This is me, I say.
But I don’t believe it.
ROUND FOUR
X uses this round to catch up on the cards.
The round is a mess. I am stunned early and I hold.
Much of round four looks like this:
BLOCK
X LANDS A COMBINATION
COMBINATION CONSISTS OF:
JAB
LEFT HOOK
JAB
LEFT HOOK
RIGHT HOOK
JAB
STRAIGHT
TO THE BODY:
JAB
JAB
POWER SHOT STRAIGHT
POWER SHOT STRAIGHT
UPPERCUT (impact, stun)
My best bet is, of course:
BLOCK
HOLD
BLOCK
BRACE FOR IMPACT
HOLD
BLOCK
HOLD
Spencer’s head is in his hands, not even watching.
I can hear him say, “You don’t need me to tell you. I’m sure you’re still feeling the impact of that left hook.”
I tell him that I am.
The left hook heard around the world.
“That should have been your left hook.”
It used to be mine.
Now all I do is hold.
HOLD
HOLD
HOLD
HOLD
Even though he doesn’t knock me down, the judges score round four an “eight,” two points that hit right at the heart. The round goes to Executioner.
It’s because I performed little more than the role of the punching bag.
I took the punches and grabbed for dear life.
X mumbled about thirty seconds from the end of the round:
What is wrong with you?
You tell me.
I’m kind of finding it difficult to say much of anything.
ROUND FIVE
No comment.
That’s the official statement.
Spencer stares at the dry-erase board, baffled at the scribble.
“You need a lot of work…”
You can say that again.
He stuns me this round with something that doesn’t quite register but it definitely stung. Much like a bee sting, it tingled and then shot right to the back of my brain, a numbing pain.
It’s the uppercut.
The same damn uppercut.
I was always good at carefully throwing in an uppercut at the end of a combination. I could really get the glove right under the chin, the kind of punch that sends glassjaws crying and cast-iron chins to the ground.
Not that I ever really did.
During my prime, I fought more just like me.
We took the punches like we planned on early retirement. They wear on you over the years. I wonder how bad my memory, my reflexes, my conditioning will be five, ten, fifteen years from now.
But okay, the uppercut.
Didn’t see it coming (which means X did a great job connecting).
I don’t remember how long I was on the ground but it wasn’t for long. You fight enough and you can get by for a while, at least half the fight, on instinct, muscle memory, the routine of having heard, smelled, and felt pretty much everything you’d expect in a fight.
Sensory cues from decades of self-affliction.
Remnants of a fighter that can’t stop fighting himself.
ROUND SIX
It all comes apart after that uppercut knockdown in the fifth.
Spencer is silent, chews gum. Watches in silent dismay.
It’s bad, and he’s no longer bothering to rant or even comment. I get the sense that he wants to shut the footage off as much as I do; however, it stays on as I look like a wreck in round six.
X has me pinned against the ropes for a third of the round.
BLOCK
HOLD
SHORT LIFELESS HOOKS TO THE BODY
It’s what I do to survive.
To the referee it appeared as though I was all right.
Can’t say that I was but again, fighter’s instinct.
“Were there any lights on during the last three rounds?”
Can’t say that there were so I don’t say anything.
Spencer blows a bubble, lets it pop and hang over his lower lip for a few seconds before pulling it back into his mouth with his tongue.
“Rookie mistake.”
ROUND SEVEN
So by now everyone in the audience expects X to win. If it goes to decision, X is victor, no doubt about it. This is one of those cases where I basically have to knock him out in order to win.
And that wasn’t going to happen.
Everyone knew it.
People stood up and left.
There were a few rounds left in the fight but it seemed as though everyone had it all fought out in their mind. They knew how it would end. We fought it out, lagging behind the times.
I watch the footage, not at all familiar with what happened in round seven.
I was out on my feet, nothing there.
You know how everything is muted when underwater, both sight and sound cloudy and obtuse?
That’s how it feels after being stunned, your mind slush, random thoughts, sometimes as odd as the last time you called your mom, rise up from the grey matter of your memory.
For me, round seven was all about hamburgers. I tasted a bacon cheeseburger, craved it, after the half-memory of eating a double-decker at a local restaurant resurfaced somewhere towards the beginning of the round.
I could go for one right about now…
Spencer runs his palm across the dry-erase board, smearing everything he’d written. Conceivably, this would be alarming. Conceivably.
Yeah, well I’m just hopeful that there won’t be a follow-up lecture.
I mean look at what I’m doing:
JAB
JAB
JAB
JAB
HOLD
Versus what X is doing:
BLOCK
WEEVE-JAB TO BODY
LEFT HOOK
RIGHT HOOK
STRAIGHT
Keep in mind that this is all news to me.
Can’t recall what happened this round.
Turns out I didn’t miss anything. I missed every single punch thrown, leaving myself open fifty percent of the time for X to throw in a combination, score more points, make me look terrible.
It’s a horrible performance. I admit it.
When I attempt to clinch, I leave myself wide open. X sees every single clinch coming so what does he do?
BACK PEDAL
TWO STEPS
LEAN BACK
WATCH ME GRAB AIR
PERFECT STRAIGHT
HOOK TO THE FACE
I don’t cut easily. I have taken a lot of damage these last couple decades, compounded misery on layaway, but hell if I’ve kept myself fairly clean, give or take a welt or two on occasion.
But blood flows by round seven from the wound on my face that would swell and become the welt that led me to the hospital.
Take one of those dry-erase markers and draw a face on the welt and from a far enough distance, from the POV of a druggie or drunk son-of-a-bitch, they just might figure the welt for a conjoined twin, a second face, skull and all. It swelled and throbbed and pained me for hours, a day, even now I feel numb to the touch on that side of my face.
The painkillers, you see.
Spencer sighs.
Says nothing.
Here it comes.
ROUND EIGHT
Wow, the welt is already forming; the referee pulls me aside and says something to me. Can’t hear it from the side of the ring but it’s the usual measure of consciousness. Answer the question:
Is this fighter out on his feet or is he still fighting?
The referee should have called it right then and there. Part of me is glad that he didn’t because it’s far more embarrassing to lose the fight between rounds; however, what happened next, about a minute into round eight, might have been one of the worst experiences of my life.
You’ll see what I mean.
I still see the sequence in slow motion.