THE SHOW
We’re driving through the Village on a December day, a seasondefying day, skin-weather warm so that everywhere we look women are wearing little in defiance of winter. We are eight men in a van: A.J., Milton, Julian, Will, Nelson, Victor, Professor and me. Our wolf tongues loll from our heads, and we howl.
That girl over there looks nice, A.J. says.
The heads swivel.
That girl? That girl right there? Milton is incredulous. The one with the pushed-in face? The one that looks like Herman Munster?
A.J. rushes to defend his sweetheart.
She’s all right, man. She has a nice, tight body.
“She” is probably a “he,” Milton says. Did you get in this van and go blind? Now that girl over there, now that is all right.
Her? A.J. says in a wounded tone. Man, she looks like a St. Bernard.
At least she’s a female, you drunk.
But look at her, yo, Julian says.
That girl is dark, though, says Nelson.
Like chocolate, says Julian.
More like charcoal, Nelson says.
Laughter.
The scouting mission has been in effect since the van began to roll from Revolution. Now we’re cutting east on 8th Street, street of leather, street of shoes, Bengali hucksters cross-armed before their shops.
So does having sex before a fight really affect you? asks the new white guy on the team—the Professor, Milton calls him.
Sure, Julian says. It takes out your legs. It’s like getting shot with buckshot. Buckshot to the knees. It makes you too relaxed. I try not to have sex for at least a week before a fight.
Heads nod agreement.
We are on our way to a boxing show in Yonkers, where I will fight for the first time in four years (if we arrive on time and if a match can be made for me). Milton has allowed that I am ready. No longer does he advise me to wait another year for the Gloves. No longer does he say, “Anasi, you’re punching handicapped.” Now it’s “I can’t wait until Stupid sees you knocking guys out. Then he’ll be sure to retire.”
I just read that every time a man has an orgasm, A.J. says, he has to eat like three bananas and a steak and protein powder to get back in him what he lost. So every time you bust a nut—
I didn’t know that myself, Julian says.
Soon after stepping into the van, A.J. revealed that he has been drinking, and the liquor has slowed his drawling voice to syrup. The English/West Indian A.J. is a Supreme Team part-timer who will show up in the gym every day for a week, then disappear for a month. At every return, he claims that this time he is serious, that he’s going to get sharp, have some fights, win the Gloves. As much as I like A.J., I don’t believe it will happen. Boxing for him is an elective; he has a middle-class sheen and makes decent money as a manager for trade shows.
You know who’s been pushing up on me a lot? he says, and names a woman boxer, a heavyweight. If she keeps coming around, I might have to go for it.
Big Mama? Milton says. You’re talking about Big Mama?
Milton jams the brake, jolting us against the seats.
All right, A.J., get out. Get out. You’re drunk or you’re crazy, and I can’t have either one in my van.
This ride isn’t the first time I’ve seen A.J. tipsy, and it isn’t the first time that Milton has harassed him for it. Milton, night ranger, club player, doesn’t drink himself, not a dram or drop, and shows little tolerance for those who do.
Milton doesn’t like black women, Will says.
You don’t understand, Milton says. I was married to a black woman. Hey, look at that, she looks like a little something that I used to know.
Then I guess she has to be ugly, Will says.
Will, did you ever see me with an ugly woman?
I’d have to say yes.
But that was just your cousin.
Yeah, Will replies, but he’s all right.
General hilarity.
Beneath my own laughter, I’m uneasy, almost hoping we don’t arrive in time. That we will is far from certain. Although the hour is just past four and the weigh-in isn’t scheduled until six, we must drop Nelson off in the East Village to retrieve his car, then stop in Harlem somewhere to get Julian’s boxing book, pick up Puni somewhere near Co-op City and finally make our way all the way back east across the Bronx to the show in rush-hour traffic.
