Laura Meets Jeffrey

by Jeffrey Michelson

  I was never blessed with much physical grace or more than normal coordination. What I brought into the ring was great stamina, fair size (just under six feet and 175 pounds), a low fear of punishment, and an aggressive willingness to mix it up. At my best I could be daring in attack and stubborn in defense.

  I was an awkward boxer without much poetry, which in boxing can be its own reward. Being awkward makes you harder to read sometimes, often harder to hit and less likely to telegraph your punches. Ken Norton and Joe Frazier are two famous boxers who are considered awkward in style. Mike Tyson is another obvious example. What he lacks in grace he makes up for in power and courage. And teeth.

  Saturday morning boxing protocol was simple. You’d fight a round or two, or rarely three. Sometimes Jose´, our coach, would suggest a match between two of us.

  A pact between fighters would be made as to the level of contact. One might say, “Let’s just practice for a round or two, I want to work on my jab,” or “I want to work on my defense so come at me and I’ll just defend.” Or maybe we’d agree on light contact and sometimes full contact. We all wore mouthpieces and cups. Headgear was available, but I hated headgear. It interfered with my vision, was annoying to wear and the extra size made for a bigger target.

  Everyone wrapped his hands with long strips of cotton fabric to protect against injuries induced by punching. Wraps make it less likely you’ll hurt your thumb and reduce the risk of a fracture to one of your wrist bones. They maintain the alignment of the joints and add strength to your punch. Mostly I just loved the ceremony of wrapping before a fight. It’s always a tense scene in every boxing movie. In real life you are the warrior preparing for battle. For real. Not a video game. Low tech. You against him. May the best man win.

  The object of our fights wasn’t to destroy our opponent, but to gain advantage. The main difference between us and most amateur or school boxers was that we hardly ever went for that fourth killer punch or combination after we had already stunned our opponent with a great two-or-three-punch attack. And we never went in for the cold-hearted fifth. Knowing you could have finished him off sufficed. He knew it. You knew it. The other boxers and friends watching knew it. That was enough. Nobody kept official score because we all knew the score. It was boxing’s version of catch and release.

  Maybe you’d come in with a medium tap to exploit that second opening, or rarely, a third or fourth opening, but it was bad form to come back with a haymaker. Sometimes it happened when tempers flared, but losing your temper is more likely to harm you than help you in boxing, so tempers are tempered. It’s part of the Zen of Boxing.

  Some trainers preach that a professional boxer needs to be having fun because boxing is a job, and nobody can do a great job if they don’t like what they’re doing. Losing your temper means you are not having any fun. More important, losing your temper takes you out of the fight, steals your energy, and wastes focus on emotions. Your opponent becomes a personality rather than just some force with a specific set of fighting tools trying to kill you.

  Fighting is about instinct and not thinking. Once the bell rings it’s best if it’s all autopilot. Your game plan, based on you or your coach’s perceptions of your opponent’s strengths and shortcomings as matched to your tools and weaknesses, takes intellectual awareness. Stay away from his lightning quick right. He gets tired out quicker than you so make him move a lot. Work his body and wear him down before you try to take him out with a headshot. In the ring, this thinking needs to be driven into your subconscious and modified into instinct. Lose your temper and your game plan goes out the window and a different instinct, blinded by anger, takes over. Once at the gym, we were all compatriots on the same team and nobody wanted to do real damage. That was the convention.

  My fights with Michael Mailer were consistently the most punishing. Norman said it was because we were too equal. Michael and I liked mixing it up not because we hated each other but because we loved each other. I had known him since he was three-and-a-half years old when we lived in the same house. I’d carry him on my shoulders sometimes and go shopping. He was curious about everything and I’d answer questions.

  As boxers we had different skills and advantages. He was a teenager, faster and a more refined boxer. I was early thirties, bigger, heavier and stronger. We were equally brave so altogether it was a brutal combination. Norman had us fight less as the years progressed when the damage and the Saturday afternoon headaches got more intense. (As a post script: In the late ’80s when Michael was at Harvard and had fought in Golden Gloves contests, and he was closer to me in size and strength, we boxed a round in his basement in Provincetown and I was totally outclassed. I couldn’t wait for the bell to ring and refused to fight a second round.)

