Praise for The Laughter of Strangers
“Like a ghost fretting over its lost body (or is it bodies? – in this book whatever you think of as ‘you’ might simply float like a butterfly right into someone else’s body) a boxer attests to his presence, damaged and shimmery though it may be. That this fractured first person narrator feels the need to put the word ‘me’ in quotes speaks volumes. Terrifying volumes. This elastic, hurtling narrative pivots (and pivots again) on a recurring image of almost unimaginable dread – that of being laughed at in your hour of need by an audience of strangers.”
—GRACE KRILANOVICH, author of The Orange Eats Creeps
“The last time I got punched in the face (by someone I wasn’t married to or dating) I was 16 years old. What began as an exchange of witty banter, turned into a pummeling. Never make jokes about a man’s mother enjoying the erotic companionship of goats, or you’ll find out about this world. The Laughter of Strangers is like that beating. I never trust people who use a middle initial, but Michael J Seidlinger is different. If The Laughter of Strangers had a middle initial it would be an F. And that F would stand for “Fuck yes.” I’m on my back. I’m having my behavior corrected. It’s teaching me a lesson. And I can see stars.”
—SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Crapalachia
“Michael J. Seidlinger’s The Laughter of Strangers is vicious and unforgettable. Willem Floures’s search for meaning in a world that keeps knocking him off his feet is as gritty and enthralling as a fight. The Laughter of Strangers destroyed my expectations of what a boxing novel can be. Seidlinger is charting new narrative territory, and we should follow him wherever he goes.”
—LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of The Isle of Youth
“Steeped in noir, Michael J Seidlinger’s superb boxing novel delivers 12 rounds of sweet science and shifting identities. Both physical and philosophical, it’ll leave the reader with a complicated bruise – the closer you examine it, the more it resembles your own face.”
—JEFF JACKSON, author of Mira Corpora
The Laughter of Strangers
by Michael J Seidlinger
A Lazy Fascist Novel
Lazy Fascist Press
an imprint of Eraserhead Press
205 NE Bryant Street
Portland, Oregon 97211
www.lazyfascistpress.com
ISBN: 978-1-6210-5097-1
Copyright ©2013 by Michael J. Seidlinger
Cover Art Copyright ©2013 by Matthew Revert
Edited by Cameron Pierce
Proofread by Andrew Wayne Adams and Kirsten Alene
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
All persons in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.
Printed in the USA.
WILLEM FLOURES
Sex
Male
Manager/Trainer
Spencer Mullen
Division
Heavyweight
Rating
1 / 57
Stance
Southpaw
Height
6’1”
Reach
70”
Brand ID
00954
Alias
Sugar
Country
United States
Residence
The Bowery, New York
Birth Name
Willem Bernard Floures
Won 52 (KO 12) + Lost 4 (KO 2) + Drawn 0 = 56
THE LAUGHTER I HEAR
I can take a punch. That used to be the problem. Twelve rounds without so much as a knockdown, or getting numb at the knees, tends to bore the audience. It bore right into the audience’s attention span, splitting it in half. I gave them ten seconds at the start of my career. At best one of my fights rendered them five.
Five seconds.
If I don’t make it count, they watch the other guy, who does everything I do, but maybe a little bit better. If you asked me, I’d agree:
ACCURATE STATEMENT
But, yeah, I can take a punch. The problem then is when I start to feel those hooks to the body, the punches right against my shoulders. I shouldn’t feel those; I am conditioned to embrace the impact and go searching with the jab, jab, jab, jab, even if they only end up hitting air, jab, jab, waiting for the moment I can launch a power shot left right where it counts.
If I can take a punch, they can take a punch.
IT STILL HURTS
I give them my best and at the very least they might take a step back, shake off the hook, the uppercut to the chin.
Maybe a knockdown, four count, if I’m lucky.
If it’s me that’s hitting the canvas, it takes me three just to get my old tired ass off the ground, another four to get up to my feet. The referees with their endless commentaries—
“Are you okay?!”
“Can you see me?!”
“Look into my eyes!”
“Follow my nose!”
Does very little to reassure me.
How many times have I hit the canvas at the expense of myself but to bolster what this is, the betterment of the brand?
ARE YOU ASKING?
Lately it’s been a lot.
So what I’m saying is—
I COULD TAKE A PUNCH
Nowadays every punch feels like glass cutting skin, earth quaking up my spine, calling me collect, telling me to stay down.
END IT NOW
I’ve got a few fights left in me, thank you.
