Tom Schreck: On the Ropes

After Clogger came Larry Kingston, who was chronically depressed and incredibly boring to talk to. During Larry’s sessions I usually pretended to jot notes down on what he said and instead wrote out what I needed at the grocery store.

The very last session of the day was with Emmanuel “Froggy” Bramble. Froggy was another gay guy who hung out in the park and lived pretty much the same life as Mikey. Froggy didn’t have any desire to go the transgendered route, but he was flamboyantly feminine. He accentuated a lisp as if playing to the stereotype and he often said he had no desire to change his lifestyle.

His numerous arrests for park activity and low-level drug possessions forced him into treatment. Like Mikey, he was fun to talk to but he did very little therapeutic “work” in our sessions-whatever that is. Froggy was originally from Jamaica and he had very dark skin and wore his hair in neat cornrows. At six-two and a well-muscled 215 pounds, he didn’t really fit the body type of your basic, central-casting flamer.

He was about ten minutes late, which is actually early by our clinic’s standards. Froggy was wearing knee-length black spandex pants and a white mesh shirt. He kept his wraparound mirrored sunglasses on.

“Hello Mr. Duffy,” Froggy said.

“Hey Froggy,” I said. “Tell me what’s been going on.”

“Oh, you know, just doing my thing.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. You’re talking about your nocturnal park rendezvous?”

“You say it so nice,” Froggy said, exaggerating his lisp.

“C’mon, Frog, you know it’s not safe.”

“That doesn’t seem to bother the steady stream of upstanding businessmen who come visit us,” he said. “’Course when I get through with them, they’re all upstanding.”

“Yeah, but-”

“This week we had a Crawford city council member, a prominent tax attorney, and my new favorite-that TV doctor,” Froggy rolled his eyes like someone who just finished a superb flaming baked Alaska for dessert. “That man gives as good as he gets-just like he says, ‘body and spirit,’” Froggy said.

“Look, Frog, let’s talk about drugs…”

“He’s so cute in his white coat and to think, a TV celebrity, doing me the favors.”

“Frog-the drugs?” I said.

And so it went. Froggy wanted to get off bragging about his sex life and I wanted to talk about anything else. Part of it was because it was a little gross, but mostly because it didn’t help Froggy focus on doing anything to better himself. It was an uphill battle, but toward the end of the hour Froggy halfheartedly agreed to at least look at his addictive tendency.

Such is a day in the business of saving lives. It was a full day and I had had enough. I needed to do something physical and get my heart racing, so I headed to the gym to hopefully get some sparring in. My own rule is to get a sparring session in at least every two weeks if I have no fight scheduled. If I’m training for a specific bout, then I spar three times a week. As a professional opponent, it behooves me to stay in shape in case a decent payday, short-notice fight comes up. There was the possibility of that fight in Kentucky, but I didn’t think I wanted to take it. After that, you just never know when the phone is going to ring.

Smitty was watching a couple of teenage featherweights in the ring. The cool thing about Smitty was he gave everyone the same attention regardless of ability or potential. The determining factor about whether Smitty took time to coach you was whether you sparred with heart. If you avoided fighting, if you got in the ring and pussied it, or if you made a ton of excuses about sparring, then Smitty had little use for you. He wouldn’t be mean; he just wouldn’t take you seriously.

Fighting was a spiritual thing to him. He believed it was an important thing in life to face what you’re scared of and keep on keeping on despite your fears. We met when I was a teenager and I was doing karate. The Y has a karate class and some of the guys from the class come in during the boxing sessions to work out or to add boxing to their skills. I thought I was a badass as a kid because I had a black belt until I decided to box with another kid who had a few amateur fights. The kid punched me in the stomach and I threw up. The next day I asked Smitty if he would train me and I never went back to karate. Real fighting, I’ve learned, involves being hit and dealing with it and in karate classes there just isn’t enough real hitting.

If you looked at Smitty, you’d think he was the quintessential, old-time, gym-rat boxing trainer. He was in his sixties, black, and still all wiry muscle with a close-cropped head of gray hair. He favored Dickies, flannel shirts, and work boots as his fashion statement. Smitty devoted his life to boxing, which made his central casting role authentic, but it was far from all he was. Smitty got out of Korea and with the GI Bill went to Dartmouth where he got a degree in American literature. He reads voraciously and continues to teach literacy courses in the state prison sixty miles away three times a week for nothing. Smitty is independently wealthy, though you’d never guess it from looking at him. He never said how he happened to make his fortune and he never flaunted it, living in one of the city’s old brownstones and driving an Olds Ninety-Eight from the late eighties.

I loosened up and Smitty came over to work me through the mitts. In mitt work, the trainer calls out punch combinations and you have to respond with the right punches. It drills proper technique and reaction time. The way Smitty did it, it worked your defense too, because if he saw you drop your guard, he’d crack you in the face with a mitt.

“Turn the hip over on your hook,” Smitty said. “That’s where your power comes from.”

I threw four or five more hooks in a row, none of which pleased Smitty.

“Do you want to hit like a bitch your whole life?” he growled. “Throw the hip into the hook!” he said.

This has been going on since I was a teenager. I didn’t have much power in my punches and I knew it. Power in boxing comes less from muscle strength and more from the subtle shifting of body weight. Some fighters naturally have the knack of shifting their body weight just right so they maximize their power. If you don’t have it, you can have success by being crafty in the ring and by hitting the other guy more than he hits you. Without the shifting of body weight, it’s tough to get one-punch knockout power.

“Smitty-I’m trying,” I said. “I’ve been fuckin’ trying since I was fourteen.”

“Let it happen, Duff. Let your hip out, then snap it in at the right moment. It’s just like givin’ it to a chick,” Smitty said.

He’s used that analogy every day I’ve been in the gym since I was fourteen. Maybe if Lisa let me throw it to her once in a while it would mean something to me. Smitty finally changed up from the hooks and had me working some other combinations and moving. Moving and being crafty was my game, and it’s what keeps me in boxing. I get knocked out, but I rarely take beatings, because I know how to move. That’s why I can beat the local guys and the nobodies and can’t beat guys with one-punch power.

“You’re good for today, Duff,” Smitty said. “I ain’t got nobody for you to spar.”

“I was hoping to get some work in the ring. Ain’t nobody around?” I said.

“Nobody for you, Duff. If you really want to, do some bag work,” Smitty said. “You got to let me know about the deal in Kentucky.”

“I don’t want to go down there unless they come up with more money.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Smitty said. He was no Don King, but he knew how to work small-time promoters and squeeze the most money out of them.