  The overriding joy of boxing, beyond the primordial mano-a-mano triumph of winning, is that you are never more alone, never more tuned into your own body, never more self-reliant and in control of your own destiny. Sex may be more enjoyable, but boxing is more exciting.

  Your vision changes when you fight. All your eyesight abilities join together to concentrate on one job in a very small area: his fists and their relationship to you and your fists and their relationship to him. That’s all there is. It’s like the distance/velocity screen on the inside of the Terminator’s bioelectrical optics system, except without the heads-up display.

  You know exactly when you are within his reach, when he is within yours. This doesn’t mean you are always right or are fast enough to react but whatever you can do, you’re doing. In some small way your life depends on you and ancient fight/flight programs deep inside your hard-drive are activated. It’s as real as anything gets for middle-class guys, barring a mugging at gunpoint.

  There is no outside world—just your feet, your hands, your wind and some other guy trying to hurt you. Maybe he makes a certain breath sound just before he throws a right. Maybe he wipes his brow with his left glove before a right hand uppercut. Maybe he telegraphs his cross with too much recoil. Maybe he bluffs a left jab too often just before he throws one. Everything means something. It’s chess and Grand Theft Auto and playing football and a hockey fight.

  Your head is empty except for the challenge in front of you. It’s not just visual focus. It’s complete focus. Time also changes. You cannot believe how long three minutes can be if you get hurt in the beginning of a round and you know he’s hot and you’re cold.

  Every bodily system is maxed out or shut off to let other ones work harder. If you are not used to it, you’ll be exhausted in under a minute. Some guys are exhausted immediately after the first time they’re hit. Guys in good shape from singles tennis or running marathons would come down to the gym, try boxing and be out of breath in forty-five seconds. With a guy throwing punches trying to hurt them, their adrenalin burns up and they are quickly spent.

  No activity in the world burns calories faster than boxing. I don’t mean hitting the heavy bag or jumping rope, I mean being in the ring with someone else who wants to smash your fucking head in.

  I could box six rounds at my best. Most of the Saturday morning civilian boxers could go three or four, maybe five. What it takes to go ten or twelve professional rounds is inconceivable. (They used to have fifteen-round fights, but they stopped them; too many injuries after round twelve.)

  One of the benefits of boxing is that you must work out, you must run, and you must not smoke. There are no options. You cannot fake it. The best reason to make sure you work out and don’t smoke is so you don’t get beat up on Saturday. It’s point-blank motivation. A sign over the door of the gym where we boxed said: CONDITION IS A STATE OF BODY NOT MIND. I loved it. I read it every single Saturday. It was dead on. It doesn’t matter how psyched up you are if you are not in shape. In boxing you can’t cheat life.

  After boxing we were all noisy celebrating our testosterone in the locker room and at lunch we tasted the laughter of gladiators who survived. Four to ten of us would head out to a local greasy spoon, take over the back roo
m and relive our best moments of the matches, trade filthy sexist jokes and enjoy camaraderie that you can only get from sports that are this violent. You can’t get it from golf. Guys fighting a weight problem like Norman and myself enjoyed only a few gourmet meals more than we did our hamburger-dripping-with-fat, any guilt absolved by diet amnesty earned from a morning of boxing.

  Boxing is a way to earn self-respect, deepen the dialogue inside, add gravitas and take yourself seriously. You walk different every moment of the day and your level of self-respect is visible to others and your vibe elicits deference.

  When I was with Laura, I tested the old boxer’s myth about the benefits of sexual avoidance. Also, I wanted to see how drugs would affect my game. So I boxed once after staying awake all night at an orgy. I boxed well rested without sex. I boxed once on speed, once on coke. I never boxed on pot because I could tell that was a no-no. The last thing you need is some mind-altering drug that will affect your sense of distance and time.

