BAYWATCH
It happened like this: I walked into our studio one day to find a new trainer, a young black man, handsome and fit. In the ring he was directing a Barbie-pretty blonde, all Los Angeles long and smooth and tan, with an impressive chest. The trainer had once fought for Milton. “I tried to help him,” Milton later said, “but he went into Cus D‘Amato’s camp and started using that Tyson style, you know, hands up, peekaboo. You can’t really work with a guy moving between styles like that.” It was the D’Amato style that the man attempted to communicate to the blonde (we’ll call her Baywatch). Within a few minutes we all realized that the trainer was incompetent. You felt it, and felt that everyone else felt it, a flash through the room. He lectured, he stood stock-still and she stood before him absorbing the gibberish, boxing philosophy 101 from a turgid adjunct. She gazed up at him with unblinking eyes of pacific blue. Every swing of arm, every shift of leg was bordered and bookended and buried in words. We laughed behind our hands.
Baywatch was an actress, in New York to play the lead in a boxing film. It was just a matter of time before she met Milton. I can only guess at the reasons that brought her trainer to flaunt his prize before us, but his fish would soon begin to wriggle away. Whoever he was, he had brought his student to the wrong gym.
By the mid-1990s, every high-power health club had to offer classes in boxing to keep pace in the locker room arms race. The requisite heavy bags and rings were installed, making those gyms more … gymlike. Unfortunately, the bodybuilders and aerobics instructors didn’t
know how to use this equipment: Beefy arms swung awkwardly; wrists were damaged, nails broken. So, for the first time since the antiracketeering act stifled the mob and shrank the job market for enforcers, boxers found themselves in demand. Trainers (and their fighters) migrated away from the few remaining outer borough clubs into Manhattan, where the streets are paved with dead presidents. To these high-rent locales, boxers brought a hint of the street, and while a bit of street serves as a stimulant, an aphrodisiac even, too much of it frightened the suits who exercised there. After all, boxers were indistinguishable from the people who scared them on the subway; they had the same rough voices and dark skins. A cry went up from the yuppie gyms: WANTED : BOXERS WHO CAN TALK TO WHITE PEOPLE.
Enter Milton, who, for all his abrasive arrogance, had charm. He had MC’d parties and events, managed musicians, booked shows and could speak American Standard. Milton hadn’t gotten into amateur boxing to make money; directing the Boys’ Club program on the Lower East Side was no ticket to the Fortune 500. “I lost everything over boxing,” Milton said. “I lost the wife, the kid, my house, the whole nine yards. So I decided I might as well stick with it.” He wasn’t Nostradamus enough to foresee that within a few years, boxing would become a fitness flavor of the month.
By the time Milton moved to 12th Street, however, a few pioneer white-collar types were creeping down to that subbasement and paying whatever Julio could squeeze them for to learn nothing: corporate VPs who’d boxed thirty years before in their army tours, an art-dealing couple in search of a new thrill, women wanting to melt flab off their arms. Bounced from 12th Street, Milton went to Brooklyn, to Kingsway, to his place on 14th. With his business cards and sales pitch, Milton ran a good game. “Come in and see what we’re about,” he’d said. “The first lesson is free. We can talk about money later.”
Why don’t you get a place out in Williamsburg? I asked him once. There are big loft spaces; rent is low.
Milton gave me the look. Who’s going to come out to Brooklyn to train?
He had a point. I knew yuppies in Manhattan who had lived there
for a decade and never been to Brooklyn, who didn’t even know it was on Long Island. Milton might not have started in boxing for the money, but he’d developed a taste for the white-collar bread, pan dulce. No matter how much personal charm he had, they weren’t going to follow him to a Brooklyn ghetto to box.
In 1999 at least a dozen boxing films were released or in production, and a boxing documentary made in New York was nominated for an Academy Award. (Milton groused about the documentary. Footage of him shot by the filmmakers did not make the final cut although [because?] one of Milton’s fighters had twice defeated one of the film’s principals in a Gloves final. “She was our very own punching bag with arms and legs, Bob,” Milton said. “They should have shown us beating that girl’s ass.”)
Within two days Baywatch was consulting Milton on the finer points of boxing, and by the end of the week she had jumped to him full-time. A movie had to be made; boxing skills needed to be acquired; there was no time for sentiment. The other trainer simply vanished. We all saw it coming.
Milton became both Baywatch’s personal adviser and something of a consultant on the film, which was being shot in a Westchester township a short drive from the city. With his new authority, Milton leveraged his fighters and friends into extra roles and bit parts in the film (some of them speaking parts, which paid impressive day rates). The production was looking for boxers? Milton knew plenty of boxers. They needed equipment? He could help them with that also. His strategy was to rapidly make himself irreplaceable, the man the production could not live without.
I’m not even the main guy there, Milton said. They got this Spanish kickboxer, and he’s asking me what to do.
I hope you’re not telling him, one of his fighters said.
