07/26/2007: "Amateur Pugilistic Record: 0-2!"

Hi All,

Well, back from NY. Good time, lots of flights in a short period of time, lots of listening to the same crappy loop of in-flight songs over and over until I was sick of the artists. Fergie is especially annoying to me, I've found. Her songs, recently, are spelling primers. You get "The Glamorous Life," where she spells it out:

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S ...

...then you get "Fergalicious," where that horrendous word is spelled out. Over and over and over on United Airlines' only real music channel---the other one was playing gutbucket guitar music or a hootenany hoe-down or something, and the other one was the flight control deck---so I gotta say I was out of my mind by the time I landed here in Calgary.

I was also headachy from the fight, which is, I assume, what some of you are checking here to see about. Unless you're looking for my review/sexual self-excoriation piece (do I write any other kind for that particular publication?) in Nerve:

www.nerve.com/screeningroom/books/downtime

(BTW: I fucking LOVE that graphic Nerve used. I'm reliving that old emasculation as I write this)

Or maybe you're looking for some more recent emasculatory news, which I can happily provide.

Now, I'm going to write this before checking the emails I've gotten today, post-fight stuff, or before I check the blogs and such which I've heard have posted news of the fight, where I know I can expect to find mockery and words such as "farcical," "publicity-hog writer(s)," and "Davidson took yet another beating." Not that I care overmuch what's said, my general sense being more or less that me and Jonathan know the score, that, just like the last fight, it wasn't a farce between the ropes---though it was outside of it, or at least a circus sort of atmosphere, and though my body certainly wishes it was more of a farce---and that, to a certain extent, I've got to understand that in the literary community this sort of thing is looked upon as pretty crude, or a weird spectacle, and that we'd be all better sitting on panels and buffing our elbow patches and the silly specter of a fight brings down ... well, not literature, as that is unimpeachible, but certainly the stature of anyone idiotic enough to participate in such. So be it. I'll probably read comments on the fight in the coming days, if I can't grit my teeth and abstain, and none of it will be terribly nice or ... I don't know, probably the motivation on both Jonathan and I's part will be misunderstood. Trivialized.

Anyway, it's a defense mechanism. I can admit that. I try not to hammer people on this blog, but I have (the worst offense being deleted by my publisher) and try not to say anything that I wouldn't say to that same person's face. That said, the purpose of this blog is a lot different than some other blogs and anyway, it's all small potatoes in the long run---meaning, this fight, the little attention it gets, all of it. Nothing for me to get bent out of shape about, but I do sometimes. And not because I fared poorly---I didn't win, I don't think so, but I aquitted myself as well as my abilities, which are slim as far as they pertain to boxing I've discovered, are concerned---but ... yeah, I guess just because some people tend to seek to trivialize and downgrade and castigate this particular endeavor, which, from my perspective, is not something I've wanted to do but something I've felt to have been necessary, strictly-speaking, both for the sake of the book, my publishers, and for the sake of myself 50 years down the road, wherever I may be, so that I can look back with the assurance I gave every shred of myself to this career when I could.

Okay, enough sobby-sobby. I just wanted to get this done before responding to any emails or even reading them or looking at any of the internet sites they've sent. A fair, honest appraisal of things.

On with the fight synopsis and a few links at the bottom.

So, I get to Gleason's gym at, oooh, 7 or so. Fight was at 8:30. GLEASON'S GYM---bar none, the most honest-to-God boxing gym I've ever been in. Pure old school boxing. You could tell everyone's who'd never been in a boxing gym before when they entered: their nose wrinkled at the impregnated stench of sweat in everything. Three rings, guys all over the place training---and women. The first ring actually had guys practicing pro wrestling moves; the snap-falls boomed through the whole place. Real boxers hanging about (Gleasons has trained, like, 12 world champs or something); this one young guy was chucking jabs at the heavy bag that were making it snap on its chain as if I'd chucked my strongest haymaker at it. This other guy I accidentally swung my arms into while stretching---"Sorry," I said, and he was like, "No problem." But the sense I got was that IF it had of been a problem in any way, shape, or form, I'd've been a smear on the tiles in about 10 seconds.

So I'm just sort of hanging around when Jonathan shows; cheers, whistles. His corner and his buddy and last boxing opponent, David "IMPACT ADDICT" Leslie, was there and everyone was wearing these cool HERRING WONDER tee shirts.

So we separate and start warming up. Me, I've got nobody to train me or wrap my hands, which is fine as I never had anyone really training me the past 2 months and I always wrapped my own hands; I'm just riding the bike, moseying around, hitting the bag to work up a sweat.

I get introduced to Jonathan's girlfriend. She says Hi, her name's Fiona.

I'm looking at her, looking, it clicks.

"Yeah, you're Fiona ... Apple."

Jonathan's dating the singer Fiona Apple. So that's pretty cool. I'm thinking, hell, even if he loses, he goes home with Fiona Apple. That's got to go a long ways towards healing any hurts. Me, I got to go home to the hotel minibar.

