Written in June 2018

Five months ago I limped with a cane, literally crawling across a dark street to cut the throat of the innocent, unarmed, ebony youth tracking me…like some zombie in a bad movie I creaked towards my now terrified hunter.

Seven months from now will no doubt bring the same wretched state, my rotting body ossifying into an ever more cantankerous engine of ambulation. When I was sunk in such despair I never permitted myself to image again the fitness of my fighting times, for I know that come one spring—if spring comes—that fitness will not return, but stay forever out of reach.

I have had recent conversations with caring people who wonder at my fighting on [I’ll only compete in very limited circumstances from here on], although I’m simply training, sparring and drilling as if training for combat, a combat I hope won’t come, because it won’t be a sporting event but a legal disaster.

I found the answer recently while ambling along on a few jaunts at dawn, noon, dusk and midnight savoring my resurrected ability to beat the shit out of other men. Indeed, the four men I sparred with last week, pretty much got their heads handed to them in a tactical sense. It was I that was bruised up from fingertips to collarbone and shaven dome. The two less experienced guys that only have a couple years or stick and knife in are still learning control, so I’m taking a lot of lumps. Hitting the speed bag and heavy bag at the boxing gym last Thursday the vibrations broadcast pain through over 50 bones and it felt great! My fading eyes were tearing up over the pain but my ugly mouth was grinning. Doing the dumbbell routine I can actually hear the severely bruised ulna of the right arm creaking like an old ship’s timber. The concussion I got from eating a left hook last Friday has brought back my sense for fiction and I’ve decided to finish a novel next week, hopefully after another brain bruise to set me firmly on the narrow meat-headed track of yesteryear.

Erique—though overweight from his recent illness—has finally internalized his five years of training into a formidable, functional skill set and I’m still spending half the session bullying his big ass around the deserted ball court. The other three men, Brian, Nero and Mescaline all bring strengths and skills of their own to test my reborn abilities against...

…and all of a sudden, while I walked by some feral negro last Friday, who pulled his two pit bulls up on an old lady’s lawn to let me pass as we nodded in mutual appreciation, I started walking on a manful plane again, once again hated by sissies, respected by criminals, every day until the cold invades my bones lived with the well-earned hatred of this degenerate world.

Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival