The Housekeeper: Love, Death, and Prizefighting

by Josh Samman

  Sometimes I didn’t want to escape. I missed home, and my mom, a theme in my life by now, but there were times where I enjoyed the solitude, being in the woods, away from everything.

  Many of the employees were ex-military or military wannabes. Everything was strict. Each morning we woke up to a bullhorn, had five minutes to make our bed, brush our teeth, and stand at attention. We had even less time to use the bathroom and shower.

  There was marching, cadences, and uniforms. Several times a month they would make us run laps in combat boots around the track. Other times they’d pick us out of the group at random and make us clean the kitchen or bathrooms the whole day. I thought my dad’s was a lifestyle change. This was night and day.

  We spent hours on end in the hot sun. The food was better there. They had sweet southern ladies in the back, cooking grits, mashed potatoes, pork chops, and anything else we wanted. It was the best thing about the place.

  They kept us fed because they kept us working. We dug holes and trenches, and laid concrete. We built fences and gardened plants. There were lakes, horses, and cattle. I learned to kayak, climb, and more. There were even some mushrooms growing in the field. I didn’t think of touching them.

  There was a single kid I identified with, out of all 40, the only other from my hometown. His name was Justin, “Juice” for short. He was a few years older and was there for drug charges. Like me, he read books and played chess to pass the time. He gave me my first copy of Gorgias, and said he wanted to grow up to be a philosophy professor. I didn’t know if they let criminals become college professors, but it sounded nice. He preached what my mom preached, that we had to be good people in order to feel good. He enlightened me, and I looked up to him.

  There was an employee, named Mr. Shannon, who was the alpha of the camp. He had no neck and lifted weights every chance he got. He was an intellectual too, and would pull Juice and I out of activities that he knew we didn’t like. He’d talk to us about everything, from girls, to boozing, to things he’d done that were illegal when he was a kid. He found a way to connect like other counselors couldn’t. He was a male influence in ways I never had before, and helped me through the process.

  The camp was performance based. Like the detention center, we were assessed on our behavior day to day, except now we were judged by an intricate point system that required a set number in order to graduate from the program. Numbers appealed to me, so the system came naturally. The same was true for Juice, and we worked the program the way it was meant to be worked.

  Both Mr. Shannon and Juice were martial arts enthusiasts. Mr. Shannon had been a hand‑to‑hand combat instructor in the military, and Juice took Kung Fu at a Shaolin studio in Tallahassee.

  They talked about it often, and I could only sit and listen. I liked watching boxing, but didn’t know enough to contribute. It was the only topic I couldn’t keep up with in discussion, and I so desperately wanted to.

  37.

  "..Because the warrior path, like true love, leaves us open to the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow, the greatest freedom and the greatest uncertainty."

  -Pedro Olavarria

  Dylan and I were up on a sleepless night, the eve of our final bout of filming. Somehow, we’d gotten on the topic of what would be worse; losing a spouse or losing a child.

  “I couldn’t fathom being able to say goodbye to someone I’d built a life around if given the option.” All my life I’d had two deep-rooted fears; not fulfilling potential, and growing to be old and alone. Gerascophobia was the clinical name for it. I suggested that maybe if one lost a child, at least they’d have their spouse to grieve with.

  Dylan scoffed at my answer. “That’s because you’re a fuckin’ kid, with no kids of your own. A kid is like… It’s like you.” He lacked the words to explain what it was he felt for his children, but his eyes lit up when he talked about them as if magic tricks were going on in his mind. He showed us pictures of his son and daughter every day the whole time we were there, both around seven years old.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without them. And my wife would never forgive me if I let something happen to them. She’d kill me.”

  He tried to explain how a child was an extension of himself, with a love that couldn’t be described. I didn’t have kids, and had never lost anyone close to me, so I was speaking in ignorant hypotheticals. I took Dylan’s words as I took many of his words, for that of wisdom, and hoped that I would never have to deal with either situation.

  The next day arrived, and I’d gotten the fight I asked for. I stood across the cage from Kelvin, the dark horse of the whole tournament. There I was, one punch, kick, knee, or submission away from my destiny; the culmination of years of struggle and strife. I was moments away, less than five minutes surely, from what I expected to be my finest moment. It was to be the moment when I could finally relax for a minute, and look back on all that I’d done, at everything that had become of my career.

  This game of Mixed Martial Arts had many ways to look at it. I knew the sport contrived of chaos, doused in differences of ounces and milliseconds. I knew that anything could happen and that everyone had a chance to win on any given day. This fight though, I had convinced myself that I had a 100% percent chance of winning. Maybe 98% or 99%, because everyone can get lucky now and then.

  Too much confidence and not enough respect, that was my undoing. I’d watched Kelvin win upset after upset, seen his intensity in the cage, his versatility in both knockouts and submissions. In my mind, I just failed to see any way he was going to beat me.

  The bell rang. From the first second, until the moment it was all over, I kept waiting for him to make a mistake. Such was the name of my game often, waiting to capitalize on the mistakes of opponents, and most the time it worked. This time, there were none.

