I stretch out for a full twenty minutes. The older you get, the more essential this boring routine becomes. A muscle strain or, worse, a tear, takes longer to get over and being sidelined is not an option. I need to work out. Without it I’d go fucking crazy. Especially now. It centers me. I need to do more of this in order to stay cool. Mercando’s right: I need to shut the fuck up and keep my head down.
I do a further twenty minutes of jumping jacks, squats, burpees, and some hops, in preference to the jump rope, as that messes up the lactic acids in the arms if you plan on throwing punches later. Then I wrap up my hands and do three rounds of shadowboxing with three-pound hand weights before gloving up and doing four rounds on the heavy bags, mixing up combos — jab, straight right, left hook, jab, double jab, right, right hook, right cross, uppercuts — finding a beautiful rhythm that takes me into another place. As always, sad nemesis faces materialize on the battered leather bag as I strike:
BANG! The fascist shitbag Quist.
BANG! The insipid slimy Thorpe.
BANG! The fucking coward McCandless.
BANG! The filthy creepy pedophile Winter.
BANG! The scheming fake Mona.
BANG! The rubber-lipped faggot Toby.
BANG! The Botox fake ass Thelma.
BANG! The Botox fake ass Valerie.
BANG! THE ASSHOLE IN THE PARK. . FUCKING CLINT AU — FUCK THAT! FUCK THAT! FUCK THAT! GET PAST THAT SHIT!
BANG! The greedy needy loser Sorenson.
BANG! The greedy needy loser Sorenson.
BANG! Sorenson. BANG! Sorenson. BANG FUCKING SORENSON. .
I’m panting and drenched in sweat as the rounds fly past. Then I wind down and get in four times ten pull-ups on the bar. I drop to the mat, feeling that burn, that delicious purr inside, and take a long, frosty drink of H2O. Grace Carillo from the MDPD has come in, and greets me with a croc’s smile. Her strut is good, catwalk-arrogant, but her ass belongs to me. After a sleek, pantherlike stretch, she’s wrapping her hands and I’m gloving up again, mouthguard in and headgear on, as we climb through the ropes with Emilio. I wear a Title protective sports bra with reinforced chest guards, which is fine for sparring, though I note Grace is clad in the heavy armour: the full female training chest protector. She looks real badass, with that dusky skin set off against the black headguard, titguard, gloves, no-foul-groin and abdomen protector, and the shin-high boots. Way too much for sparring though: I smell gun-shy.
Emilio sets the bell and Grace and I touch gloves and commence our tight dance. With those long rangy arms, she’s a tough, awkward motherfucker; there is a solid left jab to get past. Let that bitch control the distance and she’ll torture and frustrate you all day. I’m looking at the beads of moisture spotting on her face between the lines of the headgear, my thoughts drifting to her pussy and how sweaty it would be, but how sweet it would taste. .
BANG!
Motherfucker! I see stars as a solid straight right pushes through my guard, snapping me back into the here and now. Que perra se determina. . bitch got game. . I can’t have this, and I shake my head and move forward, determined to get inside this fucker. I have to take another, but I snap it off, cause I’m where I want to be, and I let go with a vicious hook to the body, Micky Ward style. Sweet spot, I purr to myself, watching the wind squeeze from her accordioning frame. — Sorry, sugar, I say as she winces and sucks in air, still folded like a razor.
— Easy, ladies, Emilio warns, as Grace shakily gets upright, and we’re back at it again.
It’s now a technical show, as the sting has gone out of Grace’s jab. When Emilio earnestly calls time we end on a sweaty embrace and I’m digging her musky scent as it mingles with her perfume.
We hit the showers and Grace strips off unselfconsciously. Oh, man, the body on that chick. — You really got me good there, she smiles, rubbing that taut, sleek torso as she steps into a cubicle. If she didn’t have a boyfriend, I swear to God I would try and tap, tap, tap me that MDPD ass until it pooped nuggets of gold! I’m berthed in the adjoining trap, touching myself, thinking of how I could just step next door with my terry cloth and soap up that pussy. .
In my mind I make that short step and Grace’s big lips are on mine and I’m sliding my hands around her ass and we’re grinding our crotches together and then I’m hunkering down onto my knees to feast on that sweet bounty. . no bitch tastes finer than one with a fusion of Latin and African American blood coursing through her veins. . — Ohhhh. .
— You okay, Lucy? Grace’s head snaps around the corner of my stall.
— The water got kinda cold all of a sudden, I say, stepping back in terror.
— It can do that, she smiles, stepping out, big yellow beach towel like a candy wrapper around that sweet block of milk chocolate.
I’m too mortified to say anything so I get myself dried off and pull on my clothes.
Sometimes Grace and I grab a drink or a sandwich, but she’s back on call, so I’m on a solitary walk up to Lincoln. It’s hot now, the Bank of America clock is saying 80 but it feels more like 90, and I’m heading down the street, browsing in store windows, and to kill time I go into Books & Books. I start looking at the art books, which I generally never do, and I realize why I’m acting this way when I see the spine:
LENA SORENSON: FUTURE HUMAN
I pick it up and leaf through the pages. There are numerous plates of the little bird-boned monster men with their reptile-green translucent skins I saw Sorenson trying to assemble in her workshop. I’m scanning around shiftily as I read, worried the stalking loser will come in, catch me red-handed, and identify me as being like her. So I take the book up to the cashier and pay the ludicrously expensive price of $48. I feel both relieved and exploited as the sales clerk slips it into a brown bag. It makes me wonder what Sorenson or the photographer and/or author team of Mathew Goldberg and Julius Carnoby get paid for this?
Retracing my steps, I continue down Washington. On 14th I’m arrested by the presence of a man with greasy blond, sun-bleached hair, his skin tanned under a coat of grime, clad in the middle-aged Miami sex offender’s uniform of grubby Hawaiian shirt and stained beige shorts. I can’t quite believe it: it’s Winter. Timothy Winter. The fucking pedophile, the short-eyes whose miserable ass I was stupid enough to save! He’s with a balding obese guy with a grimy layer of sweat on his pustular face. This guy wears a buttoned vest and nothing else on top; a brown gut swells down to an underpants waistband with David Beckham embroidered on it. Although this fucking tramp must be in his forties, his pants hang hip-hop style below his gross ass. It’s Winter who revolts me most, though; his sneer of entitlement as he tries to bum cigarettes from smokers standing outside one of the Irish themed pubs. He doesn’t even recognize me when our eyes meet! A doorman, sitting on a stool outside, tracks him and Fatboy Gross down the street.