with more people than Martha. Her issue, she told me, is that she just never felt fulfilled. She kept a running classified in the adult section of MetroCrawford, the local alternative magazine, letting the folks who were so inclined know that she was a BBW searching for fulfillment. Apparently, there was no shortage of men willing to lend a big, beautiful woman a hand when it came to her pursuit of fulfillment.
At two p.m., I had a session with Clogger McGraw. Clogger got his nickname from an unfortunate bathroom incident at a crowded party. Suffice it to say, Clogger conspicuously interrupted the natural flow of things at this gigantic house bash and was forever stuck with this incredibly visual moniker. Clog at one time was a talented navy pilot who spent his days landing F-something-or-others on aircraft carriers. Unfortunately, this activity was the most fun for the Clogman when he was stoned out of his mind. Amazingly, Clogger made it out of the service with an honorable discharge. The real trouble began when he flew his single engine plane upside down under a Thruway overpass.
Never a detail man, Clogger did it a quarter of a mile from a state police barracks. After the stunt, he noticed he was dangerously low on fuel and landed the plane in the right-hand lane of I-87, just south of the New Paltz exit. Clogs still had a joint going when a trooper pulled his plane over, and they got off on the wrong foot when Clogger refused to turn down the Dead on his custom plane stereo. When the trooper tried to give him a Breathalyzer, Clogger took an exaggerated inhalation on it and thanked the officer for the bong hit. He was laughing so hard when the trooper handcuffed him that he strained an abdominal muscle.
Clogger was a trip, but he rarely showed up for sessions. He recently got his wings back on a provisional basis and he was making his money flying a plane that pulled a message behind it. Most recently he was advertising a car dealership by flying the plane past Yankee Stadium during their big weekend home stands. The Clogmeister had even developed his own following. After a few games of making the pass in his little single engine, he got bored, and boredom often led to trouble for Clog. In this case, it seemed to be harmless or at least mostly harmless.
Instead of just flying by with the sign, Clogger started to do a series of acrobatic rolls through the sky. He planned it so it would occur at the end of the bottom of the fifth inning. It got to be a favorite with the crowd and Steinbrenner, ever the businessman, even got an exemption for Clogger to fly closer to the stadium. Pretty soon after that, the Yankee radio announcers also got into the act. Now, at the end of the fifth, they went to a commercial late so John Sterling, the announcer famous for saying, “Yankees win, thhhhhhhhhhhe Yankees win!” at the end of games could announce Clogger. He would announce Clog’s arrival and then after Clog did his roll, Sterling would say, “Clogger cannnnnnns it!” It got so popular that Steinbrenner had Sterling do it over the PA, in addition to the live radio broadcast. It was pure Clogger. Being a big Yankees fan myself, I had always wanted to see the Stadium from Clogger’s view and the Clogster agreed to let me be his copilot someday. I made him promise to stay off the Thruway on the way home.
After Clogger came Larry Kingston, who was chronically depressed and incredibly boring to talk to. During Larry’s sessions I usually pretended to jot notes down on what he said and instead wrote out what I needed at the grocery store.
The very last session of the day was with Emmanuel “Froggy” Bramble. Froggy was another gay guy who hung out in the park and lived pretty much the same life as Mikey. Froggy didn’t have any desire to go the transgendered route, but he was flamboyantly feminine. He accentuated a lisp as if playing to the stereotype and he often said he had no desire to change his lifestyle.
His numerous arrests for park activity and low-level drug possessions forced him into treatment. Like Mikey, he was fun to talk to but he did very little therapeutic “work” in our sessions-whatever that is. Froggy was originally from Jamaica and he had very dark skin and wore his hair in neat cornrows. At six-two and a well-muscled 215 pounds, he didn’t really fit the body type of your basic, central-casting flamer.
He was about ten minutes late, which is actually early by our clinic’s standards. Froggy was wearing knee- length black spandex pants and a white mesh shirt. He kept his wraparound mirrored sunglasses on.
“Hello Mr. Duffy,” Froggy said.
