he’s done. And I lost.
He pulled up in front of the Moody Blue.
“Duff, for the last fourteen years, what have I told you after every fight?”
“That win or lose, you’re proud of me.”
“That’s right. I’m proud of you tonight too, Duff.”
“Tonight? You sure? I fought like shit,” I said.
“Yep,” Smitty said.
16
I was drunk by noon.
Legally, AJ’s isn’t supposed to open until noon, but a lot of times AJ will stay open all night for the guys who work the graveyard shift in the cookie factory around the block. At noon, the Foursome started to come in, and I was praying they wouldn’t grill me about my performance.
They had all gone to the fight, as did Kelley and some of the people from the office. It pissed me off-I finally got to a point where I get some hometown attention and I lose in the most embarrassing fashion imaginable. There was a lot on the line, I was fighting a fat, out-of-shape guy with a shit record, and he beats me in front of my hometown crowd. Check that, he knocked me out in front of my hometown crowd.
AJ’s always had the paper and it had a photo of me on the front section of the sports section sprawling to the canvas after I tried to get up. The cute banner above it read, “Dombrowski Falls Back to Palookaville.”
Sweet.
TC and Jerry Number One came in together like they often did. They didn’t come in the same car nor did they call each other, they just wound up always coming through the door at the same time. Less than fifteen minutes later Jerry Number Two arrived, followed by Rocco. They always came in the same order, always spaced by the same amount of time.
I was braced for questions about how it happened or suggestions on how they would have done things differently. I waited for some cockeyed philosophy about how getting knocked out was a good thing followed by a two-hour discussion about the brain science involved in rendering someone unconscious.
The guys greeted me, said hello, and ordered their drinks. Then, they just watched the TV and the pre-game show for a preseason football game. I waited and they never mentioned anything about the fight.
It made it worse.
I decided that the Schlitz wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be, so I ordered a Beam on the rocks. I saw Jerry Number One look at my drink from the corner of his eye like he was trying not to get caught. I thought to myself just how pitiful my existence had become when the Fearsome Foursome had begun to feel sorry for me.
By three o’clock I had that woozy drunk feeling where it becomes difficult to think about your own thoughts. Things kept coming in and out of focus and nothing stayed in my head clearly for more than a thought or two. I remembered the ref counting seven through ten and how I wanted to get up but I couldn’t. I remembered how it felt to have my body not respond to my brain’s commands. That’s what happens when you get knocked out-time goes by quickly and it takes a while for your body to get your brain’s messages. It’s why you always see fighters arguing after they’ve been counted out. Besides being embarrassed, they don’t believe enough time has gone by and they’re pissed off at their bodies for not doing what the brain told them to do.
At four o’clock AJ hesitated when I ordered my bourbon. Even as bombed as I was, I knew it took a lot to get AJ to hesitate. The Foursome were back to talking and they were kicking around something about whether cows lay down when it rains because they’re tired or because of the dew point. TC thought the dew point had something to do when the cow had to move its bowels. It faded off after that.
At eight, I awoke in a puddle of my own drool, my face flat on the bar. Kelley had come in to watch the Yankees game, which was being shown on the ESPN Sunday Game of the Week.
“Welcome back,” Kelley said.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Eight.”
“Shit.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry how last night turned out.”
“Yeah.”
That was all he said, but I appreciated him saying it. We sat mostly in silence watching the Yankees lose to Boston eight to nothing. The Yankees got just two hits in the whole game. I nursed a few Schlitzes during the game, and I was probably still drunk by some official drunkenness measurement. It wasn’t a fun drunk or even an escapist drunk, but rather it was the shitty part of being drunk without any of the positive aspects of it.
I still couldn’t walk right and I couldn’t think clearly but I felt sick to my stomach, not from the booze but from the fight. It was the type of feeling that drinking will numb a little for about a half an hour while you’re building your drunk. After that there’s no use and you know it, but you keep drinking anyway to avoid feeling that feeling that will now be worsened by the shaky feeling of losing your buzz.
Kelley took me home and I didn’t argue about him giving me a lift. Al kicked me in the nuts when I came through the door and just like the night before with Strife I didn’t move quick enough to defend against it. My drunkenness was probably scarring Al and I was sure it wouldn’t be long until he would soon start attending BOA meetings-that’s Bassets of Alcoholics meetings.
I grabbed another Schlitz to help me be drunk enough to sleep. I spilled some down my face trying to drink it with my head on a pillow. Al jumped into bed with me and walked up the length of my body making sure to stride right on my left testicle on the way up. He licked my face and stuck his tongue in my ears and chewed a little. Then he spun around twice and paused with his ass in my face for effect and finally laid down next to me, his back spooning into my gut.
Apparently, Al didn’t care about me getting knocked out by a fat guy.
17
Drunk sleep sucks.
I was in and out of it most of the night and somewhere around four in the morning I think enough of the alcohol had left my system that I could get some quality sleep. That gave me four or four and half hours of sleep, if I pushed it, before work.
It wasn’t meant to be.
First there was the yells, then the loud thwack sound going on outside the Moody Blue. Finally, there was Al’s objection.
“WOOF, WOOF”- thwack — “WOOF, WOOF.”
Oh, how I hated life.
I sat up in bed and got a rush of that queasy, not-quite-pukey feeling. I stood up and realized my equilibrium was off and thought for a second that I was going to blow my cookies right there on my bedspread. Al didn’t help by running circles around me and incessantly offering me his opinion on the yelling and the thwacking.
Al did one last circle and stopped directly in front of me.
“WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF,” Al said, clearly upset that he wasn’t getting the response he wanted from me. Then he jumped up and kicked me in the nuts. I decided that now was as good a time as any to go barf. Al followed me with a steady chorus of WOOFs.
Having heaved through the basset din, I thought I’d go check out the five a.m. commotion in front of my house. There he was, decked out in yet another Karateka Bad-Breath ninja getup. He was yelling about horseradish
