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The battle for Staten Island
Jun. 28th, 2022 06:43 amI dreamed an old work friend of mine, K., was in a boxing event out on his native Staten Island. Now K. is an older man with a family, and was always a basketball guy, but apparently he was also a boxer, and so I went to the event, which was in a rather seedy bar on the North Shore that seemed familiar—dark interior walls, almost like a Coney Island High or CBGB, the smell of rank beer in the morning. Despite the close quarters they had managed to set up a ring in there. I didn't know anybody in K.'s corner, but would go up now and then between bouts and give him encouragement, joking that it was a good thing that I was out of the game else it'd be he and I fighting next. He had gotten to the semifinal round, and they were about to reveal his opponent (the various other bouts were taking place in different venues around the island).
From out of the back of the bar appeared a tottering image of the Statue of Liberty, complete with streamers coming from the torch. The audience was agape at what seemed like a large plaster statue. It was more like a professional wrestling entrance. Two rotund guys in black appeared and began ripping apart the image, and out from inside the statue stepped a rather petite young woman, bronze skin with well-defined abs, heavily tattooed and geared up to fight.
K. and his trainer entered the ring to confer with the ref and get instructions. I waltzed around to the other corner and began talking with the woman, who, it turned out, was from Austria, and a mother, and was much older than she seemed (early '50s). She told me she was about 120 pounds, which was maybe 80-100 pounds less than K., who at 6'5" towered over her. She said she'd been competing for a long time and held some amateur records, and she moved as if she were a fighter, which gave me some relief. But still, they couldn't let this fight proceed. I got into the ring to go over to the ref and K. and protest, and by their expressions they seemed equally concerned. It had been decided, however, that they would both fight with only a single gloved hand, and the other arm was not to be used at all except to clinch; the discussion now was whether K.'s arm should be tied down or freed.
The woman assented to the ad hoc rule and the bout commenced. The two immediately clinched, and I could tell K. was pulling his punches; the woman landed flurry after flurry of clean shots to K.'s head. The shots weren't doing anything, but they were scoring blows and I could tell he was going to lose the round if something didn't change. "Hit the body!" I hollered from ringside (the clinch exposed the woman's right ribs, and K. reluctantly began to pound away at them; my hope was that it would inflict enough pain that the bout would end quickly).
The battle continued, but then my wife was there and removed me from the entire event. We were on a mission, she said, to drop off a large inheritance at a bank in Jersey City. There were various sized bills, as if from another country where the currency is mismatched, all in black leather bags. My son was there, too, and we all donned dark sunglasses. The wife drove, slowly, across Staten Island toward Bayonne, heading for the Jersey City waterfront, as I counted the loot. She swerved to avoid a bunch of revelers in the street in front of an Irish pub called "Duffy's" (there seemed to be some type of Irish cultural event going on, or game—people done up in all kinds of green and daubed facepaint), and I wondered where she had found all this money, and what we were going to do with it.
From out of the back of the bar appeared a tottering image of the Statue of Liberty, complete with streamers coming from the torch. The audience was agape at what seemed like a large plaster statue. It was more like a professional wrestling entrance. Two rotund guys in black appeared and began ripping apart the image, and out from inside the statue stepped a rather petite young woman, bronze skin with well-defined abs, heavily tattooed and geared up to fight.
K. and his trainer entered the ring to confer with the ref and get instructions. I waltzed around to the other corner and began talking with the woman, who, it turned out, was from Austria, and a mother, and was much older than she seemed (early '50s). She told me she was about 120 pounds, which was maybe 80-100 pounds less than K., who at 6'5" towered over her. She said she'd been competing for a long time and held some amateur records, and she moved as if she were a fighter, which gave me some relief. But still, they couldn't let this fight proceed. I got into the ring to go over to the ref and K. and protest, and by their expressions they seemed equally concerned. It had been decided, however, that they would both fight with only a single gloved hand, and the other arm was not to be used at all except to clinch; the discussion now was whether K.'s arm should be tied down or freed.
The woman assented to the ad hoc rule and the bout commenced. The two immediately clinched, and I could tell K. was pulling his punches; the woman landed flurry after flurry of clean shots to K.'s head. The shots weren't doing anything, but they were scoring blows and I could tell he was going to lose the round if something didn't change. "Hit the body!" I hollered from ringside (the clinch exposed the woman's right ribs, and K. reluctantly began to pound away at them; my hope was that it would inflict enough pain that the bout would end quickly).
The battle continued, but then my wife was there and removed me from the entire event. We were on a mission, she said, to drop off a large inheritance at a bank in Jersey City. There were various sized bills, as if from another country where the currency is mismatched, all in black leather bags. My son was there, too, and we all donned dark sunglasses. The wife drove, slowly, across Staten Island toward Bayonne, heading for the Jersey City waterfront, as I counted the loot. She swerved to avoid a bunch of revelers in the street in front of an Irish pub called "Duffy's" (there seemed to be some type of Irish cultural event going on, or game—people done up in all kinds of green and daubed facepaint), and I wondered where she had found all this money, and what we were going to do with it.
