(Note – much of the prose in this story is the original author’s. I have shortened the story and changed the plot. Explanatory notes follow the story)
I was a child until the early spring of my fifteenth year. It was March 1975, and the world seemed to have left its orbit. We’d seen Nixon driven from office, and now we had a President who needed the Secret Service to help him to his feet after stumbling down the stairs. The communists were humiliating us in Vietnam. Patty Hearst was robbing banks and recording TV messages for her black kidnappers. And New York City, the financial Capital of the world, was sinking into bankruptcy – the streets beneath our apartment were ruled now by drug dealers and street gangs.
Pop had been unemployed for almost a year. Mom had taken off with her lover, and the two of us sat alone in our apartment that late winter, getting on each other's nerves.
Bitterness was all that was left in my father. The humiliation of being unemployed, the shame of having his wife leave him, had drained him of his self respect. It was just the two of us now. We didn’t speak about Mom. My Pop didn’t want to talk about what happened. We didn’t even know where she was. Like most evenings, Pop just sat in his recliner, his face buried in the Daily News, while I stared at the TV.
"You know you look like a girl," Pop said to me for the millionth time. “Why don’t you get your darn hair cut?
I wanted to tell him what he looked like. Sitting there in his Gold's Gym tank top, showing off his sagging shoulders and his spreading waist. You shouldn't wear a shirt like that unless you actually went to a gym - and he hadn't seen the inside of a gym for years.
No, I wasn't getting a haircut -- I liked the way I looked, the way my blond hair fell around my ears. It was another act of sullen defiance on my part - part of my arsenal of things he found offensive.
Besides, Susan had said I looked cute. Although she was a few years older than me, I’d developed a huge crush on Susan. She worked in a bakery on Broadway, and I was planning on asking her for a date.
The Jeffersons, a popular sitcom about a black unit, was on the TV. In this episode, Lionel Jefferson was dating a white girl, and the girl’s father was gunning for him. The charming boy was now hitting on the girl’s mother.
"I'm sick of watching this crap," Pop said. He raised the remote and switched the channel, cutting off the end of one of the young Jefferson's compliments to the girl’s hot Mom.
"C'mon Pop - I was watching that!" I said, but he didn’t respond. He just sighed and muttered something unintelligible.
The father I knew was gone. Instead of feeling sadness, I was angry at him. Angry at his weakness, fearing, perhaps, that his defeat by the world meant that I too would be beaten down. I'd look over at him with contempt, wondering how he could let the world treat him this way.
"Bill, we just don't have fun anymore," Mom had said. We sat and simmered in those pitiless words my Mom had said to my father just days before she left him. I couldn’t deny it. Living with Pop wasn’t much fun at all.
"C'mon Pop - put the Jeffersons back on," I said.
"I'm sick of seeing those people. I see enough of them without having to watch them in my own house," Pop said
He wasn't even looking at me. Funny though -- it seemed like every channel he switched to had a black person on it: Barbara Jordan pontificating on Nixon; Soul Train; Howard Cossel interviewing Mohammed Ali. And when he saw Ali, he flicked the set off.
****
We had always been happy together, the three of us. Mom was there when I got home from school. We'd talk in the kitchen until Pop got home. Every night we had dinner at exactly seven o'clock, because Pop and I liked to watch Star Trek at six. We'd eat dinner, and then most nights we'd take a walk in Riverside Park. We were a good Unit. Like most we had our problems, and like the better ones they were handled with care.
Now that I'm an adult and understand relationships I have a deeper picture of their problems. My mother had always wanted another child, and Pop’ wasn’t able to give her one. Even then, I could see the look in her eyes at the children in the park, and now I understand why my father stiffened whenever she pointed them out. She spoke often to me about what I was like when I was little, and I knew from the sound in her voice that I was killing something inside her by doing what all boys do: growing up.
If the world had been kinder to my father, if he was still the strong, vibrant man I grew up with, then Mom might have stayed. I'd look at the pictures of him in the hallway. There were a half dozen photos of him in fighter's poses, centered around a framed page from of the Daily News, showing the 1959 Golden Gloves standings and the proud circle around his name. "Bill Williams 11-1-4” He was a lot closer to the top then the bottom. The collage was completed by a picture of Mom and Pop, she was leaning back into his rippling chest, his arms hung around her into his big shoulders. They met during that tournament because Mom was a fight fan.
I remember asking Pop once, when we were on better terms, how come he never made it to the top.
“I thought I was pretty good, and I was." Pop pointed to the pictures. "I mean I thought I might even be city champ. Then they matched me against this guy. Cleveland. Earl Cleveland . . .” He ran his fingers down the yellowed standings, and found his name. "Guy had a jab like a rocket. Couldn't even see it coming.”
“Plus he had a mouth on him. Started calling me names. The guy was so abusive; it knocked me off my stride. He kept disrespecting your Mom. I lost my concentration. Eventually he got lucky, took a swing and broke my jaw. I was never the same in the ring, thanks to that bastard.”
I imagined Mom watching Pop’s beatdown at ringside, hearing the black fighter taunting her man. I imagined her feelings as she watched Pop taking the hiding. Was she close enough to hear his opponent calling him a “pussy boy” and threatening to “fuck his bitch”? But whatever disappointments Mom had of Pop, they managed. They never flared above a low simmer.
But the earth shifted on them the day my father was laid off. It was the first snowy day of the winter when I was home with Mom. We heard him walk in the door and saw the flakes of snow and ice on his uniform, and the look he gave my mother. “They let me go” he said. “They said I’ve been letting folks ride for free.”
Pop was a 46 year old bus driver who never went to college. He’d been driving that bus for the past ten years, doing a circuit of upper Manhattan and the South Bronx. It was a puzzle though. I remember hearing him talk of his bus as if it was a fiefdom, how if there was any trouble, if anyone dared to sneak on, or smoke, he'd stop the bus and "take care of it." He didn't say what he did, all he said was that he "didn't need the cops to handle things." So I wondered what had changed.
I got a hint when I heard him complaining about “them" , complaining that "none of them paid the fares." I had no doubt of that "they" referred to blacks.
Pop tried real hard to find a new job. There were many nights when Mom and I ate alone because he was out in the suburbs looking for work. He wasn’t a literate man, but he did all the leg work, riding the subway across the city, typing out his CV and job applications by the score. I'd say goodnight to him while he was sitting at the kitchen table, pecking slowly at the typewriter in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I'd lay awake listening to the tap of the typewriter.
But in truth, there were only a couple of months of intense effort. That was all he had. By the middle of January, the typewriter was back up on the top shelf in the closet. After that he seemed smaller to me
Each day I grew further from him; Age and the cruelty of economics was killing him drip by drip. He'd be sleeping in the morning when I left for school, he'd be asleep in the recliner when I got home, floundering in some backwater of despair. One day, my mother came home and said the car was gone, and when they made a few phone calls they learned that the finance company had taken it away.
My mother worked part time as a ticket seller in an ancient movie palace on Broadway and 107th where she once took me to see the Sound of Music. That was a long time ago. The surest sign of their panic was that she swallowed her reticence and kept the job even after they started showing adult movies. They were that desperate for money.
#######
Until that winter, at least, our Unit still had the consolation of a "nice" building, meaning that almost all the residents were white. But no amount of Rent Control subsidies could keep the old residents there when the building was sold. The new owners let no scruple stand on the way of a quick, profitable turnover. They realized that they were guaranteed income from welfare recipients and drug dealers, so they moved them in.
The mid seventies was the era of “white flight”, any working class Unit like us that could afford to had left the city, fleeing the chaos and violence. Our doors were steel barricades, fire escape windows were nailed shut in the calculation that it would be far better to be trapped by a fire than suffer the torments from those that would break in. But with only Mom’s meager wage coming in, we couldn't afford to join the exodus.
It was a Saturday morning when the first non-white tenants arrived. They got in the elevator with me with a pile of boxes, two tall muscular men with afros. They looked down at me coolly, saying nothing. One I later learned was Lamaar. The other was named Bags.
Lamaar had a short, close cropped Afro, and he had gold all over him: a half dozen thick chains around his neck, a bracelet on his wrist with "Badass" in big, block letters, and a couple of rings on each hand, rings with short, sharp spikes designed to cut skin in a fight. He had wide shoulders and a lean, hard belly, and there were tattoos running down both of his arms. Bags was also a huge man, with tattoos and gold chains.
When I went home and told Mom and Pop about the new arrivals on the floor above, Pop looked pissed, as if this was just the latest in a long line of personal wounds. He didn't say anything, but I could see the anger on his face, the way he looked upwards as if he might see them through the ceiling.
That night, my Mom and Pop were watching TV when the music started. Not too loud, but loud enough for both of us to hear. I think it was Sly and the Unit Stone. Mum tried to put on a happy bounce, saying she “kinda liked the beat” which clearly irritated Pop. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, Pop sprang out of his recliner and stormed out the door. I hadn't seen him act so decisively, so boldly in months. A few minutes later I heard footsteps from upstairs as they answered his knock on the door.
Then I heard shouting -- whoever answered the door up there had answered his complaint with a tirade of vicious curses. As I sat there listening I remembered I hadn't told him anything about Lamaar and Bags. I didn't tell him how big and mean they both were.
Pop came back a few minutes later with his hand covering his face. His nose was bleeding. He went right to his bedroom and spent the rest of the night there. That night the music thundered above our heads, an invitation for Pop to come upstairs and complain again, and get some more of the same. But he never did.
#####
During that next month, the music could start any time. Pop tried to ignore it. He pretended it didn't bother him. He buried his face in the Daily News. There was no place for him to hide, because even the News was about blacks - the front page had a picture of a couple of black killers being led in handcuffs up the stairs of a precinct. Still, he just sat there, doing nothing. It was clear then that Mom was losing patience with him, for his lack of action. It was like he was a big disappointment to her.
With Pop unemployed, there were no more walks in Riverside Park. We lived together, but the inner lives of the three of us had spun away from the close orbit of a few months before. Following his initial burst of activity Pop seemed to get weaker almost every day. I was growing stronger, hair was sprouting all over my balls. I was consumed with my crush on Susan, the girl who’d told me I looked cute. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was eighteen, and was the sole subject of my increasing sexual fantasies.
And Mom? There was something changing in her as well. Sometimes while I was in my room I could hear Mom and Pop talking in the living room. Or rather her talking, and some polite grunts from him. It was like she was scolding him. “Why didn’t you stand up to them?” I heard her say one day. “Why can’t you be a man?”
"I'll sort it I promise" Pop had replied. "Just gimme some time all right Carol?"
I sensed that Mom was different. She had always seemed a typical mother, someone who seemed above animal instincts. But the exposure of my father's weakness and the strange place she worked in must have shifted some fault line in her soul. I imagined her at the movie theatre, visualizing her sneaking a peek at the same screen that once featured Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn. Catching a glimpse of the beaming face of Marilyn Chambers while she was being pounded by a huge black cock. The times, they were a changing alright.
Not long after Lamaar and Bags moved in upstairs, my whole world shifted on its axis. I became an adult. Fun, Mom said that she wanted, fun. I knew she found fun in the lean, agile muscles of Lamaar. I knew because I saw him fucking her.
It happened one day after I came home sick from school. Pop was out in Queens somewhere, he had a rare interview. I could smell the grass as soon as I opened our apartment door. The Doors were playing on the stereo: "Try it on for size . . ." I should have left when I saw the thin belt on the floor of the hallway. If I had left I could have told myself nothing was going on. If I had left I could have remained a child a bit longer.
But beneath the music I heard another sound, a muffled cry that seemed to call to me, as if I heard it before. I walked down the hall, and when I got to my parents bedroom my eyes opened in wonder.
All I could see was his ass, the big black haunches pushing into her, rocking the squeaky bed, and making her cry: "I'm almost there! God, that’s amazing!" Her legs were up over his shoulders, her heels pointing straight in the air. Her hands told me what was happening inside her. She had her hands on his ass, her red nails were caressing the stubby spiked hairs he had down there. "Oh, Jesus, Lamaar . ..give it to me, give it to me…!"
They didn't hear me, they didn't hear my heart slamming and the blood rushing like breaking surf up into my head.
I don't know if Pop knew that Mom was having an affair; if he did, he knew it as something unconscious, a truth too painful to face directly. But after seeing her with Lamaar, I knew why she left him; I will never shake the memory of what I saw that day, and the inner picture of what she was doing those days . . .for fun.
She left Pop a few weeks later. Even though her words were directed at Pop, they hurt me too. "Bill, we just don't have fun anymore." As she’d said those words to Pop, I had no doubt what Mom’s idea of “fun” really was.
She’d left a note on the table saying that she needed some time to “work things out in her head”. Pop was devastated. She hadn’t left an address. Pop assumed she was staying with her folks in Connecticut. But he almost had a breakdown on fight night, the night the raw truth hit him like a haymaker.
####.
The events occurred shortly after Mom left. I had gone shopping at the A&P with my father. While we were waiting for the elevator in the lobby, two men came up behind us.
"Hey, how you doin!" one said.
We turned around and saw two tall black men The man held reached out and offered his hand to my father. "Good to see you man. Ive just moved into the building. I'm Big D and this here’s Bags”.
My father was as stunned as I was, given the size of the men. But he switched the grocery bags to free a hand to return the other man's handshake. "Hi," he grunted, looking up at Bags as he did so. "I'm Bill."
I was looking at the two of them, feeling anxiety rise with me at the exchange. I avoided looking at Bags, who I remembered from our previous meeting. He was wearing a white cotton tank top, dark purple nylon shorts that ended below his knee. He had a baseball cap turned backwards on his forehead, and I knew he was looking at me steadily.
We stepped into the elevator. I pushed our floor, and Big D said. "You guys live on 5? So do we. I just moved in last month. 5E. Bags’s stayin with me as his crib’s a little crowded right now. Right Bags?”
“Yeah” Bags said. “An don’t think I aint grateful bro.”
As the elevator made it's slow climb I tried to work out what was happening. We lived in 5D. The two men were living next door in 5E. I knew that Lamaar and Bags were previously on the floor above in 6E. I wondered why Bags had moved downstairs.
Big D was acting real friendly, smiling at my father while he told him how happy he was to be in such a nice building. But a weird feeling was rising in me, a mixture of panic and something else.
Although his words were pleasant, the sound of Big D's voice made me feel uneasy. He was standing too close than he had to my father, leaning into him and smiling. It was too friendly, it felt like he was running some kind of game. I could tell my father was uneasy too, but he was forced to respond with politeness.
When the elevator stopped, Big D and Bags got off first. I was still in the elevator, following my father out when Big D spoke to him again. Pointing to Pop's Gold's Gym T-shirt, he said: "You a fight fan, Bill?"
"Yeah, very much so." That was the first time he’d responded to Big D with more than a single word.
"Should be a good one tonight, eh?" Big D glanced for just a brief Moment at Bags when he said this. Almost like he was saying: "Watch this."
Jees, Pop . . . no! I was saying no to something I couldn't even think about. C'mon Pop! I was screaming at him inside my head.
"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it," Pop said. He was stiffening a bit, there was the slightest edge of sharpness in his voice.
"Yeah. Quarry-Norton should be worth watching." I knew Big D didn't mention Ali-Wepner, the top of the card, on purpose to try to draw an opinion from my father.
It was obvious to me, even as a thirteen year old, that ABC was using race to promote the fights. Wepner was the latest in a series of quick cash-ins that Ali had used in the year since regaining the heavyweight crown from George Foreman. Every three months or so he'd offer some white unknown a title shot so he could pocket another three million or so from ABC.
Wepner was typical; a thirty-three year old white liquor salesman, a big, slow man that could hit hard enough to gain a few knockouts over opponents that were even slower than he was. Each one of these fights had the effect of fanning the flickering hopes of millions of white fight fans who would grasp at any hope now to defeat Ali, their nemesis. Tonight’s fight was even billed by the network as “ Give the White Guy a Break.” I had no investment in these things, but my father still spoke of Rocky Marciano with reverence. And he hated the draft-dodging Ali enough to take a liking to Joe Frazier, because he was a man that beat Ali, and his because his style was close enough to Marciano's that it convinced my father that Rocky could have beaten him.
"Tell you what, Bill," Big D smiled at my father. "Why don't you and your boy come down to our place tonight?" He and Bags exchanged a quick glance. "Da four of us can watch the fights tonight."
"Well, I don't know . . ," Pop said, looking down as if the excuse he needed was written on the dirty hallway tiles. Bags was looking at me. I met his eyes and immediately looked away. Jesus, Pop. No. Bags was smirking, the thin wispy hairs that formed a fringe around his upper lip made him look evil.
Now Big D stiffened. The smile was going quickly. He looked mean. "C'mon man. I'm just being friendly. We're neighbors. . ." He seemed to stand taller, harder.
"OK. OK. I guess we can come."
Shit! Bags was grinning now, daring me to look back at him. My eyes had nowhere to go, they kept getting caught on his torso, the white cotton stretched tight over his dark brown body, over a chest and abdomen that was hard, rock hard.
"OK, then," Big D said. He and Bags turned, and he said over his shoulder" "Come by around 8:30. "
We turned too, towards our apartment next door. When we got to our door, Pop fumbled with his bags, and started opening the locks. I looked back over my shoulder at them, the two of them still laughing about something. But Bags was looking back too, and when he saw me he gave me a scowl
#######
We didn't say a word about it. My father didn't want to admit he had been cornered, outmaneuvered by Big D's wily friendliness, a friendliness that only partially covered something malevolent underneath. I thought about telling him I wouldn't go, but he might challenge me - he might ask what I was afraid of - as if his fear wasn't apparent.
So at 8:30 we walked down the hall like soldiers who'd rather take a bullet than admit fear before their comrades. We knocked on the door, and knocked again, louder so they would hear us over the music.
The door opened. Bags didn't even look at my father, he bored in on me with his eyes, and didn't manage anything beyond a sullen "hey." We walked past him into a small corridor. The living room was off to the left, and a hallway led to the right.
When we entered the living room, I saw this was a man's home. While our apartment still had many of the outer niceties of my mother, clearly this crib was set up for men. There was a small amount of furniture scattered on the hardwood floors, furniture with sharp, metallic angles covered with either polished glass or rich, black leather. The wall opposite the couch had an entertainment center with dozens of fine controls and flashing meters that reacted to the Motown beat. And right in front of it was a white, fluffy rug. Bearskin. My mind formed an immediate and vivid picture of what it was used for.
Big D walked in from the hallway. "Hey, glad you came!" He smiled and shook my father's hand, and then held it to me. "You're Jamie, if I remember right?"
I said "Yeah, Jamie." When I returned his handshake I saw how big his hands were. His fingers were so long they reached halfway up my forearm. I was struck by the contrast between the hard ridges of his knuckles against the large, but seemingly sensitive fingers.
"Why don't you two go in and sit down."
My father sat on the couch. Perhaps because he didn't realize how low to the ground it was. He seemed to sink in. I sat in leather rocker on his end of the couch, and was able to look down on him slightly. His eyes were expressionless, as if the strangeness of this, his presence in the home of some black people, his sitting on their couch listening to soul music had caused some inner persona to flee.
After a minute Bags came in and. handed each of us a Colt 45, and I looked over at my father before accepting it. "C'mon Bill, no harm in this, eh?" Big D said. "Just boys havin' a drink together." My father surfaced and gave a slight nod.
I gulped it, knowing from some drinks I had already had that it would deaden me, make me more able to handle this. It was good, real good, stronger than the other beers I had had. I leaned back in the rocker, while Big D switched from the stereo to the TV. Bags sat in the chair that matched mine over on the other side of the sofa. He took a pull from the beer, and gave me a wink.
Big D sat on the couch next to Pop. A lot of his additional height must have been in his legs; His head was a few inches above my fathers, but his knees were at eye level, so he had to spread them to see the TV. He was wearing red track shorts; I looked at the veined granite of his thighs and his hamstrings and I guessed he was a runner. He was younger than Pop, maybe his mid thirties, tops.
The beer tasted great, I settled back in my chair and started watching the TV. Quarry and Norton were already in the ring. Quarry, a big white guy who had mixed it with the best, was fighting for his professional career. A few years ago he lost to Frazier in a fight for the crown that Ali abandoned when he refused the draft. Since then he'd dropped rapidly in the rankings. Norton was a massive black guy known as the “Jaw Breaker” with 32 wins and three losses to his name – two of these losses were to Foreman and Ali.
Not long into the fight, Quarry developed a bad cut over his left eye. He was bleeding badly enough that the referee stopped the fight a few times and brought a doctor in. "That's it, fight's over." Big D said. "Norton's just gonna work on it."
