If You Believe in Yourself…Cont’d

As mentioned, the fight’s off.  One well-placed body shot, one strange “popping” sensation in my side, four x-ray views of my chest, one fracture diagnosis, no fight.  It was a weird-ass night.

If you’ve never been intimately involved in a full-contact sport, you might think that sparring and fighting are the same thing.  They look and sound remarkably similar: punches land with audible thumps; blood drips or trickles or flows from noses and lips; faces wince, flinch, occasionally snarl (a primordial, unconscious show of teeth covered by mouthguards).  But sparring isn’t fighting.  We understand that we’re not supposed to hurt one another, not in a serious, permanent way that pulls us out of the real game.

Most of us know that.

Rib Breaker (RB) has been coming to the gym for two-or-so months.  She hasn’t fought before, but a full lineup of varisty high school sports renders her exceptionally strong and aware of her body.  She practices her punches without the self-consciousness that plagues so many girls and women trying to eke out a place in boxing’s Boy Kingdom.  She’s someone with a lot of potential, a natural talent that gets noticed and piques curiosity.

“I’m gonna spar RB and A,” co-coach told me.  “Get on your headgear and be ready to round-robin with them.”

I’ve known A for about 6 months.  I blew her off when she first arrived at the gym: she was just another girl in too-short shorts who spent more time watching the boys watch her than watching her form in the mirrors.  A stuck with it, though, more and more often getting lost in her punches and footwork, slapping impatiently at misguided suitors who tried to get her attention between rounds.  We’ve worked together a lot  lately, and I now consider A a teammate.  I wasn’t worried about her.  RB’s taller, heavier, stronger, but A’s got ring-time, a mean overhand right, and patience.

Bell rings. A extends her left glove, our customary gesture, a handless handshake to establish good will.  RB tilts her head, momentarily confused until co-coach calls, “Touch gloves.”

RB bats A’s hand, then advances with an aggression that stuns me.  She unloads on A: jab-right-jab-right-body-right-jab-right.  Co-coach steps in, admonishes RB, “Whoa-whoa-whoa, RB.  This is sparring.  You don’t go all out.  Work  your defense and distance.”

RB nods, covers up for a moment.  A, now guarded and tense, taps RB’s headgear with a few jabs, moving her head back and forth, leading with her left shoulder like we’ve been working on.  RB stands static for an instant, then launches again.  She hits blindly, the punches are ragged around the edges but they’re landing hard.  A’s driven backwards, off-balance when RB lands a straight right that opens A’s nose.

“Time!” shouts co-coach.  He lifts A’s face by the chin, looks briefly at her car-wreck nose, takes off her headgear and gloves and sends her to the women’s restroom, where the water always smells like overdone eggs from sitting too long in the pipes between uses.  He glances at RB, who is examining the lacings on her gloves, turns to me, says, “Take it easy on her, but make her work.”  I wasn’t concerned, feeling certain that I’ll be able to back RB off if I need to.

Bell rings.  I extend my glove, but not all the way, saving some elbow-space in case she goes over my left with a jab after we touch. Instead, she loops with her right, smashing into my left ear with a force that muffles my hearing, like getting rolled by a wave from behind at the beach – disorientation as water pours into your eyes and nose and you push fruitlessly Up at what suddenly became Down.

She follows with a left hook. I block automatically, twisting slightly to the inside to follow her glove and absorb the shock.  She steps back, jumps forward with the right hook that breaks my rib. The Wrong inside me drops me to the floor on my knee, the first time I’ve been knocked down.

I knew for an instant that something had gone bad in my body, but I forgot. Endorphins, adrenaline, hyperventialition oxygen and Pure Fucking Rage erased knowledge, tapped instinct on its shoulder and brought me back to my feet.  We sparred two more rounds, my anger making me awkward, she turning away and showing the back of her head when I landed punches on her.  That’s supposed to be like a dog in a play-fight flashing their belly – I’m compelled to shut down and let her regroup.  After the sixth or seventh time she pulled the toreador crap, I plugged her in the shoulderblade anyway, drawing the ire of Lo and co-coach.  They both tried to talk to me afterward, but I was obviously too unsettled to listen, too queasy and robbed to care.  Lo and I left for home.

