Boxing Myself Volume 2

Ya’ gotta love perspective. Without it, we’d blow through life like constant toddlers. Bumping into the same wall, touching the same hot pan handle, pulling the same cat tail over and over and over again without ever stopping to pose the question, “Is it maybe not such a good idea that I keep doing this?” Sure, sometimes we choose not to learn from our mistakes—bad situations can feel pretty darned good, e.g. sleeping with an evil ex, popping an evil pill, eating an evil donut—but for the most part, it is the human’s uncanny ability to make adjustments after a potentially dangerous experience that keeps him or her safe from an early death. Many people would agree that boxing, whether in the amateurs or professional ranks, is potentially dangerous and therefore worthy of serious reflection before (should I do it?), during (what am I doing?) and after (what did I just do?). My father sees no value. He doesn’t consider it necessary to experience even the potential for danger before making an adjustment. “It’s boxing, ”he says. “It’s violent by definition. There’s no potential. You go in there with the sole purpose of massacring your opponent. Someone is going to get hurt.” Yes, boxing is violent by definition but it is also tactical. It is about efficiency of movement, speed and power. It’s totally scientific. It’s also fun and, at the amateur level, totally safe. We have headgear and standing 8 counts. We try to score points, not knock downs. Amateur boxing is about sport not bloodshed. Right? Right. Or so I believed until right around the middle of June. For three years everything was lovely and theoretical and then something awful happened: I got a fight.

FRIDAY JUNE 17th After the agonizing decision not to fight in this year’s New York Golden Gloves and several months of training and hustling, I finally got myself a real bout. The white-collar show I’d done in early May was not sanctioned and therefore didn’t go into my fight book or on record. We went three rounds instead of the USA Boxing standard four, and each had been significantly shortened from two minutes to one and a quarter. The ref was afraid I’d hurt her, so he asked me to take it down a notch. I spent the next few weeks walking around with a dangerously false sense of security. One exhibition bout does not a champion make. I needed a real fight, but getting one was proving harder than I’d expected. Where were all the girls, I wondered? Where were

all the glory-eyed Hillary Swank-fuckers and bored stock brokers with delusions of pugilistic grandeur? Where were all the contenders in need of experience? Was I seriously the only one not taking the summer off? When the call came I was excited but anxious. Luckily, I was also ready. All I knew about my opponent was that her name was Meghan and she trained out of Church Street Gym; she had six sanctioned fights to my zero and had made it to the Gloves quarterfinals where she lost to Ronica Jeffrey (who incidentally, went on to upset the balance of the entire NY amateur scene by beating Maureen “Million Dollar Baby” Shea in the finals at the Garden). According to the promoter, she was a “good little boxer.” She’d been fighting at 125 which meant that I had exactly seven days to come down in weight from 132 to 128. No problem, right?

SATURDAY/SUNDAY JUNE 18th and 19th I had not expected the fight to come through three hours before the start of a Youngblood retreat. Twice a year, our playwrights group heads up Lexington, New York for a couple of days to eat, drink, stay up until dawn and, on the rare occasion, actually do some work. I’d been looking forward to getting sufficiently knackered and eating my weight in s’mores. Best laid plans. I couldn't afford to gain a single pound over the weekend, nor could I risk getting sick, which can happen after two days of moderately hard partying. If I drank too much, didn’t get enough sleep, ate crap all weekend, I’d be at a serious disadvantage come fight night. So I dug deep and I asked myself, “Edith, what’s more important to you right now? Getting wasted or winning this fight on Friday?” It was a surprisingly easy question to answer. I brought my speed rope up with me and rose early Saturday morning pre-breakfast for 45 minutes of cardio in the barn theatre. It was a beautiful misty spring day in the mountains, a little on the cold side. Still I managed to break a good sweat jumping and shadow boxing and working abs for a bit. After a quick stretch and rinse, I headed to the canteen to help RJ mix up a mega batch of flapjacks for the 25 playwrights and

directors who’d be barging in by 9:30 looking for sustenance. I turned out close to 50 griddle cakes before making myself an egg white omelet with a tiny bit of cheese and one piece of multigrain toast. For the purposes of posterity, I feel duty-bound to reveal that I did eat two silver dollars but they were miniscule and completely plain. I also drank quite a lot of coffee. We did manage to do some work over the next 24 hours which was great because it totally kept my mind off of the fact that EVERYWHERE I TURNED, someone was clutching an ice cold beer in one, or both, of their hands. Then on of our playwrights had to go and cook up a massive pasta dinner with lots of fresh crusty ciabatta and big bowls of cubed mozzarella cheese. The sauce was a Springy delight full of tomatoes, herbs and spicy Italian sausage. I ate it sans rigatoni with an extra helping of salad and stayed as far away from the bread as humanly possible. I did allow myself two glasses of red wine and a couple spoonfuls of cheese but that was it.