  I surprised myself by boxing well even after a sleepless night of sex. I couldn’t box as many rounds as usual but the rounds I boxed were more than decent. I felt like a warrior and fought like one. The drugs had strange effects. With speed I was more aggressive and certainly had more stamina, but I made more defensive mistakes and missed more than usual. I felt invincible. I took more of a beating because I actually wasn’t more invincible. It’s like the “Sign over the Door” said.

  I understood why the Nazis gave speed to their fighting men. You don’t need to eat, you don’t need sleep and you’re irritable and aggressive. But, they lost the war because the reality of war is also just like the “Sign over the Door.”

  Doing coke made me more defensive and less offensive. I didn’t like that. It made me feel too self-conscious, which for boxers is the kiss of death. I boxed only one round and quit for the day. Boxing is about letting go, living on the edge of instincts, not intellectualizing them. You don’t have time to think. Thinking about the actual fighting while you’re fighting is bad. Being conscious of your game plan is like taking more than 3.8 seconds to read a billboard when you’re driving. It’s a message, but it’s not there to distract you from your driving.

  You can’t process thought as fast as you can react. Boxers train hard and that’s where thinking comes in. You fight a zillion practice rounds with your coach yelling stuff like “Keep your hands up,” “Stop pulling back with your jab and telegraphing it,” “Keep your elbows in,” or “Stick and move, stick and move.” Practicing is about thinking. Fighting is about being. It’s the great physical existential equation. That’s why many intellectuals love boxing and that’s why no stupid boxers become world champions. To be great, you need to have the machine, the attitude, the brains, and the skill.

  Unless you had a miserable headache, which is how many of us spent Saturday afternoons—and evenings, and sometimes Sunday—or unless you were injured, sex was definitely enhanced. This was true for me and for several fellow boxers. We talked about it. Sex or not having sex, as far as I could tell, had no effect on boxing. But, boxing does have a tremendous effect on sex.

  Sex, as we contemporary American Homo sapiens interpret it, unlike boxing, is one of those activities that goes beyond the “Sign over the Door.” With sex, the state of your physical plant is superseded by who you think you are. No fuck makes you feel more “man” than the fuck after boxing, headaches notwithstanding. Even losing a few rounds gives you a tough-guy edge. And winning is pure aphrodisia. Self-respect makes everything more intense.

  After expending all that energy and releasing all those hormones, then taking a long shower, eating a good meal, and taking a restful nap or a leisurely walk, you’re loaded for bear. You have made a prodigious offering to the God Of Manliness and in return your balls will be thrilled to pump you a special load.

  I did notice one thing—in retrospect. The more I got into S&M, the more aggressive I became as a boxer and the more chances I took in the ring. My style got more frontal, more risky. I took more hits, and gave more. I used to feel bad if I hurt someone. Then I didn’t feel bad. Then I liked it. Then I lived for it. I became less generous and more exacting. I felt tougher and thought I was becoming a real fighter. I enjoyed more and more the breaking of eggs for the omelet, which is the psychic bottom line.

  José Torres once told me that when he was a kid he liked fighting and hurting other boys. He liked punching them in the face. Maybe being a sadist was the necessary part of being a winner in boxing. I was getting better and stronger and all the hot sex was making me feel more manly. It was only later that I realized that I was just becoming more violent. In every way. A couple of times in the ring I paid for the extra aggression.

  The 1980/81 boxing season was memorable because one of my regular opponents on Saturday mornings was Ryan O’Neal, the actor, and one tough Irish son-of-a-bitch. He was in terrific shape, with lots of great natural eye/hand coordination. He played racquetball several hours every day and had great wind, which is the boxer’s secret weapon. He was a little bigger than me and a whole lot meaner.

  I liked boxing Ryan. He had more reach, a half-classy style and was always an uphill battle. Plus he was an Irishman I could legally hit. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Irish. I love Ireland. Two of my best friends are Irish. I love how green the country is, their lighter than drizzle “grand soft days.” I love Bloomsday and the complexion of Irish women. I adore Irish horses; their big boned well-muscled Thoroughbreds, Irish Draughts, and crossbred warm-blood sport horses. I can listen to U2, Thin Lizzy, Van Morrison and Irish accents all day long.