I hit the doorstep of our house and knew I couldn’t be around anyone at the moment. I made my apologies, then drove over to the big parking lot outside the stadium at the university.  I found a circle of dark away from the lights, parked my car, and cried for a half-hour.  I cried for being 33 years old and finding boxing too late to be able to stack up to someone whose body bounces back obediently from any sketchy situation.  I cried for being embarrassed in front of the Ring Voyeurs, the guys who used to fight and now hang around the gym like their guts hang over their pants; unimpressive, practically stantionary, but solid and real and there.  I cried because as much as I’ve built my muscle and timing and cardio condition over the past year, I apparently hadn’t developed confidence that would and should coast me through a bad sparring session.  Mostly, though, I just cried because I love This Thing so much and someone who knows nothing took that love away from me that night.

When I returned home, Lo took one look at me, then carried me to the bathroom where he undressed me like a child (“Arms up.”  “Give me your foot.”) and put me into the bathtub (the place he knows I always retreat when the world’s falling down).  I finished it out there, caught my mental breath at last, and stood up to towel off and go to bed.

Pain. Serious pain came back as instinct and epinephrine retired for the evening and knowledge again took the floor.  I knew something was wrong in my side, I just didn’t know what.  It took x-rays the following morning to answer that, with the footnote that I’ve got 4-6 weeks before I can even think about really training again.

“There’ll be tons of fights next year,” Lo says, and it’s true (amateur figts are rare during the holiday season when fighters want to eat with their families).  “You let being mad take away everything you’ve learned.  You just stood there and slugged it out with her instead of making her box  you.  Every time you thought about it before you threw, you out-boxed her like nothing.”  That’s true, too.  Unfortunately, it seems that knowing the truth (once again) isn’t making me feel any better.

“It’s one of the classic American meta-narratives,” I say to Lo a few days later. [His eyes start to glaze over, as they often do when I start in on the words that begin with "meta" or "post" or "neo" and end with "ism" or "ological."] “‘If you believe in yourself, give 110%, and never abandon your dream, you can accomplish anything.’  But it’s not really true.  I work my ass off, want this more than I should and I still got taken by some girl who doesn’t know shit.”

He did the right thing, which was nothing.  He just took my hand and sighed.

If You Believe in Yourself, Give 110%, (don’t fracture a rib), and Never Abandon Your Dream, You Can Accomplish Anything

The Question will remain unanswered for the moment.  An overzealous, undertrained sparring partner fractured one of my ribs, making the Nov. 7th fight a no-go for me.  More later…

I’m Getting Ready to Rum-BLLLLLLLE.

Exactly one month from today (pending approved opponent) I’ll be navigating my first fight.

I decided in my mind about two months ago; decided in public two weeks after that.  It changed absolutely everything about boxing for me, including:

The Hierarchy. As I have mentioned, http://phdeath.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/dont-be-a-looky-loo-be-a-do-y-loo/, fighting in the ring (or merely saying you will, it turns out) secures one a place in the top echelon of the boxing gym.  Eyes are on me in new ways: seasoned fighters drop tips on their way to the water fountain (“Good on the feet, but keep your chin down.”), fighters at my level try to find a toehold in my psyche to plot their own (“Nervous yet?”), coaches favor me (“Get the fuck outta the way if you’re just gonna stand there – she’s trying to work.”).  Yes: I’m trying to work.

The Work. Boxing has always been the hardest physical task I’ve ever undertaken.  Our gym is a nod to traditionalist fight training – no air conditioning, no comforts, base accoutrements.  Get 20 of us working in there at 6PM on an August afternoon, and you’ll leave with your toes pruned from the sweat in your shoes – literally – like you’ve been swimming for the last 90 minutes.  It’s been rough since I started, but training is nothing like training-to-fight.

In addition to Lo, another trainer – a retired pro – took a shine to me and offered to help bring me along.  He subscribes to a well-tested and absolutely exhausting school of thought: boxing’s about legs and lungs, not fists.  His cardio/strength regiment takes things from my body that I didn’t know it had to give.  His relentless attention has sharpened my punches and my focus- the Hawthorne Effect revealed to me in a way that my undergrad intro psychology class could never have divulged.  I came off the bag one night after a round of burnouts (throwing as many punches as fast as you can for one minute) to hang over one of the industrial trashcans, unsure if I was going to throw up from the exertion.

“You OK there?” co-coach asked anxiously.

“I’m alright,” between gasps. “Just feeling pretty sick right now.”

“Oh. You know, just because you’re punching fast doesn’t mean you can’t punch clean.  Toward the end of that last set you weren’t snapping that left back to your cheek.  You’d be leaving yourself open for an overhand right just like we talked about…”

I got the feeling that if I had been puking my guts out in that moment, he simply would have critiqued my heaving technique.

“You’ve got to want it more,” he finished.  That’s how he almost always finishes.

Wanting it More. I hesitate to say it because it sounds as cliched as a boxer having “Gonna Fly Now” from Rocky on his iPod roadwork mix, but it’s true: I love the film Million Dollar Baby.  It’s not just because it’s a movie about a chick who boxes, it’s because it’s an amazing movie about a chick who boxes. It was adapted from a short story by the late F.X. Toole; his decades-long passion for boxing informs every detail, every character, every jab and slip and cut in the film.  If you box, you know this movie is legit.  Unfortunately, it’s also inspired my not-so-inspiring nickname from Lo.

Those who have seen MDB know the infinitely-hateable “Billie the Blue Bear,” the bitch who causes Maggie’s paralysis and eventual death.  Billie doesn’t care who she hurts or how badly, so long as she wins.

I don’t seem to mind if I lose or how badly, as long as I don’t hurt someone.  Enter “Becki the Care Bear.”

I’ve been doing far more sparring – learning to deliver and absorb punches in real-time is the most essential element of my training right now.  I’m absorbing beautifully.  The delivery’s been less impressive.

Lo, between rounds: “Why are you pretending?  You’re pulling 90% of your punches.  Get in there and land on her – that’s what she’s there for.”  (her/she, in this case, is a newly-minted female pro who started her wildly successful amateur career when she was in gradeschool.  I couldn’t hurt her with a two-by-four, but I still held back.).  Female pros; dudes with five inches and forty-five pounds on me; a girl who was allowed to beat on me for two rounds when I was forbidden to punch her back so she could build confidence…all receive the same gentle handling, arouse in me the same concern.  I’ve yet to really let my hands go on anyone to date, and I need to do that if I’m going to be ready.

I’m becoming a solid fighter…I just don’t much like to punch people.  I don’t remember all the details of necessary and sufficient conditions from the Informal Logic class I TAed 1,000,000 years ago, but it does seem obvious that I can’t fight well if I don’t want to hit anyone.  It seems a laughable stumbling block, but it’s my biggest challenge at present.

I’ve no pithy ending to conclude this.  I can only say that I hope to overcome this and not feel compelled to book passage to the Island of Misfit Toys (“A boxer…who can’t hit!!!”).

A Pound of Pure

There are almost no bright spots to being home-bound with the flu for three-days-and-counting.

Too tired and apathetic to read, journal, or prepare for the summer course I’m teaching in a few weeks.  Too mired in self-pity and chest congestion to rearrange my closet.  Too run down to do anything but curl on the couch with a double-the-fabric-softener blanket that I alternately embrace (the chills) and kick to the floor (the sweats).  Too weak from coughing and loss of appetite to monitor the results of the Iranian election, I turn to the movies we keep in the storage beneath our elderly TV.

My average body temperature runs in the low 97s Fahrenheit.  Anything over 100 and I begin to get tinny on the edges.

Temp: 101.3; Film: Requiem for a Dream.

Before The Wrestler and The Fountain, but after π (Pi), Darren Aronofsky made the moving, eloquently composed, breathtakingly ugly Requiem in 2000.  Aronofsky scripts obsession better than anyone I’ve encountered; Requiem is his landscape of addiction.  I’d seen it twice before; Saturday (Flu: Day III) was my third.  From nowhere, from everywhere, from fever, maybe: a Pound of Pure.

Harry and Tyrone are addicts restless in the ceaseless, small cycle of score and shoot.

HARRY

…we got this idea.   Tyrone has this connection, Brody, with some dynamite shit.  If we can get some cash together, we can get a piece, cut it up and make a fortune.

TYRONE

Soon we could get a pound of pure and retire.

HARRY

We’d get off hard knocks and be on easy street.

A Pound of Pure resurfaces later in the movie, too.  It’s not merely heroin, not just money, not only the end of petty everyday anxieties.  A Pound of Pure is a mantra, a code for Accomplishment, the psalm sung of having Arrived at Real Living.

We each have a Pound of Pure.  A girl I knew in high school, covered in anorexia creeping over her like ivy: a double-digit weight.  My mom: an Audi TT coupe.  My dad: a boat outfitted for deep-sea, captain’s flying bridge prominent on the horizon.  A friend from my Master’s program: a self-sufficient homestead, all food grown on premises.

And me?  I’ve had more Pounds of Pure than I can list. 

Age 11: my own horse.  My parents bought me a beautiful grey mare, not long off the racetrack.  She would bolt blindly – unstoppable – and was retired to pasture when she and I were 12.

Age 13: a boyfriend.  He was beautiful, too.  He kissed me with tongues before I was ready and dumped me a week before school started because, he said, he would be embarrassed to be seen with me in the hallway.

Age 17: acceptance to Temple University.  I lasted two weeks, the noises of Broad Street cutting through the window screens at night, and begged to be picked up and taken home.

Age 23: a cross-country move to sight-unseen southern New Mexico.  I was the still the same girl with less relative humidity.

Until a few months ago, my Pound of Pure was my Ph.D.  With it would come the job at the small, liberal arts college; the end of coursework and obligatory writing; personal acceptance that I was smart and worthwhile – not just an articulate scammer who gives good word.  Until then, my Pound of Pure would be picked up in May 2011 along with a fake diploma (the real degrees are mailed weeks later in cylindrical tubes) from a Dean of Arts and Sciences who had never before laid eyes on me.

A few months ago, I realized the Ph.D. won’t make me happy, either.  I’m going to finish, but the patina’s already worn off the whole thing.  I’d lost my Pound of Pure without noticing.

I don’t think I can find a new one.  Requiem made me realize that.  Harry and Tyrone get their Pound of Pure, and predictably they fuck it up.  It’s not because they’re junkies.  Rather, it’s because there is no Pound of Pure – not in the way we want it to be, not in the way that you can get it/reach it/finish it/conquer it/end it and Life Proper begins.  Once you’re there, you’re you.  You with a better car, a better piece, a better job, and you.

Maybe I’m not better off for realizing that.  I walked Lo through my Pound of Pure, through the skeleton frame of this post.  “It’s OK, though,” he said.  “You get the Pound of Pure, are happy for a little while, then start looking for the next One.  That’s what it means to be human: working from goal to goal, keeping up the fight.”

But I don’t want to pretend that the Emerald City is truly shimmering in glory; I’d rather reconcile to the dodgy huckster behind the curtain.  Or maybe to the fact that I have to be that huckster – creating my own happiness fully aware that I’m doing so.  Settling in for a journey with no end date, no departure/arrival boards, nothing to frame or sail or drive or snort or buy.

My ounce of acceptance is worth a Pound of Pure.

Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty (My High School Bully)

I found my high school bully on Facebook.  No: I didn’t friend her.

She was older than I; I’d not bothered to search her class in the “Find Friends” (or former enemies) function of FB.  Eventually, boredom led me to browse the graduation years close to mine, et voila: High School Bully (HSB).

The few people to whom I’ve mentioned this are, across the boards, surprised that I had a HSB.  It’s not just that I’m a boxer.  Nor is it the bearing boxing lends to the rest of my life.  It’s that I’m quietly comfortable being in charge: at school, at the barn – the kind of quietly-comfortable-being-in-charge that apparently seems a natural birthright.  My Now-Friends cannot reoncile a Then-Death who was a target.