As the bleeding accelerated, Quarry grew wilder and Norton more methodical, both men knowing that the cut changed the calculus of the fight, making it improbable that Quarry would last the full fifteen.
Big D downed his beer in a few quick gulps, I looked over and saw the muscles in his neck shiver as he brought the beer down. "These are going down good! Bags, why don't you get another round. Looks like Jamie there is ready for another."
"Yeah," I said quickly, holding up the can. I had only finished two-thirds of it, but I figured I could down it while Bags went for more. "How bout you, Bill?"
Pop held out the empty can. I hadn't realized he was empty too. He was the same as I was, liking the buzz from the beer, the calming, restful drowse of it. I downed mine as Bags took my father's can, so I was done as he came over to get mine. He took my empty and sauntered down the hall.
While he was down there, Norton connected with a flurry of punches. Quarry's chest was covered in blood now.
By the time Bags walked back with the beers the referee had stopped the fight again for the doctor to examine Quarry’s cut. "C'mon, man, let them fight!" Big D said.
Inexplicably, the ref let it go on. Maybe it was the TV schedule, but it was obvious to me that Quarry had no chance, he was just barely holding on, while Norton seemed
fresh and strong.
Bags handed my father a fresh Colt, he tossed one to Big D, and he held mine out to me. When I reached for it, he pulled it away quickly, like a tease. I looked up at him, and he was grinning like a cat. I felt a jolt in my body. I didn't reach again, knowing he'd just do the same thing. After an eternity, he handed it down to me. I took it and gulped. He walked over to his chair, smiling at Big D as he did so.
Big D was about to say something, when Bags shouted. "Look at this." We looked over at the set. They were stopping the fight . Quarry couldn't take any more punishment. Norton was surrounded by an exultant mob. Bags muted the volume on the TV as the ad break began.
"Why'd they stop it." Big D said. "Damn, Norton was just getting warmed up."
"Too much blood," Bags said. “Hey Bill, how come white guys bleed so much? Ya man, he be bleedin like a stuck pig.”
Pop looked up from his Colt like he heard the sound of an approaching predator.
"I mean, the fight just gets started, a round or two, and these white guys, they start bleedin' like fucking pigs,” Bags said. “All of them”
"Marciano never got cut." Pop said it with surprising force, as if Bags had hit some tripwire. I could feel the anxiety bubble up within me from beneath the sudsy drowse of the beer.
"Marciano never fought men like this," Bags said, dismissively. If I was expecting some confrontation I was disappointed. Pop had no response.
Instead, there was another eerily long silence as we watched the ads on TV without sound. Too long. It became uncomfortable. Al the time Bags was staring at Pop. Eventually Pop broke the silence.
"Nice place you got here," he said, trying to diffuse the tension.
"Got a white bitch come in twice a week” Big D said. “Bitch cleans like you wouldn't believe."
I was stunned by his crudity. One thing about my parents – there was never any obscenity in our house, so it was strange hearing this kind of talk with Pop around. Big D kept on going though.
"She a real fine piece of ass too, right Bags?"
"Shit yeah!" Bags said, as he took a slug of beer. He was slumped back in the chair, one leg with was hiked up on the glass edge of the coffee table. “Bitch always dress like she needin some pole, aint dat right.”
I took a long pull on my beer. I was slightly giddy from the beer, and the unreal situation around me. I knew Bags was the younger man but he seemed so . . . confident, so sure of himself, in front of my Pop.
“Dats right, man” Big D said. “Plenty of white bitches gaggin for it in this hood, right Bill?” He laughed, and slapped my Pop’s thigh, hard. Pop winced. My father seemed to sink deeper into the seat.
There was another long, uncomfortable silence.
"So, you got a bitch in your place Bill?" Big D asked.
I took another drink, watching the two of them. The buzz I was feeling gave me a curious feeling of detachment. I saw the teasing beneath Big D's mock friendly demeanor.
"No." Pop turned to the side and looked up at Big D. "The two of us live alone." He looked like he wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.
"Just like us, eh? Just a couple of bachelors with nothin' holdin' us back." Bags said. He straightened up a minute and looked at the TV. I could see him measuring something in his mind, timing something. I was folded back into the leather rocker. He turned towards Pop again.
"Tell me Bill." He dropped his voice a bit, but it was still easy to hear."You get lots of pussy?"
He was smiling, but the words came out like a challenge. Just how much of a man was he?
"Yeah, I get my share." Pop said, hesitantly. I knew he was lying, and from the sound of his voice Bags knew it to.
"Shit, look at that fat fuck." Bags said. The picture had shifted to Chuck Wepner's dressing room. He was preparing for his ring walk. Big D turned the TV volume back up.
"Bags, get us all another round." Big D said. I was glad. My beer was empty, and I wanted another, because while Big D had eased back a bit, I knew it wouldn't be long before he started picking at Pop's scabs again. I needed another beer.
Wepner was sitting on a bench in the training room, huddled over in concentration as his trainer worked on his shoulders, talking to his man. The TV announcer said: "Six months ago he was a liquor salesman, and he got a phone call. . ." Building him up, encouraging people like my father to believe that fate and desire could somehow win over the gravity of talent.
Bags was standing over me, holding a beer out. I reached up slowly; I wanted the beer, but I didn't want to be teased again. He didn't this time. He handed me the beer casually. I looked up and said "Thanks." He had that same smirk on his face, that same hard look in his eyes.
After another flurry of commercials began. Then Ali came in like a prince, surrounded by a huge entourage. The arena was electric with adoration. He tossed his robe away like a Sultan, and the hangers-on fell away like chariot dust. He started dancing around the ring, shadow boxing. "Damn, he looks good!" Bags said.
"What a body. Damn he's ripped!" Big D and Bags were joyful, watching the great Ali. "Ain't he pretty?" Big D said, and it was another departure from the world I knew. Two men free enough to talk about a man's body, the specifics of his build, and the way he carried himself. "Look at those hands, so quick," Big D said.
"Yeah, fast like a mutha, but big. Seven inch fists." Bags said.
Wepner had already entered the ring, another spectator to Ali's show. He too was big, but running to fat and covered with body hair.
The TV switched to another commercial break. Again Big D muted the TV.
"So we were talking about pussy before, Bill," Big D said. "You lived here a while. You must know all the fine bitches in this building, right."
Oh my God! Like my father would know. Like the young career women from the building came in and strutted around his recliner. The thought was laughable. My father stayed motionless on the couch, he couldn't bring an answer up.
I took a slug and looked at a wire frame clock on the wall. I wondered how long before we could leave, and get back home to a place that was familiar, safe. I didn’t care who won. I just wanted the fight to be over.
The fight started. Wepner came out like a bull, big and menacing. Ali met him in the center of the ring and started dancing, moving back towards his left as Wepner chased him. Webner started throwing punches, but Ali slipped them easily. About two minutes had elapsed before Ali threw his first punch, connecting with a quick, stinging jab. He connected three more times before the bell. Wepner hadn’t landed one solid punch.
As second round ended, there was a delay while the ring doctor took a look at a cut over Wepner’s right eye. Big D started speaking to my Pop again.
"I'll tell you Bill, Bags here, he gets pussy like you wouldn't believe. Bitches all the time. Some of them real sweet young things – college bitches, nice and tight, know what I mean?"
"Shit yeah!" Bags tipped his beer can up in acknowledgment. “Ripe and ready, that’s how I like em”.
Even at that age I knew the type of men that girls liked, the type they'd open their legs for: men like Bags. Men who were cocky, and who looked like they could handle themselves. Even laying back in his rocker, Bags looked strong and agile; his young black body was hard with tight muscles. He had deep set black eyes beneath long, sweeping eyebrows, eyes that were wide apart, and bright with animal attention. Yes, he looked like he had everything that girls looked for. He looked like he had balls.
"Gets it from me. See that rug there?" Big D said, addressing Pop. He pointed over to the white bearskin rug. "At least a couple of times a week I get me a bitch down on that rug”
I could see it now. I imagined his muscular black frame pounding one of his conquests on that thick rug. I imagined that if lay down on it I would smell the juices and perfume of the last girl he had.
“Married white bitches, dey gaggin for it too, aint dat right Bags?” Big D said.
Pop was just sitting there, just staring off into space, ignoring the comments. It seemed he was studying the table light. Big D leaned back and stretched his long arms. "Damn, I love me some married pussy. Can't go more than a day or two without wetting my big dick in a sweet married pussy. You tellin me you aint the same Bill?
My Pop was silent.
"I’m speaking to you BILLY FUCKING BOY!” he said menacingly. “What are you, a fucking fag`?”
."Er, actually, I think we're gonna get going," Pop immediately said, sitting forward, trying to stand. “Come on Jamie”.
I was surprised that Pop had any fight left. I thought he was just going to sit there and listen silently all night.
"You wanna go?" Big D sat up too, and his expression changed in an instant. He drew his head back, as if recoiling from some insult.
“SIT THE FUCK DOWN” Cap said.
Cap’s eyes were like hot coals, and his body that was relaxed and fluid just a Moment ago was now tense, ready for something, something that scared me. Pop immediately sat back down.
"What's the matter, you don't like it here?"
"No . . ," my father looked up at him. "I-I-I umm . . ," he was looking for a way out. "I-I-I mean I just w-w-want to w-w-w--watch the fight that’s all. It’s c-c-cool man"
"OK, then," Big D said, and resumed his lazy recline. He stretched his arms again, and placed one arm up on the shoulder of the couch, his big hand almost touching my father's neck. "Ok, then, Mr. Bill. We'll w-w-watch the fight." He grinned like a kid at Bags as he mocked Pop's stutter. “It’s all c-c-c-cool”.
The third round began. Again, it was one way traffic. Ali was simply picking off Wepner with his jab, dancing round him and making him miss with his wild swings. It looked like Ali was enjoying dismantling his opponent. He was taking his time. The fourth, the fifth, they were much the same. Ali was winning the rounds, toying with Wepner, but not delivering the decisive blow.
“Yo Bill. This white flight we keep hearin about, what’s the deal with that? Bags said to my Pop after the end of the fifth.
“It’s err, white people moving to the suburbs” Pop said
“And why do you think that is Bill,” Big D said
“Er..I don’t know” Pop said, sounding cornered. “To escape, to get away from…” his voice dwindled”
“To get away from da black man? Is that what it’s all about Bill?
“No…er…well” said Pop.
