The Boxer

[Heavy Metal Hero]

I saw quite clearly a figure in the night, who stood proud in his animal domain for the pleasure of those who would look his way. He fell, and then stood, and then fell again. The labourious lashing of this gang of hoodlums who had swarmed with such instincts attributed to the scavenger, and he fell, and then stood, and then fell again. He was bleeding, and he fell. He stood. Again! All of this on the side of the freeway, with drifting snow floating amidst the elements of the city air. I was walking house. Not home, but to the place I have lived for what seems like centuries, feels like decades, acts like eternity and above all conspires to reduce my existence to one speck of cosmic dust upon the forgotten armoire in our attic, the universe.



He fell. Stood. Fell.



I am reminded of the time I came to this very city. It is a long anecdote of short words, as if by some circumstance I was the very misguided waif of any famous novel ever written. Actually, I had left home at eighteen to pursue my life. I would be a tradesman. I would travel the world. I would retire young, buy a boat, sail in the saturated pleasure of a life gone horribly right. Marry young, beautiful wife, children with her eyes, my nose and lovely freckles, and “aren’t they darling?” and “you’re a great man, Charlie,” and “you truly deserve this promotion, Chuck.” This is the story we like to hear, the story that tucks our children into bed, because they are so darling, this is the story that leads to laciviousness with our wives on Tuesday nights because they love us so and would bear the world to protect us, as we would bear fire and brimstone for their sakes.



My story, our story, is one more seldom told. He falls again. In the first year I lived in this God-forsaken city, I recall money slipping between my gray, gloved fingers like so much sand. Housing was impossible, jobs were elusive. I even played the stock market in those younger years, and the disappointment of my broker pissing funds into his habit before he went to prison was one moment that we do not hear. The law is here to protect us, but the law is malleable. The law can be circumvented in this labyrinth.



A long walk to the soup kitchen, a long walk to the halfway house. One of the shaggy miscreants lands a blow with a pipe. This is my life, this is our life. This city is one brawl, one cluster-fuck of the human condition that never ceases. I taste bile in my mouth from hunger. The abused man strikes out at one of his assailants, who falls as hard as I’ve seen any man fall before. The man falls. He stands. His enemy does not.



It should be understood how it feels to fall down a gaping hole, like the centre of the universe, something that is a black, all-consuming non-existence. To look at the city from above, as the cheek of this country, and then remove the beard to the basest flesh; if one were to apply Occam’s Razor to the city, to remove the jungle mass of sky-scraping success, one would witness this great non-existence. The city consumes life. Even death, yes, the city is death as much as it is life.



The fighter, and he will be described as such forever more, strikes another of his assailants. The man does not fall, he is hit with a small car screaming right around the corner, into a stack of garbage cans and stray cats which fly off in all directions. His fist is a Hollywood car chase. He falls again, but he continues to stand.



I would like to break at this point to express my admiration for the fighter. He is a case study of the prevailing good in us all, in that he has shed his fear of mortality. Or, at least, we can believe that he has. Perception is the only trait that we apply unintentionally against ourselves. We perceive the freckles, yachts and torrid affairs as our desires, and this is why we aspire to them. But, nobody is ever happy. The fighter falls once more, a thousand times in one fell swoop of a human windstorm.



I remember now more than ever that loneliness is one part of the human condition that we all know periodically, and if not periodically, perpetually. On Seventh Avenue there is a house of ill-repute. Some people will abuse any talent for the good of the wallet; wealth is the American dream, and one lucky person stands above this pyramid scheme of lonely denim pyramids. I, even in my social serfdom, have visited Seventh Avenue for the good of my heart, should it turn blue as a vein, dead inside like what is outside it.



In fact, over several months I made several visits with a particular rose in this despicable garden, and this rose bloomed on its own regard, it was invaded and transplanted by miles. As if I were an insect, inhabiting a hive with no queen, completely alone and working for the sake of some unseen God, I brought a piece of her with me, and she grew within me, and then part of me died within her. This is the bond between the insect and the plant. I believe now that, possibly, she saw me as her way out of life. This city is life and death and there is no way out, but the indomitable hope of the downtrodden makes us believe such childish, frecklish things.



If one were to continue on with this sugar-plum symbolism, the gardener sprayed poison upon her petals to deter the worker bee. But hell, to be colloquial, her pimp kicked my ass. Isn’t that a kick in the ass, eh? Brutally, even. Like a good cog, I kept turning in the machine and I have never seen her again. To be honest, I never learned her name. I loved the rose, and I never knew the species.



I do not understand why I felt compelled to jump the road barricade, to slide down the snowy hill just off the freeway and come closer to the scene of this fighter. If I were to summarize the most likely scenario of these theatrics, I would have to assume that this surly bunch had bet on the losing fighter and, at the end of the night, were exacting revenge on the very man who cost them the silver chains they use to bind themselves to this city. Was it general interest, or some strange vested interest that was driving me toward this circle of life within death?



I loved a woman once. The fighter strikes down another man. I had dreams. I had aspirations, youthful exuberance, a master plan for being the story that we all so love to tell. The fighter lays more blows. I let sand slip through the hourglass. My hands are the proponents of my end. The fighter is slammed hard to the frozen gravel, his eye swollen, brow cut, cheek dripping with flaking red. All because I was afraid of death. But death in the presence of death is just life for the sake of living. Rose petals fall. The fighter spits blood from deep in his chest and stands up again. I hoist myself over a chain link fence.



Sometimes, snow falls like cotton, and other times it slices like ethereal knives. Sometimes the wind will halt as the city takes a breath. This behemoth reaper, the all-consuming hole in which we reside, lives only on our fear to defy its grand plan. Minute by minute, breaths are sucked into this respirating wind. Day by day, more of our mortality is eliminated.



I do not understand. I called out “hey, you there, stop!” and once again the fighter stood. There is attention on me. It is terrifying. I am defying the natural order, I have become a variable. For the good of the hero I never will be, I can fleetingly play the hero I never was. My story is seldom told, our story is seldom told. We are the victims of this black, rot-infested haven for the damned and our only moments of living are the ones where we accept that we are living in death. I feel the city grasping at the final strands of my soul. The behemoth reaper spews upon me the pestilence that I am a part of. The thugs descend upon me like so many more cannibal rats.



The rose had come to this place as an aspiring singer from some obscure foreign land. She was blonde and thin, and through her blackened eyes and ragged demeanor she was beautiful. I loved her.



I felt most alive when I was shot for the first time. It was a sensation I had missed out upon all those years ago. Then, the feeling of the warm and precious life I’d gained seeping into the snow, and this is the time that I finally understood that I had lost all there is to lose. I lost love, and now I lost life for love long lost. I still don’t understand, however, how my own acceptance of my species sent the cannibals scurrying. Perhaps the ignorance we have of the nature of death is the only thing protecting us from understanding the nature of life?



The fighter looks down at me, and his broken face is the last thing I see before the black of the city consumes me. He is my hero and I am his. This is how I spat in the face of the natural order. The city must be furious.



In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade, and he carries the reminders of every blow that laid him down, or cut him ‘til he cried out, in his anger and his shame, “I am leaving, I am leaving!” But, the fighter still remains.



He remains to fall, and stand, eternally.



Somehow, I hear my rose singing again, eternally, as a speck of cosmic dust upon which the devil himself once fed. In the city, the true dead are those who are living. The boxer was not afraid of life; he was my last hero, and for my love I lived forever more.



The Boxer,
As inspired by “The Boxer,” written and composed by Simon and Garfunkel