Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

Who stood to my right in the ring, circling around us like a VIP cameraman while I targeted the cut, sending punch after punch right for the same spot, hoping to open the wound enough to leave a scar (and maybe end the celebrity’s career as an actor)?

SILENCE

The memory continues to bleed with or without any sense.

The celebrity doesn’t know how to control emotion during a fight and I take advantage of that. You can’t let anger fuel the fight; it can be an influence, sure, but if you are throwing volume punches with no other strategy, your opponent will stop your would-be freight-train long before the fight can go the distance.

The cut is looking bad; bad enough that celebrity blood bleeds into the memory and ruins the end of the fight.

I might have won the fight but it bleeds into the aftermath. Ambulance ride for both celebrity and I.

Bleed.

Somewhere later, we sit facing a set of cameras. Bright lights wash out the blood, wash out any words that we might have said.

It looks bad.

I look better than the celebrity, but it is clear that the publicity stunt went wrong. Maybe it went right. I don’t seem to recall.

The memory continues to bleed out the final clause:

And I hear it as a single sentence, a question, directed at me, from a media representative as baffled as anyone else, “What is wrong with you?”

The memory bleeds until black.

And then there is…

SILENCE

I want to say something but this is not the time or place to say much of anything. I’ve already spoken for myself. For better and for worse, I outstepped any logic, any reasonable understanding based on the identity as it used to be.

Blink.

A frame appears, sans memory:

ARTICLE TITLE: THE RISE AND FALL OF WILLEM FLOURES

ARTICLE TITLE: THE TRUTH ABOUT ‘SUGAR’ WILLEM FLOURES: INTERVIEW WITH A CIPHER

ARTICLE TITLE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF FISTICUFFS: IS IT OVER?

ARTICLE TITLE: THE SECRETS AND LIES EXPOSED: A GROUP INTERVIEW WITH THE FIGHTERS OF WILLEM FLOURES

A frame breaks into shards before the next memory wipes the mirror clean. The memory has both color and sound.

The memory takes place in a large arena, full of pyrotechnics, fans holding makeshift signs, many of them praising an identity that isn’t mine, and I have full control of the ring.

I hold a microphone and, so unlike me (what does that even mean anymore?), I provoke the audience.

The words “heel” and “sports entertainment” and “celebrity walk-on” flicker in between frames.

The memory aligns to what I imagine are the official broadcast cameras. I see myself for what I really look like. Outside of any self-created visage, that is me…and I look a lot like ‘James.’

It looks like ‘James’ is filling in for me.

“I’m here to save all you idiot wrestling fans from wasting more brain cells watching a fake fight!”

AUDIENCE

LAUGHTER

Provokes me.

Their laughter is what I want to change.

I don’t want to hear it. As the memory begins to reveal itself, I struggle to ignore, to look away, anything, just:

No more of it.

Please.

But it seems the memory is a portrayal of the same self-conscious person that I am. The laughter switches to cheers, chaotic chanting, because it seems that I appeared at the venue for one reason and one reason only:

I am there to beat up ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures.

Not just any part of myself—

I am there to beat up the most vulnerable part of me.

“Is that what you want?!”

The memory skips, already winded, out of breath from twelve rounds of a fight that should have never transpired.

IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!

Then that’s what I give them.

Punch to the stomach.

Punch to the face.

That gets a big enough reaction.

Punch to the face, to the stomach.

Punch to the mouth.

Punch to the stomach, to the stomach, to the stomach.

Punch to the eye.

Eye closes shut.

Punch to the eye.

Punch to the mouth, to the face, to the stomach.

Punch to the forehead.

The memory skips, fading to black.

SILENCE

I breathe heavily.

The black fades back to our reflection.

And that’s what makes it all click into place.

The voice narrating every single memory…

It’s Spencer’s.

The memories comprise his own sort of mourning for the Willem he once knew. Every single memory is familiar not only because they are mine but also because they were the subject of Spencer’s lectures long after I stopped listening. I wonder:

If I had continued to listen and take notes, would Spencer have continued to discuss boxing?

Would his lectures have continued to analyze my fight performance rather than my performance as myself, as the identity I confuse and abuse?

Have I done something grave?

Willem Floures as enigma, does it fail to be as prominent as Willem Floures the boxer?

SILENCE

Of course I have no one to consult but myself. They all seem to know what’s right even if we know that it’s wrong.

I look at Sarah.

I look at ‘James.’

I look at myself and it’s a lot like looking at the reflection of a stranger.

A knot of dread in my gut worsens when Spencer walks into frame.

Right there, in the mirror, Sarah’s claims are correct.

I wrote him out of my “story.”

I look at my reflection.

THAT’S ME?

THAT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE ME

Spencer replies, voice an echo in my mind, “How would you know?”

There is rhythm to any mania. Maybe it’s the mania that sets the rhythm and makes it impossible for me to keep up.

Some identities don’t have much else but the voice, no career source, no means of buoying their celebrity stake of the spotlight besides their ability to surprise. And maybe that’s why I drove myself to silence during the early, younger, golden years of my boxing career.

I used to think silence would be enticing; only now, do I realize that silence is worthless unless it precedes or follows a storm.

SILENCE

It’s all I’m left with. Bask in silence of a basement where only X and I remain. The rest have escaped. They’ve taken any clear sense of what I can be. Spencer let them out as effortlessly as he led them here, tethered and tied. I pick at the scab of a memory where I confronted Spencer about his actions. I don’t remember what was said but I recall it had something to do with jealousy.

Perhaps it was guilt. Whatever it was, it is no more.

Left behind the silence and the solace I ignore.

I have nowhere else to go.

With the TV on full-blast, I keep myself entertained.

I drive the silence away.

The TV pays me back for having paid so much attention to it.

The house doesn’t make a move, too afraid it’ll get my attention; I need to be alone. I need to think about this. I need to avoid it for the time being.

Wait until this show is over.

Not now. Maybe after the next one.

It’s only thirty minutes.

There’s plenty of time.

Right X?

BREAKING NEWS

The show I’m watching, the show that’s watching me, is interrupted by a loud crescendo of over-produced brass instrumentation.

I try turning the volume down but there’s no remote.

“Hey X, you have the remote over there by any chance?”

Executioner sits in the chair next to me, slouching, eyes open and cloudy; he’s quiet even though I set him free myself.

Really, he was the one that should have taken my place.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but…he would have carried the Willem Floures name well.

It’s because I can’t find the remote that I am stuck watching the one channel at the current volume.