The Laughter of Strangers

by Michael J Seidlinger

  Like the name implies, it is a punch that involves the outward extension of your arm in a sweeping motion.

  This isn’t to be confused with a haymaker (I’ll end with that too. Going to send him to the canvas with one).

  Hooks are quick and massive. They bridge the gap between straights and uppercuts. The perfect combination, in my opinion, begins with a jab, dispenses with hooks and follows it up with an uppercut.

  You throw a few straights in there for good measure.

  The hook is what often wears down the ribs and body of your opponent.

  Every time I punch Mamba…like so…his abdominal muscles absorb the punch. At first it is fine; that’s why fighters condition their bodies, often taking round after round of punches to the stomach as conditioning.

  Note to self, I need to train more.

  There’s often no time, what with all the booked events.

  It’s always something I feel guilty about. Take one look at my old and beaten body and you see a lifetime of fighting. There’s still tone, still muscle, but it’s hidden under layers of flab.

  But anyway, that’s why I can’t afford to take too many punches to the body. It’s why Mamba, though he looks in perfect shape, will feel it as much as I would feel it getting punched to the body repeatedly.

  Eventually the abdominal muscles get sore and when they do the ribcage is no longer protected from each punch.

  Each punch straight to the bone.

  UPPERCUT

  Crowd pleaser. The uppercut. It’s also incredibly difficult to use effectively. Most fighters can see it coming from a mile away. This kind of punch is popularized by all of the different leagues and all of the different fighters that have successfully landed the uppercut to end the fight.

  It often does.

  Reason being that the uppercut, if connected well, hits right under the chin. Get hit right under the chin and it’s lights out.

  I’ll explain why.

  FOOTWORK/DEFENSE

  You can’t just stand there and take punches!

  You can’t just assume that the punches won’t hurt you. Half the time it isn’t about one decimating punch but rather a volume of punches over the course of the fight that causes the inevitable loss (via decision or knockout—either way it is still a loss).

  Basic fighting stance—

  Keep your fists up.

  Keep your chin down.

  You keep your chin tucked in and down because you are most vulnerable there and on either side of your head (temple shots are deadly).

  The more likely a punch will cause your brain to rock back and forth inside your skull, the more likely you will get knocked out.

  Get hit under the chin and the impact is like your own personal earthquake.

  HAYMAKER

  And for the final punch, one that is the most common because it’s the one that people use by default, and by people I mean everyone; this is the punch of a drunkard, the punch of an angry individual.

  It is the punch that requires zero training.

  I’d say this is the one punch that hurts the most.

  Too bad it often hurts the person throwing the punch too.

  How to throw a haymaker…

  There is no “how.”

  Just throw it. Like so—

  And if it connects, like it does with Black Mamba, right to the side of his head, it’s lights out for him.

  Meaning it’s lights out for me too.

  If it weren’t for the boxing gloves, I would have broken my hand.

  Either way, the referee, nonexistent until now, appears near Black Mamba’s fading body.

  The count begins.

  The audience has been cheering, laughing, howling, the entire time.

  I return to my corner.

  The same series of actions repeated:

  Spencer shouting, spit, take in water, and exhale.

  ARE YOU LISTENING?

  And I’ll say—yes.

  Totally. If only because it’s the one answer I have yet to give.

  Hey, can I ask you a question?

  What do I look like right about now?

  THE SILENCE I DECIDE

  Now that I’m here, I can’t get myself to go back out there. I should. They want to see me. I’m the talk of the industry, and maybe the whole country.

  Number one fighter—‘Sugar’ Willem Floures.

  Not that it matters much.

  They are all disappearing; every time I look away, they disappear.

  Them—

  All of the would-be better versions of me, disappearing.

  All I’m left with is myself, free from self-improvement but fixed in time with nothing to look forward to without looking back.

  And I don’t know where they are going. I don’t know where they’ve gone. They know everything, though. Wherever they are, I am no longer. They replace me, showing the world that I’m a fraud. I get the last laugh though, because if they tell anyone, they only end up hurting themselves.

  Their identity is my identity.

  Spoil mine, spoil yours.

  So they better lean towards silence if they don’t want to hear the world’s laughter.

  HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

  He knew.

  We knew.

  What was his alias?

  No, not Executioner. The other guy.

  BLACK MAMBA

  THAT’S THE ONE

  MAMBA? YOU THERE?

  I don’t hear anything. The house settles, exhales a low rumble, and the basement’s temperature lowers, cold enough to be a chiller.

  I look away just to see if another will escape.

  Thankfully a few seem to have fallen asleep. I could definitely use some sleep but if I did they’d all disappear. Funny to think I haven’t yet explored why they disappear at all. Is it because I am fulfilled, exactly who I want to be?

