by Josh Samman
I was dismayed, concerned, scared for her, scared for myself, but more than anything it hurt to see her cry like that. Everything that she’d been working towards putting in the past had come back to blow up in her face, with a fierceness. How do you put your mistakes behind you when you have a constant reminder of them pumping through your blood?
I looked at my watch, 12:02 in the morning.
What a birthday present.
I moved next to her, feeling weak. It was a colossal pill to swallow.
“Please promise this won’t change anything for us.” She pleaded, trying to keep herself together.
This changes everything. I wanted to tell her. I held my tongue.
“I don’t know what to say.” My words felt cold as they came out of my mouth. I tried to compensate by holding her close. I let her cry as a million thoughts rushed through my head.
I don’t know how one person can attach themselves to so many junctures in another’s life, but she had a knack of doing so, in the most dramatic fashions. Had a gun been pointed at my head, forcing me to choose between Isabel and my career, my choice would have been my career. I thought about the possibility that this would be our last weekend together romantically. It hurt me to the core. I didn’t know how I’d even begin to explain myself to my friends, coaches, everyone who’d supported me through my whole journey, if I was so reckless as to choose a mate that could spell the end for it all.
Make it through the weekend, I told myself, still trying to take it all in. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Do you want me to go home?” She asked again, unable to hide the desperation in her voice.
“Of course not. Please stop talking like that.”
“Promise me this won’t change anything,” she said again.
“There’s no way this doesn’t change things, Isabel.”
“I don’t want you to stop loving me. Or stop looking at me like you do.”
“I can’t just stop out of nowhere, and what does that mean? How do I look at you?”
She sniffled again, wiping big, wet, brown eyes. “I don’t know. Like you think I’m the prettiest girl in the world.” Her voice cracked.
My heart sank through the floor. Christ, what a line. Of course she’d say something out of some princess fairy tale, and I ate it, hook, line, and sinker. She nailed it, with the most simple elementary words, the way I felt when I looked at her, but she wasn’t supposed to know that.
“I’m not going to look at you different,” I said, trying to gather myself from being stripped raw at her answer. I was struggling to contain my own emotion at this point. I’m not sure I’d ever been good at giving anyone comfort, and I certainly wasn’t doing a good job of it now. I was too busy reeling myself in from the news, seeing her cry, hearing her plead.
If we’d hit a ceiling of vulnerability before, we were now through the roof. It was the deepest I’d ever seen into her soul. It was her laid bare, saying take me or leave me like she’d never done before. I wondered if I’d even be able to leave. I wondered how I could say no, because could I really ever?
The computer on the bed cycled through the Pandora station that had been on since she arrived. Stateless’ “Bloodstream” began to play. If God was up there, he had a cruel sense of humor.
She cried harder, and slammed it shut.
54.
Early Spring, 2007
"A dream is just a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."
-Charles Dickens
There was something about Izzi and her family being on the opposite end of the belief spectrum, at a time in my life where I was still forming my own conclusions on the supernatural. Izzi hated that word for it, supernatural.
She engaged in my inquisition, helped me get to the bottom of what people with faith thought, better than most in the church had. It was her conviction that was romantic, and I tried to coax it out of her any chance I got. I was curious at how people were captivated by faith, and she satisfied my curiosity. Whether or not we agreed was irrelevant. It was the trait of being opinionated that was appealing to me, to both of us.
I wasn’t rejecting the notion of something greater completely, just challenging modern Christianity. There weren’t many people that she’d heard do that. My roommate Chris was one of them. He introduced me to Dawkins and other pretentious atheists that were public figures. I wanted to question people without sounding condescending, but wasn’t sure how good I was at it. She’d tell me to stop blaspheming, that He could hear me. Sometimes it would be her questioning me.
“I don’t understand how you can say that you don’t know where we came from. What do you think happens when we die?”
“What happened to us before we were born? If your parents didn’t take you to church, you wouldn’t believe what you do now.”
“Well I’m glad they did!” The Monroes go to church more than the pastor, a joke around town. Church and FSU Football, those were the things they hung their names on. “Did yours not?”
“They did. A lot. How you can have certainty in something you’ve never seen? I don’t consider capacity for illusion to be a virtue.”
“Don’t use big words to try to make me feel stupid.” She wasn’t dumb. “I have seen him, everywhere. He speaks to me, in so many ways.” She elaborated, citing things she’d seen throughout her life that weren’t explainable otherwise.
“I understand it may seem like some coincidences are too much to describe, but they’re still just coincidences. Neither of us knows where we came from, the difference is I don’t make up an answer.” I didn’t pretend to be able to wrap my brain around String Theory, or multiple universes, or any of the other ideas that Chris and I watched on the Science Channel. I just knew I didn’t believe the bible.
“So you’re seriously telling me you don’t pray before fights?”
“I don’t pray before fights.”
“Oh Lord. Well, I’m gonna start praying for you.”
