Shorty

Between 2003 and 2009 I was a South Side boxer and Chicago Golden Gloves champion. It’s a detail about me so idiosyncratic, so at odds with my wispy appearance and my cerebral mien, that it surprises me too when I think about it, like a mole on your back you glimpse in the mirror. 

I was a doctoral student when I started boxing: too old to become any good at it and too invested in the academic track to take boxing as seriously as I had. Never an athlete, let alone a pugilist, the inspiration sprang out of the same source that had always inspired my less-than-conventional pursuits: namely, literature. 

I completed the first year of my PhD program in anthropology at the University of Chicago feeling deflated. It was a hard and lonely year. A continent away from my family and friends in an institution whose hierarchy I couldn’t scale, I hankered for a sense of meaning. I sought it by reading books that featured the University of Chicago, like Philip Roth’s Letting Go and Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein. The book that finally made the difference was Body and Soul: sociologist Loïc Wacquant’s account of his boxing experiences in a South Side gym while pursuing his own PhD. It captured my imagination, not because Wacquant glamorized or satirized the University of Chicago as other writers had, but because he escaped it. It gave me an inkling of a different, off-campus world in which a restless graduate student might distinguish herself.

The nearby boxing gym that Wacquant patronized had since shut down, forcing me to look further afield. Not a halfway girl, I caught the #15 Jeffry Local bus to Trumbull Park Gym down on 105^th Street. There, I entered a world pulsating with the stench of sweat and rotting leather; the thud of punches on worn heavy bags; the clickity-clack of the speed bag; and the swish-tap-swish-tap of the jump rope, all in buzzer-marked 3-minute stretches and 1-minute intervals, emulating boxing rounds. 

None of the boxers at the gym spoke to me that first day and I was too intimidated to approach them, but Rodney, the coach, made up for it by being chatty and solicitous. He trained me without fuss, showing me how to wrap my hands and lace on a pair of boxing gloves, and having me practice the footwork and jabs he demonstrated. It felt feasible and exciting.  

I tried two other gyms, closer ones that would not take me a full hour to reach. Their coaches received me just as graciously even though, or perhaps precisely because, as in Trumbull Park, I was the only woman and the only white person there. One gym’s coach warned me not to come around with money or jewelry. In the other gym, the coach said not to worry about the men loitering outside because no one touched his boys.

I knew right away that I wanted to become one of the boys, only not his. Trumbull Park won me over the next time I was there: one of the boxers—Ashante—found out I was studying at the University of Chicago and asked me if I knew Loïc Wacquant (he called him Louie). It emerged that Ashante was one of the boxers featured in Wacquant’s book, and Rodney was another: both used to train in that no longer existing gym. Nothing excites my imagination as much as the romance of a book, and Rodney and Ashante were elevated in my eyes. Now I had to become book-worthy too. 

Until recently, I thought I had. Over the years, I told the story of how, through discipline and willpower, I overcame my abundant physical limitations and learned how to box, never that well but well enough to spar and compete. How, more than the boxing itself, I reveled in the camaraderie, breaking barriers that separated me from people whose backgrounds could not be more different from my own. How I always had a bunch of roughs in my corner calling me shorty. How I did something that no one else in my anthropology cohort had: gained an authentic entry into a truly foreign community and become a meaningful part of it. 

I would have loved to repeat and embellish that story here. The problem is that it exists at some variance from the truth. I know this now, and please believe me when I say that I did not know it before, because, for the purpose of writing this down, I did something I could never bring myself to do otherwise: I consulted my journal. 

I’ve been keeping one since my early twenties. It has become part of my daily routine to jot down things I did and sometimes felt each day. I never made an effort to stylize it as it was never meant to be read, not by others and not by myself. On the rare occasion in which I needed to locate a name or detail, I extracted them with the metaphoric outstretched fingers of a ready-to-withdraw hand, the rest of my body twisted backward, eyes half slits. I refused to touch anything in that journal I didn’t absolutely have to. 

I knew that I would not like what I found. Like most people, I harbor a good number of illusions about myself. Family and friends let me entertain them by telling me what I want to hear. They assume I’m after flattery and they are correct. My self-flattery extends to Past Me, which I envision as a crude version of my current ideal, not there yet, but well-intentioned and showing potential. It’s a bubble I’ve had no desire to burst. 

As soon as I started reading my journal from the boxing years, I knew why I had avoided it for so long. It grated on me with its aggrandizing banalities and with the slew of embarrassing reflections and decisions. My first revelation was that there was no gradual falling in love with boxing in a narratively coherent fashion the better I became at it. I was all in from day one. After a lifetime of couch-potato lethargy, I boxed every afternoon, jogged every morning, and did regular strength training in between. It wasn’t the boxing that got me hooked. Boxing was merely the excuse to set up base in that gym. What I thrived on was the attention.

I received a great deal of it, and not for my boxing skills. The attention was for being an eager-to-please white girl. All of the adult men in Trumbull Park flirted with me and I flirted right back. When I wasn’t “shorty,” I was “sexy legs” and “baby girl.” When they said they’d been thinking about me, I asked what they’d been thinking about. When they touched my waist and hips, I let them. When it was my butt and breasts I removed their hand with a laugh. And when they responded by asking if I had a boyfriend I said “Yes,” ironically, and they laughed too. 

I was an incorrigible tease, but I did get a lot of training. Not only by Rodney: everyone gave me tips and pointers. When I was ready to spar, there was never a shortage of volunteers to spar with me. Panting and being told “You ain’t tired,” or saying I got another round in me and getting a “Damn right” was beyond thrilling. My body changed: I built muscle and stamina. I spent a long time admiring my reflection in the mirror. I also looked good in the gym. Rodney held the pads for me in the ring and had me jab, double jab, double jab right (everyone heard my right!), weave and bob, one two hook, upper cut, overhand right. People stopped to look. Visitors asked if I was one of Rodney’s fighters and everyone confirmed that I was. 

I got my own boxing shoes, hand wraps, gloves, and mouthguard, but I used the gym’s headguards, always drenched in the literal sweat of other people’s brows. I went “Eww” the first time I put one on, but after that I repressed my queasiness for fear of not being taken seriously. Over time, I learned to enjoy the sensation of others’ sweat, their droplets mingled with mine while sparring. It formed part of the general intimacy, like having water poured into my mouth or my shoelaces tied while my hands were in boxing gloves and doing the same for others.

In the beginning, I was horny all the time. Once when watching a match, Big Kenny, sitting on the bench below mine, announced that he would rest his arm on my lap and proceeded to do just that. My journal dissolves into semi-coherent blather as I admire the dark, sinewy arm. Never had a sexier arm rested on my person and it was all I could do not to stroke it. 

Even less pleasant to read about in the journal was my cluelessness. One of the questions I got asked was if my parents were “rich or struggling.” With arrogance that mortifies me today, I explained that they were neither, that they both worked hard all of their lives and were careful about how they spent their money such that they could now lead comfortable lives, pointedly implying that the person asking the question really ought to do the same. 

My boxing buddies had police records, worked sporadically, and were often hard up for cash. Mystifying to me then—they also kept changing their phone numbers. I learned to state my name when calling lest they denied it was them. I was forever frustrated by what I considered their flakiness and lack of discipline. I never scolded them for losing jobs or missing practice, but I’m sure my disapproval was broadcast loud and clear. I resigned myself to paying for the gas when we went out, but I got peeved when they didn’t return the money that they had themselves called a loan. I demanded it back, “on principle.”

One time, Rodney asked me to lend him $75, and I said no. I explained in my journal: “First of all, he still hasn’t paid me back the $50 from last time. Second, he’s always eating out and buying shit, much more than me! Besides, he needs the money to pay off a stupid debt he wouldn’t even have if he had any sense.” That’s the sanctimonious little twat I was. At least I felt guilty about it, although Rodney himself immediately asked someone else for the money without holding it against me. 

Then there was the cultural appropriation, even as the expression was unknown to me at the time. It came from a place of admiration: I really was taken in. I went so far as to research how to get public funding for opening a gym and fantasized about leaving my graduate studies behind, raising Rodney’s kids better than I imagined their baby mamas had, getting other kids off the streets. Ultimately, all I ever did was tie my hair back in a durag and change the way I spoke. “I’m tired as a mothafucka” was one thing I said all the time. When anyone called me I was either “chillin” at home or “kickin it” with friends. 

On the part of my boxing buddies there was casual antisemitism. They recommended solving embroglios by finding a “Jew lawyer,” and they blamed what they considered the distorted images of Malcolm X and Farrakhan on “Jew producers” (Ashante lent me a couple of Farrakhan’s tapes to listen to “with an open mind.”). They got pretty touchy when I called them on it, which I didn’t do very often. I knew they liked me, personally, and the rest I shrugged off. I was “shorty,” after all.  

Before reading the journal, I was hoping to find enough about boxing in between what I imagined to be all the graduate school drama. Instead, for my first couple of years at the gym, boxing took over almost entirely. My sparring sessions are depicted in excruciating detail. At first, I sparred with the regulars—Jeff, Tank, Gustavo. They found it easier, I suppose, to practice with someone who couldn’t hurt them. Either I called them out or they announced that they wanted a piece of me, gamely pretending it was a real match. Rodney got annoyed when I didn’t run it by him first. “You’re like a little boy,” he said, “always wanting to spar.” 

The first time I sparred for real was when wild, loudmouthed K’Ron showed up at the gym. The others knew her from the hood, and I was excited at the sight of another girl. Rodney said I wasn’t ready for her, but I insisted, and regretted it almost immediately. In the ring, there was no overlooking her size and experience. I sent out a tentative jab and K’Ron blocked it and got me in the face with a right that had me flying back against the ropes. It was like reality itself hitting me in the face. I kept coming at her over the two rounds that Rodney allowed, but it never got any better. Later, seeing how crestfallen I was, the guys told me that I shouldn’t compare myself to K’Ron. “She a street fighter,” they said. “There ain’t no woman in her.” 

I stepped up my game in the months that followed as the dads started asking me to spar with their sons. The first time Ramón arranged for me to spar with fourteen-year-old Ricardo, Rodney warned Ricardo to take it easy on me. I protested with false bravura that Ricardo had nothing I couldn’t take. Rodney countered that he didn’t want anyone saying he didn’t protect his fighters. It ended up being fine, though never easy. Another regular sparring partner was Lil Kenny. He was twelve the first time we sparred, and I gave him a bloody nose. I know how that sounds. In my defense, these kids usually gave me as good as they got. Lil Kenny showed his dad the blood and Big Kenny asked him if he wanted to quit or if he wanted to get back in there and make me pay. Lil Kenny got back in the ring and Big Kenny said, “That’s my boy.”

Reading my journal, it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement again, especially when I got someone good, knocked them down, knocked the mouthpiece out of their mouth, and when I had an audience. I start feeling all the old feelings again: the jitters, the pride. I’d go to Trumbull Park after a difficult day on campus and my mood would pick up. I got antsy on days I couldn’t go, knowing everyone else would be there. Once it was because of a guest lecture by legendary sociologist Giovanni Arrighi that I “had to attend.” It makes me laugh when I read it now. Then again, I have no recollection of the lecture.

On weekends, we sometimes drove around and grabbed a bite to eat. Once Tank and Kyle came over to my place and played cards with me and my roommate (they taught us Spades). All of my gym buddies came for my thirtieth birthday party, where they stood out among the University of Chicago crowd. We went to Ashante’s cousin’s house one time to watch a pay-per-view Floyd Mayweather fight. And when Tank was on house arrest at his mother’s place, I went to visit him. He told me that if anyone on the street messed with me, to say I was with him. As it happened, the only people ever to mess with me on the South Side were cops. They stopped me on occasion to ask what I was doing there, suspecting I was out to buy drugs. 