Thank you everyone, my would-be fans, people that used to bet their holiday bonuses on me, the penultimate of the name everyone couldn’t help but stop and watch whenever we fought.
‘SUGAR’ WILLEM FLOURES
That’s a name I built from the ground up. I wasn’t the first to systematically climb the ranks, beating the sugar out of everyone I had known to be inferior, leaving only the sour taste of defeat, my claim forever being:
“I am the greatest!”
I can still hear it now. In the silence of this locker room, blood drying on my face, I can still hear those words.
And I was. I was the greatest.
IS
WAS
WILL BE
TWO OF THESE SIMPLY WILL NOT DO
But the most appropriate might be the least flattering. Past tense.
I was ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures.
I had mastered it all, the ins and outs of what I could do to beat myself up. I had everything under control. My demons, my weaknesses, my vices, my tendency to lose track of time, all of it was under control.
I could take it on at a second’s notice, some wide-eyed newcomer thinking he’s got it all down, what it means to be me, calling me out, challenging me like this is some game and not the sweet science, but you know what? I always did. I fought cold, straight, no training. I used to be able to see every single punch, bob, weave, flick of the cheek, squint of the eye, long before they’d ever register.
Now, this blood as evidence of my defeat, they see the very same in me.
I USED TO BE ABLE TO TAKE A PUNCH
I have never been able to take defeat. And when I didn’t see that punch coming, I swallowed the blood alongside the painful realization that maybe, just maybe, I forgot what it means to fight.
I AM FORGETTING MYSELF
How difficult it is to climb to your feet when rocked, stunned, trying to beat the ten count only to go
back to doing your best not to be beaten to the punch yet again by someone thinking they’ve got it right, me, everything from strategy to street cred.
I hate the way it feels, a trickle of blood slowly dripping down your forehead. I thought the wound had healed. Guess not.
Wipe it away quick enough to feel the warm liquid grow cold.
It is starting to swell up.
The welt will be big enough to be unforgettable.
Spencer is going to take a picture of it. I know he is.
He’ll never let it go, this loss. My first loss in the last five fights.
What he doesn’t understand is how hard I fought only to barely win by decision. When you win you always remember the cheers of the audience; when you lose you try your damnedest to erase the sneers and laughter they send in your direction. No one is able to completely remove the mark a loss leaves on your psyche much less the scars that show in the faintest of light.
I used to be able to take a punch, now all I seem to do is take on losses.
FIGHT RECORD
Okay, look, let me say something about my record. Don’t think I’m narcissistic because I am not (at least I don’t think I am). I have a good record.
You can say that “Ironman” did well to spread the Floures name with his attempted suicide and bout with depression, one of the biggest national stories in recent sports history, but I was the one Williem Floures that created this whole league, made it so that the name Floures is synonymous with combat, with boxing.
FIFTY-TWO WINS
Might as well be a fine wine because thinking about it makes me feel all warm and buzzed.
TWELVE BY KO
I managed that not because they couldn’t take a punch—they can take a punch as well as I can—but because of wearing them down first with the jab. Like Spencer always said, lead with the jab, smother with the jab, and wait for the opening. Land as close to the temple or as snugly under the chin and rock that brain, send them to the canvas, watch them dance their way to defeat. I waited them out, knowing that I’d get impatient.
“Fight like you are not who you are and that’ll keep them on their toes.”
WISE WORDS
Spencer, my trainer and agent, I couldn’t have amassed the record without his guidance. He’s right though—
I know how they’ll fight just like they know how I’ll fight.
They know what I’m thinking.
I know what they are thinking.
We are alike because we are alike.
So to win, to be the best, I can’t be myself.
I must fight like I’m someone else, like I don’t know what I’m doing.
Worked for the majority of my wins, not so much for the four losses.
But I don’t like to talk about that. Means Spencer always talks about it. Means it’s something that I should do because I wouldn’t normally do it myself. Go against the grain, the expected.
FOUR LOSSES
Not so bad.
MAKE IT FIVE
Still not bad.
IT IS BAD
I’M JUST NOT GOING TO ADMIT IT
UNTIL I HAVE TO
Here’s the rationalization that works best:
It benefits one it benefits all. Younger throws the shot and I, the older, take it. I hit the canvas. I taste copper. Sure, sure, I look bad but it’s getting better. The audience gets a knockdown. We both get purse money.
He’ll go out after this, night on the town, while I go to the emergency room, welts the size of a second head swelling from the side of my face.
That’s my rationalization and I’m going to stick to it.