At the moment, however, we are on the prowl, mobile and menacing to women everywhere, a thrill-seeking hormone-boosted pussy wagon. In the East Village, our heads spin to follow a woman in hot pants being dragged by three pit bulls with spiked collars. A hush in the van, silent approval of the pit bulls, the hot pants, the posterior.
I can help her! Milton exclaims, and swerving to the curb, he leaps out and rushes down the street. As we watch, he stops her with an urgent call, then runs his game on her, complete with stupid magic tricks. Seemingly from nowhere, a Supreme Team business card appears in Milton’s hand with a grand flourish, and he speaks with animated abandon. We have seen this particular trick before but are not unimpressed. He leans over the woman, arms waving, mesmerist’s eyes puncturing hers.
That man is a predator, Julian says, shaking his head in admiration.
I thought Milton had a girlfriend? I say.
So? Will, Julian, Nelson and A.J. respond in choral unison.
Sometimes you get tired of the same thing, Julian says, no matter how good it is, know what I mean? A man might love chicken, but that doesn’t mean he wants to eat chicken twenty-four/seven. I know you must feel that way with Nadia sometimes, Bob.
Who’s Nadia, Bob? Will asks.
Oh, that friend of mine who comes to the gym.
You mean that little girl you’re blazin’?
Will gives a suggestive hip swivel as a visual aid.
A rare smile dawns on Victor’s face.
Bob’s a pimp, he says.
Bob’s a pimp, he repeats, delighted by the notion.
Bob’s a part-time gynecologist, Milton says, sticking his head into the van. He only works from midnight to four.
As we roll again, Milton tells us he informed Hot Pants that she needed to train with the Supreme Team. Boxing, he told her, would give her the strength she needed to handle the frisky bulls. Milton is earnest in his narration. “I can help that girl!” he says, half convinced by his own patter like any good con man.
We drop Nelson beside his SUV between B and C, the girlfriend already waiting there for him. Then we lurch uptown, in and out of traffic that gathers and clots as we struggle upstream, a condensation of vehicles toward the hour of five, the desperate commuter wriggle to escape the city. To my right, Professor breaks into a McDonald’s bag in his lap.
Who wants a burger? he says. Who wants a soda?
Julian reaches back a big hand for a serving of salt, carbs and saturated fat.
Aren’t you fighting tonight? I ask.
I ain’t gonna get a fight up there, says Julian. Nobody’s gonna fight me until the Gloves, when they have to fight me.
I stare wistfully as the french fries bolt down his gullet. Oh, how I love that fried meat smell, McDonald’s heating-coil-cooked beef! But I’m to set to fight and the idea of combat with grease in my gut gives me pause, as does the thought of weighing in even a half pound heavier. After the weigh-in, I’ll have an energy bar for comfort.
As the last event before the Gloves, the Yonkers show will draw fighters from all over the region. Unlike the tournaments—the Golden Gloves, Metros and the Empire State Games—shows do not require fighters to make a certain weight and do not guarantee bouts. Matches are made by a U.S. Boxing official from among the fighters present.
This show is important to me; I haven’t fought a competitive round in over four years. A fight is very different from even the hardest sparring. It’s in my best interest to come in as close to 125 pounds as I can. I’ll get a feel for the talent in this weight class, since every fighter at the show will be looking forward to the big tournament. I have no shame: I want to fight the smallest, the lightest, the weakest opponent I can, a
pushover, a paraplegic, anything to get through those terrible three rounds.
Another car, holding a group of Milton’s white-collar boxers, joins us on 68th and Third and now we are three.
Just follow me, he shouts out the window to Nelson, and switches on his hazards as a beacon for the others to follow. Nelson ignites his hazards as well, then the third car, to form a blinking caravan in the dusk. Milton whips in front of a cab doing sixty and swerves across two lanes to avoid another truck that’s hit its brakes. I turn away from the window. Thoughts of the show pull me into darkness: I want to fight, I don’t want to fight, I want to fight, I don’t …
We cross to the West Side Highway and then cut back into the grid somewhere in Harlem for Julian’s book, the hazard lights saccading behind us. I’m on the back bench between Victor and Professor, Victor’s head recessed back into a hooded jacket. He looks exactly as he wants to look: a thug from white flight nightmares. Beside me, Professor has slumped forward in his seat with a desperate look on his face.