My heart warms at the belonging I felt in that gym. I’d walk in and go through the drill, knowing exactly what to do. Everyone took for granted my presence and newbies acknowledged me as a regular. I don’t have that kind of environment anymore, haven’t had one ever since. Before fights, we went to work out at other gyms where I’d show off my skills. People there who didn’t know me gave me a confused once over and asked “Latina?” (I’m blue-eyed and fair) which I took as the highest compliment. 

Things changed when I started competing. I never had many opportunities because there were few women boxers and hardly any in my weight class (I weighed in between 102 and 108 pounds). I pretended to be upset by this, but secretly, I was relieved. Fights made me inordinately nervous, and I sacrificed studies and socializing and food for them. I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt. I got the occasional black eye even from sparring and I always sported my boxing injuries like trophies. What scared me was letting Rodney down and embarrassing myself in front of my teammates and friends. I lost more fights than I won (my record is 3-4), which chipped at my confidence. I was ecstatic when fights ended, even those I lost, simply because they were over. 

Leaving Chicago for a year of fieldwork gave me a much-needed respite, but the gym felt different when I returned. It always had high turnover, with people weaving in and out according to the irregular rhythms of their lives, but some of my favorites had left never to return. I changed too: my social life was more robust and my studies more demanding. My journal descriptions of the workouts are curtailed: “Why do I need all this punching and getting punched at?” Still, I kept boxing every afternoon with a hard-nosed commitment, compelled by a drive I couldn’t name. It reads almost as if I was the person I am today. 

Rodney told me one day that I would have an opponent for an out of town fight the next weekend—my first four-round, open-division fight—and my heart sank. “There goes the burrito I planned on getting for dinner,” I wrote. It was then that I finally made up my mind to stop competing. When I told Rodney that it would be my last fight, he was resigned. He could tell that my heart was no longer in it. I lost that fight, but it was close. People said she had better technique while I was more of a slugger. What I really was, though, was burnt out.

I still went to the gym and sparred with the guys. Before the Chicago Golden Gloves, trainers from other gyms brought their “girl fighters” to spar with me. One time I broke in a new girl. She still had much to learn, I reflected sagely in my journal, but she had a lot of heart and kept coming at me despite getting her ass whooped, “just like I used to when I was starting out.” 

I got some pressure to compete again. To everyone’s delight, I had won the previous year’s Golden Gloves with a second round TKO. A banner with my name hung on the wall of the Trumbull Park Gym. Didn’t I want a chance to win again? But I did not. Fighting was no longer for me. 

The most special moments in those last couple of years were when old boxing buddies made a surprise appearance. Tank showed up one day after a long hiatus. A couple of days before I’d left the country for fieldwork, I finally consummated my long-running flirtation with him in what I seized upon as the perfect timing for avoiding consequences. The sex was awkward and disappointing, but I was right about there being no consequences. At the gym, we sparred again for old times’ sake. 

Then we talked about his best friend and our other old boxing buddy Kyle, shot dead a few months back at the age of 21. I was surprised not to see Tank at the funeral. Tank explained that he didn’t want to remember Kyle like that (it was an open casket funeral, and I confirmed that the sight of Kyle’s dead body was jarring). Tank came to the gym a few more times after that, but always on his own terms, and we all knew he would disappear again before long. 

Another day, Big Kenny and Lil Kenny stopped by, except that Lil Kenny was fifteen and taller than me now. Still boxing, he said, in another gym and with peers. I liked to think that our multiple sparring sessions helped build him up. Fifteen-year-old Adam, who had moved to Ohio a couple of years previous, also came by while visiting family in Chicago. I recalled a particularly spirited sparring session when he responded to my hook—which I learned only later he “really felt”—with a body shot that I also definitely felt. 

“You were feisty today,” I told Adam after the sparring. 

“What that mean?” he asked, and Rodney said, “It means you a punk.”

I stopped going to the gym every day. As with other difficult-to-kick habits, I had to contrive an activity that would keep me away, so I signed up for volunteering. Once or twice a week I went to a downtown studio to record audiobooks for the blind and then reward myself with a mushroom stroganoff pasta—the kind of dish I would never indulge in while trying to make weight. I also stopped sparring every time I was at the gym. When I did spar, I got winded more quickly. “I’m too old for this,” I wrote after one such session.

When I defended my doctoral dissertation, Rodney and Ashante came and I teared up on seeing them in the audience. I didn’t know how long I would stay in touch with them or with any of my other boxing buddies after I was gone, but I would always have their presence that day. In the summer of 2009, I left Chicago to take up the first of a series of postdoctoral gigs in Europe. That was also the end of my boxing years. Nostalgia for boxing had been squeezed out of me by that point. It felt, rather, like being set free.  

Boxing played no part in my life after leaving Chicago. Some of my new friends don’t even know I used to box, although my nephews certainly do. I’ve taught each of them the basics and still drill them on combinations when they demand it. A boxing trophy adorns a shelf in my childhood bedroom, and they admire it when visiting their grandparents.

Beyond the attention-seeking and ignorance, what vexes me most in reading my journal today is all the time I wasted. For years, I was at the gym every afternoon: almost an hour’s commute each way plus a 90-minute workout. This, while living in a new country, carving out a social life, pursuing a PhD. And for what? I knew even then that I wasn’t very good at boxing and it would never be my future. I could have done so many other things with that time. Become a brilliant scholar. Made more friends. Developed my writing skills. 

“It makes no sense,” I said when telling my new friend Derrick about it. 

“Why does it have to make sense?” He countered: “Isn’t the fact that it made you happy enough?” 

It did make me happy, very happy, at a time in which other aspects of my life conspired to make me anxious and sad. Derrick was right in encouraging me to value purposeless fun more than I had. 

But it also tapped into a deeper concern. If in reading my journal now, I wince at the futility of what Past Me squandered her time on, what will Future Me make of my current pursuits? For the past couple of years, I’ve been spending as much time on my personal writing as I have on work. What if it never gets published? What if I’ll never be good at it? What if this, too, is a waste of time?

Yet the consolation is also right there, between the lines. After I stopped boxing, I no longer remembered it as the problematic pillar of my erstwhile identity. I construed it instead as evidence of my authentic search for a better one. My journal exposes me as an unreliable narrator, not because I lie to others, but because I lie to myself. I convince myself that the things I want now are what I’ve always semi-consciously pursued, when, in fact, they are mounted on the ruins of failed desires. 

I take heart in my capacity to always tell myself a happy lie. Faced with the choice between regret and delusion, I choose delusion almost every time. It gives me hope that if my current writing dream fails, I’ll spin a tale about the redemptive role it used to play in some foreordained non-writing life, the contours of which have yet to emerge.    

Last week, some twenty years after boxing overtook my life, I signed up for a trial session at a boxing club in Lisbon, where I’ve been living for the past year. I figured that, along with reading my journal, it would help jog my memory. The online registration system afforded no space to explain age and experience. All I got was an automatic message asking me to confirm my attendance in one of the regular classes by clicking Sim or Nõa. 

When I got there, the coach told me to try to follow along. After warmup, he divided us into pairs. I put on the boxing gloves he gave me and felt a buzz of familiarity. We were to take turns throwing a one-two-hook. When my turn came, muscle memory took over. Throwing the most explosive combination that gym had seen in a while, I felt strong and energized. The coach beelined over and watched me for a minute, waiting for me to pause. “Já fisezte isto” (you’ve done this before), he said when I did. 

Reader, I said “Sim.”