A Not-So-Beautiful Mind: the Stresses of Battle, and the Way a Lizard Handled Them
There are times in life
when one finds herself in a pair of pineapple underpants in front of a crowd,
grimacing at a stranger. Normally, these times are called “nightmares” and are
prefaced by too many enchiladas before bedtime. But what is one man’s nighttime
specter can indeed be another lizard’s waking horror.
It was the weekend of
the Muay Thai Showdown—and my first-ever amateur bout. All week I had battled
the urge to rip a tree up by the roots, or perhaps frisbee-throw all three of
my work monitors, flip my desk and scream “THE LIZARD COMETH!!!!!! ALL SHALL LOVE ME
AND DESPAIR!!!!!!!!!” like some kind of exclamatory reptilian Galadriel. I was not handling the
nervous energy well. Or at all.
After running three
times around the block, my adrenals still piped white hot. I was like Old
Yeller right before they shoot him. Wiping the foam from my mouth, I texted my
battle buddy and resident eyebrow-stitch tender-to (more on that later), Ashley,
begging her for assistance.
Liz: ASHLEY???? WHAT DO YOU DO BEFORE A FIGHT
Liz: WHEN YOU ARE TOO EXCITED
Liz: AND MAY RESORT TO MURDER?
Perhaps “murder” was too
dramatic a word choice. Alas, I am a dramatic reptile and participate only in
tragedies and farces. Murder, as a certain provider of Head Trauma once told me,
is the only way.
Ashley responded
quickly, probably out of concern for felonies that may or may not have nearly
occurred. “Meet me tomorrow,” she said,
“and I’ll show you what I do.”
***
When I found her, Ashley
was wailing on a heavy bag like her childhood had given her a crippling
prejudice against leather and fluff. My stomach was empty. I was just about on
weight but the idea of eating or drinking filled me with a sweaty terror and
visions of a crowded room pointing and laughing at an off-weight Lizard. Ashley
completed her rounds with a series of low kicks that probably would have
removed an actual leg, and then motioned for me to follow her.
We climbed into
Ashley’s SUV and headed to the Boulder Creek. I chewed at
my fingernails until they bled.
“It’s not so much that
I’m nervous,” I said, as we walked westward through the park, and up toward the mountains. Even as a young Lizard thespian, caked in full-on old age
makeup in front of hundreds of angsty highschoolers whose attendance was not
optional, I did not get nervous. I do not have a healthy fear of death, so I
participate in life-threatening activities like a normal person might play a
video game. “It’s more that I am like, so, so excited. Just too excited.” It
was true. I had been soaked with a consistent sheen of sweat for about four
days, and my heart felt like I had sprinkled it with a coarse coating of Jack3d
and left it to marinate.
“I was the same before
my first fights,” Ashley said, turning off down a trail that led toward the water. She explained the importance of mental preparation—to
civilize the mind, but make savage the body. I still laugh at this because in
all regards my brain is like a battering ram. The answer is always to bully
through things, like a troll. But in order to survive, a lizard, like any other
creature, must adapt and change. I sat upon a smooth, cool stone and closed my
eyes.
A fairly common
visualization technique—and the thing Ashley suggested I do—is to mentally go
through the whole day. Take the event that is giving you ulcers, and stroll
through it inside your soggy grey tissues. Because then, when you step inside
the Tanner Gun Show with the intention to savage some poor girl—there is no
stomach drop. You have already been here. You have been here a million, million
times. In the creek, it is easy with the sound of water and the stones smooth
against your toes, to vanish into this other place—to walk into the building.
To feel the Vaseline rubbed over my cheeks and eyebrows. I felt the gauze as it
looped over my fingers and the squish of the ring canvas beneath my feet.
When I felt that I had
sufficiently imagined my right fist colliding with another person’s skull, I
opened my eyes. I still had a bit of an electric edge, but now it felt like
something I could use. Like a cattle prod, intended for self! In reality, the
best mental comfort is the training—the hard training where you grind yourself
into a fleshy paste and wish there was a stretcher to carry you away
afterwards. When you survive this, you know that you have spared yourself nothing
and that when Tony yells “CHOP!” in the corner, your leg will respond before
your brain registers what it has heard.
***
My known associate
Steve Eisman arrived at about five o’clock to ferry me to the weigh in. Tony
was already at the venue, and told us so:
Tony: Are you guys here?
Tony: I’m a little afraid to get out of my car.