Religious differences aside, we grew closer. As incredible as she was, it was also what she represented that I was attracted to early. She was the forbidden fruit, the thing I was beginning to think I’d never fully have. I was the same to her, something that she wanted but no one would ever allow.
We hung out for months, more than she told anyone about. The secretiveness of it made it exciting, but gave me a complex of our relationship. If her brothers were around, she’d act differently. I don’t know if she ever let anyone kiss her around them. They were non-confrontational, but they weren’t soft. They’d grown up in the woods, and went to Fairview, the urban school I’d almost attended for the IB program. Izzi talked about Wyatt getting in fights from time to time.
She was so keen on judgment from them, and it trickled down to me in a powerful way. I wanted to tell them about her and me, at least give them some sort of hint before they found out elsewhere. She refused.
Because of the nature of our relationship, I never knew which Izzi to expect. When she was affectionate, it was mind numbing. When she was cold, it was painful. It was as if Izzi held a mechanism that with the press of a button, she could make my heart flutter.
She made me a CD that I kept for years. “Wild Horses” was the first track. The rest was filled with Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and Bill Withers. Things like that made Izzi her father’s daughter. Her favorite movie character was Penny Lane from “Almost Famous,” and she’d often say she was born in the wrong decade.
I made her plenty of CD’s. She enjoyed contemporary music too. She liked Ben Harper, and wrote an essay on Gnarles Barkley’s song “Crazy.” Music was something we always shared. I was too scared to play for her. That part of my life was something only people from years past knew about me.
This part of my life, people only knew fight Josh. She didn’t care much about fight Josh, and I couldn’t figure out why. Fighting was becoming the aspect of me people cared about most.
&
nbsp; She’d never watched it, and I made her one day.
“So are you gonna get a bunch of tattoos like them?”
“No. I don’t like tattoos.”
“I bet you’ll change your mind. When am I gonna go watch one of your UFC fights?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to. And it’s not UFC fighting yet.” I had to explain to her the difference between local MMA and what we were watching on TV. I had to explain to her I wasn’t even a professional yet.
“Wait, wait, wait.. You’re not even pro?” She nudged me in the ribs with her elbow, teasing.
“Shut up. I could be.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure you could.” She stole the remote and changed the channel. I felt deflated. I texted Orkin that night and told him to get me a professional fight.
55.
Isabel still had dried tears on her face when we woke the next morning.
“Today is gonna be great,” I told her. We were parachuting in a few hours, and I woke up intent on not letting the previous evening ruin the day. I tried to not think about it, pretending like I didn’t want to run to the clinic right then and there to get myself tested.
We drove from Orlando where we were staying, to Titusville, a rural town closeby where they’d throw us out of the plane. It was my mom, Isabel, and a few friends. We’d coincided the weekend around our first Orlando Combat Night, happening the day after my birthday.
We got to the airstrip, and my adrenaline rose. Feeling nervous about something was a nice distraction from the night before. My mom and I had been skydiving once. Everyone else was going for their first time.
We all strapped onto our tandem partners and asked in which order we wanted to jump. I’d go first, followed by Isabel, then mom, then the rest. As we began to ascend, I looked at her for a sign of how she was feeling.
She was the calmest body on the plane, staring stoically out the window. I’m not sure she’d ever been on a plane in her life, and there she sat, with the resolve of a jet fighter pilot.
“You scared?” I yelled over the sound of wind as they opened the doors, revealing the ground more than 15,000 feet below. She smiled at me sweetly and shook her head, showing not a morsel of fear. I believed her.
I jumped out head first, feeling the blast of cold air rush against the bare skin on my face. Below me, I could see the Florida coastline, towns and cities, fields and farms. For 90 seconds I had no worries in the world, not a thing in life to do but feel the endorphins. That’s what we’re all here for anyway, endorphins.
The freefall was quick but powerful. I hit the ground with my heart beating out of my jumpsuit, still in invincible bliss. Isabel landed 20 yards away, unhooking from her instructor and running towards me. My mom and friends followed one by one until we were all on the ground. Maybe it was the prospect of near death that was intoxicating, or perhaps the people I was with. Either way, there wasn’t a thing in the world that could have troubled me in that moment.
We took pictures next to the plane and began the ride back to Orlando, to get ready for the rest of the weekend. On the way home we didn’t say a word about what she’d told me the night before. There was nothing more to say. She couldn’t do a thing, but let me decide for myself, and that’s what she did.
I had decisions to make, but first, research to do. I didn’t know a lot about Hepatitis, or the differences between the types. When I got home, I spent the whole night in front of the computer, reading what had to have been every article on the internet ever written about the disease.
Isabel had done the same, and we talked back and forth as I read. Contraction percentages through sex, we learned, were not particularly high; 3-5% from women to men over the course of a year. The risk, it seemed, was in careless interactions that inevitably happened between couples. A scrape, or cut maybe, left without a band-aid. Sharing a toothbrush, and having a bit of blood from exposed gum. Spotting during menstrual cycles. All those things were much more common as methods of contraction.