  We fought back and forth for the majority of the round, as I realized I was not going to walk through him as I’d anticipated. I was still confident until the end, the last minute of the first round, when almost unexplainably, he’d made his way to my back. His forearm was pressing against my Adam’s apple, doing his best to choke me unconscious. Exactly how he got there would be a question for later. For now, all I could do was tap his leg frantically, ending the fight, and saving my trachea.

  The ref split us up, and Kelvin ran around the cage, screaming, almost in disbelief at himself that he’d actually done it. I was in disbelief too, and laid there on the cage floor, listening to his cries of celebration. It was one of the worst feelings of my life. I made a mental note of how it felt. Such was a tool I’d done many times over the years, making notes of unenjoyable moments to try to ensure they never happened again. I wanted to learn from my mistakes, but this was one that was going to be hard to swallow. I sat there until the referee told me to stand up, so he could read the official result. I went to the locker room to chock up my tears and try to figure out what the hell went wrong.

  I had been in fights before. I had lost before. I knew that seconds were of magnified importance. I didn't think about all those things before the fight. I went into it with just as much hubris as I’d come across as having to others. It was a disastrous combination, mixed with someone who was determined to defy the odds.

  In my sport, one’s dreams coming true sometimes relied solely on the development of other’s nightmares, and that’s what Kelvin had done to me. To come so far and lose at the very end was heartbreaking. After the long, arduous road that was The Ultimate Fighter, my journey had come to an end. Although the final four was nothing to scoff at, never would I be able to claim the title of TUF winner.

  After a loss, every minute of every day was dedicated to hypothesizing where it all fell apart. What could I have done differently? Where did I stray from the path? If I had a time machine, what's the very moment I would go back to? The hamster wheel of analyzing loss was something I’d have to get used to if I was going to survive the things to come.

  38.

  Early Spring, 2004

&
nbsp; I graduated from WFWI in six months and was back at home getting into trouble almost immediately. I returned to Lincoln High School, and barely finished the year. My experimentation was not done. It wasn’t just easy to repeat the same patterns of behavior; it was nearly impossible not to.

  I had a new image when I came back. Nobody knew someone who’d been to jail before. I didn’t know how people would look at me. Some girls thought it was cool. Some kids were scared. It was amusing at first but tired quickly. I didn’t adapt well.

  It was a time in my life that was filled with intense substance abuse. I tried harder drugs, synthetics I’d never done before. I did LSD, and ecstasy. I snorted cocaine for the first time, and liked it. I found kids that did it heavily. I sought them out, and attached.

  I never stole again, though many people I used with did. I thought it put me on some moral high ground, being a junkie but not a thief. I was 15, and met a group of kids who had just finished high school. We were at a party on their graduation night, and they saw me doing a line in the bathroom. They’d done coke before, but didn’t know where to get any. I told them I could help.

  I never sold cocaine. I facilitated its use, between a group of rich kids, and a drug dealer named Fatso. They weren’t comfortable going to that side of town, let alone Fatso’s apartment. He kept pit bulls and guns everywhere, and made a point to intimidate people. He liked me, though. I made him lots of money.

  The crew of guys I’d met did just that; crew, at the rival high school, Leon. Each of them had a scholarship to different Ivy League Universities, all for rowing a damn boat. Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, they were all going in different directions, to the best schools in the world, and they wanted one last summer of fun.

  They’d give me piles of their parent’s cash to get them bags of blow. I’d tell them it cost double what it did, then spent the rest on my own habit. They knew what I was doing, that I needed them for my own addiction. We were friends, but there was a function of us all using each other.

  We would binge until the early hours of the morning, playing Tetris of all things. They were avid enthusiasts of the game and were surprised when I kept up, or beat their scores.

  “You’re a smart kid huh?” There was one I was closest with, that I engaged with the most.

  “I used to play puzzles a lot.”

  “So why are you all caught up with this shit?” He’d seen me on benders, always wanting one more. It was different than the painkillers, more than just a physical dependency. I really liked the stuff. It was the kind of desperation I’d told myself I wouldn’t taste again. The land of cocaine addiction was an ugly place, changed people’s personalities, including my own. The nights were thrilling, the days empty.

  “You guys are the ones with bright futures, what are you doing with the stuff?”

  “Well, that’s kind of the point. We’ve got our futures secured. What’s your plan?”

  I didn’t like the interrogation. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.” The birds were chirping, and the sun was up. If I had a problem, I wasn’t going to admit it.

  39.

  “How does it feel to be on the losing end of the biggest upset in TUF history?” The producer asking the questions didn’t pull any punches.

  Felt like shit. I walked out.

  I’d seen more than half the cast members cry under the pain and pressure of the last two months. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t be one of them, but there I was, in tears from dashed dreams of hours earlier.

  I stepped into the backyard of the mansion. The first person I called was my mom. After all this time of isolation, we finally got our phone back, and the first call I made went straight to voicemail. I called my step dad, Jeff, who answered after a few rings.