Professor, are you okay? I ask.
I feel a little nauseous, he says. I get motion sickness sometimes.
After retrieving Julian’s book, the caravan decamps, headed north and east. Twilight thickens and figures on the sidewalks turn to gray shades. Victor stirs beside me. He sticks a hand out from his jacket sleeve and scrawls a large C in the mist on the window. C is for “Crip” (although Victor insists he’s been out of the gang world since his stabbing). On Broadway in the 150s, groups of young men loiter on the traffic island.
Oh, shit, Vic mutters, this is Dominican Town.
He lifts his sleeve and erases his mark. I remember Milton’s mentioning that Dominicans in Washington Heights were “looking for” Vic.
We fishtail along Broadway as it skews across the island, Broadway once an Indian trail, breaking the grid geometry. Professor stirs beside me, a dolorous expression on his face.
Milton, he says, Milton? You got to stop.
Stop. What for?
I think I’m gonna be sick.
Milton pulls over. The Professor jumps out of the van and stumps up the cross street to the head swivels of the corner boys.
You see the Professor run out of here? asks A.J. It looks like he went out to score.
They was grilling him, son, says Victor.
The corner boys have clustered and are staring down the side street, wonderstruck by the appearance of the bullet-headed blond man. We stare at them staring.
All I know is, I’m rolling out of here alive, says Milton.
That’s my man. Julian sighs. I got to go out and look after him. He’s like a baby in the jungle out there.
Julian leaves the van.
We might not be here when you get back, Will shouts.
Victor smiles.
If you hear [thump, thump, thump (he bangs his hand three times on the van side)], drive off.
In a few minutes Julian returns, escorting the Professor, who drops to the bench beside me.
We were afraid they were gonna stick you, says Will.
They was grilling him, repeats Vic.
We crisscross the grid, north and east, back onto the expressways, the New York expressways designed by Nazi scientists intent on ratcheting up tension and fear. Steel plates, potholes, tight lanes without shoulders, deranged drivers, grand prix curves, a cruel video game. Beside me, Professor gurgles vomit into an emptied soda cup. Out to the brick towers and swamp reeds of Co-op City, where we meet Puni and his mother in the semicircular drive of their project. Puni is fifteen; Puni’s mother, a slender woman with tightly braided hair, looks to be a few years younger than I am. Milton brags on Puni constantly: “Bob, you should have seen him with this pro. The guy said, ‘I’ll take it easy on the kid,’ and then Puni’s in there, just spanking him, saying, ‘Who’s your daddy? Who’s your daddy?’ Fifteen years old!” Puni’s very dark, with a long frame to grow on.
Back on the road it’s getting toward six and we’re a borough away from the show. Puni’s mother opens a foil package of fried chicken. The cell phones never stop ringing, both Professor’s and Milton’s. For a half mile, Milton hooks a ride behind a fire engine running its siren for our very own motorcade. Our hazards flash. I keep waiting for a cop to pull us over.
Milton is talking to the organizer of the show.
Keep the scale open! he shouts. We’re on our way. I got two ‘fifty-six opens and a ’sixty-five open and a ’twenty-five novice. Hello? Hello! Hello!
Milton’s cell has frozen. Crisis. Soon both he and Professor are talking to Sprint on Professor’s cell in an attempt to get the code to unlock Milton’s phone. The chaos of the roadway reflects the chaos in my head as I waver between dread and hope. What if I’m matched against the next Ray Robinson? What if I walk out from my corner and get knocked out by the first punch?
Nelson pulls up beside us, and his girlfriend begins hollering.
Milton! You got a call!
