Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

And this is hard to hear, you—a total stranger—knowing these kinds of things about me. It feels like a betrayal, makes me want to bolt and never come back. It’s hard knowing that while I was off with Linus Houghton on his leper colony, Karen was here with you, telling our story, explaining all the horrible things I’ve done. Explaining about her cousin and how, yes, I did a bad thing there. My version probably makes it sound a bit more benign than it was, I admit.

No one says anything.

You take a step out of the doorway. “Do you have anything else to add, Martin?” You reach into your back pocket and pull out your little stun rod.

But this only makes me angry. I take a step forward, and we have a little stare-off. “Marty,” Karen says. “Marty, you need to leave.”

I stand still for bit longer, and it instantly reminds me of all those silent fights Karen and I had over the years. I don’t think for a second you’ll actually use your little weapon on me.

I reach forward to grab Gus’s collar, but I guess I move too fast because you jump forward and jam that stun rod into my forearm. And it hurts worse than any cut I’ve ever given myself. Burns into my skin, and I can even smell melted flesh. I yelp and reach down to cover it with my hand, but this hurts even worse.

“Vick!” Karen says.

“Dammit!” I shout, and I want to attack you, but my arm hurts too bad. I shake it out for a minute, and you glare at me like you’ll hit me another time if I take a step forward. You really enjoyed that, didn’t you? So I hold my good arm out for Gus, and he comes.

“Fine,” I say as we reach the last step. “Enjoy your shitty grocery store salami and your city.” And we leave.

You don’t say anything. Karen doesn’t say anything either, doesn’t call after me to say goodbye. Doesn’t even say goodbye to Gus. We walk down the street, in between the luxury cars and expensive brownstones, and I look down at my forearm. It’s already blistering and purpled, and it’ll be like that for a while. Might leave a scar, but it’ll heal. I don’t worry about it too much. Things will work out. I can’t be a librarian or a bald museum docent, but people will always need meat. Not everyone can be one of those vegans. I’m sure I can snag a job in some deli in some crummy grocery store. No need to worry about me.

And you, bald museum docent. Vick. Do please be good to her. Take her to that little restaurant; get her the lamb fillet. Wear nice shoes and a sport coat. No flannels. Act like Lopakhin. Never stop wooing her, taking her to wine tastings and lectures. Make her sizzle with life every day. If she ever starts crying during sex, don’t hesitate. Roll her over, ask her what’s the matter, dear? Remind her there’s no need to salvage anything, no secrets to protect, and you have all the time you need.

My son wants to be a cage fighter. He’s seventeen, and so he knows a lot about everything, especially this. He’s considered all the particulars, and he just knows he could be good at it. “There’s a purity to it, Dad,” he says. “Fighting is the original human sport.”

I pray this will pass in a week or so, or perhaps the first time he gets punched in the nose hard enough to make his eyes spurt water and his brain swell against his skull.

His mother lives in Oregon, so it’s just the two of us and has been for many years. It’s perhaps true that I pushed the muscular pursuits too much when he was younger—a small engine repair class, full-bore target shooting, a survivalist weekend up north in which the guide informed me that anyone who called it “camping” was doing it wrong—but this was merely to lodge a few traces of grit under his fingernails, perhaps help him with the gaggle of bullies that always seem to circle him.

When none of this seemed to work, I enrolled us in a Tae Kwon Do class. I thought a martial art might help us bond, maybe give him more confidence. Toughness. But our instructor, a twenty-something kid from Colorado, smelled more like reefer than sweat and couldn’t even remember Jared’s name after two years. But that was my fault, trusting a Scotch Irish guy to teach Jared. White people can knock out crossword puzzles, and we make a terrific green bean casserole, but we shouldn’t be teaching martial arts.

So last year I signed Jared up for wrestling at the high school, but he rarely even dresses for meets. He’s too lanky, too much surface area to grab onto, all arms and legs and no torso. Horrible posture. A chest so concave you could eat soup from it. His singlet appears to be eating him. He never complains about how his teammates pick on him, but I hear them laugh about it. They throw his shoes up into the gymnasium rafters, his jock strap into the unflushed urinals. They stand too close in the showers after practice and pee on his leg while he makes shampoo mohawks.

This is the son who suddenly wants to represent the family in the cage-fighting world. I’m terrified. You spend your life toughening your kid up, hoping to give him some calluses, but then he takes it too far. Trusts your encouragement too much. This can’t happen, you think. Not this. Not my kid. I have a college degree, a mortgage, a job that requires a collared shirt. I never thought I was such a bad parent that my kid would grow up and get inside a cage and kick people in the face. Don’t let your kids become cage fighters or strippers: it’s a universal ambition.

Jared leads me into the living room, taking his long, loping strides. I worry that I could draw an anatomically correct stick figure of him. “Watch this,” he says.

He walks me through one of the cage fights on the television. Both men seem like they’re still wearing shirts because they have such heavy tattoos. One of the guys sports a red mohawk, the other a shaved head. They dance around each other for a while. The crowd starts to boo. Then Shaved Head tackles Mohawk, and they tumble into the cage, which holds firm and keeps them from tumbling into the crowd. Shaved Head works on Mohawk’s knees, trying to straighten them out and pin him down. He punches Mohawk’s body twice, then his head, which Jared says is called “softening him up.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Shaved Head was trying to penetrate Mohawk.

“He’s in half guard right now,” Jared says of Shaved Head. “He’s trying to get the mount, which takes the other’s guys legs out of the equation. If you get the mount on a guy, you can pound his face into ground beef.”

I’ve never heard my son talk like this.

“See how he uses the cage?” Jared says. “It’s not just a barrier; they know how to use it. Just another tool in the arsenal.”

Mohawk is cut under his eye, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He tries to elbow Shaved Head from his back, and a few get through. One catches him on the nose, and it starts to pour blood all over them both. The announcers go ballistic, and so does the crowd.

There’s under a minute left in the round, and Shaved Head turns it on. He starts dropping elbows of his own. He’s dripping blood all over Mohawk’s face. One of the announcers says it looks like Shaved Head is trying to end the fight before the doctors step in and stop it. It’s nice to know they have doctors in the vicinity.

Shaved Head straddles Mohawk, pinning him to the mat, and Jared jumps up. “Got him!” he shouts. He’s punching straight down onto Mohawk’s head, jamming it into the canvas, where it ricochets just in time to get pounded again. These are big punches, and they’re connecting. The crowd cheers. It reminds me of something from the Discovery Channel —a hyena trying to eat a baby kangaroo, perhaps. But then Mohawk pops his hips up and slides between Shaved Head’s legs. “He’s escaping out the back door!” the announcer shouts. Shaved Head tries to fall on him, but Mohawk swivels on his butt. He drops his legs over Shaved Head’s neck and chest, grabs an arm and yanks the shit out of it, and then the ref is on top of them. The crowd completely detonates. Everyone is screaming. Jared too is standing on his toes with his arms raised. I’m not totally sure what I just saw. Mohawk, who’s dripping with his own blood, won somehow. Jared tells me he dropped an armbar on Shaved Head.