Muhammad Ali and I Go Down!

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO….!"

I screamed loud enough to be heard by the neighbors―loud enough to be heard by the Lennons on the corner!  

said Joey

asked Kippy

"What's wrong with you" dad asked examining the front page of the LA Times staring down at the horrific results of the FIGHT OF THE CENTURY. 

Without having to turn to the sports page it was right there in the headlines. Ali had lost!                                                                                                                                                   "It can't be" I said. "Impossible."                                                                                                                                                       My dad was surprised, but not shocked like me.  

They wondered...  Hide your wife. Hide your kids.                                                                                                                          

   Hamper                                                                   Electrocution                                                 Veloci-Raptor 

"But we had a contract...he promised to knock Frazier out in 6 rounds"

Dad furled his brow and stared incredulously at me. "Vad är fel med dig?" he said in Swedish. 

  

Dad didn't get it. "This can't be!" 

He set his paper down and raised a brow as if waiting for my answer. 

"You don't get it." I said. And he didn't. "That might as well be me in there." 

               Another blank stare.

"What chance do I have now of becoming anything more than moldy bread."

I got this look like I should have been committed to the insane asylum at Camarillo.

Obviously he didn't know what Muhammad Ali said about moldy bread and penicillin.

"We had a contract," I said waiving my arms. "He promised me that I was destined not to be moldy bread"

My poor father had no idea what I was talking about. "Come here and let me look at your tongue," he said.

I did and then realized that he was looking into my eyes. I knew what he was doing. He was scared. He thought that maybe I had discovered the Mexican Tomato plants in the backyard and had started puffing on the "Mary Jane." He was afraid I had turned to the dark side... 

"Dad...No! Tony Alva...whatever..."  He was more confused than ever. 

Ali's victory was my victory. This fight meant that I could become someone and now I have no chance. I felt like everyone kept lying to me. First it was Phyllis Diller now it's Ali. Adults and their promises and their Prophecies just can't be trusted.  

The Blasers next door heard the scream.                                                                                                        "What's the screaming," said Tommy in alarm pulling on his grandpa's shirt.  
                                                                                         

 "It went the full fifteen," my dad said.

 It was me. I had been knocked down.











"Unanimous decision." He continued.


 I felt sucker punched. "ughhhh!" Not by Frazier, but by Ali.










  thought one of the neighbors

"Ali...Ali...Ali...Ali...how could you do this to me?" I said walking away talking to my dog, Poochie.

Poochie was minding her own business, enjoying the warmth of the sun―trying to stay out of it.                                                                                            
I was rejected by Andrea and the world had just shifted off its axis. Bent I'm telling you.

I turned around and my Dad's eyes were still trailing me. He watched for a little bit and said something else in Swedish, "Galen!" 

It's been less than a month and the city was still recovering from the big Sylmar earth quake that hit back in February.

Frank Nargie the mailman who lived across the street said he was outside when it hit and saw our big old house rock back and forth. He said he thought it was going to fall over. Two of the boy on the third floor got knocked out of their beds and another rattlesnake got loose. I remember feeling like I was on a ship being tossed back and forth by a storm. 

It was tragic. Fourteen people were killed. Two Hospitals collapsed. Governor Reagan declares a State of Emergency and appealed to President Nixon for Federal aid. 

                                                                               

"Earthquake―Smearthquake" I felt like I had been rocked from my foundation and in a personal state of emergency. Who do I appeal to?  I tried God and that didn't seem to work.

Who could I trust?

I swan and improved on my times in the Butterfly. But I still sucked. In my first race I was so terrible that a guy with a broken arm and plastic bag over his cast beat me.

                                                                                                                                         

I finished my first swim season at Saint Monicas, but  really didn't care a whole lot  about competing. It was pretty simple―I had given up on the notion that I could discover what true love was about and settled on finding friendship and fitting in. 

Distance and distrust was best.   

I wanted to fit―belong―find my place, not win gold medals. Kurt the "big Saint Monica's scoring champion" was up at Humboldt University and becoming more of a hippie. I could never be like him―why try! Ali lost. Adults are not to be trusted. I realized that life was easier as a robot and decided to withdraw into my own world where it was a little safer.  

More aftershocks...then the "Hensheys Incident of 1971" in Santa Monica!

  and off to Dachau ...but why?  

Hensheys picture credit: Facebook post by Michael Hayasi "You know you're from Santa Monica If" group May 2016 

     

Muhammad Ali, Moldy Bread and Markie D

March 8^th, 1971 Moldy Bread. 

A tribute to my hero and the greatest.    