"Always been the way it's always been when different people meet” Bags said. “Look at da Indians, da Jews. That’s why people migrate, why they move. It's fear. They afraid."
My Pop had no reply.
“You think white folks in fear of the black man Bill?” Cap said. “That why they all running like pussies?”
My father didn't move, and didn't acknowledge Big D in any way. The black man seemed like someone who would get off on pain. Someone who would hurt you, just for kicks. For a second I imagined seeing Pop spitting blood and teeth on the floor. We were both scared. Pop even seemed to be trembling
We sat in silence, and watched the fight. The next round was underway Wepner was standing in the center of the ring, turning like a pinwheel as Ali circled around him. Every five seconds or so, Ali would fling a jab that shot from his body like the bite of a cobra. Wepner was holding his hands just a few inches below his face, but Ali's jab was so quick that he could fling a punch the few feet that separated them and land it squarely before Wepner could raise his hand to block it. Every time.
The silence broke when the ref called the doctor in. "Shit! Fucker's bleedin'," Bags said.
"Damn! That shit again!" Big D said. He sat a minute and said some more. "Know how that works Bill?"
He didn't wait for my father to ask; Big D moved over along the couch right next to Pop and drew his right hand into a huge fist and said: "Ali hits like this. . ." Big D demonstrated the movement of a punch. "See, just as the punch lands, he turns his hand just a bit. . ." He pivoted his hand counterclockwise an inch or so. "Just a few punches with that little turn there cuts the motherfucker's eye open."
Pop was shut down, hiding somewhere deep inside. Big D looked at him, waiting a long time for a reaction from Pop.
“Talking bout bitches, Lamaar upstairs got a new white bitch,” Big D said. “Man, she makes some noise. I can hear her begging for it, like she never been pronged before. Dat why Bags spendin some time at my crib.”
“You ever hear Lamar at it with his new bitch, Bill?” he asked my Pop
“I can’t say I have” my Pop replied
"You ever hear Lamaar pronging his new white bitch, Jamie?"
I said it: “Er….yeah, I did once."
“Sound like she havin a reeeal good time right?
“I guess so” I said
Big D leaned back on the couch and laughed. Bags almost spit his beer out on the table. This was funny!
Then Big D stood up, and he said to Bags: "Let's go in the kitchen and get some more beers."
When they left, I could hear them down there, laughing and giggling, and talking about something in low, basso whispers. I leaned over at Pop. "Pop, can't we just get out of here?"
He was frozen. Maybe he had the same fear I did; whatever it was though, he seemed pale and bloodless. "It's not going to last long . . . maybe another round or so," he said
I was about to tell him I wanted to leave anyway, but at that Moment something happened. I was about to speak, but then heard a rhythmic squeaking sound coming from the ceiling. Barely imperceptible at first, it was definitely the sound of a bed creaking. The regular creaking sound seemed to provide a warped accompaniment to Wepner’s vicious beatdown
Then Big D and Bags sauntered back in, holding two beers each. Bags walked right over to me and glanced at the TV “Shit, that white boy’s taking some punishment” Bags said
Then I heard it again. it was definitely the sound of a bed creaking, and a squeaking sound could also be heard. Then I heard what I though was a wail of pleasure. “Oooooooh yeeeahhh” – we all heard it. And I recognized the voice.
The ninth round was over. Wepner was still hanging in there, taking the shots.
“Sounds like Lamaar’s back home” Big D said. There was silence again. Then more creaking, faster now, mixed with the unmistakable, wet sounds of fucking.
Then my Mom’s voice – unmistakably my Mom’s – cut through our silence like a knife. We all heard it”“Oooh, yes, fuck me Lamaar, fuck me. Yeah. Give it to me. Oooooh yes. Fill me up. I want it so baaaaaad!!".
I looked at Pop. He seemed unable to comprehend what was happening. Surely he couldn’t have failed to recognized Mom’s voice. He looked stunned.
Then Pop blurted out "Jeez, that sounds like Carol"
He was staring up at the ceiling. Both black guys were suppressing laughter.
The bed creaks were louder and faster now, as were Mom’s yelps and wails of pleasure. We could hear a male voice too, grunts and snarls. ”
Creak, creak, creak, slurp, slurp slurp
“Ooooooh! Ooooooh! Ooooooh! Mom groaned.
“Take it bitch”
“Yes. yes! Yes! YEEEES!! Give to to me”
“Fucking hell, that is Carol” Pop said.
Wepner lunged forward, but his advance was halted by a lightning-fast Ali jab that caught him square on the nose.
Then we heard a loud banging sound, like wood on concrete. It must have been the bedhead hitting the wall.
“Seconds out, round ten”
The fighters were back in the ring but my Pop wasn’t paying attention. Mom’s wails rose to a crescendo, then became sobs. Sobs of pleasure.
“The fucking whore” Pop said.
“Shit, bitch in tears from da big prong" Bags said.
"You ever make a woman cry because our prong feel so sweet inside her Bill?.”
My father took a deep breath. Then I saw there were tears in his eyes
The headboard was banging even harder now, the rhythmic noise almost drowning out the TV.
“YES!” Mom was yelling. “Yes, fuck it up me, fuck me, give it to me please”
“Please, please” Mom begged. “Fill me up. I love it!”
“I’ll kill her” Pop sobbed. He was in tears. He rose and made to leave, but Cap was on him immediately.
“Something you don’t like Mr Bill?”
Big D dragged Pop by his ear and pushed him against the wall. “Somethin you don’t like? Say it”
“No, no” said Pop.
“Raise your hands boy. Be a man”
N…nnn…no, I don’t want to fight” Pop said.
“Something you don’t like about white bitches going with brothas?”
Big D’s face was right in Pop’s face and he was cowering.
“Noooo” Pop said
“Why won’t you raise your arms? You tellin me you a pussy Bill?
“Y…y…y..yess” Pop said. “I don’t want to fight. I am..I am”
“You’re what? Big D said
“A..a pussy. I’m a pussy” Pop sobbed.
Upstairs, the fucking sounds continued. They were even louder than before.
“Apologise for the sins of your race” Big D said
“I’m sorry for everything, really” Pop said. “I just want to go home”
“Who’s the superior race? Say black men are superior”
"Black men are superior”
Louder. So Lamaar’s bitch can hear you”. Big D began viciously twisting Pop’s ear.
“BLACK MEN ARE SUPERIOR” Pop yelled at the top of his lungs. This time the entire building could probably hear him. I wondered what Mom was thinking, hearing that shout as Lamaar flooded her womb his seed. Did she recognize Pop’s voice? And what on earth might she be thinking later as she curled up to Lamaar is post coital bliss?
Then, I glanced at the TV. Wepner had finally succumbed. It was fifteen rounds. He’d almost gone the distance, and he was a bloody mess. Big D released his grip on Pop so he and Cap could high five.
Just then, thankfully the doorbell rang. Bags spoke to someone on the intercom and then buzzed them in. He then strode back into the room.
“Hey D, remember that college bitch I told you about, she here with a friend. They want to smoke and party man. What you say we get rid of these two pussies and get ourselves some real pussy?
Pop was still stood against the wall, shaking. He looked terrified.
“You aint going to disturb my bro Lamaar, right? Cap said to Pop.
Nooo, noo, I only want to go home” Pop said.
The doorbell rang, and Big D went to get it. The two girls who paraded in were young, slightly unsteady on slut heels. Both were wearing tight dresses. One carried a bottle of brandy. “Hiiiii” they said.
Then I realized to my horror that one of the girls was Susan, the girl from the bakery, and the other was her friend Emma. I could hardly recognize Susan. She looked older with make-up and her hair done. To be honest, I thought, she looked like a slut, She kissed both men, as did Emma. “I brought the brandy you like” Emma said.
“Good bitch” Bags said “Hey ladies, this here is Jamie and Bill, they were just leaving” Bags said.
The two women hardly glanced at us, their eyes were so focused on the black men. I don’t think Susan even recognized me. If she did. She didn’t care. On the way out, I glanced back I saw Susan settling into the sofa, where my Pop had been sat, her skirt riding high and her hot thighs on display. As the door closed we heard giggles and laughter.
Pop and I walked into our apartment in silence, and immediately went to bed in our separate rooms. We didn’t say a word to each other.
Later, as I layed in bed listening through the thin walls to Susan getting fucked, I thought what Cap had said about white flight. I thought of those ancient people crossing seas on fragile reed boats. The few lucky ones found refuge on small Polynesian islands before the boat gave out. Or people with bleeding feet walking on the ice across the Bering Strait. Not for adventure, not a thirst for new places, but a need for safety, to find some faraway niche, away from the stronger ones. The ones their women wanted to mate with .
The men may have been escaping, I thought, but their bitches doubtless kept looking back with desire and lust in their eyes.
And then I thought of what I had seen in my parent’s bedroom, the way Mom sounded with that black man on top of her, the strength of his muscles, the size of his cock, the clench of his black ass as he took her. Then I visualized what was happening now, on the other side of the wall - Susan being pounded by Cap on the bearskin rug, while Emma rode Big D on the sofa.
Now I knew the real reason for white flight.
######################################################
Note: Until recently I had not read Pervitron’s classic Fight Night for many years. I remembered it as a great scenario, but was turned off by the almost exclusively forced gay sex that the story leads into. Upon a recent read of it, I began to think what the story could have been if I controlled the narrative. This is the result. I changed the prose to direct the plot to where I wanted it to go, but the credit remains Pervitron’s.
I have also realized that Fight Night’s initial scenario had a profound effect on my storytelling. I used almost the exact same location, Morningside Heights, for New York New York, which also had a historical setting. A teenage boy’s account of his stepmother’s infidelity was used in “My New Mom”. I fact I now realize that many themes of masculinity, submission, redundancy and implied violence explored in Fight Night appear in my stories.
Finally, a mention to Chuck Wepner. Contrary to what the story suggests, he put in the fight of his life. He actually had Ali down in the 9th round. Some say the movie “Rocky” was inspired by his courageous performance.
(The story goes that, on the day of the fight, Wepner presented a sexy negligee to his wife and told her to wear it in bed since she would be sleeping with the heavyweight champion of the world that night. Mrs. Wepner was wearing the negligee when Wepner returned to their hotel room with twenty three stitches. She asked him: "Okay, bigshot...Do I go to Ali's room, or does he come to mine?")