But I was a late bloomer.  Physically, emotionally, and certainly in regards to self-confidence.  I didn’t really start to grow until I was immersed in my undergraduate degree – far too late to have it make a difference in 9th grade.

HSB and her methods were fairly typical.  I was, too: the bullied kid who had no idea how it all started and even less of a concept of how to make it stop.  It erupted one day midway through my freshman year, when she cornered me in a lavatory and announced “Five people told me you’ve been talking about me.” (It’s somehow always “five people” isn’t it?).

I wasn’t even 100% on her last name, much less singling her out for a smear campaign.  I can’t recall excatly what I said, how I supplicated, but it was enough for her to sniff my weakness, to glimpse my rather large Achilles Tendon and begin the chase.  For the next six months, every school day was HSB and her three-or-four-member entourage tracking me through my tiny, rural high school, making it so I couldn’t use a bathroom until I got home, pressuring me until I was the youngest ulcer patient served by my family’s internist.  My principal, still carrying the muscle of his high school football, said that girls never really did anything to one another, anyway, and from then the situation was quietly ignored by staff.  It ended at the same time as the school year, and blessedly did not restart for my sophomore semesters.  Ah: the lousiest time of my life in one, brief blog paragraph.

So now: Facebook.

“Holy shit!” I cried to Lo.  “Come here!”

He appeared by my side, squinting at the thumbnail photos.  “That’s her.  That’s my fucking HSB.”  Unlike my Now-Friends, Lo is familiar with my HSB.  Six years of marriage and two cross-country car rides will do that to you.

He stared incredulous.  “That’s her?”

“Yeah.  I guess she had the superfluous head removed sometime after graduation.”

He rolled his eyes at my intentional misread of his reaction, and I knew what he was thinking…because I was thinking it, as well.  She looked stunningly mundane.  In high school, she had a hard-edged prettiness; I had to admit that even as she worked me over.  Now, all of those angles were buried under soft flesh.  Her wash-n-go haircut, rounded features, even the appliances in front of which she posed were so prosaic.  She wore a shapeless tee-shirt, and though the photo was waist-up, I could easily imagine the clumsy capris or jeans that sat below the frame.

Lo drifted back to the living room.  I couldn’t stop looking at her embarrassed grin, the dimple above her elbow.  I felt myself biting down on the mouthguard that wasn’t there, my eyes narrowing as they do when I’m checking my distance from the punch-mitts. My breathing got more resonant, measured – the way it does when I’m working to control my adrenaline.

I realized I was furious.

I knew I still hated her, and how unhealthy that is.  I’d no idea I carried this much anger.  I shut down my laptop for the night.

Rationally, I think I should thank her.  Memories of her pointless, cruel offensive later taught me to square up, hold eye contact a second longer than comfortable, claim my space on every sidewalk and grocery store line and in every classroom.  Moreover, the Never Again she sparked in me is what sent me to boxing, one of the authentic joys in my life.  She unintentionally shaped one of the aspects of my personality I cherish most: Badass.  So yes, I owe her something for that.

Yet, I don’t feel that gratitude.  Time hasn’t comforted me, nor has HSB’s dissolution into a banal nonentity, nor my arrival at a being a person I really dig.

Is there closure beyond Dr. Phil?

Don’t Be a Looky-Loo; Be a Do-y Loo

“So – when are you going to fight?”

This question has been coming up frequently at the boxing gym the last few weeks.  I’ve been working hard, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  It helps to understand that there’s a hierarchy at the gym.

I. Randoms. Randoms are people who come to the gym once (or at the most, twice), realize boxing is really, really tough and never appear again.

II. Secondary Randoms. SRs make it past the first week, but remain nameless.

III. Regulars. Regulars can be counted on to show up, but don’t spar.  They have names, but no nicknames.

IV. Trainers. Trainers spar in preparation to Fight in the Ring.

V. Fighters. Fight in the Ring.  They are the Slashes to our GunsNRoses, the Kurts to our Nirvanas, the Fonzies to our “Happy Days.”

