I tell him. Not quite an excuse but not far off either.

I can hear the audience…

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

I wonder if they are laughing with or at the guest.

There is wonder in the fact that they can forget the greatest news bites but fail to let something like I THINK SO go.

Negativity floats.

The positive swims for a second before swallowing too much seawater, and down it goes, to the very bottom of the sea.

I’d like to live there.

Think about it—down there, where no human being can subsist—I’d like to fight the ocean, the tides; I’d like to face myself in the mirror and see me for who I am now, not what I used to be.

A fighter loses the fight and it’s a slippery slope to rock bottom.

Can I hit rock bottom?

Can I live there?

NO

Spencer claps his hands together, “Hey!”

“Yeah…?”

Look at me. I must look like hell, pre-defeated before the prefight can even begin. Embarrassing.

“You say you’re tired well good because we have Bedside Chat next.”

I knew it was coming.

I’m not sure I’m ready yet.

But I don’t tell Spencer this. I keep it to myself.

Instead I ask, “What about training? I feel weak…I need to recondition myself for this fight.”

“We’ll get to that,” Spencer replies, waving his hand in the air, dismissing my query.

I need to hit the heavy bag, need to work the snap back into my jab.

Over the last couple years, I’ve barely trained at all.

Spencer with a poetic excuse, “Every step you take is a training exercise, now come on, let’s get going. We
cannot
be late to any scheduled press event. That’s the last thing we need, to be marked ‘LOP’ for the rematch.”

He means guests marked “LOP” are unpredictable and are known to skip events and/or crash events. You might as well not even go than be late to the junket. And if we were late, Spencer would say the same thing.

He’d tell the cabbie to turn around, sacrificing that event while we make our way to the next one, early.

Sure the excuse is good enough but that doesn’t make it true.

Training involves heart rate, toning, recuperation.

Most of the prefight window I’m staring into a camera, being criticized or considered a spectacle, an unfortunate celebrity.

I can’t say it ever was very exciting…

But maybe.

X seems to enjoy it, which means, well yeah, I must have liked all the attention too.

“Once upon a time.”

“What?”

I shake my head, “Nothing.”

“Well come on, hustle Will!”

Up and out of the dressing room, sprinting down the hall. Here we are, yet again, how many times have we done this?

Even if I knew I’d still find reason enough to forget.

Wish I could have selected what to keep versus what to forget.

I listen to the distant audience laughter as we step out into the back alley of the studio building.

I practice my introduction on the cabbie. Unresponsive, the cabbie takes a drag from his cigarette and says, “You’re that fighter.”

Yes, I am.

Whatever that means.

Label me a fighter.

How does that help define who I am?

INTRODUCTION

READ: I AM TRYING

The cabbie doesn’t give a name and there’s nothing left to say.

Spencer gives the cabbie directions.

The rest is silence, and I am still staring into the rearview mirror, watching the disinterest hang over the cabbie’s face, gloom of a near-frown, stench of long hours sitting and smoking, wrinkles forming where it counts most, reminding me of my own age.

And how old I have become…

I am a fighter.
Edit
: I am an old fighter.

I am a fighter that doesn’t know when to quit.

EDIT: I AM STILL TRYING

I think I am, anyway.

Got to be something worth fighting for, right?

THE LAUGHTER MOST DEAR

Just now I remembered this one training exercise that I created, without anyone else’s help, not even Spencer, who is the king of coming up with creative forms of punishment; it was this simple little stunt where you merge between five to eight rounds of sparring with a jog around the ring. Each round is split down the middle so that the first minute of the first round, you spar; the last minute of the first round, you jog around the ring. You reverse it for round two, jogging in the first minute and sparring in the last, back and forth until you are gassed. When you are gassed, you spar one last round, but not before chugging straight vodka from the bottle right before manning the gloves.

I did this not because it helped me physically (maybe it did, don’t know) but because it helped so much mentally, just being able to compress all of it into one forty-five minute training session.

Time is “of the essence” and even back then I knew that I only had so much of it reserved for the gym. Over the course of my entire career, I got the sense that very little of training consisted of conditioning the body.

Mostly we went to public places and made sure people, fans, haters, whoever it might have been, were there to watch.

I get the sense that I can measure time not in hours but in media junkets. Like this one, Bedside Chat, where I lie down on one bed facing away from the other bed where X will lay, we compete against each other in rehearsed sketches facilitated by a central computer programmer.

The world watches our words type out on a screen that we cannot see.

Via an earpiece in our right ear, we hear the producers telling us what to type next. What I love the most about this is how we receive notice from the listeners, the viewers, the audience, the world.

Not a sound.

Never a sound.

Instead we see their commentaries as a trickle of type, just like ours only smaller, set in italics, running across the bottom of the screen only they can see.

We see it later, after the event is over.

Post-criticism, it feels so much better, easier to handle; Bedside Chat started as a feature on a blog and has now become a celebrity mainstay.

CANDID

That’s the word used in the Chat tagline.

Not far from the truth. If only the world knew that everything was rehearsed, prewritten, and really what X and I do is attempt to be ourselves.

Be
me.

I worry that I’ll get that part wrong.

I think I’m confident but I can’t be sure.

Maybe I’m self-conscious. Have I always been self-conscious?

CHAT PROMPT

The way this looks, both beds are cast in synthetic moonlight. X might as well not even be here; I don’t see him walk in just as he doesn’t see me. I type out what I’m supposed to type out:

HELLO

But that’s not enough, the producer voice speaks into my ear via the provided earpiece, so I opt for: