A Not-So-Beautiful Mind

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...

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.