I researched what it does if left untreated, and what the treatment process was. It was only in recent years that a possible cure had become available. Isabel explained that she’d have to make a decision whether to undergo treatment, or ride it out for 20 or 30 years until her expiration date. It was an unfathomable decision for a 22 year-old to be posed with.
The possible cure was a combination of drugs, called alpha interferon and ribavirin, that patients took for 48 weeks. The alpha interferon could only be introduced into the body through a small self-injecting needle, and the ribavirin was to be taken twice a day, three pills in the morning and four in the evening. I cringed at the thought of her ever injecting herself with anything again.
There were several downsides, besides the abundance of medicine and needles. It wasn’t anywhere near a sure fix. It was around 50% successful, and less so in females. Worst were the side effects. Over the course of one’s treatment, the percentage of patients who reported one or more of the side effects was alarming:
Fatigue 70%
Headache 66%
Muscle soreness 64%
Fever 41%
Joint pain 33%
Nausea 46%
Loss of appetite 25%
Diarrhea 22%
Depression 36%
Irritability 32%
Insomnia 39%
Skin reaction 28%
Hair loss 32%
She had watched one of her friends undergo the treatment while in rehab. Whenever she talked about what it was like, she always had a disdainful look on her face. She would squint her eyes and shake her head a lot, exuding a mix of fear, confusion, and disgust.
“It was terrible,” she said, “watching her go through that. She turned into a different person. She slept all day, and when she was awake, she was awful to be around. And she started to lose her hair.” Isabel was petrified, beside herself at the fact that she’d have to go through a year long hell just for a chance to kick a disease that she didn’t even know she had until weeks ago.
“That insomnia rate seems pretty drastic,” I said to her as I read.
“Insomnia? Fuck Insomnia! My fucking hair is going to fall out Josh!” She protested, struggling to find a more emphatic word than “fuck.” She got her point across.
My mind thought back to her sitting across the glass in Leon County Jail, joking that at least she still had great hair. It was a trademark of hers, and would soon be slipping through her fingers, should she choose to undergo treatment.
“I thought all of this was behind me,” she said. “I don’t know why it has to keep following me.” It really was tragic. I wondered what she thought the reason for this was, in the mind of someone who was convinced everything happened for a reason.
I must have had told this girl that I loved her at least a million times in our lives, and now I felt like it was time to put up or shut up. Prove it or move on. It was all or nothing at this point.
I thought long and hard before starting the conversation about our options. I wanted to help her get through this, but I wasn’t sure if I was the person for the job. I thought back over the years and the struggle that I’d had to be a good man, to fight my selfish side. She’d had a remarkable impact on my life. She made me a better person. I thought this may be my chance at finally repaying her. I told her there was no way I could stay with her if she didn’t start treatment.
“And then what?” She asked.
“And then it’s all over, for good.” No more reminders of the past.
“Why do you want this? Why do you want me?”
“I know I want you in my life. If we’re going to be together, then I need you to get better. And you should want to for yourself.”
“I do want to for myself, but you can’t make me start this, then up and leave me halfway through it when I’m sick and bald,” she said prudently.
“I’m not gonna do that. And hush, you’re not gonna be bald.”
“You’re sure that I’m what you want?”
&
nbsp; “I’m sure.”
“Okay. I’ll go back to the doctor this week.”
The whole thing made me feel valiant. I hoped the decision would not come back to haunt me.
56.
Summer, 2007
“When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.”
-Carl Sagan
“He thinks he’s gonna be some UFC star, married to lil’ baby princess.” Chris and a friend were giving me a hard time about Izzi. They weren’t lying. That is what I thought was going to happen. I’d just won my first pro fight, and was on top of the world. I felt in love for the first time in my life, not just with fighting, but with another person.
I was in love, but we all were. I felt like a character in “There’s Something About Mary,” and Izzi was Cameron Diaz. She was a soul bandit. She put it on me like no one ever had; curled my toes, dizzied me, made me never want a different girl. I didn't have any problem telling anyone. I told my friends, her friends, anyone that would listen. She thought I said that about every girl.
I’d held the cards only briefly. She was in control now. I was always available for her, dropped whatever it was I was doing when she called. She had me by the balls, and dragged me through hell and back with them in hand.
My shallow 18 year-old self had signed up for a pro fight to impress a girl, and once I’d won, there was no turning back. I quit college to pursue an MMA career. That meant no more financial aid, and because I was no longer a minor, no child support. I sold weed to supplement income.
I’d hustled sacks here and there, but had never bought it in bulk. I had a friend from Miami that I’d known for years. He gave me a scale and started me with small bags. My credit with him grew, and with it, the amount he gave me. When I ended up getting the paycheck from my first fight, I signed it all over to him, because that’s how much I’d owed, $1,200.