“Hey Froggy,” I said. “Tell me what’s been going on.”
“Oh, you know, just doing my thing.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. You’re talking about your nocturnal park rendezvous?”
“You say it so nice,” Froggy said, exaggerating his lisp.
“C’mon, Frog, you know it’s not safe.”
“That doesn’t seem to bother the steady stream of upstanding businessmen who come visit us,” he said. “’Course when I get through with them, they’re all upstanding.”
“Yeah, but-”
“This week we had a Crawford city council member, a prominent tax attorney, and my new favorite-that TV doctor,” Froggy rolled his eyes like someone who just finished a superb flaming baked Alaska for dessert. “That man gives as good as he gets-just like he says, ‘body and spirit,’” Froggy said.
“Look, Frog, let’s talk about drugs…”
“He’s so cute in his white coat and to think, a TV celebrity, doing me the favors.”
“Frog-the drugs?” I said.
And so it went. Froggy wanted to get off bragging about his sex life and I wanted to talk about anything else. Part of it was because it was a little gross, but mostly because it didn’t help Froggy focus on doing anything to better himself. It was an uphill battle, but toward the end of the hour Froggy halfheartedly agreed to at least look at his addictive tendency.
Such is a day in the business of saving lives. It was a full day and I had had enough. I needed to do something physical and get my heart racing, so I headed to the gym to hopefully get some sparring in. My own rule is to get a sparring session in at least every two weeks if I have no fight scheduled. If I’m training for a specific bout, then I spar three times a week. As a professional opponent, it behooves me to stay in shape in case a decent payday, short-notice fight comes up. There was the possibility of that fight in Kentucky, but I didn’t think I wanted to take it. After that, you just never know when the phone is going to ring.
Smitty was watching a couple of teenage featherweights in the ring. The cool thing about Smitty was he gave everyone the same attention regardless of ability or potential. The determining factor about whether Smitty took time to coach you was whether you sparred with heart. If you avoided fighting, if you got in the ring and pussied it, or if you made a ton of excuses about sparring, then Smitty had little use for you. He wouldn’t be mean; he just wouldn’t take you seriously.
Fighting was a spiritual thing to him. He believed it was an important thing in life to face what you’re scared of and keep on keeping on despite your fears. We met when I was a teenager and I was doing karate. The Y has a karate class and some of the guys from the class come in during the boxing sessions to work out or to add boxing to their skills. I thought I was a badass as a kid because I had a black belt until I decided to box with another kid who had a few amateur fights. The kid punched me in the stomach and I threw up. The next day I asked Smitty if he would train me and I never went back to karate. Real fighting, I’ve learned, involves being hit and dealing with it and in karate classes there just isn’t enough real hitting.
If you looked at Smitty, you’d think he was the quintessential, old-time, gym-rat boxing trainer. He was in his sixties, black, and still all wiry muscle with a close-cropped head of gray hair. He favored Dickies, flannel shirts, and work boots as his fashion statement. Smitty devoted his life to boxing, which made his central casting role authentic, but it was far from all he was. Smitty got out of Korea and with the GI Bill went to Dartmouth where he got a degree in American literature. He reads voraciously and continues to teach literacy courses in the state prison sixty miles away three times a week for nothing. Smitty is independently wealthy, though you’d never guess it from looking at him. He never said how he happened to make his fortune and he never flaunted it, living in one of the city’s old brownstones and driving an Olds Ninety-Eight from the late eighties.
I loosened up and Smitty came over to work me through the mitts. In mitt work, the trainer calls out punch combinations and you have to respond with the right punches. It drills proper technique and reaction time. The way Smitty did it, it worked your defense too, because if he saw you drop your guard, he’d crack you in the face with a mitt.
“Turn the hip over on your hook,” Smitty said. “That’s where your power comes from.”
I threw four or five more hooks in a row, none of which pleased Smitty.
“Do you want to hit like a bitch your whole life?” he growled. “Throw the hip into the hook!” he said.
This has been going on since I was a teenager. I didn’t have much power in my punches and I knew it. Power