I felt like I had dug a hole and put my heart in a box. It was shrinking and turning to stone. I buried it to keep it safe. I wanted one thing—to know genuine love and to feel accepted. I put on a pretty good show, but in reality I was terribly afraid of rejection and burying my heart six feet under was one way to cope.  

Without a heart I was nothing more than a robot—a robot with skin—a freshman in high school who was a mere collection of mechanical parts and all kinds of gears that turned inside. I fooled most people into thinking I was human—like I was a real person.  But I wasn’t and they didn’t know.  My family didn’t know me and the shame was so great that I couldn’t share any of my secrets with them—with anyone. 

Maybe it was better that my brothers and sisters didn’t care to really know who I was. I was damaged goods and didn't want the world to know. 

My best friend, Tommy, didn't know. Jeffrey didn't know.

The Blasers didn't know and the Lennons didn't know. Maybe it was better this way.  

My faint pulse was only the beating of the metal pistons beating up and down. I cried when I watched the Wizard of Oz because I was the Tin Man. Like Pinocchio I wanted to become a real boy. I hoped against hope that Andrea would show me the way. 

But,NO!  She hugged that other boy and now my heart was broken and dreams dashed. I dug a deeper hole for that vault that contained my heart. Thankfully that crazy skater kid who I ran into at the ruins of POP, Tony Alva, offered me pot and that made me feel like I could be real someday. Maybe there was some hope for this piece of moldy bread—Tin man—Zombie.

 Thum-thump thum-thump  

My oldest brother was a fanatic fan of World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion, Muhammad Ali.

Though Tony was the mad genius and instigator of inventive sibling torture, he had been kind to me. He and his girlfriend, Patty took me shopping and bought me clothes in the Sixth grade. 

What you don’t know is that the turtleneck sweater I’m wearing (in the picture above) is not really a turtleneck sweater. It’s a dicky—a turtleneck thingy attached to two small squares of fabric. Don’t ask me why they invented something so ridiculous.  But the truth is that I have no shirt on under this jacket—just this square, phony dicky. Goes to show ya - "Things on the inside aren’t always what they appear to be on the outside."   

And because Tony liked Muhammad Ali, I like Muhammad Ali. Ali may have said this to the world, but he may have well said to me, "If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you."  

“God, I don't know who 'they' are but could you please make something out of this moldy bread. Turn me into penicillin or something.”

Ali is the greatest and tonight he returns to the ring. We had something in common. Like me, he had wrestled an alligator and tussled with a whale. Me too. Me too. Unless of course, he really didn't wrestle an alligator or have a run-in with a rogue whale like he said in one of his famous saying—I did. 

"I done wrestled with an alligator; I done tussled with a whale.

Handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail.

Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.

I'm so mean I make medicine sick."

Ali was the greatest and tonight at Square Garden place in New York he would pummel Joe Frasier, who was also an undefeated champion in 

The Fight of the Century.  

But we had to wait until the newspapers tomorrow to find out. I think the reason I had so much interest in the fight was that it wasn’t Ali in the ring—it was me. He said I could become something and I believed him. We had a contract. 

It was me against all of my fears. It was me and all of my secrets. This victory tonight meant that I had the chance to become real—a human—a person. There might still be hope that I could find love and be loved.  

Our house was full—full of hippies and brothers and family and strangers who had been welcomed and brought in from the outside. 

But I was on the outside looking in as if only occupying space in our big Venice house. 

You get the Idea!

So I had a lot at stake this fight—it was me against the world. Tony was fan and wanted to see a good fight, but I needed Muhammed Ali to win. 

That thing Andrea did. That hug. Put me on the ropes. My personal Zombie Apocalypse was on the line.  The faint sound of Thum-Thump Thum-Thump you hear is the faint sound of my heart coming through the floor boards like in Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart"    

I needed Frasier to go down in six. I needed a victory. I needed to know that I would one day free my heart and that I could be kind-of-human. “If I only had a heart.” 

When a man's an empty kettle he should be on his mettle,

And yet I'm torn apart.

Just because I'm presumin' that I could be kind-a-human,

If I only had heart.

I'd be tender - I'd be gentle and awful sentimental

Regarding Love and Art.

I'd be friends with the sparrows ...

and the boys who shoots the arrows

If I only had a heart.

photo credits:

Dicky: http://nocef.com/crochet-dicky-pattern/

Frasier v. Ali Poster:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_of_the_Century

Pistons: https://www.pinterest.com/ian6394/work-stuff-very-cool-stuff/

POP ruins: credit in prior post