No chance. Whenever he asks me something, I just sit back in my chair and say [he shrugs], “I don’t know. You got me.”
Baywatch accompanied the Supreme Team to boxing shows (she was “finding the character”). Her presence among us impressed the little world of amateur boxing. At a show in Yonkers, her name was announced over the loudspeaker, whereupon she stood and saluted the crowd to hoots and cheers. Boxing officials fawned upon her like little boys before a queen. She wore a floppy felt hat, jeans and boots—the queen on holiday. Men stood in line to have their picture taken with their arms around smiling her. I was astounded. This woman wasn’t Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa. She wasn’t even Marilyn Monroe. She was a B-level actress whose career highlights included a Playboy centerfold and something called Bordello of Blood. Yet she performed with a perfect air of noblesse oblige, throwing smiles and brushing glances with her admirers.
Milton played it cool, leaning back in his seat or nonchalantly working the room. He must have enjoyed the reflected prestige, but he knew the world of celebrities and wasn’t overawed. Even so, he saw an opportunity. No one became rich training amateurs, and it would certainly be beneficial if he became known in Hollywood as the Boxing Guy.
Milton’s dalliance with Baywatch created an agitation of a different sort in the community of the gym. One of the woman boxers, whom I barely knew, told me she was leaving Supreme over her.
It was crazy, Milton said. She started crying, saying I was stupid to be wasting so much time on this actress, that I was abandoning you guys for her and that she was going to go back to California after the film.
Milton shook his head. Julian nodded sagely over the narration.
She’s a young girl, right? Twenty-three or something? [Julian meant the woman boxer.]
Yeah, twenty-four, twenty-five, Milton said.
Well, you’re an OG [original gangsta] and she’s a young girl and she doesn’t understand where you’re at.
Hey, Milt, another fighter asked, is that actress’s chest real?
Yeah, Milton said, it’s real fake.
His new responsibilities altered the flow of gym life. Three or four days a week he traveled to the set, and when Baywatch came to our studio, his focus contracted to her. Once one of the fighters asked me,
“Bob, don’t you think Milton should be getting paid for his work on this film?” I said, “I think he is getting paid, and pretty well,” watching a smirk cross Milton’s face as we spoke, a smirk that said we would never know.
Yet the work was not easy; Baywatch strained even Milton’s training expertise. Although remarkably fit, she was bodybuilder stiff. Even drilling scrupulously, she barely progressed from week to week. When Milton put me in the ring with her, it felt as if I were being belabored with sofa cushions. I couldn’t believe she was about to star in a boxing film. Apparently, auditions hadn’t required any type of martial exhibition. The fight scenes were sure to be highly stylized or use good stunt doubles (in this straight-to-video production she plays a jilted ring card girl who finds her true calling as a fighter. Caveat emptor). On the other hand, I admired how zealously Baywatch worked to protect her greatest professional asset. She spent hours every day on the treadmill and with free weights, taking nothing for granted.
I’m afraid of losing my ass, she remarked one afternoon.
It seemed in no danger of disappearing.
I’m afraid I’m losing my ass, she said. All this boxing stuff focuses too much on arms and back. I have to do more legwork.
Sure enough, she added another entire set of lower-body calisthenics to her routine from that day forward.
If there was something more to Milton’s relationship with Baywatch, well, it remained a mystery to us. He lived with one woman, but that said nothing.
Besides his son in Atlanta, Milton also had a daughter with another woman. This child appeared in the gym at times, a beautiful two-year-old with golden skin, blue eyes and a brown Afro, the edges of which were also touched with gold. Milton didn’t seem on good terms with the mother, a blonde who scowled every second she was among us. When the child exasperated Milton, he referred to her as “the mistake.” She would crawl among the boxers’ feet, a McDonald’s hamburger drooping from one tiny fist, the top bun dropping to the floor.
Milton’s interaction with Baywatch continued, all eyes upon them. Her celebrity status didn’t change Milton’s habits; he still talked on his cell while working the focus mitts, even with this lustrous prize.
How can you train me and talk on the phone? she complained.
I’m doing two things at the same time, Milton said. It’s okay, I’m Puerto Rican that way.
The southpaw, hands-down style that he was teaching her created conflict on the set. The director wanted her to use a more orthodox boxing approach. Milton of course couldn’t, or wouldn’t, teach any other way. “Look,” Milton told her, “right now it doesn’t matter what you learn. You’re as stiff as a board out there. If you keep with the style, you’ll start loosening up. Then you can give him what he wants.” But there was very little time.
I think this girl is after me, Milton said after she left yet another message on his voice mail. I’ve been running away from her all week.
Yet if he was running, he wasn’t running very far or very fast. In the gym, he waved around a video box, the cover adorned by an airbrushed rendition of her face. He played the role of her papi, putting her in cabs, taking her to Grand Central, having flowers delivered to her Port Chester hotel room. He escorted her to the nightclubs where he had entrée and related their exploits with boyish delight. “We saw Puff Daddy, and he bought us a drink.” “There’d be a line outside the club, and she’d say, ‘There’s a long line here.’ And I’d say, ‘Not for us,’ and we’d walk right in.”
