Pugilist At Work

It’s 03:58 on a Tuesday morning. I stand darkening the doorway of a building whose stucco is falling off in trapezoidal sheets. Water has infiltrated the cracks in the plaster, and large portions want to peel off high up on the front of the building. There is a gutter but no downspout, and it is obnoxious when it rains. Water falls 25 feet to the ground and lands close to the front sidewalk. A man limps to the sound of my knocking on a tin rollup door with a knee brace on, his keys jangling. I pull on the steel grid frame, but it is dead bolted from the inside with a key. That is not going to pass the fire marshal inspection, I think.

“You have the place on lockdown”, I say from the dark. “Yeah, people from the shelter down the road try to get in here sometimes and I can’t have that. Hang on a second, guy”. The coach lets me in and asks if I have ever boxed before, but he would have figured it out on his own in short order. He singles me out to work on the speedbag which hangs 3 inches higher than it should. “Just throw a jab, wait for the bag to hit the back of the platform, then the front, then the back, then hit the bag again. Then switch hands every so often. Just like this”, he batters the leather teardrop and makes it look easy.

My first friend; Ham-hands Jimmy, they call him, is a foreman for a construction company and he has been boxing his whole life. Maybe 200 fights he says, if you total up exhibitions and amateur bouts. It is unbelievable at first, but Jimmy is 56, and he started boxing when he was 11. He is also a full-time smoker of American Spirits in a blue-ish pack. He has severe plantar fasciitis through which he grimaces while we warm up jumping rope. Jimmy floats over the rope as if it isn’t there. His hands whirl like U-joints and the nylon skips around him in a visible blue haze. It is obvious that he is fast on his feet, and without seeing him throw hands, I already know that I couldn’t hit him if I had to. He can have full conversations after 8 minutes of serious and deliberate skipping without sounding like he is out of breath. I can hardly keep from laughing. His feet alternate bearing the weight of his medium frame, his hands cross the rope around his body every twelfth rotation or so and he does not err. The effort for him seems timed the way that a camshaft does in an internal combustion engine as it rotates against the tappets in the valve head. It isn’t so much that he is trying to jump rope, it is just happening in perfect sequence and effortless rhythm. His voice is raspy and everything he says is an honest and inappropriate non sequitur in livestreamed, unedited candor. He says it with prophetic conviction and the delivery of a skilled comedian, but he doesn’t know why everyone laughs so much when he talks. That is why Ham-Hands Jimmy is a favorite. He speaks at a utilitarian industrial volume which serves as well to address the framing crew on a job site as it does to tell stories about his recent prostate check, and how, “it was a heck of an orthodontist visit”. The coach says that Jimmy should get a new orthodontist, and Jimmy replies that he’ll do no such thing; not with that kind of all-around medical service. Jimmy walks the line between embarrassing loudmouth and sparring partner-amateur-comedian-extraordinaire with ease.

There is no outrage here. Weight jokes, race jokes, DUI stories, prison memories, profanity, and dirty one-liners fly freely through the smell of sweat and the hum of propane heaters. Tupac and Aerosmith play in alternating tracks as the fight timer buzzes in 3 minute round counts all morning. It hurts so well, and I hope it never ends.

The gym is just a tin shop building with some wood framed walls that create the locker area. You can see your breath when you walk in, but within 20 minutes, there is steam rising from our bodies. A brigade of Heavy bags hangs from chains like giant burnt salami beneath the suspended, ballasted lights. The chains disappear deep into the cobwebbed rafters and their creaking chimes resonate chromatic and clear through the cold air. It sounds like work getting done. The coach tells me that I am pushing the bag and that I need stop that. He walks by and shoves my gloved hand up and into the side of my head. “Cover your face, guy. Someone is going to catch you with a big overhand right.” My name is “guy” for months.

Morris is a communications technician of sorts in the U.S. army. That isn’t his official title, but from what I gather between sets of medicine ball throwing and belabored pushups — he’s responsible for making sure comm’s are up and running when Uncle Sam’s finest need to talk amongst themselves. He had a fight scheduled for last weekend but his opponent weighed in with a 10lb advantage, and the coach canceled the fight. That’s how people get hurt, he says. On Wednesdays, Morris gets to lead the group in a calisthenic routine that we coined “Morris’s house of pain”. He is slabbed in lean muscle and his dark eyes are fixed on each person that lags behind. We slip around in a puddle of community sweat that volitilizes with the scent of Pine-sol residue from the rubberized, padded floor. Pushups, sit-ups, lunges, shadowboxing, jumping jacks, all in a circuit; until we can no longer.

Mary is heavyset and she is here every single day without fail. Despite her personal struggle with maintaining a healthy weight, she displays outstanding cardiovascular endurance. She options not to spar, and instead continues training on an old air-resistance bike with foam grips fastened to the dynamic handlebars in sticky wraps of failing electrical tape.

Bret is getting a divorce and he hits me like I am responsible when we spar. He has missed some of the workouts recently and has begun to come in late. He has a drinking problem and the separation from his wife has him holed up at a motel with no accountability. His eyes are red and his sweat smells flammable. I outweigh Bret by 33 lbs and I am 3.5 inches taller, but he has more experience and he’s angry. We match up well. I bruised his side in a dark purple continent across the ribcage, chocolate raspberry Australia, it looks like. He sprained his thumb during an angry outburst in his garage. He warns me that when his hand heals up, he’ll be bringing a left hook back into the strategy. We bump gloves, he says I am going to be in trouble. He has a master’s degree in business administration and is a registered nurse.

Bret stole my gloves in the second week of training. We had matching models, and I told him that they must have been swapped accidentally in the locker area. He insisted that there was no such mixup. I trained with Bret’s old gloves for weeks until I could buy new ones. They never left my sight.

Among the crew is a wayward teenaged boy whose membership is covered under a youth-at-risk community outreach scholarship; he is a natural fighter, but he needs direction. There is a bariatric surgeon, a neurosurgeon, 2 local chapter members of a prolific biker club, moms, dads, a personal trainer, and other everyday people. Some members are faithful to attend every session. Some are transient and make it a couple times each month. Everybody works hard. Those that are preparing for a sanctioned amateur fight sign paperwork and buy new hand wraps at the cash register in preparation for the weekend. Those that came here to get in better shape talk with each other as they exit the building. The morning sun has just started to cut low through the wet streets, and the town around us bustles in the waking of a workday.

I made a routine of listening to Randy Travis on the way to the gym. For some reason the baritone’s sad old songs brought a measure of comfort in those cold and lightless mornings. I never thought that I’d be any kind of boxer, but that wasn’t the point. I came here to see what it was all about. What it was like to make friends with strangers; what it was like to hit them and let them hit me and walk away better friends than before. What a paradox it is to bond over a bruising, sweat-soaked contest for speed and strength. We’re just people that came here to hurt together and get stronger from it.

When the spring came, I had to stop going to the gym. The crops had started to blossom and work waits for nobody. Those heaving dark hours now had to be spent doing the things that I get paid to do. I regretted that it was the case, but that’s how it had to be. I left without telling anybody that I wouldn’t return, at least not for some time. It didn’t matter. These places have high turnover and some new guy will replace me. He probably already has.

All of this has me thinking; what was it for? What did I learn? Perhaps I’ll ponder that for a while and put words to it at my next opportunity.

May we seek discomfort wherever we can find it.