Pervitron’s prose is immense, The original can be found at
http://www.asstr.org/fiLamaar/Authors/Pervitron/
###############################
I was a child until the early spring of my fifteenth year. It was March 1975, and the world seemed to have left its orbit. We’d seen Nixon driven from office, and now we had a President who needed the Secret Service to help him to his feet after stumbling down the stairs. The communists were humiliating us in Vietnam. Patty Hearst was robbing banks and recording TV messages for her black kidnappers. And New York City, the financial Capital of the world, was sinking into bankruptcy – the streets beneath our apartment were ruled now by drug dealers and street gangs.
Pop had been unemployed for almost a year. Mom had taken off with her lover, and the two of us sat alone in our apartment that late winter, getting on each other's nerves.
Bitterness was all that was left in my father. The humiliation of being unemployed, the shame of having his wife leave him, had drained him of his self respect. It was just the two of us now. We didn’t speak about Mom. My Pop didn’t want to talk about what happened. We didn’t even know where she was. Like most evenings, Pop just sat in his recliner, his face buried in the Daily News, while I stared at the TV.
"You know you look like a girl," Pop said to me for the millionth time. “Why don’t you get your darn hair cut?
I wanted to tell him what he looked like. Sitting there in his Gold's Gym tank top, showing off his sagging shoulders and his spreading waist. You shouldn't wear a shirt like that unless you actually went to a gym - and he hadn't seen the inside of a gym for years.
No, I wasn't getting a haircut -- I liked the way I looked, the way my blond hair fell around my ears. It was another act of sullen defiance on my part - part of my arsenal of things he found offensive.
Besides, Susan had said I looked cute. Although she was a few years older than me, I’d developed a huge crush on Susan. She worked in a bakery on Broadway, and I was planning on asking her for a date.
The Jeffersons, a popular sitcom about a black unit, was on the TV. In this episode, Lionel Jefferson was dating a white girl, and the girl’s father was gunning for him. The charming boy was now hitting on the girl’s mother.
"I'm sick of watching this crap," Pop said. He raised the remote and switched the channel, cutting off the end of one of the young Jefferson's compliments to the girl’s hot Mom.
"C'mon Pop - I was watching that!" I said, but he didn’t respond. He just sighed and muttered something unintelligible.
The father I knew was gone. Instead of feeling sadness, I was angry at him. Angry at his weakness, fearing, perhaps, that his defeat by the world meant that I too would be beaten down. I'd look over at him with contempt, wondering how he could let the world treat him this way.
"Bill, we just don't have fun anymore," Mom had said. We sat and simmered in those pitiless words my Mom had said to my father just days before she left him. I couldn’t deny it. Living with Pop wasn’t much fun at all.
"C'mon Pop - put the Jeffersons back on," I said.
"I'm sick of seeing those people. I see enough of them without having to watch them in my own house," Pop said
He wasn't even looking at me. Funny though -- it seemed like every channel he switched to had a black person on it: Barbara Jordan pontificating on Nixon; Soul Train; Howard Cossel interviewing Mohammed Ali. And when he saw Ali, he flicked the set off.
****
We had always been happy together, the three of us. Mom was there when I got home from school. We'd talk in the kitchen until Pop got home. Every night we had dinner at exactly seven o'clock, because Pop and I liked to watch Star Trek at six. We'd eat dinner, and then most nights we'd take a walk in Riverside Park. We were a good Unit. Like most we had our problems, and like the better ones they were handled with care.
Now that I'm an adult and understand relationships I have a deeper picture of their problems. My mother had always wanted another child, and Pop’ wasn’t able to give her one. Even then, I could see the look in her eyes at the children in the park, and now I understand why my father stiffened whenever she pointed them out. She spoke often to me about what I was like when I was little, and I knew from the sound in her voice that I was killing something inside her by doing what all boys do: growing up.
If the world had been kinder to my father, if he was still the strong, vibrant man I grew up with, then Mom might have stayed. I'd look at the pictures of him in the hallway. There were a half dozen photos of him in fighter's poses, centered around a framed page from of the Daily News, showing the 1959 Golden Gloves standings and the proud circle around his name. "Bill Williams 11-1-4” He was a lot closer to the top then the bottom. The collage was completed by a picture of Mom and Pop, she was leaning back into his rippling chest, his arms hung around her into his big shoulders. They met during that tournament because Mom was a fight fan.
I remember asking Pop once, when we were on better terms, how come he never made it to the top.
“I thought I was pretty good, and I was." Pop pointed to the pictures. "I mean I thought I might even be city champ. Then they matched me against this guy. Cleveland. Earl Cleveland . . .” He ran his fingers down the yellowed standings, and found his name. "Guy had a jab like a rocket. Couldn't even see it coming.”
“Plus he had a mouth on him. Started calling me names. The guy was so abusive; it knocked me off my stride. He kept disrespecting your Mom. I lost my concentration. Eventually he got lucky, took a swing and broke my jaw. I was never the same in the ring, thanks to that bastard.”
I imagined Mom watching Pop’s beatdown at ringside, hearing the black fighter taunting her man. I imagined her feelings as she watched Pop taking the hiding. Was she close enough to hear his opponent calling him a “pussy boy” and threatening to “fuck his bitch”? But whatever disappointments Mom had of Pop, they managed. They never flared above a low simmer.
But the earth shifted on them the day my father was laid off. It was the first snowy day of the winter when I was home with Mom. We heard him walk in the door and saw the flakes of snow and ice on his uniform, and the look he gave my mother. “They let me go” he said. “They said I’ve been letting folks ride for free.”
Pop was a 46 year old bus driver who never went to college. He’d been driving that bus for the past ten years, doing a circuit of upper Manhattan and the South Bronx. It was a puzzle though. I remember hearing him talk of his bus as if it was a fiefdom, how if there was any trouble, if anyone dared to sneak on, or smoke, he'd stop the bus and "take care of it." He didn't say what he did, all he said was that he "didn't need the cops to handle things." So I wondered what had changed.
I got a hint when I heard him complaining about “them" , complaining that "none of them paid the fares." I had no doubt of that "they" referred to blacks.
Pop tried real hard to find a new job. There were many nights when Mom and I ate alone because he was out in the suburbs looking for work. He wasn’t a literate man, but he did all the leg work, riding the subway across the city, typing out his CV and job applications by the score. I'd say goodnight to him while he was sitting at the kitchen table, pecking slowly at the typewriter in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I'd lay awake listening to the tap of the typewriter.
But in truth, there were only a couple of months of intense effort. That was all he had. By the middle of January, the typewriter was back up on the top shelf in the closet. After that he seemed smaller to me
Each day I grew further from him; Age and the cruelty of economics was killing him drip by drip. He'd be sleeping in the morning when I left for school, he'd be asleep in the recliner when I got home, floundering in some backwater of despair. One day, my mother came home and said the car was gone, and when they made a few phone calls they learned that the finance company had taken it away.
My mother worked part time as a ticket seller in an ancient movie palace on Broadway and 107th where she once took me to see the Sound of Music. That was a long time ago. The surest sign of their panic was that she swallowed her reticence and kept the job even after they started showing adult movies. They were that desperate for money.
#######
Until that winter, at least, our Unit still had the consolation of a "nice" building, meaning that almost all the residents were white. But no amount of Rent Control subsidies could keep the old residents there when the building was sold. The new owners let no scruple stand on the way of a quick, profitable turnover. They realized that they were guaranteed income from welfare recipients and drug dealers, so they moved them in.
The mid seventies was the era of “white flight”, any working class Unit like us that could afford to had left the city, fleeing the chaos and violence. Our doors were steel barricades, fire escape windows were nailed shut in the calculation that it would be far better to be trapped by a fire than suffer the torments from those that would break in. But with only Mom’s meager wage coming in, we couldn't afford to join the exodus.
It was a Saturday morning when the first non-white tenants arrived. They got in the elevator with me with a pile of boxes, two tall muscular men with afros. They looked down at me coolly, saying nothing. One I later learned was Lamaar. The other was named Bags.
Lamaar had a short, close cropped Afro, and he had gold all over him: a half dozen thick chains around his neck, a bracelet on his wrist with "Badass" in big, block letters, and a couple of rings on each hand, rings with short, sharp spikes designed to cut skin in a fight. He had wide shoulders and a lean, hard belly, and there were tattoos running down both of his arms. Bags was also a huge man, with tattoos and gold chains.
When I went home and told Mom and Pop about the new arrivals on the floor above, Pop looked pissed, as if this was just the latest in a long line of personal wounds. He didn't say anything, but I could see the anger on his face, the way he looked upwards as if he might see them through the ceiling.
That night, my Mom and Pop were watching TV when the music started. Not too loud, but loud enough for both of us to hear. I think it was Sly and the Unit Stone. Mum tried to put on a happy bounce, saying she “kinda liked the beat” which clearly irritated Pop. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, Pop sprang out of his recliner and stormed out the door. I hadn't seen him act so decisively, so boldly in months. A few minutes later I heard footsteps from upstairs as they answered his knock on the door.
Then I heard shouting -- whoever answered the door up there had answered his complaint with a tirade of vicious curses. As I sat there listening I remembered I hadn't told him anything about Lamaar and Bags. I didn't tell him how big and mean they both were.
Pop came back a few minutes later with his hand covering his face. His nose was bleeding. He went right to his bedroom and spent the rest of the night there. That night the music thundered above our heads, an invitation for Pop to come upstairs and complain again, and get some more of the same. But he never did.
#####
During that next month, the music could start any time. Pop tried to ignore it. He pretended it didn't bother him. He buried his face in the Daily News. There was no place for him to hide, because even the News was about blacks - the front page had a picture of a couple of black killers being led in handcuffs up the stairs of a precinct. Still, he just sat there, doing nothing. It was clear then that Mom was losing patience with him, for his lack of action. It was like he was a big disappointment to her.
With Pop unemployed, there were no more walks in Riverside Park. We lived together, but the inner lives of the three of us had spun away from the close orbit of a few months before. Following his initial burst of activity Pop seemed to get weaker almost every day. I was growing stronger, hair was sprouting all over my balls. I was consumed with my crush on Susan, the girl who’d told me I looked cute. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was eighteen, and was the sole subject of my increasing sexual fantasies.
And Mom? There was something changing in her as well. Sometimes while I was in my room I could hear Mom and Pop talking in the living room. Or rather her talking, and some polite grunts from him. It was like she was scolding him. “Why didn’t you stand up to them?” I heard her say one day. “Why can’t you be a man?”
