By Bart Barry-
“By the time the matador enters with his cape and sword, the bull is already swaying sideways and forwards as if at sea, with punctured and twitching muscles – surprised, I think, and offended, but here is the thing – seeing itself for the first time in true relation to something else, no longer alone and dominant, but suddenly half of a two-way exchange.” – Samantha Harvey, Dear Thief
Cast
RAMIREZ …. Barber and trainer, former amateur boxer in San Antonio, tall.
SIL …. Aircraft engineer, former Texas Golden Gloves champion in Dallas, fast.
BIG RICK …. Construction worker, former Alabama defensive lineman, strong.
SAFE HANDS …. Writer, fifty pounds overweight, relaxed.
RAMIREZ: Big Rick gets done with him, and I say, ‘Another victim.’ Safe Hands starts auctioning it all off. He donates his headgear to the gym, kept his gloves, and gives a Mexican kid that hightech mouthpiece he was so proud of.
BIG RICK: Was a surprise, dude. I didn’t think it was that bad.
SAFE HANDS: It was that bad. Let me be clear.
SIL: Good chin and a long fuse when we sparred, Safe Hands.
RAMIREZ: Same thing with Big Rick.
SAFE HANDS: Y’all weren’t getting hit by him.
BIG RICK: I went easy. I didn’t put it on you. What would’ve happened if I did?
SAFE HANDS: No worse because you’d have tensed up, slowed down. Only time in my life I had this terrible thought: What if he kills me by accident?
RAMIREZ: Never been there. I take that shit personal.
SIL: Me either. It’s a fight.
RAMIREZ: Safe Hands, you kept leaning left, putting yourself in cannon alley.
SAFE HANDS: I was out of my mind. Every time Big Rick hit me, I wondered why the hell I was still conscious.
BIG RICK: You make me into more than I am.
SAFE HANDS: Bullshit. Fear doesn’t lie.
RAMIREZ: You ever spar him, Sil?
SIL: Safe Hands? Lots.
RAMIREZ: Big Rick.
SIL: Once. I don’t know about them right hands. I wasn’t availing myself of them.
BIG RICK: Frustrating as shit, man. I couldn’t find him anywhere I looked.
RAMIREZ: I only did pads with him. Did that before I put him in with Safe Hands. I knew what was coming.
SAFE HANDS: Thanks, friend.
RAMIREZ: (Laughing) You’re welcome, friend.
SIL: Why they start calling you ‘Safe Hands’?
SAFE HANDS: Ask Ramirez – his nickname.
RAMIREZ: I seen this lazy whiteboy barely hitting the bag. Putting in no work. Three minutes was his finish line, and he don’t care how he gets there. But he knew how to wrap hands. Safest hands in the gym, ain’t that right, Safe Hands?
SIL: He used to war a little with me.
SAFE HANDS: You brought it out, Sil. That incessant tapping. He’d make me wear headgear, which I hated, just so he could aim at that Everlast label on my forehead. A target.
SIL: I told you.
SAFE HANDS: No lie. He told me to get headgear with a label so he’d have something to aim those jabs at. Tap, tap, tap.
SIL: Eventually he’d get mad and pounce. It was either wrestle him or war with him, and we usually wrestled. He had a chin and some hook. I don’t war with that.
RAMIREZ: Why didn’t we ever spar, Safe Hands?
SAFE HANDS: I’ll tell you exactly why. That kid Joe. He was my height, much faster and about half my age. I watched you run him into that left elbow four times. Fifth time you split his eyebrow.
RAMIREZ: You’re gonna to be a tall Puerto Rican in Little Mexico, kid, you better have something. I got scalps with that elbow.
BIG RICK: Ramirez can crack. Tall skinny dude who brings it.
RAMIREZ: It’s the chinups. I tell the kids do chinups. A knotted upper back is how you get power.
SAFE HANDS: Or you can be three hundred pounds of muscle like Big Rick.
RAMIREZ: That’ll do.
SIL: Not every big guy –
RAMIREZ: Was just going to say that.
SIL: – knows how to punch. You weigh three hundred pounds, you can hurt another man. But there’s a difference between that muscle-punching and a guy who has technique.
SAFE HANDS: Big Rick was rough when I first saw him. I told my wife, ‘Black guys hate getting hit in the face. I’ll just put a jab in his face, his hands’ll go way up, I’ll jump in under his elbows, and he’ll get tired after a couple rounds.’
BIG RICK: You were right about hitting me in the face.
SAFE HANDS: Did I?
RAMIREZ: You landed a couple.
SAFE HANDS: Big Rick got out of range so damn fast. That first step backwards, man, that’s what did me in. He’d be out of range, and I’d be soldout over my left knee, and then, boom!
BIG RICK: I’m strong as shit, dude, but I can move.
SAFE HANDS: I wasn’t ready for that. Sil, sure, he’s polished. But not you, Big Rick.
BIG RICK: I ain’t moved like Sil in my life.
SIL: (Smiling) Put the sweetness in the science, brother.
SAFE HANDS: How tall are you, Sil?
SIL: I tell people six-foot.
RAMIREZ: I’m six-four, Sil, and I got you by half a foot.
SIL: Hush, child.
SAFE HANDS: First ten times I sparred with Sil, I swore he was seven-foot. He was ten feet away from me. I’ve never sparred with anyone who understood space like Sil.
BIG RICK: I still ain’t hit him, seen him.
SIL: Got to keep the young folks at bay.
RAMIREZ: You calling Safe Hands ‘young’? How old are you Sil?
SIL: Not important.
RAMIREZ: He shaves his head and refuses to talk.
SAFE HANDS: What do you guys think of that quote at the top?
BIG RICK: About the bull?
SIL: I kinda liked it. But I like sparring more than sex truly. Moving around is a drug for me. It’s why I’m still doing it –
SAFE HANDS: At whatever age.
SIL: There you go.
RAMIREZ: You ever get sparring so good you don’t care if you lose, if you look bad, because you’re just so glad you found someone you match so well with?
BIG RICK: Hell no.
SIL: Nah.
RAMIREZ: Me either. But I hear stories.
SAFE HANDS: I have.
RAMIREZ: Fucking Safe Hands.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
