The Laughter of Strangers (5 page)

HI WILLEM FLOURES HERE,

THANKS FOR HAVING ME

X types out:

GREETINGS WILLEM FLOURES HERE SWINGING HAYMAKERS AND HAVING A HELL OF A TIME

I quickly get the sense of competition, what sort of competition this is going to be. My word against his, his word against mine. Who will they believe? What will they have us do? I’m kind of glad that Spencer was forced to stay back. Everything that happens now is:

CANDID

And by that I am certain.

I THINK SO

Please let that die.

Producer voice in my ear tells me that I’m going to say something about the last fight. I say something about the last fight, just that it was a good one, and that I know we can both do better next time. The producer whines, wanting more from me than that, so he offers a prompt for both of us. The audience can see the prompt:

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE “ONE-TWO SOUTHPAW SLIP?”

A signature punch of mine. I’m happy to talk about it extensively. So what exactly do they want?

I explain as clearly as I can how it consists of leading in orthodox, standard positioning, leading with a left jab, jab, jab, jab, wait and feel it out for the switch-footing to southpaw, throwing a right hook to the body, another jab to the face, as I do; the meat of the move is in the left straight to the body, sometimes I aim for the face, which, when landed, provides enough power to stun. I know because that’s probably how I was KOed last fight.

Right?

Wrong it seems.

I get this wrong.

That is not the “One-Two Southpaw Slip.”

The producer voice speaks into my ear, curious about what the hell I’m talking about when X is evidently the one that’s correct.

I know what I know which alarms me when, considering my position here, I am prone to questions about my life, my boxing style.

If I get it wrong, what does that mean for me?

Does it make me any less than I already am?

DID YOU REALLY VISIT MOLLY JEND’S SPACE SERVER ONGOING PRIVATE PARTY?

Molly Jend, now there’s a name that used to be synonymous with Willem Floures. She was always a good friend until we had a falling out of sorts. I said some things, she said some things and we kind of never apologized. But that place, “Space Server,” is this exclusive VIP party central that never dies. The music can be heard for miles (not really, that just sounds cooler than saying “music is really loud”) and she has successfully turned the house into a business and the business into a success.

People pay in hourly blocks to be a part of the exclusivity.

Yeah…

You could say Jend and I were an item.

The idea for Space Server, more or less, began as a joke during those few summer months when we were the opposite of productivity, wasting every day and night on leisure spillover and sinful commodities.

Producer voice speaks to me instead of speaking to ‘X’ but clearly what I hear is not meant for my ears.

“I didn’t tell him to smear the chat. Have you heard anything about Sugar smearing this broadcast?!”

Smearing as in crashing, as in intentionally going against the script.

I don’t know what’s wrong.

Producer voice says what I don’t want to hear:

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

My reply should be:

I AM TALKING ABOUT MYSELF

WHO ELSE?

What if I’m not?

The point is I’m talking.

I am being honest. I mean, right? I didn’t do this to smear the show. I actually enjoy these chats. The audience actually has a voice, even if it’s italicized and withheld until the end of the broadcast.

If you ask me a question, I can’t help but answer honestly.

Producer voice goes back to the script I believed I had been following:

WHAT PART OF YOU DIED ON DECEMBER 3
^RD
?

Sensitive question but this is a “tell-all” kind of event.

I find it effortless to type out my reply rather than form it in mouth, tone, hanging there, the sound of my voice, which always sounds uncertain, unconfident of what I might say.

December 3
^rd
was a day I had forgotten.

It was a day when part of me died.

Guess we want to go there.

Do we really want to go there?

I imagine X has already answered. I picture his response to be long paragraphs with proper punctuation. My lines are jagged, cut and trim. It’s because I could never type fast enough. Computer literate I am not.

Never mind, though, because I get the point across.

What happened, how it involved the slicing of wrists, the depression of a top ten fighter. He succumbed to those thoughts, our thoughts, the thoughts that don’t make any sense until they circle around like a shark on bad days when every cut, every strike, is augmented twice as large, twice as deadly.

I hurt most on those days.

Random seizures of bad memories.

He was young and hadn’t survived very many of these shame spirals.

A week after we fought he lost a second time.

The escaping into long drawn out lacerations up the forearm. I thought about that, seeing and imagining what it must feel like to cut and watch as the blade goes in deep.

I hear that the pain is slower than the bloodletting.

Blood surges out of those cuts but the pain, the kind of pain that’s lasting, waits patiently until the realization hits:

You’ve done it.

You have no way of undoing what has been done.

Yeah…

On December 3
^rd
, Willem “Lucky Strike” Floures committed suicide.

It felt like I lost a part of me when really I had won.

CANDID

They want candid but they want the truth.

Producer voice doesn’t accept my words, the truth, again with the worry that I’m going against the script.

Hey now, I’m answering every question.

When the producer says, “You’re getting them all wrong!” and, “Are you forgetting yourself?” it begins to sink in. Shame.

Same feeling.

Same uncertain response:

I THINK SO

Spencer is pissed.

He must be. Somehow I’m not. It’s like I’m watching from the sidelines as I destroy my entire career. What must this look like, an old fighter acting all senile, forgetting the facts, fibbing and falling into some kind of fiction he truly believed to be the truth?

Shit.

And X must be doing well.

Producer voice with another prompt:

YOU FOUGHT WITH A BROKEN HAND ONCE. TELL US ABOUT IT. SPECIFICALLY, HOW YOU AVOIDED LOSING DESPITE SUCH A DEBILITATING INJURY

I believe I broke my right hand when I landed a punch to ‘The Assassin’s’ skull. He ducked and as he did, my power punch hit the top of his head rather than flush on his nose and forehead.