"I'll sort it I promise" Pop had replied. "Just gimme some time all right Carol?"
I sensed that Mom was different. She had always seemed a typical mother, someone who seemed above animal instincts. But the exposure of my father's weakness and the strange place she worked in must have shifted some fault line in her soul. I imagined her at the movie theatre, visualizing her sneaking a peek at the same screen that once featured Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn. Catching a glimpse of the beaming face of Marilyn Chambers while she was being pounded by a huge black cock. The times, they were a changing alright.
Not long after Lamaar and Bags moved in upstairs, my whole world shifted on its axis. I became an adult. Fun, Mom said that she wanted, fun. I knew she found fun in the lean, agile muscles of Lamaar. I knew because I saw him fucking her.
It happened one day after I came home sick from school. Pop was out in Queens somewhere, he had a rare interview. I could smell the grass as soon as I opened our apartment door. The Doors were playing on the stereo: "Try it on for size . . ." I should have left when I saw the thin belt on the floor of the hallway. If I had left I could have told myself nothing was going on. If I had left I could have remained a child a bit longer.
But beneath the music I heard another sound, a muffled cry that seemed to call to me, as if I heard it before. I walked down the hall, and when I got to my parents bedroom my eyes opened in wonder.
All I could see was his ass, the big black haunches pushing into her, rocking the squeaky bed, and making her cry: "I'm almost there! God, that’s amazing!" Her legs were up over his shoulders, her heels pointing straight in the air. Her hands told me what was happening inside her. She had her hands on his ass, her red nails were caressing the stubby spiked hairs he had down there. "Oh, Jesus, Lamaar . ..give it to me, give it to me…!"
They didn't hear me, they didn't hear my heart slamming and the blood rushing like breaking surf up into my head.
I don't know if Pop knew that Mom was having an affair; if he did, he knew it as something unconscious, a truth too painful to face directly. But after seeing her with Lamaar, I knew why she left him; I will never shake the memory of what I saw that day, and the inner picture of what she was doing those days . . .for fun.
She left Pop a few weeks later. Even though her words were directed at Pop, they hurt me too. "Bill, we just don't have fun anymore." As she’d said those words to Pop, I had no doubt what Mom’s idea of “fun” really was.
She’d left a note on the table saying that she needed some time to “work things out in her head”. Pop was devastated. She hadn’t left an address. Pop assumed she was staying with her folks in Connecticut. But he almost had a breakdown on fight night, the night the raw truth hit him like a haymaker.
####.
The events occurred shortly after Mom left. I had gone shopping at the A&P with my father. While we were waiting for the elevator in the lobby, two men came up behind us.
"Hey, how you doin!" one said.
We turned around and saw two tall black men The man held reached out and offered his hand to my father. "Good to see you man. Ive just moved into the building. I'm Big D and this here’s Bags”.
My father was as stunned as I was, given the size of the men. But he switched the grocery bags to free a hand to return the other man's handshake. "Hi," he grunted, looking up at Bags as he did so. "I'm Bill."
I was looking at the two of them, feeling anxiety rise with me at the exchange. I avoided looking at Bags, who I remembered from our previous meeting. He was wearing a white cotton tank top, dark purple nylon shorts that ended below his knee. He had a baseball cap turned backwards on his forehead, and I knew he was looking at me steadily.
We stepped into the elevator. I pushed our floor, and Big D said. "You guys live on 5? So do we. I just moved in last month. 5E. Bags’s stayin with me as his crib’s a little crowded right now. Right Bags?”
“Yeah” Bags said. “An don’t think I aint grateful bro.”
As the elevator made it's slow climb I tried to work out what was happening. We lived in 5D. The two men were living next door in 5E. I knew that Lamaar and Bags were previously on the floor above in 6E. I wondered why Bags had moved downstairs.
Big D was acting real friendly, smiling at my father while he told him how happy he was to be in such a nice building. But a weird feeling was rising in me, a mixture of panic and something else.
Although his words were pleasant, the sound of Big D's voice made me feel uneasy. He was standing too close than he had to my father, leaning into him and smiling. It was too friendly, it felt like he was running some kind of game. I could tell my father was uneasy too, but he was forced to respond with politeness.
When the elevator stopped, Big D and Bags got off first. I was still in the elevator, following my father out when Big D spoke to him again. Pointing to Pop's Gold's Gym T-shirt, he said: "You a fight fan, Bill?"
"Yeah, very much so." That was the first time he’d responded to Big D with more than a single word.
"Should be a good one tonight, eh?" Big D glanced for just a brief Moment at Bags when he said this. Almost like he was saying: "Watch this."
Jees, Pop . . . no! I was saying no to something I couldn't even think about. C'mon Pop! I was screaming at him inside my head.
"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it," Pop said. He was stiffening a bit, there was the slightest edge of sharpness in his voice.
"Yeah. Quarry-Norton should be worth watching." I knew Big D didn't mention Ali-Wepner, the top of the card, on purpose to try to draw an opinion from my father.
It was obvious to me, even as a thirteen year old, that ABC was using race to promote the fights. Wepner was the latest in a series of quick cash-ins that Ali had used in the year since regaining the heavyweight crown from George Foreman. Every three months or so he'd offer some white unknown a title shot so he could pocket another three million or so from ABC.
Wepner was typical; a thirty-three year old white liquor salesman, a big, slow man that could hit hard enough to gain a few knockouts over opponents that were even slower than he was. Each one of these fights had the effect of fanning the flickering hopes of millions of white fight fans who would grasp at any hope now to defeat Ali, their nemesis. Tonight’s fight was even billed by the network as “ Give the White Guy a Break.” I had no investment in these things, but my father still spoke of Rocky Marciano with reverence. And he hated the draft-dodging Ali enough to take a liking to Joe Frazier, because he was a man that beat Ali, and his because his style was close enough to Marciano's that it convinced my father that Rocky could have beaten him.
"Tell you what, Bill," Big D smiled at my father. "Why don't you and your boy come down to our place tonight?" He and Bags exchanged a quick glance. "Da four of us can watch the fights tonight."
"Well, I don't know . . ," Pop said, looking down as if the excuse he needed was written on the dirty hallway tiles. Bags was looking at me. I met his eyes and immediately looked away. Jesus, Pop. No. Bags was smirking, the thin wispy hairs that formed a fringe around his upper lip made him look evil.
Now Big D stiffened. The smile was going quickly. He looked mean. "C'mon man. I'm just being friendly. We're neighbors. . ." He seemed to stand taller, harder.
"OK. OK. I guess we can come."
Shit! Bags was grinning now, daring me to look back at him. My eyes had nowhere to go, they kept getting caught on his torso, the white cotton stretched tight over his dark brown body, over a chest and abdomen that was hard, rock hard.
"OK, then," Big D said. He and Bags turned, and he said over his shoulder" "Come by around 8:30. "
We turned too, towards our apartment next door. When we got to our door, Pop fumbled with his bags, and started opening the locks. I looked back over my shoulder at them, the two of them still laughing about something. But Bags was looking back too, and when he saw me he gave me a scowl
#######
We didn't say a word about it. My father didn't want to admit he had been cornered, outmaneuvered by Big D's wily friendliness, a friendliness that only partially covered something malevolent underneath. I thought about telling him I wouldn't go, but he might challenge me - he might ask what I was afraid of - as if his fear wasn't apparent.
So at 8:30 we walked down the hall like soldiers who'd rather take a bullet than admit fear before their comrades. We knocked on the door, and knocked again, louder so they would hear us over the music.
The door opened. Bags didn't even look at my father, he bored in on me with his eyes, and didn't manage anything beyond a sullen "hey." We walked past him into a small corridor. The living room was off to the left, and a hallway led to the right.
When we entered the living room, I saw this was a man's home. While our apartment still had many of the outer niceties of my mother, clearly this crib was set up for men. There was a small amount of furniture scattered on the hardwood floors, furniture with sharp, metallic angles covered with either polished glass or rich, black leather. The wall opposite the couch had an entertainment center with dozens of fine controls and flashing meters that reacted to the Motown beat. And right in front of it was a white, fluffy rug. Bearskin. My mind formed an immediate and vivid picture of what it was used for.
Big D walked in from the hallway. "Hey, glad you came!" He smiled and shook my father's hand, and then held it to me. "You're Jamie, if I remember right?"
I said "Yeah, Jamie." When I returned his handshake I saw how big his hands were. His fingers were so long they reached halfway up my forearm. I was struck by the contrast between the hard ridges of his knuckles against the large, but seemingly sensitive fingers.
"Why don't you two go in and sit down."
My father sat on the couch. Perhaps because he didn't realize how low to the ground it was. He seemed to sink in. I sat in leather rocker on his end of the couch, and was able to look down on him slightly. His eyes were expressionless, as if the strangeness of this, his presence in the home of some black people, his sitting on their couch listening to soul music had caused some inner persona to flee.
After a minute Bags came in and. handed each of us a Colt 45, and I looked over at my father before accepting it. "C'mon Bill, no harm in this, eh?" Big D said. "Just boys havin' a drink together." My father surfaced and gave a slight nod.
I gulped it, knowing from some drinks I had already had that it would deaden me, make me more able to handle this. It was good, real good, stronger than the other beers I had had. I leaned back in the rocker, while Big D switched from the stereo to the TV. Bags sat in the chair that matched mine over on the other side of the sofa. He took a pull from the beer, and gave me a wink.
Big D sat on the couch next to Pop. A lot of his additional height must have been in his legs; His head was a few inches above my fathers, but his knees were at eye level, so he had to spread them to see the TV. He was wearing red track shorts; I looked at the veined granite of his thighs and his hamstrings and I guessed he was a runner. He was younger than Pop, maybe his mid thirties, tops.
The beer tasted great, I settled back in my chair and started watching the TV. Quarry and Norton were already in the ring. Quarry, a big white guy who had mixed it with the best, was fighting for his professional career. A few years ago he lost to Frazier in a fight for the crown that Ali abandoned when he refused the draft. Since then he'd dropped rapidly in the rankings. Norton was a massive black guy known as the “Jaw Breaker” with 32 wins and three losses to his name – two of these losses were to Foreman and Ali.
Not long into the fight, Quarry developed a bad cut over his left eye. He was bleeding badly enough that the referee stopped the fight a few times and brought a doctor in. "That's it, fight's over." Big D said. "Norton's just gonna work on it."
