Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

I let him have this round but I let him know that he can’t hurt me by clinching whenever he attempts more than a single punch.

The crowd boos a little, but even the perfect fight has a number of highs and lows.

This is a tough round to judge.

I get in cheap kidney shots when we clinch.

I bring him to the ropes and fight using rope-a-dope, using the ropes to prop me up as I lean back and launch forward with extra force single jabs to his face. Most of the round, I punch not to the body or face but to his gloves.

I do it because no one does it.

I win the round.

The round I took off to rest.

ROUND ELEVEN

It’s bad. The cut gets worse despite what the cutman does to keep it from getting bigger. ‘James’ focuses on the cut and by the end of the round I am nearly dead on my feet, blood down my chest, the front of his shorts stained with my blood.

His round. No doubt about it.

This went the distance and physically we both have to pay for it.

ROUND TWELVE

He knocks me down at the beginning. Uppercut.

Five of five.

The referee counts instead of calling it.

I get to eight before standing up.

He looks into my eyes and says, “I’m going to let you fight because you got this far. Don’t make me regret it!”

And I don’t. I let fists fly. I dig deep into the tank.

I leave nothing for tomorrow.

This is my last.

His defense avoids eighty percent of my onslaught but everyone is shocked to see the elder of the two fighters taking the last round.

He’ll win the round because he knocked me down, but I win the fight in terms of psychology.

I silence him in the last and as the bell rings, I know that I’ve lost. I needed to lose in order for Willem to rise back to the top.

But even in losing, I know what just happened.

“It is, it really is.”

There you have it, the perfect fight.

In my humble opinion, there is no greater fight I can give.

This is my best performance.

In my best performance, I lose.

You can laugh if you want, strangers.

The laughter of a stranger is not always bad. It gets old and loses all meaning. So let them laugh. It won’t always hurt this bad.

You can wash it in the sorrows that bleed the same bright white from before, but this time it all seems so new when you’re empty handed.

No longer holding onto much of anything.

Just your face, looking back at you in the mirror, waiting to be redefined. Waiting for a description.

We know what a stranger sees…

BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU? WHAT DO YOU SEE?

In the silence of the bedroom, I hear myself talking. Not ‘myself’ but myself — who I am now. In the silence, I hear myself saying, “Hey, how are you feeling?” That’s a question I’d ask someone that’s gone twelve rounds but that would mean I can’t be talking to myself because I have twelve rounds to go.

LAST FIGHT

Alongside my last fight there will be a series of lasts—

Last chance to make things right.

Last statement before receding into the world of anonymity. The public doesn’t look for sound bites or blurbs from the fold of people you call life. They look for the notable identities to buoy whatever it is they are trying to sell.

I hear myself talking, and it sounds like me.

It sounds like what I imagined I’d sound like.

It’s not that far off from anything you’d hear Willem saying.

THAT’S BECAUSE

“I know, I know.”

YOU REALLY NEED TO START GETTING USED TO

“Yes, I know.”

YOU SHOULDN’T INTERRUPT PEOPLE

WHEN THEY ARE

“Yes, I know.”

SEE? THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM

“Yeah and what’s my problem?”

YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING

I laugh, “I assure you that I don’t have that problem. If anything, I know how to make toast and survive in a fight. Not much else. Wait. No. I got something else. I have ten toes and nine-and-a-half fingers. I lost that tip of my left pinky finger during that, you know…”

I KNOW

“Of course you know because—”

“What are you doing?”

A voice that could only be Sarah’s.

“Oh, hey Sarah.” Looking down at the two dolls in my hands, recalling instantly how odd this must look, dolls, talking to myself, in her room when I’m not supposed to be, “I was… wondering where you went.”

She wanders over, takes one of the dolls from me and says, “You shouldn’t be in here!”

Her tone is scolding more so than angry.

“Yeah, sorry. I was just following the—”

YOU SOUND LIKE A LUNATIC

“Never mind.”

She looks at her doll, “What were you doing in here?”

Doing my best to change the topic of conversation, I ask, “What were you doing out of your room?”

She places both hands on her hips, “What am I, some kind of prisoner?!”

I shake my head, “No, no, just…I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know!”

SMOOTH, REAL SMOOTH

What else am I going to do? I relent, “Yeah you’re right.”

She exhales deeply, the house shaking at the peak of the sigh, “Whatever…”

I remain seated on the edge of the bed as Sarah wanders over to the mirror and, unsurprisingly, she lacks a reflection.

YOU DON’T FIND IT ODD?

I am the only person within frame.

She turns and looks at me, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. What?”

“It’s just…”

She returns her attention to the mirror, “Oh, this.”

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT SHE IS,

DON’T BOTHER

“You are probably wondering what it means for you.”

I admit that, yes, it’s a little selfish but…

DON’T SAY ANYTHING

She sets the doll down on the end table next to me.

“You see me right?”

I nod.

“That’s only because you know my dad. You know my name.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t exist to the world out there. This is how we are.” Looks at me, “Get it?”

YES YOU DO

“You mean…”

OH JESUS

“What don’t you understand?”

I hold up the doll, “By ‘we’ do you mean ‘us,’” referring to the inanimate doll, “or ‘us,’” pointing to the room as a whole, meaning all the hauntings within the house.

“I mean ‘us’ as in everyone that watches the media. Everyone that watches one of your fights. Everyone that—”

“Laughs…”

THERE YOU GO INTERRUPTING PEOPLE AGAIN

She nods, “Right.”

For a while we are silent, sitting there thinking about all of this while Sarah brushes her hair. When she’s done doing that, she wanders over to her dollhouse, takes the one I’m still holding, and puts them back in position.

She sits next to the dollhouse, facing the opposite side.

“Why are you sitting there? You can’t see into the house that way.”

“Yeah I can. I see from the outside looking in. I see into the house the way anyone else would if they really wanted to look.”

SILENCE

We sit in silence. I resist talking to myself until the words seemingly escape me like they did:

RIGHT ABOUT NOW IT HAS STARTED

RIGHT ABOUT NOW IT’S THE BEGINNING

OF THE END

Sarah isn’t put off by this, “How is the fight going?”

I shrug, “It’s still round one. Feeling each other out.”

Realizing how odd this is, I narrow my eyes, “How do you know?”

She makes a face, “My dad is at the fight, duh.”

DUH!

“You are very mature for your age, you know that?”

“I have to be.”

“Who takes care of you anyway?”

She looks into one of the dollhouse windows, “I take care of myself.”

“‘James’ used to right?”