All Hemingways Must Suffer

"The waves and rocks of my retreat both shelter and ruin shipwrecks like me."

It was a typical off handed remark made over a glass of scotch. It was a remark typical of a grad. student of literature on a heady Tuesday night bender which actually began on Friday night and now has continued for so long this kid thinks he's Hemingway. Any moment now he will start in about purely fictitious African Safari's or complaining that the gym down the street will no longer let him box for non payment of dues. That is when I tell him about the boxing ring in my back yard and invite him to drop by anytime to spar. I have had the pleasure of sending two hung over grad students to Professor Poole's Lit. class with black eyes this semester and would love make it three.

Most future writers I have know cannot take a punch.
These guys feel like Hem after a few pints of scotch but all hit the lawn like the inebriated rag dolls they are despite their booze inflated bravado. But before I can steer the conversation down that dark alley the kid starts to retch and gag after draining his fourth glass and he and I both know what happens next.

I slam my right hand on the bar next to his empty glass the sound of which startles him nearly to his feet. Unfortunately for him his feet find the shifting plane of his back pack instead of solid ground and he tumbles back over the bar stool. I kick my feet high, and vault to his side of the bar, landing near enough this poor saps skull he rolls away in a slobbering panic onto his stomach. This is convenient for me and I grab a hand full of belt loop and another of shirt collar and drag him gently but swiftly out the back door and into the alley where he lays hobbled and vomiting in a congealed puddle of fry grease before loosing consciousness.

Back inside, behind the long mahogany bar I imagine he'll come to feeling a little less like Hem and somewhat more like The Great Gatsby. I wonder what is the point in aspiring to become a great writer if you can't hold your drink. How will you grease those creative wheels when they refuse to turn of there own volition? How will you spend your weekends? What is the point?

I wash the last of the glasses and am half way through counting the cash when the phone rings. I pick it from its cradle on the second ring, using my standard after hours greeting.

"The Dube, we're closed"

"Hey this is Willy"

"Hey Willy, you still awake?"

"Sleep is for fledglings, I want to box"

"Well come down to the bar, the back entrance, bring some smelling salts, and some speed, I got a sleeper in the alley."

Willy stutters gutturally into the receiver an expression that is nearly a laugh and hangs up. Like my future writer, Willy too, hasn't slept in days. His girlfriend Jenny drove in from San Francisco on Friday with copious amounts of high quality speed. By Saturday night they had unscrewed, gutted and subsequently shattered every single light bulb in their house and were at my front door in hopes of doing the same to mine. Twenty four hour of lighting and inhaling later and their finger tips where burnt smooth, void of any prints. I handed off a four pack of sixty watt bulbs and hurried them back into the night.

Smoking speed with Willy and Jenny is a commitment I am no longer willing to make. Days turn into weeks until you are left huddling in a corner pissing yourself in paranoid terror. Willy seems to love it, but Willy is a mutant strain of human whose body is capable of metabolizing all manner and quantity of foul substance with an efficiency far beyond the pale of regular human abilities. Willy is a super hero of narcotics fearless and feared and probably not long for this world.

I finish counting the till and cleaning the bar when I hear giggles coming from outside the back door. I hear the tremor and tension of Willy's voice as he directs Jenny with the smelling salts. Then I hear a tortured gasp followed by a case of empty beer bottles crashing to the pavement. Then I hear nothing. The writer has been exhumed. I open the door to find the three of them sitting in the muck of the alley, passing the charred shell of a hollowed light bulb back and forth between themselves.

Willy's dark curls spiraling vertically from his vibrating skull. Jenny's wide blue eyes searing in the dim light pouring out to the alley from inside through the open door. The future writer is bewildered but swiftly approaching lucidity, exhaling a cloud of toxic smoke that will assuredly counter act the effects of the scotch and so much more.

Willy springs to his feet smiling through crooked teeth, eyes like two sick stars on the verge of collapse.

"This is Timmy, he's from Pickerington. He wants to spar, now."

I am feeling a pang of guilt for instigating this late night bout but it is nothing new. Willy built the boxing ring as a means of working through long painful speed crashes. In the beginning it was enough to spar with friends or at least more willing candidates. Now it has developed into a spider and fly routine. Willy is scrawny and sickly, pale as bone, but fast as lightning and impervious to pain. You wouldn't know it by looking at him but he can take a punch and throw one back just as well. So these farm boys from Pickerington see him as easy pick en’s and realize to late that Willy brings heat.