As the bleeding accelerated, Quarry grew wilder and Norton more methodical, both men knowing that the cut changed the calculus of the fight, making it improbable that Quarry would last the full fifteen.
Big D downed his beer in a few quick gulps, I looked over and saw the muscles in his neck shiver as he brought the beer down. "These are going down good! Bags, why don't you get another round. Looks like Jamie there is ready for another."
"Yeah," I said quickly, holding up the can. I had only finished two-thirds of it, but I figured I could down it while Bags went for more. "How bout you, Bill?"
Pop held out the empty can. I hadn't realized he was empty too. He was the same as I was, liking the buzz from the beer, the calming, restful drowse of it. I downed mine as Bags took my father's can, so I was done as he came over to get mine. He took my empty and sauntered down the hall.
While he was down there, Norton connected with a flurry of punches. Quarry's chest was covered in blood now.
By the time Bags walked back with the beers the referee had stopped the fight again for the doctor to examine Quarry’s cut. "C'mon, man, let them fight!" Big D said.
Inexplicably, the ref let it go on. Maybe it was the TV schedule, but it was obvious to me that Quarry had no chance, he was just barely holding on, while Norton seemed
fresh and strong.
Bags handed my father a fresh Colt, he tossed one to Big D, and he held mine out to me. When I reached for it, he pulled it away quickly, like a tease. I looked up at him, and he was grinning like a cat. I felt a jolt in my body. I didn't reach again, knowing he'd just do the same thing. After an eternity, he handed it down to me. I took it and gulped. He walked over to his chair, smiling at Big D as he did so.
Big D was about to say something, when Bags shouted. "Look at this." We looked over at the set. They were stopping the fight . Quarry couldn't take any more punishment. Norton was surrounded by an exultant mob. Bags muted the volume on the TV as the ad break began.
"Why'd they stop it." Big D said. "Damn, Norton was just getting warmed up."
"Too much blood," Bags said. “Hey Bill, how come white guys bleed so much? Ya man, he be bleedin like a stuck pig.”
Pop looked up from his Colt like he heard the sound of an approaching predator.
"I mean, the fight just gets started, a round or two, and these white guys, they start bleedin' like fucking pigs,” Bags said. “All of them”
"Marciano never got cut." Pop said it with surprising force, as if Bags had hit some tripwire. I could feel the anxiety bubble up within me from beneath the sudsy drowse of the beer.
"Marciano never fought men like this," Bags said, dismissively. If I was expecting some confrontation I was disappointed. Pop had no response.
Instead, there was another eerily long silence as we watched the ads on TV without sound. Too long. It became uncomfortable. Al the time Bags was staring at Pop. Eventually Pop broke the silence.
"Nice place you got here," he said, trying to diffuse the tension.
"Got a white bitch come in twice a week” Big D said. “Bitch cleans like you wouldn't believe."
I was stunned by his crudity. One thing about my parents – there was never any obscenity in our house, so it was strange hearing this kind of talk with Pop around. Big D kept on going though.
"She a real fine piece of ass too, right Bags?"
"Shit yeah!" Bags said, as he took a slug of beer. He was slumped back in the chair, one leg with was hiked up on the glass edge of the coffee table. “Bitch always dress like she needin some pole, aint dat right.”
I took a long pull on my beer. I was slightly giddy from the beer, and the unreal situation around me. I knew Bags was the younger man but he seemed so . . . confident, so sure of himself, in front of my Pop.
“Dats right, man” Big D said. “Plenty of white bitches gaggin for it in this hood, right Bill?” He laughed, and slapped my Pop’s thigh, hard. Pop winced. My father seemed to sink deeper into the seat.
There was another long, uncomfortable silence.
"So, you got a bitch in your place Bill?" Big D asked.
I took another drink, watching the two of them. The buzz I was feeling gave me a curious feeling of detachment. I saw the teasing beneath Big D's mock friendly demeanor.
"No." Pop turned to the side and looked up at Big D. "The two of us live alone." He looked like he wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.
"Just like us, eh? Just a couple of bachelors with nothin' holdin' us back." Bags said. He straightened up a minute and looked at the TV. I could see him measuring something in his mind, timing something. I was folded back into the leather rocker. He turned towards Pop again.
"Tell me Bill." He dropped his voice a bit, but it was still easy to hear."You get lots of pussy?"
He was smiling, but the words came out like a challenge. Just how much of a man was he?
"Yeah, I get my share." Pop said, hesitantly. I knew he was lying, and from the sound of his voice Bags knew it to.
"Shit, look at that fat fuck." Bags said. The picture had shifted to Chuck Wepner's dressing room. He was preparing for his ring walk. Big D turned the TV volume back up.
"Bags, get us all another round." Big D said. I was glad. My beer was empty, and I wanted another, because while Big D had eased back a bit, I knew it wouldn't be long before he started picking at Pop's scabs again. I needed another beer.
Wepner was sitting on a bench in the training room, huddled over in concentration as his trainer worked on his shoulders, talking to his man. The TV announcer said: "Six months ago he was a liquor salesman, and he got a phone call. . ." Building him up, encouraging people like my father to believe that fate and desire could somehow win over the gravity of talent.
Bags was standing over me, holding a beer out. I reached up slowly; I wanted the beer, but I didn't want to be teased again. He didn't this time. He handed me the beer casually. I looked up and said "Thanks." He had that same smirk on his face, that same hard look in his eyes.
After another flurry of commercials began. Then Ali came in like a prince, surrounded by a huge entourage. The arena was electric with adoration. He tossed his robe away like a Sultan, and the hangers-on fell away like chariot dust. He started dancing around the ring, shadow boxing. "Damn, he looks good!" Bags said.
"What a body. Damn he's ripped!" Big D and Bags were joyful, watching the great Ali. "Ain't he pretty?" Big D said, and it was another departure from the world I knew. Two men free enough to talk about a man's body, the specifics of his build, and the way he carried himself. "Look at those hands, so quick," Big D said.
"Yeah, fast like a mutha, but big. Seven inch fists." Bags said.
Wepner had already entered the ring, another spectator to Ali's show. He too was big, but running to fat and covered with body hair.
The TV switched to another commercial break. Again Big D muted the TV.
"So we were talking about pussy before, Bill," Big D said. "You lived here a while. You must know all the fine bitches in this building, right."
Oh my God! Like my father would know. Like the young career women from the building came in and strutted around his recliner. The thought was laughable. My father stayed motionless on the couch, he couldn't bring an answer up.
I took a slug and looked at a wire frame clock on the wall. I wondered how long before we could leave, and get back home to a place that was familiar, safe. I didn’t care who won. I just wanted the fight to be over.
The fight started. Wepner came out like a bull, big and menacing. Ali met him in the center of the ring and started dancing, moving back towards his left as Wepner chased him. Webner started throwing punches, but Ali slipped them easily. About two minutes had elapsed before Ali threw his first punch, connecting with a quick, stinging jab. He connected three more times before the bell. Wepner hadn’t landed one solid punch.
As second round ended, there was a delay while the ring doctor took a look at a cut over Wepner’s right eye. Big D started speaking to my Pop again.
"I'll tell you Bill, Bags here, he gets pussy like you wouldn't believe. Bitches all the time. Some of them real sweet young things – college bitches, nice and tight, know what I mean?"
"Shit yeah!" Bags tipped his beer can up in acknowledgment. “Ripe and ready, that’s how I like em”.
Even at that age I knew the type of men that girls liked, the type they'd open their legs for: men like Bags. Men who were cocky, and who looked like they could handle themselves. Even laying back in his rocker, Bags looked strong and agile; his young black body was hard with tight muscles. He had deep set black eyes beneath long, sweeping eyebrows, eyes that were wide apart, and bright with animal attention. Yes, he looked like he had everything that girls looked for. He looked like he had balls.
"Gets it from me. See that rug there?" Big D said, addressing Pop. He pointed over to the white bearskin rug. "At least a couple of times a week I get me a bitch down on that rug”
I could see it now. I imagined his muscular black frame pounding one of his conquests on that thick rug. I imagined that if lay down on it I would smell the juices and perfume of the last girl he had.
“Married white bitches, dey gaggin for it too, aint dat right Bags?” Big D said.
Pop was just sitting there, just staring off into space, ignoring the comments. It seemed he was studying the table light. Big D leaned back and stretched his long arms. "Damn, I love me some married pussy. Can't go more than a day or two without wetting my big dick in a sweet married pussy. You tellin me you aint the same Bill?
My Pop was silent.
"I’m speaking to you BILLY FUCKING BOY!” he said menacingly. “What are you, a fucking fag`?”
."Er, actually, I think we're gonna get going," Pop immediately said, sitting forward, trying to stand. “Come on Jamie”.
I was surprised that Pop had any fight left. I thought he was just going to sit there and listen silently all night.
"You wanna go?" Big D sat up too, and his expression changed in an instant. He drew his head back, as if recoiling from some insult.
“SIT THE FUCK DOWN” Cap said.
Cap’s eyes were like hot coals, and his body that was relaxed and fluid just a Moment ago was now tense, ready for something, something that scared me. Pop immediately sat back down.
"What's the matter, you don't like it here?"
"No . . ," my father looked up at him. "I-I-I umm . . ," he was looking for a way out. "I-I-I mean I just w-w-want to w-w-w--watch the fight that’s all. It’s c-c-cool man"
"OK, then," Big D said, and resumed his lazy recline. He stretched his arms again, and placed one arm up on the shoulder of the couch, his big hand almost touching my father's neck. "Ok, then, Mr. Bill. We'll w-w-watch the fight." He grinned like a kid at Bags as he mocked Pop's stutter. “It’s all c-c-c-cool”.
The third round began. Again, it was one way traffic. Ali was simply picking off Wepner with his jab, dancing round him and making him miss with his wild swings. It looked like Ali was enjoying dismantling his opponent. He was taking his time. The fourth, the fifth, they were much the same. Ali was winning the rounds, toying with Wepner, but not delivering the decisive blow.
“Yo Bill. This white flight we keep hearin about, what’s the deal with that? Bags said to my Pop after the end of the fifth.
“It’s err, white people moving to the suburbs” Pop said
“And why do you think that is Bill,” Big D said
“Er..I don’t know” Pop said, sounding cornered. “To escape, to get away from…” his voice dwindled”
“To get away from da black man? Is that what it’s all about Bill?
“No…er…well” said Pop.
