Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

At night I hear that laughter, the lacerating kind that feels like another fight in and of itself, twelve rounds of ridicule, the roast of ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures by all the others that know more about him than he knows himself.

The receiving end of all jokes.

It’s as bad as an inside joke that I’m not in on…

And it’s about me.

WHAT NOW?

SILENCE

I stop laughing and I’m only a cough away from crying.

Spencer sighs, he rewinds the footage and replays the KO again.

THAT PERFECT UPPERCUT

THE UPPERCUT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

Are they satisfied?

Spencer makes a face, “It is you when you were twenty-two.”

Shakes his head, “Right down to the penchant for combinations.”

He shuts off the footage, looks at the dry-erase board.

SILENCE

Everything he had written is now a smear.

“‘Sugar’…you are no longer sweet with the science.”

I feel the side of my face. This would be sore if I were sober.

He turns to me, “Well?”

I raise my eyebrows, “Well what?”

“Got any bright ideas?”

SILENCE

But I only hear laughter.

We sit here for a time, drifting between caustic thoughts and, at least for me, a deepening fear that is borderline indescribable.

I say, “You shouldn’t have signed us up for the rematch.”

Spencer sighs, “We have no choice. You take the rematch or you no longer exist. ‘Fade out on a sorry sack of shit.’ You want that? Because I don’t. I’ve spent the last three decades building you into the definition of Willem Floures. ‘Sugar’ as in sweet; ‘sweet’ as in the sweetest display of the science that is boxing. And look at you now…”

SILENCE

I have nothing to say.

Thankfully, I am not left with the laughter for long, the laughter exclusively for me. Spencer still speaks for me, and what he says next is about as succinct and on-point as anything I could have hoped to hear:

You either win or you wither away.

This is it. In terms of chances, I’m on my last and I’m lucky to have one more. Very discouraging when you look in the mirror, you look at any form of identification, and you are no clearer in your comprehension of what it means to be THIS person than you were ten, twenty, thirty years ago.

Follow that up by something a trainer and agent should never ask their client, their fighter, their friend:

“Got any ideas? Because I’m done.”

As a matter of fact, I do.

Remember what I had said earlier, about that little flicker that became something full-featured and, at least during this era of desperation, became a fantastic idea? Yeah well when Spencer Mullen seems to get behind it and approve of such an idea, what would you do?

You go along with it.

You even get a little excited.

Maybe, just maybe, you think that you might have a chance.

I MIGHT WIN

Old age does not bring wisdom.

Old age turns smart minds into fools.

A lot of what I don’t like might follow me wherever I go, but there is one place that saves me from the shame, the swarming of scrutiny and shit talking. It really doesn’t look like much, older two story house just outside the city, slightly neglected lawn, paint job on the place faded, in need of a facelift.

It is a lived-in home.

Spencer’s house since as far back as his previous life. It is also where I reside when I’m not on the road, on a plane, shoved into another stunt, or stunned by an uppercut in the eighth round of a fight that I’d rather forget.

The house looks a lot like me.

It creaks with every step just like my knees make a snapping sound as I sit down. This house isn’t much at all, but maybe neither am I.

I like it here.

It feels like I can push everything, the pressure, away; it’s almost like I can leave it all outside.

The world does not pass the front door.

Here, there is silence.

Here, this is where I escape.

Where I live, that apartment somewhere posing as my place, broken into more than a handful of times by desperate media seeking something of me, might as well not even exist. I might as well just consider the world out there as unreachable.

Because when I retreat to the calm of the house, it feels like I no longer exist. And you know what?

I like the fact that I can lose it all with a single step into the house.

It swallows us whole and it feels like we operate on an entirely different spectrum of time. Spencer was always aware of this fact. I’m not the only one that finds worth in the home. He offered me one of the spare rooms, “Fuck if I think you’ll get any solace anywhere else.”

The house holds onto a simpler time.

That’s what I believe, anyway. Spencer would never tell you but he never got over the passing of his wife. It happened quickly, the details omitted, but the fact that he drove away the grief by fixating on something all-encompassing as boxing, he began a new era of his life.

The previous era, I imagine, is felt in the confines of this home.

His daughter, Sarah, nine years of age, has the house and it’s hauntings to take care of her whenever Spencer leaves for work.

No nannies, no daycare—

Spencer can leave and Sarah never feels like she’s been left alone.

There’s something about the house…

And hear that?

SILENCE

It is what I seek. Especially now, given what we must do.

So I have to admit that I can’t believe that Spencer thinks it’s a good idea. A good idea…admitting to murder. A good idea… sensationalizing and lying about fiction made fact. A good idea… no-showing all of today’s prefight media events. A good idea…

How much is it worth?

Is it really worth the calm, the silence that helps settle those bothersome thoughts?

SILENCE

Sarah skips into the kitchen, sits with us at the table, listens to talk about theoretical murder made ‘true.’

Sarah giggles, “Are you going to die?”

“Maybe,” Spencer grins, “maybe.”

I tell him about how it might not catch on. I tell him, “Really how easy is it to pretend you murdered someone?”

Spencer’s reply: “Easier than you’d believe.”

“What about name, motive, all of that?”

YOU CAN LIE ABOUT THAT

“Why don’t you go back upstairs and play?”

Sarah frowns, “But James won’t let me back into my room.”

James. Just another one of those hauntings, I gather. The names change every time; as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t come across any of those so-called hauntings. Neither has Spencer. Product of a child’s imagination? Well, there is something here, something about the house, but I’m not about to try to explain it. I like it here. Isn’t that enough?

“Well tell James to play nice.”

Sarah skips around the kitchen table.

She punches me in the arm, “I punched you.”

Pained expression, “Yes you did.”

“Did it hurt?”

Actually it did. She got me right where I was already sore.

Turning to Spencer, “Your daughter knows how to throw a punch.”

“Course she does. Her father is Spencer Mullen.”

Sarah shadowboxes, “I fought James once. I won!”

“Good girl,” Spencer sips cold coffee from a mug.

We’ve been sitting here, scheming, not getting anywhere. Doubt on my end, assurance on his, we mostly drink coffee while scouring the internet on our respective laptops, attempting to find something to use.

Material, an image, I don’t know.

Ask Spencer and he tells me:

YOU CAN LIE ABOUT THAT

“Lie about what?”

Say anything. It can be true if they believe it to be true.

Sarah runs up the stairs, leaving Spencer and I to the unproductivity of this day. Waste of a day. Spencer is determined that this will help rebuild some of the cache I have lost.