Free The Laughter of Strangers by Michael J Seidlinger Page B

Fighting.
    Right?
    Yeah.
    Ask any of them and they’ll all say yes.
     
    DO YOU LOVE BOXING?
     
    NOTE: And all its variations such as “Do you like to fight?” and “Did you want to be a boxer?” and “Do you enjoy taking a punch?”
     
    EXECUTIONER: Absolutely.
    ICE: Wouldn’t want to do anything else.
    BUSTER: I guess so. I am a fighter aren’t I?
    ONE-TWO: That’s a stupid question given that you’re asking a professional boxer…
     
    Yeah so I guess my answer would be an absolute, one hundred percent confident:
     
    SUGAR: Yes!
     
    Maybe drop the exclamation point…
     
    YES
     
    Yeah that’s better.
    I can agree to disagree with myself. By the looks of it, I’m a bit of a hypocrite. You turn the page you see a different side of me. Maybe more of the same, but the subtleties (if I can be considered subtle) take on poor, imprecise shifts like someone that is constantly aching to be in the limelight…
    But doesn’t know why.
    I’m afraid of the dark.
    I am drawn to the brightest lights. Nothing is brighter than the lights shining on the ring on fight night.
    Imagine the warmth of everyone’s gaze.
    Imagine that you are standing facing the only person that matters:
    Yourself.
    And you are prepared…
    Prepared to go twelve rounds if need be. You will defeat that part of you that fights back. You will fight yourself, JAB JAB POWER SHOT if it takes all the blood and guts spilled to the canvas to get you to stay down.
    Imagine that and you might begin to understand why fighting is all I can do. It’s all I’m made to do. I understand the fight. Everything else, well that’s sort of the issue here. I started fighting in hopes of finding myself; big surprise fighting only created more of a rift between each emotion, each resurrected feeling, I might have.
    There are no easy identities, only more interesting proximities.
     
    CAN I GO ANOTHER ROUND?
     
    Sarah seems to think so.
    From upstairs I can hear Spencer laughing.
    Things must be going well. But that’s not my fight. Well, it is, but at this very moment, I want to be as far removed from the version of me they are sculpting. I will see myself imposed upon every possible mode-of-delivery.
    A good rumor makes for great spikes in site-hits, subscription purchases, and so forth. I don’t blame the media. They are the blood.
    They carved out the veins.
    No one exists without blood flowing.
    The media makes sure the people that want to, need to, desire to be alive are still there, being viewed.
    Read: Alive.
     
    YOU ARE ALIVE
     
    Right now, I am because they say that ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures is a murderer. Right now, I am because I am lead subject on over a dozen media outlets’ front pages. Right now…
    I AM ALIVE because I lied.
    Therefore, I am living a lie.
    And not just one.
    As many as needed.
    Sarah asks me, “Do you want to win this?”
    Words right from her father’s mouth. Spencer always barked the question in raspy, throaty calls during my training sessions.
    Motivation mostly, but you know what…
    I have been so busy thinking about my chances of winning that I have failed to think about whether or not I want to win.
    What is in it for me if I win except a rematch, another one that fights on their toes, quick to strike, ready to replace me?
     
    I WANT TO WIN
     
    I know that I do but these days I worry that I don’t have any other motivation, nothing else to claim as purpose, besides the victory. I want to win because I want to win.
    “Yes,” I shout back.
    Sarah giggles, “JAB!”
    Just like her father, she does her best to pretend that we have it all under control. But really, I’m in the basement, gassed, tired, achy, only a few days away from the rematch, and I haven’t even begun to train.
    I have become someone people can’t stop talking about, not because I am still in their minds a great fighter but rather because I might be convicted. I might be that person that killed some person . When it involves murder, everyone