When we pulled in to
the parking lot, we discovered that Tony’s fears were probably not completely
unfounded. The Tanner Gun Show, with which the Muay Thai Showdown shared a
space, had drawn all manner of local…color. Three people sported Swastika hats
that read “God’s Army” (the Judeo-Christian God would definitely be pro-Hitler…definitely), and shirts with slogans like this one:
Needless to say, we
proceeded inside, making strong eye contact with the weird, convention center
carpeting and no one else. The weigh ins were being held in a tiny back room, which Tony assured us would have no danger of incidental ricocheting bullets because, he observed, "The walls are all made of drywall." Comforting, Tony. Very comforting...
Fighters in underpants began to make their way to the scale, and it was often unclear what weight the fight was actually taking place at. For example, one pair weighed in at 163 and 145 lbs respectively. What? Excuse me, but what is this weight class? Kind Of Sort Of Maybe Weight? No one else in the room besides Tony and Steve seemed to object to this, which was similarly concerning.
The convention center staff had tried to be helpful by providing a gigantic
rolling cart of snacks, but instead succeeded only in making a room full of
ravenous wannabe-killers soak in the smell of fake butter product and drool. It was not
unlike the blood-spackled episodes of Planet Earth in which fifteen asshole
hyenas wait to rip apart an innocent wildebeest before your very eyes, perhaps even in
IMAX HD If you sprang for the $20.00 ticket, which probably you did because you
like animals a lot. You’re not scarred for life now, or anything. NO, NEVER.
Tony pulled three
chairs into a semi-circular formation, to shield us from the rest of the room.
“Freaks,” he whispered. Steve and I did not disagree. One woman sported a pair
of baby’s feet on her forearm, a garish tattoo with even more garish script
furled around the base denoting the day that the poor, poor owner of these feet
popped onto this planet. I recognized the Li'l Hulk, from Instagram, of course,
but did not make conversation or even eye contact because I was having spurious
internal debates over whether pineapple was, indeed, the right underwear
choice. It was too late now…too late…
The promoters, Oscar
and Jessica, stepped forward with clipboards and prepared to do business. They
impressed upon us the importance of not lying about our fight records to the
point that I was sure they believed someone was lying about something. Alright, guys, you caught me. I'm actually pro. You could probably tell based on my AMAZING SKILLZ that I utilize. Perhaps you recognize such time-tested techniques as "hitting her in the face" and "throwing only the right cross like a heat seeking missile until they are dead."
After a long speech
and much paper work, we were invited to get naked and frown at our opponents on
a stage. I was prepared for the theoretical awkwardness of weigh-ins, but in
practice, it was much, much weirder. One particularly pasty gentleman stripped
down to his Hanes underpants four match-ups early, and continually turned
around to make strange, scantily clad eye contact with me. No, sir. The Lizard
does not swing this way. Just—no.
Fighters in underpants began to make their way to the scale, and it was often unclear what weight the fight was actually taking place at. For example, one pair weighed in at 163 and 145 lbs respectively. What? Excuse me, but what is this weight class? Kind Of Sort Of Maybe Weight? No one else in the room besides Tony and Steve seemed to object to this, which was similarly concerning.
When it was finally my
turn, I ripped my shirt off in the style of the standard-size Hulk and threw my jeans on the floor. I climbed onto the
scale—138.6 lbs. I should have probably eaten a sandwich. I walked to the far
side of the stage and did my best to scowl and instead looked like a soulless,
pasty Irish-white Kmart Underwear model with a skin condition. My opponent
weighed in at 140 lbs exactly and stood across from me. I stared at her face
with intense, laserlike focus, and after a second, she smiled and looked away. THE LIZARD CAN SMELL
FEAR. My mouth watered. As she looked toward the cameraperson, about eighty percent of my anxiety evaporated. Then, before we stepped down, she moved in to give me a hug. Oh, I thought, you poor thing. Poor, poor thing...
Following the chest
puffing, Steve supplied me with coconut water and almond butter, which I
crushed mercilessly, and Tony effectively threw my pants at me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was time to
get the hell out of Dodge.
And as the other
fighters descended upon the vat of popcorn like so many vultures, the Detective
Sergeant, the Drunken Pugilist, and the Lizard turned their backs on the Muay
Thai Showdown. We had done what we came to do. Like John Nash, I just had to
learn to put all of the Soviet Babies in the corner.