Holding Nelson’s cell, she stretches her arm into the expressway night. Milton reaches for the phone with his free hand as he talks to the Sprint help line on Professor’s phone (the phone shouldered to his ear), his other hand on the wheel trying to match speeds with Nelson at 40 mph in stop-and-go traffic. I read that cell phones damage long-term memory. This might explain why we go through the same confusion on the way to every show: Milton doesn’t remember the last time. There are always the hazard lights, the confusion, the shuttling around. Then after we arrive too late, we sit in the front row with our arms crossed, telling one another that nobody in New York wants to fight us.
Cars behind us blare at our antics, infuriating Milton, who pumps his brakes.
C’mon, try honking now, he shouts, waving a fist out the window.
Beside me, the Professor is gray and still.
Do you want us to stop? I ask.
No, I think I can make it, he whispers.
I’ve got to think, I’ve got to think, Milton reminds himself, trying to fix on the shortest way across the Bronx to Yonkers. The cell phone is brought back into operation, but we get lost once and then again down cul-de-sacs and curving residential roads.
I hate Yonkers, Milton declares to his captive audience. The van makes odd thudding noises and also a rising whine. With the weight of bodies, it scrapes over every dip in the roadway. The vessel filled with Professor’s puke lies at my feet.
When we finally slide into a parking space outside the club, we’re only an hour late. Inside, the scale remains open; we can fight (just what
I was afraid of Spectators throng the tight hallway, our wave breaking against them. Only fighters and trainers get in free; I flash my official U.S. Boxing book with its photo booth mug shot of my face. Milton tries to slide everyone in without paying, a breezy “they’re with me,” as we flow down the stairs and into the dressing room. The room boils with voices and bodies, bodies of men and boys, naked chests and shoulders, black, brown, beige.
Get on the scale, guys, Milton commands.
After stripping down to my boxer briefs, I take a place among the nearly naked: Irish kids with freckled backs, bronzed Italians with bodybuilder bulk and Play-Doh noses. There are black light-heavies with muscles like suits of mail and Puerto Rican beanpoles that look as if you could punch a hole through them. They have come from all over the region: Bronx boxing teams, Bed-Stuy kids, a Harlem team, a club from Rockland County farther north up the Hudson. This show matters. Victor comes in at 160, and Will even heavier. Since winning the Metros, Will has decided the strain of making ’56 is too unpleasant. Julian doesn’t bother to undress; he won’t be fighting. I’m on and off the scale, “126” scribed on the cover of my book. The doctor checks my eyes and chest, has no objections, sends me on my way.
At a card table in the middle of the long room sits a young man in a white uniform, the fighters’ books heaped in front of him. Shouting trainers swarm about the official as if they’re begging for political asylum.
My fighter has … no fights! And we want somebody who has … no fights! demands a graybeard with a crumpled torso and drunk’s face, cherry and spreading.
Milton is in his element, tall in the crowd, glad-handing friends, cracking jokes, mouth curled in its usual wry grimace.
Yo, yo, we want to fight first! he shouts. We want to fight first! Shouting just for the hell of it, acknowledging and extending the chaos. Then he looks over at me.
Now you can see what a bunch of bullshit this is, he says.
These setups are mad corny, adds Will.
From the heap of books, the official must winnow the most evenly matched. You don’t want to put a seventeen-year-old with two fights against a seventeen-year-old with two hundred junior fights. His task is
complicated by the fact that the books are only nominally accurate. Fighters move from other states, other countries, “lose” their books, rise out of the junior ranks with hundreds of unregistered bouts. The book of the seventeen-year-old with two hundred junior bouts will show only those fights he’s had since leaving the junior ranks. The trainers offer unsolicited advice on possible matches; they will tell any lie to find a soft mark for their protégés. In this, Milton is somewhat refreshing, if cavalier. “We’ll fight anyone,” he likes to say.