  It’s just that when I was a kid growing up in the Dorchester section of Boston, there were a few clans of Jews and Italians, a few blacks, and vast hoards of Irish. Most of the times I got beat up it was by some kid named O’Donnell or O’Connell or McMartin. The chance to hit an Irishman made fighting somebody better than me extra worth it.

  Also fighting someone better than you is how you get better. An added bonus, and I must admit to irony if not sadism, was that it was satisfying to be able to punch someone that good-looking, like Ryan, in the face.

  One Friday night a few months before I met Laura, when I was staying with Sherry, my Texas Tornado, I was stoned on some killer weed and watching TV while she was out with her friends. She’d left her nail polish on the side table. It was candy apple red metal-flake just like you’d see on a reconditioned ’55 Chevy. I picked up the bottle, shook it and turned it upside down like a kaleidoscope. I opened it and took the brush out with a gob of polish on it. I looked for a place to paint it and settled on the nail of my left big toe. I painted the toe. I let it dry. I painted it again and again until it had the depth of an excellent auto paint job. I went to bed. Sherry came home drunk and randy. We had sex. I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning, went to the gym, fought, showered and got ready for lunch.

  As I was coming out of the shower Ryan noticed my big toe on my right foot, pointed it out to Norman and said to me, “What the fuck is this, Jeffrey?’

  I just stood there.

  I paused, looked at my other unpainted nineteen nails, and then said, “Okay, I admit it. I’m five percent gay.” Norman looked at me with an extra wide smile, then looked at Ryan and said, “I’d even admit to that.”

  During lunch I told Ryan I was going out to L.A. for a shoot that week and he offered to let me stay at his beach house in Malibu. I got to meet his sixteen-year-old daughter Tatum and one of her drop dead gorgeous 90210 girlfriends. The beach house also had the first walk-in closet-sized shower I ever saw with a dozen high-pressure heads.

  Ryan once invited me to the opening of a Broadway show and at the party afterwards at Sardi’s, I came over to say thanks. He was more than half in the bag. He grabbed me, set me down next to him, put his arm around me, and told his table filled mostly with fawning groupies what a great boxer I was. He said I had “a lot of heart.”

  Saying a boxer has “heart” or courage is beyond saying he
has craft or the luck of genetics. It’s about personality, not just talent. And it’s not a compliment given out lightly by one boxer to another, even if one is more than half-drunk. The looks I got from those girls couldn’t be bought with money. One of them found me attractive enough to take home for a one-nighter. (I don’t remember her name but she was very thin, screamed so loud it hurt my ears and urinated when she came which I found mildly erotic rather than gross.)

  So I liked Ryan. It’s hard not to like a talented charismatic movie star who treats you well and gives you compliments in front of slinky skirts and you get to fuck one of them. My problem with Ryan was in the ring. This was because his defense wasn’t nearly as good as his offense. If you were willing to risk punishment you could get inside and hurt him. Then he’d get pissed—not lose his temper, just raise his temperature—and come back and savage you. And he had the tools to do the job. It was almost as though he needed getting hurt a little to get going.

  One Saturday morning Ryan brought Farrah Fawcett down to the Gramercy Gym to watch him fight. She was a little shy and wore no makeup at all but was still the ultimate teeth-and-hair babe. That day, in front of his poster-babe, he and I decided to go two rounds of medium-hard contact. The first round was lots of dancing and a few good no-damage shots both ways. He was showboating for Farrah a little and I let him get away with it. Why not? Bringing women in to watch was permitted, but it was a rarity. I should have known he might be extra brutal that day but wasn’t smart enough to adjust my game plan, or smarter yet, to avoid fighting him altogether.

  In the second round after a no-big-deal series of trades I hit him with a left to the body, right to the face combination that stung him. Then I saw that pissed glare in his eyes and in the split second he took to recompose himself, I saw another opening and banged him with a hard right cross to the mouth.