As I said I have participated more than once, and truth be told I have taken my fair share of beatings. With me what you see is what you get. I can hold my own but I won't be falling any Goliaths or even trained amateurs. I like a good clean, fairly matched fight and I like my opponents to be as stoned as I am.

The four of us walk the block and a half from the restaurant to Maynard Ave. Tim is coming around and he is talking Willy's ear off. He has never been woke like that before. Most haven't.  He can't believe it. He has never felt so "...alert...benevolent...magnanimous..."

"Fledgling...fledgling...fledgling" Willy fires back as Tim searches for the most accurate words to describe the euphoria of his first meth experience.

It is a short walk from the bar to my backyard. The ring consists of ropes strung at three different heights between skinny maple trees in a shape roughly outlining a square. The ground in the ring is terribly uneven. Large dips and ruts are hidden beneath thick bunches of overgrown grass along the margins nearest the ropes. At the center of the ring the grass has been worn down to reveal the bare, brown earth beneath. This is the only portion of the ring where a fighter can be certain of his footing. Since most of the fights are slug fests where-in little technique or finesse is demonstrated, the majority of the fighting takes place at the center. Two inebriated men squared off swinging wildly and each unmoving.

Night fighting is made even more difficult by lack of proper lighting. The lights from the alley illuminate only half the ring well enough to see. The other half is lit by the exterior light of the back door. I realize Willy and Jenny must have stolen the bulb from that light when I reach inside the door to throw the switch and get no response. No matter. I am confident that by this point in the night both fighters pupils have dilated to the point they can see in the dark.

Timmy from Pickerington has started to second guess himself. He is taking in the scene unsure what to make of it, or the three of us. Jenny is tying Willy's fists into the gloves which are grotesquely over-sized. The six inches of padding sheathed in red vinyl make them look more like misshapen pillows than boxing gloves. They cushion the sharpness of a blow but do nothing to dampen the brute force behind it. Enough force behind these gloves will still loosen teeth, bloody noses and blacken eyes. I help Timmy into his and give him a run down on the rules of our ring.

"No stomach punches, that is how Houdini died, No hitting a man when he is down. If you draw blood keep swinging unless Willy calls it which he wont, he is a crazy fucker but he will follow the rules. If it is too much for you just call out. That will end the fight... Good Luck Mr. Hemingway."

At center ring they touch gloves and Willy immediately leans hard throwing a right hook aimed for side of Tim’s head. Tim the little fucker, lowers his head in time and the blow lands near the top of his skull and doesn't phase him. Then he lets loose. A long series of left, right jabs everyone smashing Willy's nose and eyes and mouth. Speed thinned blood is pouring from Willy's face and little Timmy from Pickerington keeps swinging just as he was advised.

Willy retreats into the shadows to recover. He then returns to the center squaring off for a second time. Tim hangs back waiting for Will to make a move, and Willy does. He leaps forward throwing a punch from his shoulder that extends the entire length of his arm and ends squarely and resoundingly on Timmy’s pained face. Now Tim is bleeding.

Blood is by far and long the biggest down fall of drunken, drugged, backyard boxing. It is one of several reasons you will never see us on TV. The blood is thin, flows easily and generously, and is often the initial factor that ends a potentially good fight before it ever gets a chance to start.

Willy keeps swinging, wide arching blows to the side of the head, backing Tim toward the ropes. Tim’s foot is swallowed by a mammoth pot hole and with one giant, brilliantly timed hook from Willy, Tim goes down, the back of his head bouncing off a maple tree root as he lands. He is out. Willy is bloody but standing.

Moments later Tim is rousted for a second time that night with smelling salts. We get him out of his gloves and into one of the lawn chairs surrounding the ring. We get him a towel for the blood and a beer for his head. He gingerly nurses his wounds and the beer disappears in two long gulps.

The four of sit drinking beer until the sun turns our black night into a milky gray morning. Willy, Tim and Jenny pass the light bulb a dozen more times. Dried blood is caked in Willy and Tim's nostrils, covering the fronts of their shirts.

Ohio State University students shouldering packs of books on the way to class fill the alley and sidewalks. Some gasp audibly at the sight of us. Others smile, sometimes awkwardly and walk on avoiding eye contact having of course seen it all before.

I admit to myself that maybe we misjudged Little Timmy from Pickerington. Maybe back at the bar we had just gotten off on the wrong foot. Timmy was tougher than he looked. Maybe he had a little Hemingway in him after all.

But I still stand by my earlier observation. Most future writers cannot take a punch.

I'd bet a case of sixty watts the little fucker couldn't write a poem to save his life.