Anyway, the show starts with Miss Saturn, who does this incredibly cool hula-hooping routine. Then Edward Champion, probably best know for his "Return of the Reluctant" blog but writes a lot of stuff, and was there as announcer and did a great job, introduced the "ring girls": Patrick "The Mangina" Bucklew and his wife, Valmonte Sprout. I wasn't sure beforehand what Patrick's deal was: I quite honestly thought he was, I don't know the right term, but a post-op transexual; I thought he was going to parade around au naturale with his inverted/converted man-junk and do his thing; turns out he wears a bodysuit with a plastic vagina overtop, which I say is a bit of a cheat: a true "Mangina" would fly to Thailand and get the discount surgery, far be it from me to challenge anyone's artistic integrity or tell them how to live or what surgery to get. His wife painted herself red and went topless; they had big numbers for the rounds and Patrick carried Valmonte around on his shoulders. It added a layer of the avante garde to the evening, and I thank Ed, Miss Saturn, Patrick, Valmonte, David Leslie and his girlfriend Jennifer (I hope I got the name right) and everyone in Jonathan's corner.

And thanks to everyone who turned out, though it was so overwhelmingly a pro-Jonathan crowd that I think I shrunk two inches in the face of it. No, I knew it was coming. When I heard a lone call of "Go Crippler!" not coming from either of my parents (my brother, who had passport issues, could not make it, so my cheering contingent was very small, mercurial, or harbored some sort of fetishistic deathwish) I actually feared for that caller's safety. I got boos or, no, maybe I got subdued applause, the sort of applause the cattleman might give the cow for showing up at the slaughterhouse because it won't work without me there. The roof blew off for Jonathan---which, again, as I always favored Jonathan on the aethstetic ticket, the Rocky ticket, I had no problems with.

And besides, I'm coming to embrace the role of mopey outsider. My brother said to me, as this fight was gearing up, "It's just like the last one---it's your book but you're always overshadowed and everything's out of your control!" Which is true, but I honestly don't mind at all, especially as in this case, without Jonathan, nothing happens.

As I'm an existential weirdo writer, of course I compare my situation to the situation in a novel I read, or a film I saw---in this case, both. In FAT CITY---the book by Leonard Gardiner, is peerless, and the movie directed by John Huston and starring Stacey Keach and a young Jeff Bridges is fantastic, too (those who give a shit about literary "shout-outs" will see some of them tossed to FAT CITY in THE FIGHTER)---there's this character, a Mexican boxer named Lucero, who, when they're looking for a match for Keach's character, Tully (Shout out!), they get Lucero to take a train up from Mexico; he does, and in the book he eats a roast cow head which he buys from an old lady when the train slows down past a little villa, which makes him violently ill but he fights anyway. He's got no cutman, no seconds, no trainer, nobody; he just sits in his corner with diarhhea and comes out to fight each round. He loses by decision and in the movie, the Keach character comes out of the lockerroom after and there's a tiny group there to congratulate him---everything about the book, set in Stockton, has a way of minimizing every grand ambition---and in the movie, after Tully's gone, in a great scene, the caretaker turns out the lights, and a few moments later out comes Lucero, who everyone had forgotten about, walking out of the darkness into a thin slit of light fringing the door, you see the light on him for a fraction and then he's gone again, into the night, into darkness again.

Now, of course there is little similar between me and Lucero. He's a good boxer, he's had really hard miles on him, he's Mexican and I'm not, he's eaten a cow head and I---to the best of my non-inibriated knowledge---have never. We've both had the trots, but that's a slim similarity. But we've both fought in front of a hostile crowd with very few on our sides, so that we do now share.

Not so say---and I must say this---that the people at Soho weren't great and supportive for me there. My thanks to Sarah Reidy and Ailen Lujo for all their work on my behalf, and that they've handled the book the way I always thought might most befit it: sort of virally, using MySpace and blogs and the Internet and a lot of non-traditional ways, just as Penguin did; and of course, for setting up the match and being there. Thanks also to Kathy Daneman, my previous publicist at Soho who moved to FSG and who was there. And most of all thanks to my editor, Katie Herman, who was there despite being involved in a really bad bicycle accident and in what must of been a fair bit of pain, but her being there was very heartening. And of course to my folks, the parentals, Mom and Dad, who put up with me being a bit rangy the day of ...

MOM [at NY restaurant for breakfast]: Milk? Is that all? Do they not have coffee cream?

ME [blowing up for no good reason]: What's that matter? Milk! Cream! Who gives a good goddamn anyway! It's from a cow! Drink it and be happy!

MOM: It's a wonder you're not married. Every day I'm stunned by that fact.

So, okay, the fight:

Well, I can't say much about it. You get between those ropes, the world really does seem to phase out, you're off in some other place, deep space, and when the bell rings the world rushes back at you a little too strong, a little scarily like this crazy jump-zoom and you're almost caught out of your skin ... all this is to say, it's hazy.