Scanning the book covers on the table, I see a 127, I see a 133. I have a sudden fear that Milton will put me in with a heavier opponent. If he asked me, “Do you want to fight this ’thirty-three?” I would have to say yes. And if Milton said, “Well, he’s one forty-five, but you can handle him,” I would still say yes. And if Milton said, “Well, he’ll be carrying a gun, but it’s only a rifle …” I would say yes, again, trapped into a yes by the boxer’s code.
Back in street clothes, I walk out to the main space of the gym, converted by rows of plastic chairs into an auditorium. Out of the entire metropolitan area, Yonkers seems to have the most shows and the bestorganized amateur boxing infrastructure, although the majority of fighters come from the city itself. As far as I can tell, the local boxing people, organizers and officials, are all white. At one table beside the ring sit a half dozen old Italian-American officials, wrinkled eagles in a row. The table before them supports a jeweled cargo of trophies, each crowned by a stylized boxer in stance.
My teammates sit together, and I join them. All the boxing crews sit in tight groups through the half-empty room, the groups brushing one another at the fringes. Julian knows many of the other coaches and fighters and greets them. After handshakes, they stand talking shop: national rankings, fights they’ve seen. Julian is the Supreme Team’s goodwill ambassador to the boxing UN (Milton is our Fidel Castro). Julian has a place here, a reputation. I feel invisible, am invisible; I
haven’t won any tournaments or done anything else to prove myself in boxing. With nothing to say to my teammates after three hours in a van, I can find no way to occupy myself. With the patience of experience, Will and Victor sit with Walkmans to shield them from the tension of the wait. Too edgy to sit, I walk back down to the dressing room.
The bedlam around the card table continues. I lean against a wall, waiting to see if they match me. Two white trainers converse beside me in that rough working-class dialect of the outer boroughs.
So I ask him, says Trainer No.1, “Are you nervous?” Now, I always used to say no, but I was lying. Of course you’re nervous. So I ask him, and he says no. And I say, “You gotta be a little nervous.” And he says, “Yeah, I’m a little nervous.” Hey, if you don’t have butterflies in your stomach, there’s got to be something wrong with you. I don’t care if you’re George Foreman.
I don’t care if you’re King Fucking Kong, says Trainer No.2, and they laugh.
Across the room, I notice a slim, dark-haired man and his obese partner fingering my book. They look at the photo, then at me. They nod to each other and lean over to talk to the young matchmaker. All of a sudden I’m balancing on a surge of adrenaline, six stories high.
The crumpled, red-faced trainer walks away from the table in rageful despair.
My guy has … no fights. No fights. No! No! I don’t trust this whole fucking setup. Every fucking time I come here it’s the same … goddamn …
His voice trails off as he leaves the room.
I recognize some of the officials from my last fight, in Bed-Stuy, more than four years earlier. A frail old man carrying a doctor’s black bag and a U.S. Boxing Rulebook walks to the card table.
The scale is closed, he says in a musical brogue.
At my last fight four years ago, I heard him make the same announcement, carrying the same kip. The man who refereed my first New York fight, now five years gone, follows him. He wears a knit white skullcap and white robes and looks like a hologram of Gandhi.
A stout black trainer begins screaming at the young matchmaker.
You promised me that fight, what happened?
I had to—
I can’t believe this shit.
I didn’t have the book.
I got his book right here, the man bellows, waving a book before the matchmaker’s face.
The matchmaker points to the table. Well, it should have been right there.
The ancient official grips the matchmaker’s shoulder.
Only let the coaches in after the bouts are made, he says, or this nonsense is gonna happen every time.
From across the room, Milton glides toward me, finger pointed at my chest.
I think we have a winner, he says.
You got somebody for me? I say, trying to come off nonchalant.
Milton nods.
How many fights does he have?
Milton waves a finger in the air.
One, he mouths in delight.
I feel a certain relief.