Then there’s me.  I train as hard as the Trainers, but have no solid plans to Fight in the Ring.  This baffles everyone at the gym.

It’s odd: in most ways I’m such an American.  I speak one, and only one language.  I measure in cups, miles, yards.  I get light-headed over the NFL.  Yet, I’m strangely non-competitive in my personal sports.  I ride well, but have only been in four horse shows in the last ten years.  I train until I’m so fatigued that some nights I get teary-eyed…but I haven’t really cared if I ever have a match.  And if you’ve no plans to climb those steps, slip between the ropes, Box Like Heaven and Fight Like Hell in front of a crowd, most ask “Why bother?”

I can’t provide a coherent answer.  “Why do I have to compete?” I asked Fiction Goddess, who is consistently incredulous about this whole boxing thing in the first place.  “Why can’t I just do my best at boxing because I love it?  Why does it only count if it’s scored?”

“Why does everything only count if you can win or lose?” FG replied.  She’s also incredulous about being an American, by the way.

“I know,” I say, warming to the topic.  “I want to be the best fighter I can be just for the pleasure of it.  Not for any extrinsic reward.  Like a Zen Buddhist, but who hits people.”

FG gracefully changed the subject, a talent that seems to come along with extensive yoga training.

Those at the gym, though, can’t be diverted from the topic of my (maybe-never-to-be) ring career.  Last night Lo’s coach approached me, spiral notebook in hand.  He gestured me ringside, asked, “What are you weighing these days?”

I should interject on myself here: unlike in polite society, asking about weight is not untoward in boxing.  We know one another to the ounce.  I couldn’t tell you Angel’s last name, but I know that he’s 111 right now, reveling in food again after cutting to 106 for Opens regionals.  Charlie’s down to 190 after a shoulder injury sidelined him: probably losing muscle.  Ayanna has a week to gain 8; yesterday she trained for an hour-and-a-half with a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese bouncing in her belly.

“I’m at 119 in my underwear, but I’ve been eating whatever I want…why?”

He told me there’s an all-woman/girl tournament coming up in June, and I should enter.

I’m torn.  I need to examine my motives, especially when the stakes are so high (as in, getting my ass kicked).  I am sorely tempted.  But I don’t know why.  Do I want to test myself, stand toe-to-toe, consider it a win just to step up?  Do I want to move up in the hierarchy?  Prove to everyone that Lo’s not wasting his time training a non-Fighter?  Be the only person in my academic department with blacked eyes, my blue collar badges?

I just don’t know.

A Poem to Goad a Poet

So…I know this amazing poet.  And you know who you are, Amazing Poet.  And I think I know you’re reading my blog when you should be posting on your own.  And if I, a dodgy rhetorician, can find the courage to post one of my dreadful poems, it follows that you can loose your genius.

I Just Wanted Red

When I was four, I always wanted red.

I was red in Candyland

ate cherry popsicles

and only accepted pink when it was

the closest thing to red.

My red Crayolas

and washable markers and

red tempra paint never lasted.

Blue, green, orange and yellow

stayed sharp

saturated

available

because I always wanted red.

One night, I took up my largest red crayon;

fat – as big around as my two biggest fingers put together –

and took up the task of turning my white dresser red.

I had a spot the size of my head scribbled in

when my mom caught me.

She scolded me

(she and Dr. Spock didn’t spank) and told me

no “Incredible Hulk” that night.

She thought I wanted to defy her,

assert my independence,

define myself separate from her.

But really?

I just wanted red.

Facing Fear (with Blurry Cell Phone Pix!)

My life requires a lot of adrenaline control.  Training a horse = working with a 1,200 pound partner who’s dictated by  flight response.  Boxing = getting punched in the nose when there’s 1:45 left in the round and you can’t tell if you’re too hurt/upset to keep going or too flat-out pissed to stop.

But the horses and the fighting rarely render me frozen-scared.  Even Yogi, the oft-unpredictable, mutantly-large Australian Shepherd doesn’t shake me with his “My. Food.” face (see below).

