Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

That’s all I hoped to get across.

Seems the gamble paid off. And then some.

The fact that I killed a man warmed them up. The fact that I don’t care about my health sends them over the edge.

AUDIENCE SILENCE

IS AUDIENCE SUSPENSE

IS AUDIENCE APPEASED

Executioner looks over his shoulder right before leaving the stage.

It’s a look that kicks over the house-of-cards charade I had built all along. It’s a look that says:

You’re running on fumes.

It’s a look that says:

Nice try.

It’s a look that says:

You are going to lose and everyone knows it.

And he’s right.

THIS ISN’T GOING TO BE MUCH OF A FIGHT

I want to fast-forward through the fight, all twelve rounds, just so that I can find out how bad I’m hurt when it’s over. The cinderblock breaks into clumps, loose, like chalk; Executioner’s signature strike to my old and busted cranium will do far more damage. I want to skip forward and somehow find out that I won. Everything will be okay. Executioner knocked out cold. Somehow I knock out a younger version of me.

Me: ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures with his oh-so-impressive twelve wins by KO.

Knock X out.

Who has won most of his fights by knockout.

How can that be?

It’s because he’s changing things. He’s learned how to correctly sit down on his punches and maximize the precision of every landed punch.

DON’T LAUGH

A person can change every part of himself.

At any given point in time we can take a picture and capture the person you were at that very moment; however, a dozen blinks later, the picture might no longer be accurate.

You might gain weight, gain insight; lose weight, lose a whole lot.

People change. You will change too.

You got to wonder what must it take to remain precisely the same, in the image wanted and expected.

DON’T LAUGH

Because I’ve tried my best to remain the same.

I can’t say that I like who I am but at the very least I’ve gotten this far. One of my biggest worries is “losing it.” Whatever that means. I don’t know how it happens but I’ve seen it happen.

It is happening to me.

Shh.

It’s okay.

I admit it.

It is happening to me.

Losing whatever it is that made things bearable.

Give it enough time and your grip on that shade of reality will loosen.

Of course, I’m saying this mostly because I need to say it. No one needs to hear it more than me. I admit it and I say that I admit it but that’s not actually true. All hot air…more bullshit, just like the lies I’ve used.

Just like that cinderblock.

Just like the fact that the murder is a fake.

It’s bullshit. Treated to be spectacle, made to generate enough light to wash out every part of me that might be in contention.

Wash them all out.

Leave only the basic fact:

That I am ‘me.’

I made this all possible.

This league wouldn’t be as popular as it is if it weren’t for me.

WATCH ME

Everyone used to look forward to watching me.

Sure I basically just beat the shit out of myself but that was entertainment for the masses. They liked seeing my skills put to the test. Fight after fight, I wasted away my youth and my health but at the very least I sold out arenas, I moved products, I gained a number of endorsements.

I was at the peak of popularity.

Willem Floures.

Household name.

Solid gold, certified celebrity.

People would bow down if I dabbled in egocentricism and forced them to treat me like a god.

But you see I never got comfortable.

LOOK AWAY

I always worried and never enjoyed my success.

How many have been washed out?

How much does this hurt?

Will I remember anything ten years from now?

My memory lapses…

Are they an indication of my passing?

When people talk about retirement do they mean to say that I am not Willem Floures and maybe I never was?

BIGGEST WORRY

WORST SOUND

Their laughter, directed at me.

They are all nameless, strangers not confidants, family, or friends, and yet that somehow makes it far worse. I want their approval.

I want to make sure that this weigh-in means more to them than it does to me. I don’t know where to divide and draw the line, which is why I have made a career out of hurting myself. Who does that?

Fighters are considered to be athletes.

And yet…

I see myself standing there, on the other side of the ring, and I always think the same thing:

WHO IS THAT?

WHO ARE YOU?

I look at that person like it’s someone else.

I look at myself in the mirror and confuse the reflection for a person I haven’t yet met.

My memory lapses…my mind erased…

With every fight I begin to wonder if the oddity and inconsistency of my words, my voice, my life, my choices, my actions aren’t one long ramble.

I begin to wonder if any of this is real.

And then I feel foolish.

I tell myself, “Get real.”

Because it is very real.

What’s about to happen.

This isn’t going to be something that I second-guess. Really, if I were truly prepared, there would be no guessing.

READY OR NOT

I would be prepared enough that I wouldn’t need sleeping pills the night before the fight. I would be prepared enough that I could keep cool, my mind never wandering back to the impending fight.

No nausea. No anxiety.

I would be myself.

And I wouldn’t follow up that statement with the words “whatever that means.”

I would know.

See that person across the ring?

It’s me.

WILLEM FLOURES

We get paid to fight. People watch us fight and marvel at the mastery of each punch thrown, shudder and cringe when they hear a punch landing against our body, aimed right at our skull. The blood splatter sometimes traveling out of the ring to the immediate vicinity at ringside, they pay top-dollar on online auction sites for blood-splattered garb stained and authentically signed by me, by us, after the fight.

We get paid to fight and the world around us develops a second and third party economy. The industry of the fight:

We last as long as we need.

We last as long as we can.

GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF THERE

Really though, I shouldn’t be able to speak for myself. I’ll only end up losing the point halfway through. I write down most everything worth remembering. Sound advice — keeping a log of information — but what no one ever realizes is that it’s equally worthless if you keep forgetting where you put the log. I’ve lost so many lists of facts and information about myself that it has become a bit of a joke.

I anticipate finding them long after they are lost.

It’ll be like discovering correspondence from the person I once was.

Log of the identity known as ‘Willem Floures’s complete with run-on sentences and an unfamiliar voice ringing out in my head like a moralist:

HOW COULD YOU?

HOW DO YOU DO THIS?

SELLING YOURSELF

HURTING YOUR BODY

FOR THEIR AMUSEMENT

But then it’s funny because in one of those logs, I believe I’d find a better answer than I could conceive at a moment’s notice.

Something wise and clever like:

“Don’t we all sell ourselves to seem more important?”

Or—

“We sell a part of ourselves just so that we know what’s at stake during the lost-and-found of our lives.”

Needless to say, I haven’t found any of the logs.

It’s like the moment I finish they cease to exist.

I only hope I won’t cease to exist before leaving something behind as confirmation, something that proves that I was ‘Willem Floures.’

Incapable of being replaced.