  Is it because I’m satisfied with the end result of the fight?

  Is it because I now understand who I am, or is it because, as number one in the league, there is irrefutable proof that I am Willem Floures? I am number one, which means the world considers me the peak of the identity. No one else is quintessentially ‘Willem Floures’s as I am, and that has nothing to do with the fact that maybe I started the league. Maybe I am the first to be Willem Floures.

  Maybe I’m not. I don’t feel like I need to know the difference.

  Fact: What’s my name?

  There you go.

  HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

  I tend to the TV. Someone has to watch the TV; otherwise, it’ll cease to exist. The same goes with the people that populate each show. If there aren’t enough viewers, their shows will be cancelled; their careers will suffer. They won’t receive as many offers, auditions. Their futures will be a future with less work, fewer opportunities. Their lives will reflect their identities: narrow, negligible. It’s why you really want to put yourself out there. You want to do whatever it takes to make that name, your identity, be a brand that is immediately recognizable.

  Look at me:

  Spewing media-speak.

  It sounds like I’m delivering the intro to a seminar on brand awareness.

  I’m way too drowsy, too high on the painkillers they gave me, to be taken seriously. At this moment, my body looks like a battlefield post-airstrike.

  But I feel absolutely nothing.

  Everything I hear echoes out like it’s being repeated by two separate voices. Everything I watch is in slow motion. This movie on TV is supposed to be nonstop action but I really think it would have been more effective if the action star ran faster, the death scenes more plentiful, and the explosions a little less exaggerated. But hey—

  It’s just my opinion.

  Maybe not even that…

  It could be the painkillers.

  HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

  What?

  HUH?

  Are you there?

  AM I WHERE?

  What?

  WHO’S TALKING?

&nb
sp; I was going to ask you the same question.

  WHAT?

  What?

  WHAT IS GOING ON?

  What?

  STOP TALKING

  Okay.

  GOOD

  Where do we go from here? I tune into the silence of the basement. Look over my shoulder and notice that one more has disappeared. That leaves seventeen left. I admit that I don’t feel much of anything at the moment. The impossibility of their kidnapping right on down to the impossibility of the numbness I feel somehow having something to do with their disappearance:

  It registers at face value.

  The inherent value being…not very much. Apparently.

  Carrying the numbness, the most I can manage is keeping my focus on the TV and so that’s what I do. Through the haze of painkillers, the movie either ends or my attention span splinters to nothing.

  Whatever happens I end up flipping channels every thirty seconds.

  Meanwhile I bask in the silence I have decided to be the most perfect victory. I pass by one of the sports channels where, big surprise, they are talking about the fight like it was a barnburner.

  Did it really look like a barnburner?

  Hmm?

  Special mention of both of our aliases.

  HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

  No answer of course because whoever’s left is right here in the basement with me. The rest of the league is out to get me. That is, to say, the majority vote being against the idea that I have made some great accomplishment.

  I turn to them, “Hey…have I accomplished anything?”

  No answer because I haven’t.

  No answer because their mouths are taped.

  No answer because I decide the nature of the silence and I’ve decided that it should be all encompassing.

  If I am unable to understand, I don’t want to be able to feel.

  If I am unable to feel, I don’t want to see anything that’ll remind me of what I’ve mentioned above.

  If I am unable to see, I certainly don’t want to hear anything.

  I just want to watch TV.

  Watch other identities take the spotlight.

  Skip to the next sports channel.

  They analyze the version of the fight that didn’t happen. If they had been watching, and I mean really watching, they would have blocked it from memory much like I did.

  The only evidence of victory (and loss) is my beaten, broken body.

  Fact: It’s the same as any fight.

  Their favor always fades long before I can recuperate.

  I DON’T KNOW

  That being said, I don’t really know how I got here.

  I must have been treated in order to get like this.

  Picture: the IV hooked to my veins, the dosage and documentation of how much to take, the gurney, the nurse spoon-feeding me, the neutral white, the sighting of blood bleeding through the dressings.

  To get here, I must have gone through a lot.

  I am the spotlight and no matter what I do to try to relish in the satisfaction of having reclaimed my title spot, “number one,” the designation registers as meaningless to me. It doesn’t help make any better sense of what I’ve slaughtered. I worked so hard, did so much, to get here.

  But am I any clearer of my objective?

  My purpose?

  Who I am?

  What is this supposed to be for?

  I DON’T KNOW

  Exactly. I am a lapse of everything but what the TV tells me.

  There are sit-coms telling me to laugh and surely there are news channels telling me all about my accolades. They call me a fighter, a real pugilist celebrity.

  Sure enough I am, to them, but for how long?

  How ironic to discover that the achievement is nowhere near as satisfying as the fight to get there.

