Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

Now they just laugh at me.

CANDID

Producer voice asks for a follow-up. Something I can say off-the-cuff.

So I say something about the fight and how I am confident that my strategy going into the fight will overwrite any of the error seen in the original fight — this includes my excessive clinching, holding, and fighting on the defensive for over half of the fight.

Playing off the retirement rumor, my fault, I explain how I want to go out with a bang, a big ONE, TWO, THREE, trio of wins.

I intend going out with a win rather than a whimper.

Not what the producer wants, and I know that, but it’s okay because I am telling the truth. I know that I’m telling the truth.

I can only say what I know to be true.

And if they are lies, there is something far worse, completely beyond my control, at work here. I can (and will) worry about what I am not and what I used to be but I cannot stomach what it means to be a blemish, nothing but a sequence of crisis and collapse.

How much more declarative must I be?

WILDCARD

The prompt about physical training.

Withhold the fact that I haven’t started yet and won’t be for weeks (what a waste); instead, I talk about how embracing the unexpected is about as good a strategy as any. Executioner expects what I expect; he expects that I will work on trying to surprise him. The trick then is to focus on predicting the surprise and proving to layer surprise on the surprise.

A mouthful, potentially impossible, but what else do they want to hear?

Producer voice in my ear asks:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

YOU ARE NOT MAKING SENSE

I don’t make sense.

As a fighter.

As a person.

I don’t make sense.

Is that the official word?

Or the word on the street?

IS ANYONE LAUGHING?

According to everyone, this is all incorrect. Does not fit with recorded history. So, then, if it isn’t true then this entire episode, this entire event, consists of lies. Seems I’m living a lie that I can’t live down.

What the hell does that mean?

I mean really…

I only know what I know, and if it happens to be wrong, a lie, then okay:

I am living a lie.

I GUESS THAT’S WHY I BECAME A FIGHTER

Everything that doesn’t make sense, I beat the shit out of me until it does.

Even if it doesn’t, the right punch will shake free the worry, the worry that’s all about how I’m nearing middle-age and I’m nowhere closer to coming to grips with who I am than when I was just starting out, burning cigarettes onto my skin just to feel something, getting into fights in front of bars in hopes of getting the chance to steal someone’s wallet.

Basically being the rebel, what I thought I should be.

Should have been.

Seemed to embody.

But no.

I was basically just lost, trying way too many paths while never actually committing to one.

Or, put more simply:

I am a fighter.

I am incapable of loving others including myself.

WHO ARE YOU BUT STRANGERS IN A CROWD?

Later, after I hear from Spencer and I hear from the world various comments and hurtful comments like:

HE’S SENILE

HE’S OUT OF HIS MIND.

HE’S ON DRUGS.

HE’S A WRECK.

Many of those from Spencer himself, I am solemn, quiet, enjoying nothing while trying my best to merge into the nothingness of the hotel room where we will stay the night, each in our own bed, not talking to each other, not talking about the incoming fight, not talking about the big problem, which has everything to do with an escaped identity.

Not talking.

Not helping.

No help at all.

Willem Floures, do you know of the man, the myth, the fighter?

I thought I did but I guess not.

CANDID

I will ask only once during the night, in the dark, lightless room, when I know that Spencer is not asleep, but has his eyes closed, trying his best to pretend that he is at rest, complete with fake snoring:

“What about training?”

He will pretend to ignore me, but the fact that I asked will bother him.

Spencer will have to answer.

And he’ll say what he always says:

“We’ll get to that.”

We always do, but by the time we hit the heavy bag, the ten-to-twenty mile run, the training routine in full, the fight can be seen, looming in the distance of next week. I’ll ask Spencer, “Why didn’t we train? Why didn’t we focus on a longer, more effective regimen?”

His response is the response of a trainer, an agent, a longtime friend that has lost confidence in his project, lost confidence in me:

CANDID

“The truth is that no amount of improvement to your body will make any difference. If you are going to win, you need to win using fight psychology.”

According to the only “friend” I have, I have a slim to nil chance of winning and even if I did, it would be less on skill and more to do with luck.

I’ll admit that this isn’t very reassuring at all.

It kind of makes me feel like a nuisance.

Makes me worry about what the world really thinks and what they will think about ‘Sugar’ in the weeks and years after my inevitable demise, my retirement from the sport.

Makes me think about how I can prove them all wrong.

All of them.

Spencer, yes, you too.

I get to thinking…

A THOUGHT

And it comes to me on that same night, dark room, the orchestration of slumber without any real truth.

And it takes me a week or two of media junkets to fathom what I need to do to begin.

And it takes a single sentence to turn the attention around onto me, limelight and thrill.

And it’s a sentence from a different kind of story:

I KILLED A MAN

And it doesn’t fit.

And that’s why it would work.

Why it would turn the fight around and maybe, just maybe, I’d have a chance to win. Like Spencer said—

Only real chance I have is to psych X out.

Yeah well, how’s this for psyching someone out?

A hurtful but hopeful thing to say:

THIS IS WHAT YOU DID WRONG

I’m supposed to learn from my mistakes.

I learn from the mistakes but I lose it all during the lecture. Spencer sits me down in a seat like this is Sunday school and draws on a dry-erase board to the constant playback of the fight.

The fight.

Executioner at his prime, Sugar losing favor.

Spencer isn’t about to analyze what I looked like, or even how hard I worked leading up to the fight. No, he zeroes in on the omission.

Punches not thrown.

Punches not blocked.

This is what I did wrong, and I might have won the match but Spencer would still sit me down for an hour-long lecture. Clean KO or biggest loss, Spencer will still preach; he will show me where I went wrong.

“To start with, how many times have I said to land first attack?”

First attack meaning first jab, first impact—

Like it’s some kind of competition.

Wait a minute…

When isn’t it a form of competition?

When are we not fighting to better understand ourselves?

“I agree,” my go-to reply during post-fight analysis lecture holy-shit-how-long-is-this-going-to-take-please-blow-my-brains-out come on I understand, I understand. How is this helping?

We’re wasting time.

I should be training.

ROUND ONE

X hops forward, two-stepping around the ring taunting me.

I put my fists up.

SHELL

I play it defensively.

I do not land the first punch.

First punch is a jab.

JAB

X leads jab, jab, jab, jab, all of them absorbed. They aren’t landing clean, but tell that to the audience, the CompuBox fuckers, the crooked judges that want me out of the picture. This league needs the new and improved. I do a poor representation of myself. They want a Willem that reminds them not of the times but of the timeless. They want my prime performance.