But we all have fears.  I see mine the 4-5 days a week I spend at the barn, preferably over a fence and out of the corner of my eye.  He’s August, our gander (pictured from a safe distance below).

I’ve never been solid with large birds, particularly those capable of producing a range of threatening noises.  August, in his best upright posture, stands at about my mid-thigh.  He hisses.  Seriously: he hisses.  I can’t adequately describe how insidious this sound is, but he’s got me cowed.

I’ve managed to limit my interactions with August to the barest minimum.  He and Geraldine (the goose) are blessedly low maintenance.  I can feed them over the fence with no personal contact and Pedro (guy who also does barn work and is amused by my phobia) cleans their water tub (August simply will not F with Pedro).

This morning, though…I arrived at my usual pre-sunrise-but-light-enough-to-see-if-I-really-squint time to start feeding.  Horses, goats, chickens, ducks roused in anticipation and started their respective “Feed me” songs.  I realized  something was missing in the chorus – Geraldine’s resonant “Haaawwwwwwnnnnk” was absent.  As I approached the goat/duck/geese enclosure, I saw a puddle of white in the gathering light.  Geraldine was lying down, oddly static, disturbingly quiet.

At this point, I knew I had to go in.  A quick scan of the horizon revealed August paddling benign in the bosque.  I breathed deeply, climbed the gate and dropped into the pen, my mouth already going dry (“Please don’t let him notice me.  Please let him stay in the bosque.  Please???“).

I gave Geraldine the Diagnostic Once Over…no blood, no feathers disturbed, wing structure seemingly OK.   Then I heard it: “splat.  splat.  splat.  splat.”…the sound of August’s feet as he spraddles across the ground.  Coming fast.

Did I want to book it?  Oh, hell yes.  But what little nurturing estrogen that flows through my body wouldn’t allow me to leave Geraldine untended.

“splat. SWOOSH. splat. SWOOSH.”  August had initiated his running-while-flapping-his-wings sequence.  He dwindled to a halt about three feet away from me, letting me light a small candle of hope, before the poking barrage started.

August doesn’t peck; he pokes.  He stretches out his 20-foot-long neck, winds up, and jabs.  It doesn’t hurt, per se, but it’s stunningly erratic.  I’ve no idea if it will be my boot, my calf, my wrist.  All I know is that it will make me say “Oof” in a register of which my voice is never otherwise capable each time he makes contact.

You’ll have to use your imagination.  The still, white goose.  The relentless gander.  The trembling human.  The soft morning air split by soprano yelps (mine).  Still: I would not give in.  I gathered Geraldine up as gently as I could, preparing to move her away from her pen-mates, wondering if the vet clinic was equipped for waterfowl.

And revealed a big old egg.  Oh.

My self-imposed, terror-inspired lack of interaction with the geese precluded my knowing that when a goose is sitting an egg, she’s really, really still and quiet.  I put her back over it.  She stared at me balefully before rearranging herself.  “Sorry, Dude – I thought you were hurt or something.”

August managed to get me one more good one in the back of the thigh as I climbed out of the pen.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” Sure, Eleanor.  You don’t know August.

St. Elmo’s Syndrome

I usually don’t begin to show symptoms of my annual bout of St. Elmo’s Syndrome (SES) until late August, in advance of my September birthday. This year, though, I’m starting early.

I was 13 years old the first time I saw St. Elmo’s Fire (1985). I decided to watch the film for one reason: Emilio Estevez was perfection embodied in a man and we were destined to be married. But even beyond Emilio, the movie enthralled me in an unexpected way: my barely-adolescent self was cruelly judgmental of the characters.

By that age, I was already a Type A(cademic Geek Goddess). I was firm in my plans, and by the time I was their age, I’d be way past fumbling around in an angsty, sculpted-lips-pouting fog. I’d be too busy working on my future Master’s program. The Kevin/Leslie/Alec love triangle? Billy’s whoring? Even (beautiful) Kirby’s crush-inspired job switch? Please. Didn’t these people have careers or graduate degrees to pursue?

