Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

“You know we were supposed to continue with prefight promotions,” I warn Spencer, given that he’s usually the one stressing out about this kind of stuff.

Spencer types something, looks up at me, screen glow causing him to appear pale, malnourished, “I have something in mind.”

When I ask, he shakes his head, “Later.”

Later becomes much later becomes a lot of wasting time searching websites, playing free browser videogames while Spencer types away at something he won’t show me until “later.”

LATER

After the painkillers start to wear off and I sit still, not moving at all, staring at my screensaver — a series of colorful psychedelic light shows — because to move an inch is to send radiating waves of pain up my arm, my leg, across my face.

I sit still because pain has me pinned.

“Okay,” Spencer says, sigh of relief.

WHAT IS IT?

Well, it’s a bunch of lies.

If it doesn’t make any sense, lie until it does.

Okay, I’ll do my best to summarize:

HE HAS A PAST

As in, I have a past history of violence.

As in, I have been known to partake in drunken misconduct.

As in, there have been a lot of bar fights.

As in, pretty much anyone would agree, given that I’m a fighter and that bar fights are so common someone will step up and attest to the lie, validating it via testimony.

As in, whatever we don’t have an answer to, we’ll lie about it later.

As in, I might have taken a knife to a man during one of these quarrels.

As in, I should have been training but instead I was busy blacking out during the killing.

As in, that’s my cover story:

My excuse for not remembering.

As in, I will plead innocent and in pleading innocent, people will think I’m even guiltier than they thought.

As in, there is a missing dead man, no longer in this world, dead by my drunken hands.

As in, it’s all a lie but the search for evidence will fuel promotions, sending the media my way.

As in, all news is good news, no matter if it’s terrible, bad, slanderous.

As in, you will know me in the next couple days as “that boxer guy who killed a man.”

As in, the world is fickle, but the media-outlets are far worse.

A TERRIBLE PAST

I have my reservations about all of it but it was my idea, remember?

Can’t back down now.

I move into the other room, leaving my laptop and that link to anxiety, on the kitchen table. Spencer follows me, carrying the laptop, reading aloud a dizzying list of deceit.

YOU CAN LIE ABOUT THAT

“If you haven’t a clue, it doesn’t matter ’cause you killed a man and everyone will believe it even if they don’t.”

Where is my heart?

Why is my heart not in this?

I can lie to Spencer, you know. I can lie, saying that I’m excited, that this will be a boon for us. However, what I think about as I sit down on the old couch, the couch that always smells of chocolate ever since Sarah accidentally spilled hot chocolate into the cushions. No amount of cleaning washes away the smell. Frankly, I look forward to it. It pulls me out of my head and back into the house, this room, right now.

Here I am.

I want to relax.

The pain numbs the soul.

I look like I’m listening.

I look and act like I am tuned into our “most deadly” little plan.

I look the part but really there’s only one thing I’m listening to:

SILENCE

The silence I seek is right here, cradling my beat-the-shit-up body, carrying me away, in search of one of those hauntings.

I seek an adventure, if only because by going on an adventure, I will be going somewhere else. Somewhere away from Willem. Meaning, I want to step outside myself. I am often way too self-absorbed and not because I care so much about this identity but because I feel obligated.

I am not the only Willem Floures.

There are forty-one of us. A whole league.

I am number two, which means I’m not number one. How can you be second best to yourself? Does it make any sense to you because it doesn’t to me. The internal monologue isn’t mine. I hear voices, all of their would-be voices, discussing dreams, ambitions, and what it means to be ‘me.’

Sometimes I just want to be a person.

Not this personality.

The pressure to keep fighting is the force of the fight itself; we fight to entertain and to be enlightened. I am not so sure I’ve achieved any sort of enlightenment. Once, back when I was minted as “undefeated” and destined to build and brand the league as one of the best, the premier boxing syndication worldwide, I thought I knew.

I thought I saw it, that spark in my eyes.

“It’s me,” that’s what I said.

In the mirror, I see the shadow take shape.

My silhouette is cookie-cutter, just another permutation of the identity that is ‘Willem Floures.’

We all manage to look, act, speak, and spell the same.

That seems remarkable until yourealize—

Scratch that — until I realize what’s at work here.

Don’t ask.

If you do, guess what?

YOU CAN LIE ABOUT THAT

I will be forced into another lie.

Never was very comfortable, barely any good at, lying but when you have an agent like Spencer who does all the talking for you, I just have to be there. Just barely.

Funny then, to come to another realization (it must be the fact that I am just so comfortable, most at ease, when in this house):

I am a fighter that has always loathed the act of fighting.

The sweet science is one of the most difficult to master and somewhere I found out that I was a natural. Well…maybe the truth is:

YOU CAN LIE ABOUT THAT TOO

I proclaimed myself a fighter and not just a fighter but a:

STRATEGIST

Not a boxer-puncher, not a brawler, not a throwback kind of style. I defined ‘Willem Floures’s to be a strategist. Meaning: I am all of the above. Meaning: I am full of shit. We are all full of shit. I mean, come on, a fight is a lot like a dance: it takes two to get things going.

Swing and a miss.

Round by round edge-of-your-seat fighting isn’t possible if I am not who I think I am. See how I am a contradiction?

Which part of me will inevitably change/fix that problem.

I used to think it was me; I’d be the one to make things work.

SILENCE

So the murder, the lies, will be enough to buoy an entire campaign Spencer has conceived tonight, as of this evening, four hours of what I had felt to be unproductive surfing the net. Guess I was the one wasting time, not Spencer. He also talks about how X will become a nonissue, might even be psyched out by the idea of having murdered someone.

What I wonder is:

“If I claimed to have killed someone, wouldn’t that mean X killed someone too?”

“No,” Spencer replies, “but yes. But no.” Never looks up from the screen.

YOU CAN LIE ABOUT THAT

“If you need to,” Spencer adds.

I killed a man.

It still feels strange to say these words.

I haven’t actually said them aloud.

Spencer says that I should.

That I have to.

“Say it, I want to hear you say it. You need to get used to saying it.”

Close one eye, open the other. Fine—

I KILLED A MAN

The statement hangs there, like I just carved through a curtain of space, rendering it wounded, broken, a black hole.

“You sound like you don’t mean it.”

True. True statement. I don’t mean it.

I don’t want to mean it.

“You have to make it sound genuine in order for this to work.”

Close my mouth. Someone find a needle and some string; I want to stitch my lips closed. Never again will I speak.

“Say it again,” Spencer commands.

I KILLED A MAN

He plays it back.