Yo, Bob, you should have seen them, Milton says, after they told the official they wanted the match. I’m standing there, and they ask me if I have anybody fighting. I say I got a few guys, including one ’twenty-five pounder. And they say, “Oh, really, who?” And I point to your book. You should have seen their faces. So, they’re like, “Really? He’s with you?”
Milton mimics them, using his Surprised Idiot voice, complete with facial expression.
So I say yeah, and they pick up the book again, and they’re looking at it. “So, how many fights does he have?” I say, “It’s right there in the book.” And the fat one says, “Yeah, but he could be a ringer.” So I say, “Look at him. He looks like fucking Elvis Presley. Do you want the fight, or don’t you?”
Milton is delighted by this sequence of events. He breezes away again, laughing.
Out in the main hall, the room percolates. As more of an audience has arrived, the distinct boxing groups have blended into the crowd. A woman leans over a steam table in one corner, tending to hot dogs, her hands wrapped in plastic. So far I am the only Supreme Team fighter with a match.
Milton gestures toward another crew sitting a few rows ahead of us. I recognize the chunky assistant. Milton points out a Puerto Rican boy with an angel’s face, a boy young enough to be my son.
That’s him, Bob.
The boxers of the other team swivel their heads back for eyefuls of me. I make a mask of my face as they chortle among themselves.
Bob, Milton says, grin flickering around his mouth, they think you’re an ordinary white guy.
I laugh too and lean back in my chair, trying to look hard. The rush has me trembling, a great bolt of energy, but I’m ready. My fate is clear. With the fight before me, my team has a reason to speak. It draws us together.
Milton stands.
I’m going back there to see if I can find any more victims.
They think you’re a pushover, Vic says to me, grinning. Those guys are dogging you.
That’s a kid over there, Julian says. You’re a man. You just have to take it through willpower. You have to control him.
Exactly, says Vic, nodding. Refuse to lose.
I want to fight immediately, to shuck my jeans for my satin boxing shorts in blue and gold. Instead I’ll jump rope in the dressing room for a few rounds and then shadowbox. When the bell rings, I want to start fast. As I walk down the hall to change, Milton emerges from the dressing room.
Milt, I say, I’m going to get warm.
Wait a second, he says. The show might be canceled. They fucked up.
The show might be canceled? I repeat. What happened?
A rumor of disaster winds through the rooms: a problem with the books, first statements ignored, it doesn’t go away … The officials run back and forth in their white uniforms like TV surgeons … I slump back into a chair. There goes my will to fight. I was so ready, so forward, so eager.
Of the forty-odd fighters in the room, only a handful have Year 2000 validation stickers in their books, although there we are, two weeks into the millennium. Without a current sticker, no one is allowed to fight under the aegis of U.S. Boxing. The young official says he expected the arrival of another official, with the stickers.
You mean he didn’t give them to you? Gandhi asks. Well, he’s at a meeting in Colorado now.
The young official shakes his head.
As the certainty of cancellation grows, the officials desperately try to arrange matches between fighters with valid books. Only a single match can be made: Angel Face and I. And nobody is going to pay ten dollars with us as the main, the only event. The show will not go on.
A man steps into the ring and shouts for our attention.
I’m very sorry to announce this to you, says the owner, a lean figure with drooping mustaches who looks like an unsuccessful pimp. It’s not the fault of Boxing Connection. We planned this event months in advance.
No one is listening, the teams already at the doors. There is consternation at the steam tables: all those hot dogs. It’s one of the ironies of the sport that as popular as it is in the upscale health clubs, on the grassroots level, in the neighborhoods, it’s dying. This sort of neighborhood show, once a weekly occurrence in the New York area, has become ever more difficult to find. In turn, it becomes difficult for fighters to develop. You can’t learn the game if you never have a chance to play it. Several times a year Milton drives to New Jersey and upstate New York for matches, and he has even ranged as far as Kentucky, North Carolina and D.C. for guaranteed fights.
This is the last show before the Gloves. I have another reprieve, but what I desperately need is a fight.