I didn’t see the film again until I was 25, and I can’t recall the circumstances under which I watched it. I only remember this: I saw these people – these people who I’d scorned in the summer before 9^th grade – and said to myself, “Holy shit…They were only babies!”

At 13, with my meticulously charted life ahead of me, I’d seen anyone who didn’t have it together at 22 as sadly lacking in self discipline. At 25…finally getting into my Master’s…like, three years after graduation…after running off from a good job in my field to train horses for a year…and starting a new discipline because I no longer believed in the subject of my former degree…oh, God…I’m. Them. But. Older. Diagnosis - SES: a conditioned characterized by the knowledge that I’m hopelessly immature and capricious and will never figure out what I really want to do.

Now, age 32. Two years away from my Ph.D., if all goes well. And taking a trip to the local community college today because I want to see if I can get my paramedic’s license concurrent with the latter portion of my doctoral program. I’m awakening to the knowledge that I will smother if I’m simply locked in a classroom teaching for the rest of my life (even though I love it). I’m forced to accept the fact that I’m incapable of having Just One Job forever.

As Wyclef said: See you must understand/I can’t work a nine-to-five.

Nor can I, ‘Clef…nor can I.

Is It Really So Strange?

I referenced Morrissey in the title of this post because I’ve been thinking a lot about androgyny lately…and who better than Steven/The Smiths?

Androgyny has come on two fronts. The first is my appearance: I recently cut my hair Pretty Freaking Short. It was at a length in which it was downstairs-neighbors with my collarbones; now it hangs out just below my ears.

Aside from a brief affair with Natalie Imbruglia’s hair in the mid-90’s (the “Nothing’s fine/I’m torn” girl), I’ve never had short hair. And that particular relationship did not end well: I was reduced to tears when the owner of a local store I’d patronized since kindergarten said to my back, “Help ya with anything, sir?”

But about a month ago I started doing the “play with the grown-out front layers and see how it’d look if it was all this length” game…and I was digging on it. I went to Supercuts (really) a few days later. The short hair has enjoyed a warm reception from everyone who matters – particularly from Lo, the man bound to me by love and law. Best: I adore it. It tucks up into my riding helmet, neatly beneath my boxing headgear, bound in a bandana. I find myself ogling my jaw line whenever I catch the bathroom mirror.

The Morrissey thing, though, occurred to me when I realized my standards of beauty/hawtness had changed with my hair length. Xenophanes was attributed with saying something like “If horses and oxen could draw their gods, they would look like horses and oxen.” For years, my measure of hair splendor was Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. It was her just-below-the-shoulders, choppy layers that inspired my hair for most of the 2000s. And now? I find myself drawn more and more to beautiful emo boys at the mall (and there’s so, so many available). Lo’s a sport: he knows I’m not coveting their bodies, but their highlights, their razored ends, and What is he using to get that premeditated disheveled look? Bedhead? Spray wax? I’m drooooling…

The second place the Androgyny Talk in my head is staged is at boxing. Before I went all Katie Holmes on myself, I never realized how hard I was trying to negotiate my femininity at the boxing gym, where I’m the only woman there on a regular basis (on my nights, anyway). I promise I never did the “go in just a sports bra” thing. But cute ponytails. Workout shorts that I bought in Women’s Fitness at Target. A touch of eyeliner even (sigh). But losing that hair bought me some freedom. I see myself without the accoutrements I relied on, and I still see a woman. I actually think I’m a little prettier this way, and at the same time, the need to look like my former conception of pretty was turned loose.

It’s a hell of thing. I look at the woman shadowboxing in the huge mirrors: face clean; muscles getting big past the point that anyone can say they’re “just really toned,” no pony tail bobbing reassuringly to the rhythm of my punches, cut-off sweat pants that are warm enough to wear to the car after without getting chilled when the air hits my sweat. And I think she’s beautiful and feminine and dude-like and generally someone I’d totally have latte with.

And now I’m sounding way too much like one of those Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” ads. But I think Morrissey would be cool with that.