  I try to remember what it felt like when I was younger, achieving so much at such a young age, and remaining undefeated for such a long time; however, where there should be reason I am left with basic facts.

  I won.

  And my fight record.

  League stats.

  I always focused on what I hadn’t achieved rather than what I managed to become. Especially now, where everything is consistently muted and disengaged from the actual circumstances, I am essentially living more in my head than out in the open. I switch the channels but nothing registers as anything more than a set of images, colors, and criticism.

  They favor me, but what does that even mean?

  Tomorrow it’ll be different.

  Tomorrow might be like yesterday—

  Full of uncertainty and the discussion of a follow-up fight where I am the potential underdog (he’s old—he’s not what he used to be) and every lie, every single time I shilled to become significant, will have gone to waste.

  I DON’T KNOW

  It’s true. I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t know what’ll happen. I don’t want to look back at them because I know the number will have dwindled at least by two.

  What will they do?

  I DON’T KNOW

  What will I do besides watch TV?

  Isn’t that enough? After you are in a fight where you are beaten into a bloody pulp, watching TV is the perfect answer to “what do you do?”

  I switch from a soap opera to a talk show.

  “On how they got a second chance.”

  Tell me about the world, TV.

  Tell me why I’m watching you.

  The host brings a bunch of celebrities past their prime onto the stage. Together they televise the basic message that has existed as an unsung law of sorts in our culture.

  An identity is like a person in that it has to continually change and evolve to stay alive. One step further—

  A person is an identity.

  When hasn’t this been the case?

  Much like a roundtable discussion, they tip-toe around the basics and they barely get their point across to the audience before they have to cut to a commercial break. Tantamount to a knockout, a commercial break is suicide to the momentum of a debate.

  When they return, they talk more about themselves. They use the opportunity to be on camera as a means of promoting their next projects.

  As I watch, I see the celebrities not as different identities but as different versions of myself, talking feverishly about their relevancy.

  Prove to the world that you matter.

  I switch channels.

  Watch the world go by with a single step up from twelve to thirteen on the dial.

  I cough and I can feel the house cough with me, trembling at the foundation. I close my eyes and feel the resonating pull into the grey that the medication makes me feel.

  I reopen my eyes and I feel like I’ve lost something else.

  What was it like to win the title?

  I DON’T KNOW

  Back to the TV, the window into the outside world, and it’s already reached middle age. If I had my phone, I would have favored that window over this one. I can barely move; my arms feel heavy. My legs…I’m not even going to try to walk at this point. Someone sat me here in front of the TV.

  This is where I will continue to sit.

  What happened to…

  I DON’T KNOW

  I forgot what I was about to ask.

  What am I trying to say?

  I DON’T KNOW

  This is the kind of confusion that I am not used to. It’s not a waking confusion; it is the kind of confusion that renders my memory useless. At least before, I wouldn’t know until a few triggers recovered the item from the so-called archive of my battle-tired brain.

  However, so numbed out by the medication, I am barely alive.

  I am barely alive at a time when I could be considered someone that is the most alive. At this very moment, my worth is skyrocketing and I can do nothing to care.

  Why?

  I DON’T KNOW

  That is good enough of a reason.

  I will not be able to enjoy my achievem
ent.

  Never have, never will.

  And I could worry about what they will do to reclaim some of the spotlight. I might wonder about Executioner and Lights Out and Buster and Ice and…and…and…and…and…and…

  But not Black Mamba; he is as bad off as I am, trading comments, sharing the same internal monologue that lately sounds more like a machine than a human voice.

  Change the channel.

  Change the channel.

  Change the channel.

  Change the channel.

  QUIET!

  I hear it droning on and on and it gets to a point where I am on the verge of being irritated before a distraction, as if on cue, pulls me out of the definite haze.

  I hear footsteps upstairs.

  Right on cue.

  I look over at them.

  Three more gone. That leaves fourteen.

  I struggle to my feet. It’s a lot like watching a zombified version of your body from over one of your shoulders. It’s like I’m holding the game controller and I am directing my next move with every press of the button.

  I shuffle my way to their side of the basement.

  I tear the tape off X’s mouth.

  I lean in close and it takes me a long time to finally say what I want to say, “Did…did…you hear…something?”

  X’s tired eyes, his sunken skin, his horrible deathly breath as he says:

  “You…”

  I want to ask him what he means but that’ll take too much energy.

  I’m lucky enough to have asked him anything.

  And besides, X’s eyes roll back in his skull, collapsing against the harness, hanging there, circling the drain of death.

  The fourteen that remain, they are young but ill.

  They are versions of me that remain only because I’ve moved on. I have outlived their goals, their lives made, met, and finally matriculated to the point of losing momentum. My way of saying they would have followed in my footsteps, not wanting to change anything.