Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

I was always good at carefully throwing in an uppercut at the end of a combination. I could really get the glove right under the chin, the kind of punch that sends glassjaws crying and cast-iron chins to the ground.

Not that I ever really did.

During my prime, I fought more just like me.

We took the punches like we planned on early retirement. They wear on you over the years. I wonder how bad my memory, my reflexes, my conditioning will be five, ten, fifteen years from now.

But okay, the uppercut.

Didn’t see it coming (which means X did a great job connecting).

I don’t remember how long I was on the ground but it wasn’t for long. You fight enough and you can get by for a while, at least half the fight, on instinct, muscle memory, the routine of having heard, smelled, and felt pretty much everything you’d expect in a fight.

Sensory cues from decades of self-affliction.

Remnants of a fighter that can’t stop fighting himself.

ROUND SIX

It all comes apart after that uppercut knockdown in the fifth.

Spencer is silent, chews gum. Watches in silent dismay.

It’s bad, and he’s no longer bothering to rant or even comment. I get the sense that he wants to shut the footage off as much as I do; however, it stays on as I look like a wreck in round six.

X has me pinned against the ropes for a third of the round.

BLOCK

HOLD

SHORT LIFELESS HOOKS TO THE BODY

It’s what I do to survive.

To the referee it appeared as though I was all right.

Can’t say that I was but again, fighter’s instinct.

“Were there any lights on during the last three rounds?”

Can’t say that there were so I don’t say anything.

Spencer blows a bubble, lets it pop and hang over his lower lip for a few seconds before pulling it back into his mouth with his tongue.

“Rookie mistake.”

ROUND SEVEN

So by now everyone in the audience expects X to win. If it goes to decision, X is victor, no doubt about it. This is one of those cases where I basically have to knock him out in order to win.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

Everyone knew it.

People stood up and left.

There were a few rounds left in the fight but it seemed as though everyone had it all fought out in their mind. They knew how it would end. We fought it out, lagging behind the times.

I watch the footage, not at all familiar with what happened in round seven.

I was out on my feet, nothing there.

You know how everything is muted when underwater, both sight and sound cloudy and obtuse?

That’s how it feels after being stunned, your mind slush, random thoughts, sometimes as odd as the last time you called your mom, rise up from the grey matter of your memory.

For me, round seven was all about hamburgers. I tasted a bacon cheeseburger, craved it, after the half-memory of eating a double-decker at a local restaurant resurfaced somewhere towards the beginning of the round.

I could go for one right about now…

Spencer runs his palm across the dry-erase board, smearing everything he’d written. Conceivably, this would be alarming. Conceivably.

Yeah, well I’m just hopeful that there won’t be a follow-up lecture.

I mean look at what I’m doing:

JAB

JAB

JAB

JAB

HOLD

Versus what X is doing:

BLOCK

WEEVE-JAB TO BODY

LEFT HOOK

RIGHT HOOK

STRAIGHT

Keep in mind that this is all news to me.

Can’t recall what happened this round.

Turns out I didn’t miss anything. I missed every single punch thrown, leaving myself open fifty percent of the time for X to throw in a combination, score more points, make me look terrible.

It’s a horrible performance. I admit it.

When I attempt to clinch, I leave myself wide open. X sees every single clinch coming so what does he do?

BACK PEDAL

TWO STEPS

LEAN BACK

WATCH ME GRAB AIR

PERFECT STRAIGHT

HOOK TO THE FACE

I don’t cut easily. I have taken a lot of damage these last couple decades, compounded misery on layaway, but hell if I’ve kept myself fairly clean, give or take a welt or two on occasion.

But blood flows by round seven from the wound on my face that would swell and become the welt that led me to the hospital.

Take one of those dry-erase markers and draw a face on the welt and from a far enough distance, from the POV of a druggie or drunk son-of-a-bitch, they just might figure the welt for a conjoined twin, a second face, skull and all. It swelled and throbbed and pained me for hours, a day, even now I feel numb to the touch on that side of my face.

The painkillers, you see.

Spencer sighs.

Says nothing.

Here it comes.

ROUND EIGHT

Wow, the welt is already forming; the referee pulls me aside and says something to me. Can’t hear it from the side of the ring but it’s the usual measure of consciousness. Answer the question:

Is this fighter out on his feet or is he still fighting?

The referee should have called it right then and there. Part of me is glad that he didn’t because it’s far more embarrassing to lose the fight between rounds; however, what happened next, about a minute into round eight, might have been one of the worst experiences of my life.

You’ll see what I mean.

I still see the sequence in slow motion.

X opts to let me try for the clinch but for a time, about fifteen seconds, we are at a standstill, waiting.

He waits for another stupid mistake.

I’m waiting to fall asleep. The audience wants this to be over and those that remain in their seats are only there in hopes of seeing a KO.

JAB

He toys around with the jab.

JAB

I block one but absorb the next.

JAB

He wants me to fight.

X knows that he has the fight won; he’s looking for the perfect time to plant that exclamation point on VICTORY.

JAB

He gets there quickly, with the single most important tool in the sweet science that is boxing.

JAB

I block.

JAB

Again, I block.

JAB

Only a matter of time and the time is now.

I absorb the jab and try for my own. Grazes his glove, which he then uses as an opportunity to threaten me with an outlandish, taunting haymaker.

I narrowly block it.

He grins, mouthpiece showing, ‘XXX’ can be seen printed across the piece. The audience is a low roar, everyone sensing blood.

JAB

JAB

JAB

Trio of jabs, two hitting me right on the nose, shaking me free, doing the trick by sending a signal, ANGER, from some part of my mind that’s still somehow working and you know what happens next. What happens next is exactly what X wanted to happen.

I foolishly go for the clinch.

I grab air.

NOTHING

And something for any highlight reel:

Perfectly executed uppercut, landing right under the chin.

And I fall back, perhaps because I was still grabbing for him I end up grabbing the ropes on my way down. I bounce back upon reaching for the top rope, stumbling in two directions, one of them happens to be X.

As if coming back for more, he hits me again.

UPPERCUT

And I hear laughter.

I look like a ragdoll being tossed around.

To the ground I go and Spencer stops the footage.

I fill in the rest.

Their laughter.

Laughing at me.

For a moment, the way the video is paused, each of my arms going a different direction from my legs, which are floating, on my face the expression of sinister confusion: I feel the tickle of a giggle rising from the base of my throat. I burst out into laughter.

Spencer says, “You think this shit is funny?”

Fact of the matter is, I don’t.

I find it all frightening.

I will never sleep well again.