"Always been the way it's always been when different people meet” Bags said. “Look at da Indians, da Jews. That’s why people migrate, why they move. It's fear. They afraid."
My Pop had no reply.
“You think white folks in fear of the black man Bill?” Cap said. “That why they all running like pussies?”
My father didn't move, and didn't acknowledge Big D in any way. The black man seemed like someone who would get off on pain. Someone who would hurt you, just for kicks. For a second I imagined seeing Pop spitting blood and teeth on the floor. We were both scared. Pop even seemed to be trembling
We sat in silence, and watched the fight. The next round was underway Wepner was standing in the center of the ring, turning like a pinwheel as Ali circled around him. Every five seconds or so, Ali would fling a jab that shot from his body like the bite of a cobra. Wepner was holding his hands just a few inches below his face, but Ali's jab was so quick that he could fling a punch the few feet that separated them and land it squarely before Wepner could raise his hand to block it. Every time.
The silence broke when the ref called the doctor in. "Shit! Fucker's bleedin'," Bags said.
"Damn! That shit again!" Big D said. He sat a minute and said some more. "Know how that works Bill?"
He didn't wait for my father to ask; Big D moved over along the couch right next to Pop and drew his right hand into a huge fist and said: "Ali hits like this. . ." Big D demonstrated the movement of a punch. "See, just as the punch lands, he turns his hand just a bit. . ." He pivoted his hand counterclockwise an inch or so. "Just a few punches with that little turn there cuts the motherfucker's eye open."
Pop was shut down, hiding somewhere deep inside. Big D looked at him, waiting a long time for a reaction from Pop.
“Talking bout bitches, Lamaar upstairs got a new white bitch,” Big D said. “Man, she makes some noise. I can hear her begging for it, like she never been pronged before. Dat why Bags spendin some time at my crib.”
“You ever hear Lamar at it with his new bitch, Bill?” he asked my Pop
“I can’t say I have” my Pop replied
"You ever hear Lamaar pronging his new white bitch, Jamie?"
I said it: “Er….yeah, I did once."
“Sound like she havin a reeeal good time right?
“I guess so” I said
Big D leaned back on the couch and laughed. Bags almost spit his beer out on the table. This was funny!
Then Big D stood up, and he said to Bags: "Let's go in the kitchen and get some more beers."
When they left, I could hear them down there, laughing and giggling, and talking about something in low, basso whispers. I leaned over at Pop. "Pop, can't we just get out of here?"
He was frozen. Maybe he had the same fear I did; whatever it was though, he seemed pale and bloodless. "It's not going to last long . . . maybe another round or so," he said
I was about to tell him I wanted to leave anyway, but at that Moment something happened. I was about to speak, but then heard a rhythmic squeaking sound coming from the ceiling. Barely imperceptible at first, it was definitely the sound of a bed creaking. The regular creaking sound seemed to provide a warped accompaniment to Wepner’s vicious beatdown
Then Big D and Bags sauntered back in, holding two beers each. Bags walked right over to me and glanced at the TV “Shit, that white boy’s taking some punishment” Bags said
Then I heard it again. it was definitely the sound of a bed creaking, and a squeaking sound could also be heard. Then I heard what I though was a wail of pleasure. “Oooooooh yeeeahhh” – we all heard it. And I recognized the voice.
The ninth round was over. Wepner was still hanging in there, taking the shots.
“Sounds like Lamaar’s back home” Big D said. There was silence again. Then more creaking, faster now, mixed with the unmistakable, wet sounds of fucking.
Then my Mom’s voice – unmistakably my Mom’s – cut through our silence like a knife. We all heard it”“Oooh, yes, fuck me Lamaar, fuck me. Yeah. Give it to me. Oooooh yes. Fill me up. I want it so baaaaaad!!".
I looked at Pop. He seemed unable to comprehend what was happening. Surely he couldn’t have failed to recognized Mom’s voice. He looked stunned.
Then Pop blurted out "Jeez, that sounds like Carol"
He was staring up at the ceiling. Both black guys were suppressing laughter.
The bed creaks were louder and faster now, as were Mom’s yelps and wails of pleasure. We could hear a male voice too, grunts and snarls. ”
Creak, creak, creak, slurp, slurp slurp
“Ooooooh! Ooooooh! Ooooooh! Mom groaned.
“Take it bitch”
“Yes. yes! Yes! YEEEES!! Give to to me”
“Fucking hell, that is Carol” Pop said.
Wepner lunged forward, but his advance was halted by a lightning-fast Ali jab that caught him square on the nose.
Then we heard a loud banging sound, like wood on concrete. It must have been the bedhead hitting the wall.
“Seconds out, round ten”
The fighters were back in the ring but my Pop wasn’t paying attention. Mom’s wails rose to a crescendo, then became sobs. Sobs of pleasure.
“The fucking whore” Pop said.
“Shit, bitch in tears from da big prong" Bags said.
"You ever make a woman cry because our prong feel so sweet inside her Bill?.”
My father took a deep breath. Then I saw there were tears in his eyes
The headboard was banging even harder now, the rhythmic noise almost drowning out the TV.
“YES!” Mom was yelling. “Yes, fuck it up me, fuck me, give it to me please”
“Please, please” Mom begged. “Fill me up. I love it!”
“I’ll kill her” Pop sobbed. He was in tears. He rose and made to leave, but Cap was on him immediately.
“Something you don’t like Mr Bill?”
Big D dragged Pop by his ear and pushed him against the wall. “Somethin you don’t like? Say it”
“No, no” said Pop.
“Raise your hands boy. Be a man”
N…nnn…no, I don’t want to fight” Pop said.
“Something you don’t like about white bitches going with brothas?”
Big D’s face was right in Pop’s face and he was cowering.
“Noooo” Pop said
“Why won’t you raise your arms? You tellin me you a pussy Bill?
“Y…y…y..yess” Pop said. “I don’t want to fight. I am..I am”
“You’re what? Big D said
“A..a pussy. I’m a pussy” Pop sobbed.
Upstairs, the fucking sounds continued. They were even louder than before.
“Apologise for the sins of your race” Big D said
“I’m sorry for everything, really” Pop said. “I just want to go home”
“Who’s the superior race? Say black men are superior”
"Black men are superior”
Louder. So Lamaar’s bitch can hear you”. Big D began viciously twisting Pop’s ear.
“BLACK MEN ARE SUPERIOR” Pop yelled at the top of his lungs. This time the entire building could probably hear him. I wondered what Mom was thinking, hearing that shout as Lamaar flooded her womb his seed. Did she recognize Pop’s voice? And what on earth might she be thinking later as she curled up to Lamaar is post coital bliss?
Then, I glanced at the TV. Wepner had finally succumbed. It was fifteen rounds. He’d almost gone the distance, and he was a bloody mess. Big D released his grip on Pop so he and Cap could high five.
Just then, thankfully the doorbell rang. Bags spoke to someone on the intercom and then buzzed them in. He then strode back into the room.
“Hey D, remember that college bitch I told you about, she here with a friend. They want to smoke and party man. What you say we get rid of these two pussies and get ourselves some real pussy?
Pop was still stood against the wall, shaking. He looked terrified.
“You aint going to disturb my bro Lamaar, right? Cap said to Pop.
Nooo, noo, I only want to go home” Pop said.
The doorbell rang, and Big D went to get it. The two girls who paraded in were young, slightly unsteady on slut heels. Both were wearing tight dresses. One carried a bottle of brandy. “Hiiiii” they said.
Then I realized to my horror that one of the girls was Susan, the girl from the bakery, and the other was her friend Emma. I could hardly recognize Susan. She looked older with make-up and her hair done. To be honest, I thought, she looked like a slut, She kissed both men, as did Emma. “I brought the brandy you like” Emma said.
“Good bitch” Bags said “Hey ladies, this here is Jamie and Bill, they were just leaving” Bags said.
The two women hardly glanced at us, their eyes were so focused on the black men. I don’t think Susan even recognized me. If she did. She didn’t care. On the way out, I glanced back I saw Susan settling into the sofa, where my Pop had been sat, her skirt riding high and her hot thighs on display. As the door closed we heard giggles and laughter.
Pop and I walked into our apartment in silence, and immediately went to bed in our separate rooms. We didn’t say a word to each other.
Later, as I layed in bed listening through the thin walls to Susan getting fucked, I thought what Cap had said about white flight. I thought of those ancient people crossing seas on fragile reed boats. The few lucky ones found refuge on small Polynesian islands before the boat gave out. Or people with bleeding feet walking on the ice across the Bering Strait. Not for adventure, not a thirst for new places, but a need for safety, to find some faraway niche, away from the stronger ones. The ones their women wanted to mate with .
The men may have been escaping, I thought, but their bitches doubtless kept looking back with desire and lust in their eyes.
And then I thought of what I had seen in my parent’s bedroom, the way Mom sounded with that black man on top of her, the strength of his muscles, the size of his cock, the clench of his black ass as he took her. Then I visualized what was happening now, on the other side of the wall - Susan being pounded by Cap on the bearskin rug, while Emma rode Big D on the sofa.
Now I knew the real reason for white flight.
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Note: Until recently I had not read Pervitron’s classic Fight Night for many years. I remembered it as a great scenario, but was turned off by the almost exclusively forced gay sex that the story leads into. Upon a recent read of it, I began to think what the story could have been if I controlled the narrative. This is the result. I changed the prose to direct the plot to where I wanted it to go, but the credit remains Pervitron’s.
I have also realized that Fight Night’s initial scenario had a profound effect on my storytelling. I used almost the exact same location, Morningside Heights, for New York New York, which also had a historical setting. A teenage boy’s account of his stepmother’s infidelity was used in “My New Mom”. I fact I now realize that many themes of masculinity, submission, redundancy and implied violence explored in Fight Night appear in my stories.
Finally, a mention to Chuck Wepner. Contrary to what the story suggests, he put in the fight of his life. He actually had Ali down in the 9th round. Some say the movie “Rocky” was inspired by his courageous performance.
(The story goes that, on the day of the fight, Wepner presented a sexy negligee to his wife and told her to wear it in bed since she would be sleeping with the heavyweight champion of the world that night. Mrs. Wepner was wearing the negligee when Wepner returned to their hotel room with twenty three stitches. She asked him: "Okay, bigshot...Do I go to Ali's room, or does he come to mine?")
Pervitron’s prose is immense, The original can be found at
http://www.asstr.org/fiLamaar/Authors/Pervitron/
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