  “Josh! What the heck man, how are you? How was it?” He was excited to hear from me. I couldn’t even muster the politeness to sound remotely enthused. I felt bad about it afterwards.

  “Let me talk to mom, please.”

  “Well hey to you too!” He joked, before handing her the phone.

  “Hey honey..” She waited for my response, knowing it would be one of two extremes.

  “I lost today, just now.” I fought back emotion in my voice.

  “Oh honey, I’m so sorry... I know how bad you wanted it.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Well, you got far if you fought all the way til today, right?”

  “Yeah. Just not as far as I wanted.”

  “I know. You’ll get ‘em next time sweetheart.” There wouldn’t be a next time, not for this accolade anyway. I didn’t say that.

  “Yeah, next time.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Do you have a ride from the airport?”

  “I’ll call Matt.”

  “Okay, call me later. I love you.”

  “You too.”

  We hung up, and Gerard walked outside to join me on the lawn.

  “You know that was your fight, we all knew it.” He echoed my mom’s sentiment, emptily. “Next time.”

  He gave me his number and told me to stay in touch. He wasn’t allowed to show favoritism on the show, but had been rooting for me, he said, and wanted us to keep in touch. He challenged me to a game of chess to get my mind off the fight. I obliged, and a friendship began.

  Finally I called Veronica. I wasn’t thrilled to talk to her, or anyone, considering the turn of events. She made matters worse when she answered. Right away, she began talking about herself, complaining about a pop quiz her professor had sprung on the class that day.

  After two months of not speaking to anyone in the outside world, I sat there, puzzled that this was the first thing I was listening to. I wanted to tell her it was over, right then and there. I decided to save that conversation for later. I told her I’d be home in a day or two, and that I had other people to call.

  I didn’t call anyone else. I went upstairs, packed my stuff, and got ready to leave. Everyone was engrossed in their phones, catching up with friends and family. We’d all talked about who we were going to call first, and all the things we’d do when we got home. Most of them had already lost weeks ago and had gotten over the sting of it. I wasn’t afforded that pleasure, and was condemned to make the flight home with an inescapable displeasure in myself.

  I finally got back to Tallahassee and tried to find the joy of returning to real life. The first thing I did was pet Juice for an hour, and roll the biggest joint I’d ever smoked. I enjoyed being high once again, as I reflected on my experience.

  Outside of the five folks I’d chosen to be brought in at the beginning of filming, I contractually couldn’t divulge the results of the tournament to anyone else. It was a huge deal, one FOX emphasized in great detail. Anyone who broke their non-disclosure agreement was subject to a penalty of up to five million dollars, which they reminded us of several times. They’d scared us enough to make me not want to tell a soul.

  When I finally met all my friends for a big dinner the next night, I had to hide my disappointment. I tried to live in the moment and enjoy the company I was with, attempted to pretend like my mind wasn’t elsewhere. I was happy to be home but still distracted, trying to digest the events of days prior. It would be months before I was able to see the tape.

  I got a text from a random number, another distraction, this time a welcome one.

  “Hey. It’s Isabel. I heard you’re back.”

  “Yeah, I am. I want to see you.”

  “I want to see you too. I’m sure you’re busy... Tomorrow, maybe? Sake?”

  “Tomorrow sounds good, and sake sounds great.”

  “Love you. I’m happy you’re home.”

  “I love you too.”

  After that text, I too was happy to be home.

  40.

  Late Summer, 2004

  “If I assess my life realistically, no one but me knows how much I like to get high, and how boring life feels without it all.”


  -Personal journal, 15 years old

  My first foray back into society was a failed one. After discovering the extent of my drug use, my mom filed a motion for a Marchman Act, and I was institutionalized for a third time at age 15.

  Because I fought it at every turn, it made it difficult for her to get me admitted. While my drugs of choice were against the law, I technically hadn’t been arrested and had to be assessed at an intake clinic. I was first taken there, then to a longer term program called Disc Village.

  Juice from WFWI had been to Disc and talked about it often. It was after his trip there that he’d failed a probation drug test and was sent to WFWI. That’s the order it should’ve been. Mine was backwards. Disc was lax. It was similar, but with far less structure. It was performance based, but nothing militarily styled. We didn’t have uniforms. We got to call our friends. It was a cakewalk.

  Easy or not, I still wanted to go home. It was at the discretion of my mom whether I could, although it was recommended that I finish the program once admitted. That’s what she wanted me to do.

  I got back to my books. I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was influenced by Ken Kesey, Bukowski, and others. I realized there were loads of intelligent people that glorified drug use, that it wasn’t just a character trait of degenerates.

  Like WFWI, there were things that I enjoyed about the place. I learned about addiction and the substances I’d been using. I discovered why I’d been feeling the way I was, so depressed after long nights. I learned the difference between immediate and delayed gratification, about dopamine and serotonin receptors, and how different drugs damaged those pathways.