I’m going to keep applying pressure to the wound on my forehead and I’m not going to look in any mirrors.
I don’t want to see what I look like.
I can feel the welt on the side of my face throbbing. It must be the size of a baseball. I can get past most of the loss but it’s what they do to drain the welt that I associate most with my current situation.
Proof that I’m not a narcissist:
I ADMIT IT
I admit it, okay?
I admit that I’m getting old.
I should think about retiring. I really should.
If I do, that means…it means the worst for what I wanted out of this life. You step aside. Retirement is about as punishing an act as it sounds; you retire all cred; you are incapable of climbing into the ring, between the ropes, never again able to wear the gloves, bite deep into the mouth guard, stare yourself down across the ring, fighting not only yourself but everything you don’t see boiling to the surface.
No matter what their alias might be, they are all me.
We are all alike.
And no one will take the place of ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures.
If I retired, though, how would I be able to protect my record? My legacy? My name? This brand? Can they really have the brand in their best interests? It’s too easy to be forgotten in this world.
BRAND AWARENESS
Willem Floures is synonymous with the sport.
However, it might not be in a few short years.
There are plenty of other names fighting, all of them trying to book the same stadiums, secure the same Pay Per View slots, that Floures has successfully achieved in the four and a half decades of fight that I’ve championed. All of us in the league, we fight each other as much as we fight the world. The world might not care for much longer. That’s what bleeds the most, hurts the deepest: The thought that every punch landed, every punch absorbed, every scar carved into my skin, will be as insignificant as the dead buried six feet under, aging stone slabs the only real remembrance, their only real legacy.
I AM AFRAID OF IT
What I worry most is that my time in the ring is passing, slipping from my grip.
THE LAUGHTER
Looking back all I hear is laughter. All I see is white. All I taste is the ache of my bleeding mouth, tongue numb, my eyes wanting so very much to roll back, have a look at the inside of my broken skull.
Looking ahead, all I hear is Spencer.
“Before I send you to the hospital to lick those poor little wounds of yours, we have to go through this!”
Just his way: tough, stern, uncompromising.
I can barely sit up straight but he’s throwing a screen in my face, pointing at the fight footage fresh from the feed.
I always wonder how Spencer can afford every little new gadget in the world but then again I forget that Floures is a moneymaker of a name.
Haven’t spent a dime myself, but that’s because I’m not in this for the money. I’m in this for—
Well if I said it I wouldn’t believe it.
People step in the ring to fight themselves.
That’s the plain truth. No doubt about it.
“Round two you got it all wrong! What the hell were you thinking?! Did you not hear me say duck the left hook? ‘Executioner’ uses the left hook as much as you fucking did back when you were ten fights into your career. How could you forget?!”
That’s another problem:
FORGETTING
My memory. It’s not what it used to be. I have a lot of bad habits, many of them I have no recollection of and it probably makes me look horrible.
I tend to apologize as much as I thank the fans.
“Left hook, left hook, left hook! Round five you’re all over the place!”
Spencer pauses the footage and points to where I stick my chin out like an amateur, getting caught with an uppercut that resulted in the first of two knockdowns.
“Yeah well at least I get up after this one,” the best excuse I can make.
Spencer does that thing where his right eye closes and he shakes his head. Something only Spencer Mullen would do, his way of dealing with smart-ass remarks (my forte).
“Round eight flatline!”
“I know, I know.”
“You ‘know,’ but you don’t understand! How does the man carrying the legendary name of ‘Sugar
’ get caught with such plain shots to the face? Why the hell were you not covering your face?!”
Spencer fast forwards the footage to where I foolishly drop my arms, making it look like a taunt, when in fact it was because I felt the tickle, the feeling of goose bumps, going up both of my arms. I was gassed.
Completely gassed.
If I bothered to block, much less throw another punch, it could have been swatting a fly. And the fly would get away without a single mark.
“It helps the brand,” another smartass remark.
Spencer taps at the screen, bringing up one of the countless fight reports, checks the CompuBox, number of punches landed versus thrown, and doesn’t say a word. He looks up at me, eye closed, a sigh, and taps the screen.
Yes, I get it.
This wasn’t just a loss.
It may very well have been a turning point.
‘X’ won, 11-0 record. Ten by KO.
DECENT FIGHT RECORD
Is he a prodigy? You might say he is.
“You’ll want to take him up on the rematch clause,” Spencer insists.
A rematch. What does it mean when I go pale, flush with fear, at such a thought? Don’t answer that. Spencer leans in close and looks at the welt.
The Laughter of Strangers Page 1