I know I got hit. Hard. Today my neck's got a kink in it and there's a few knots on my head. Jonathan can hit and he's not afraid to mix it up. We ended up doing some clinching, mainly my fault, but as I was telling Jonathan afterwards he had a sweeping hook that would catch me high and sort of drag me, my head and shoulders, towards him in its orbit; and I actually like fighting inside but we kept getting broken up, which I suppose is fair enough---the ref was great, actually---and with Jonathan's nose I'd've rather whacked him to the brisket anyway. I did do one thing I was trained to do, or taught myself to do: I got him in the corner once, feinted, then dropped the left and got him one in the ribs. But he chucked a lot of combos and caught me with 2-3 in a row sometimes; I'm not great at chucking more than one; it's like the basketball player watching his shot; you gotta throw another, be thinking, before the first one lands or fails to land.

One of the funny things, in which I had a flashback to my last fight: the OOOOHS of the crowd. In a real prizefight the crowd OOOHS when one boxer tags another; they all know it's coming, they all know the punches are being thrown with vicious intent, so it's an OOOH of "Oh, he got him!" The OOOHS in our match had a different timbre: as in, "OOOOH my GOD, they're actually hitting each other for real!"

Anyway, some of the links might help that better. In the end we both got trophies; like in kindergarten, everyone gets a gold star! You're AAAAAAALLLLLL special! So what if that macaroni collage of yours makes no earthly sense; it could be a sign of genuis or a deep socio-pathological insanity; we don't know yet so gold star, gold star, gold STAAAAAAR! Or a trophy. Same diff.

After the match, the only thing I said to the crowd was, "My aching body tells me Jonathan won that fight." And that wasn't just saying it. I think he did. It wasn't the drubbing I took in TO, but it was a loss, I'd say. No judges so it will forever remain speculative, but I think if they were there, that's how it would've swung, and should've.

In the end, I accomplished what I wanted, which was the same as before: get some attention for the book. And took it seriously: I trained my ass off, ran mile upon mile, the whole nine yards---and to be very egotistical and a little vain, I ended up looking not bad; I mean, we pear-shaped Davidsons are not supposed to look like I do in some of the photos linked to below. Of course, it's completely unmaintainable; any woman thinking, "Hey, nice bod!" is going to be completely and regrettably duped if I ever do get her up to the altar under those slim and silly auspices; it'd be like: "I do ... want a third helping of wedding cake, yes. And are the little bride and groom edible?"

And people again asked: "Do you really think this will get the book more sales?" To which I replied: "That's not really the point. The point was the attempt was made."

And I've come to discover that I'm not a good boxer, or a good fighter at all. That's taking nothing away from Jonathan's victory: I worked my ass off, did everything I could; I was a credible challenger, insofar as our experience levels are concerned. It's just, I think at a psychological level it's not something I'm terribly natural at. I think, as I go along and come to understand things about myself, that's probably where the fascination originated from: I was looking into the heads of people whose heads are nothing like my own. I thought back over all the fights I've ever been in and realized I've never once thrown the first punch. I don't want to take things down that road, not ever, but once the path's been steered I sort of say, "Well, okay," knowing full-well it's probably going to end calamitously.

Could I get better? Experience says yes. I was a shit basketball player for years and in the end was okay. I was a shit writer a long time---some might say I still am---but I'm getting better. Maybe I could become a more proficient boxer, learn how to manage myself in the ring ... but still, I don't think the psychological quotient is really there. For lack of a better word, a killer instinct.

That's okay. I never planned on making my living as a prize fighter. Will I do it again? ... I hope not to have to, but that said, I feel I still owe a lot on this book. The first time was a learning experience for everyone; this one we refined it, it worked better; but every time's a gamble. So I hope not to. Nobody really likes throwing themselves over and over into a breech that they know, deep down, is not one they were ever made for.

My thanks, finally, to Jonathan. Good guy, nice guy, talented guy. We threw hard shots, it was real, but there was a gentlemanliness about it, if that doesn't sound too weird. Within the realm of what we were doing, we were respectful as was possible and afterwards everything was cool. So, that's nice. I wish him well and hope both he and I have built up an immunity to the Fight Bug so that it won't bite and infect us again.

I've got some photos but no way to post them. Here's some links in the meantime and in-between time (with plenty of Fiona Apple bonus coverage):

www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/party_hopping/also_scene_ames_v_davidson_63792.asp
www.luxlotus.com/lux_lotus/2007/07/luxnotes-three-.html
http://slunch.blogspot.com/2007/07/3-rounds-2-authors-1-book-fighter.html
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/tags/jonathan%20ames
http://gawker.com/news/rumbo-in-the-dumbo

... I couldn't help it. I read the Gawker comments, where someone says I look like Jigsaw from the Saw movies. Why do I seek out ways to depress myself? It seems a stretch, though I've been called a Conan O'Brien lookalike, or Leno with my chin. Here are some better pics of the match, all the assorted hoopla:

http://gawker.com/photogallery/amesvdavidson

All best, Craig.