One day I drove up to the shoot with Milton, along with Will and a Puerto Rican heavyweight named Nelson, who’d been hired to play boxers in the film (he had the good nature of the stereotypical big man). We drove back and forth between the hotel and the set, in movie slow time. In the car, Nelson told us that his uncle made his living shoplifting from chain video stores.
He goes into the store while I wait in the car, Nelson said. He’s crazy, yo. He brings in a big sack and when he comes out, it’s bulging with tapes. Then we make our getaway. I can get you any new title. For real. Just give me a few days’ notice.
As Milton waited for a chance to introduce Will to the director, we drifted around the location, gorged at the buffet, pretended we had a reason to be there. A woman wearing a headset stopped to greet Milton.
Milton, welcome back! Hey, how was your trip? she asked with interest and delight.
I didn’t take a trip, Milton said, but she had already disappeared before his answer. Her false interest was so Hollywood, I looked around for palm trees.
The set was in a big church hall and recreation center with basketball courts. Milton wanted to play and we got our hands on a ball. When we divided into teams, it was Milton and me against Will and Nelson. Will, six-three, had been an excellent high school player, having started on his varsity team the previous fall. Nelson was about six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds. On the other side, Milton was in his mid-forties and I, at five-six, had played basketball once in the past decade. Milton adapted to this imbalance by cheating on every play. Whenever he tried to make a move on Will or Nelson and they touched him, he called a foul. If Will made a quick first step to get to the basket, Milton would do anything to stop him: grab his arm, pull his shirt, push. We ran back and forth over an enormous tarpaulin that had been put down to protect the hardwood floors and that bunched at every pivot. Will trash-talked: “I’m gonna break you down, son. I’m gonna pick your game apart.” Milton and I actually won the first game, but Milton’s tactics were so preposterous that the four of us collapsed with laughter. The movie people stared. It felt like the best of times when I was sixteen and easy among my friends. When all we did on summer nights was chase the ball back and forth. Under the streetlights, chasing back and forth.
Later I watched a conversation between Baywatch and Milton. They both seemed to be performing. Eye play. Whispers. He clasped her hand. She looked away. Milton loomed over her, earnest expression on his face. A leading man. The tall dark stranger.
Bob, did you ever have a girl you liked better than anyone else? So that you made plans with the girl, to travel, to live together? And then, all of a sudden, this girl changed on you, overnight, basically, and you couldn’t understand why?
Milton and I were alone in the gym, toward eight P.M., the December night already hours old.
Well, I said, I’ve had my heart broken a few times.
But suppose, Bob, that this woman told you that she loved you and
that she’d never met anyone like you. And then, all of a sudden, a few weeks later, she comes out and says, “No, wait, I’ve got to step back. This is going too fast for me.” Now, Bob, what if you had never met a girl like this, a girl of this caliber, and you thought you would probably never meet anyone like her again?
The conditional, hypothetical voice Milton was using stirred my attention. I had never heard him speak in this manner.
And suppose, he said, that you had never felt this way about anyone else in your life before.
Never?
No, never, he insisted. And now, Bob, what if your friends were always telling you that she was gorgeous, that they envied you, just to give you a little more … proof, you know, that this girl is special.
Well, what your friends think isn’t so important, Milt. What matters is what you think.
Yeah, but they were saying this to you, while all the time you hadn’t noticed. I mean, I never tried anything with this girl.
The voice had changed. We had left the realm of the conditional.
I never tried anything with this girl, Milton repeated, but she wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept calling me, paying me all this attention. So you know, after a while, I started to think about her a little more. In a different way. I let everything go for this girl. I let everything go. I ignored the gym, my responsibilities. In all my life this never happened to me before.
It was an introspective episode for Milton, a Hamlet interlude in the gloom of the gym after dark. I wondered how much truth he was telling.
His cell phone began to ring. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and looked at the number.
That’s her again. I’m not talking to her.
You wouldn’t believe it, Bob, he said, changing tones. This was dif ferent. I’ve got so many women trying to give me things. I got one woman calling me all the time, baking me cookies every week. I had another one offer to turn over her bank account to me. She was ready to write me a check for seventy thousand dollars. I told her to keep her money. Listen, Bob, if I was a real nigger, I’d be driving around in a gold Mercedes. I would have taken her money and said, “Thanks, now have a nice life.” I would have played her like an old radio.
He sighed.
You know what they say?
No, what do they say?
In Paris, women walk two steps in front of you. In Hong Kong, over in China, they walk two steps in back of you. In New York, the women walk all over you. And I have the footprints on my heart to prove it.
Milton pulled up his shirt to reveal his scarred torso. He was smiling. I never saw Baywatch again.