Hear that snap. I was sure that it was bone breaking, the sound is unmistakable, but I hadn’t realized that it was the ligaments in my hand that caved. With a few light jabs, it became all too real that something was up.

Note: If you are ever in a situation where you break your hand, do not advertise the fact that you have broken your hand by holding it up high, gripping to a shout of anguish and pain.

You do that and you better believe there will be more pain.

Punches thrown.

The fight continued. I couldn’t tell myself to stop. Who really has that kind of control?

The Assassin wanted to win just like I wanted to win.

In the end I won with a broken hand, relying on left hooks and power shots, jabbing through the pain if only so that I demonstrated how I could fight through that pain. It wasn’t going to work against me.

Post-fight conferences highlighted how I had broken my hand.

The positivity that came from the reaction to something so unfortunate was a textbook example of the irony of being memorable and relevant in this society. You had to hurt yourself in order to be heard. You have to continue working, being productive, doing whatever it is that you do to maintain their attention. If no one pays attention to you, you aren’t really alive.

The desperation of the cure.

Some want infamy. Some want fame.

Some fight. Some love. Some follow rather than lead.

Everybody wants to be remembered.

The fight will be remembered not for such a triumphant win but because I broke my hand. Never mind how I fought through the pain.

Never mind how I fought one of my best fights.

Just stay with the negligible fact that my right jab will never again be the same. Once you break your hand, it never heals fully, not when you are fighting the way I am fighting.

That became the big concern:

Question on people’s minds: How much of a hindrance exactly?

WHY THE REMATCH? WHY NOW? GIVEN REPORTS THAT YOU CLAIM IT IS TIME TO RETIRE, WHY BOTHER TO REPEAT THE LOSS?

Assuming I lose. What’s the point in pretending that the odds are not stacked against me? They are.

Producer voice in my ear warning me—

STICK TO THE SCRIPT

I do just that but seemingly nothing changes.

Producer is still upset.

Can’t make everyone happy.

X takes the question and I assume he types out a wondrous explanation because I am not asked to reply.

I hold back, watching as they ignore my would-be reply.

WHAT IS BETTER—EIGHT, TWELVE, OR FIFTEEN ROUNDS?

X would go with twelve, I’m sure of it.

I have fought a few fifteen rounder fights during my career and let me tell you, when you know that you have that many ahead of you, the fight becomes more conservative. I don’t throw as many flurries; I play more defensively.

Either you get an early knockout or you are basically there for the decision. You watch one of my fights and you know that it’ll likely go to decision. Not a problem but yes it’s still a problem because the audience wants the SHOCK and AWE of a KO.

They want that so much more than seeing the sweet science in effect.

X probably mentions something about how he has the conditioning to last a twenty round fight if there was such a thing.

I assume that he’s very smug about it.

Treats this prompt with a lack of care.

I would have done the same at that age.

I did. Something about facing yourself in the ring that changes the way you treat yourself outside of the fight. You see yourself from a distance like you see yourself throwing fists and aiming for your loss.

I feel distant even now, especially now, as I watch these words form in perfect type. I assume the audience isn’t pleased with my performance.

These words are mine.

Are they really?

CANDID

There’s that problem then, the fact that I’m getting this wrong, getting it all wrong. How can you change anything if you don’t see why you are wrong? And these memories of mine, they are as real as anything can be…I know they are right, facts from ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures’s past…but producer voice denies the facts, providing evidence revealing that I’m full of shit.

How is that?

I lived through these events; I was there.

Seems I’m full of questions.

THE LAUGHTER

We continue like this for quite some time.

I get prompts and I fail to answer them correctly, with the script in mind; like I said, I can’t fix what I can’t identify to be the problem. They tell me that I am forgetting myself and I fear that it might be true.

That might be the case.

I’ve got how many fights left in me…?

Two?

And I’m barely in the spotlight anymore.

Executioner, ‘X,’ the prodigy, the man that carries our name well, Willem Floures, looks to be everything I used to be.

What frightens me the most is what is laced in laughter:

WHAT IF HE IS BETTER?

What if he makes better decisions, fights more strategically, builds a better defense, and simply makes better sense of his life?

What does that mean for me?

I am overshadowed, poor version of an identity that I held for a time.

I hear the laughter but it makes me happy.

The laughter most dear is the laughter that I heard from the audience when I used to be hilarious. They used to laugh at my jokes.

Now they just laugh at me.

CANDID

Producer voice asks for a follow-up. Something I can say off-the-cuff.

So I say something about the fight and how I am confident that my strategy going into the fight will overwrite any of the error seen in the original fight—this includes my excessive clinching, holding, and fighting on the defensive for over half of the fight.

Playing off the retirement rumor, my fault, I explain how I want to go out with a bang, a big ONE, TWO, THREE, trio of wins.

I intend going out with a win rather than a whimper.

Not what the producer wants, and I know that, but it’s okay because I am telling the truth. I know that I’m telling the truth.

I can only say what I know to be true.

And if they are lies, there is something far worse, completely beyond my control, at work here. I can (and will) worry about what I am not and what I used to be but I cannot stomach what it means to be a blemish, nothing but a sequence of crisis and collapse.

How much more declarative must I be?

WILDCARD

The prompt about physical training.

Withhold the fact that I haven’t started yet and won’t be for weeks (what a waste); instead, I talk about how embracing the unexpected is about as good a strategy as any. Executioner expects what I expect; he expects that I will work on trying to surprise him. The trick then is to focus on predicting the surprise and proving to layer surprise on the surprise.