Boswell (13 page)

Act, I thought. Act!

I looked to my right. I was on the aisle. I looked to my left. Sabu. Elizabeth. A filled row. I made my decision. I stood up.

I turned to Sabu, the Elephant Boy. “Excuse me,” I said gravely.

He looked up at me, confused.

“I have to get by,” I explained.

Instinctively he pulled in his legs, but then, glancing significantly toward the aisle to my right, he frowned. I moved against his legs heavily.

“Ouch,” he said softly.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” he said, and stood to let me pass.

I halted in front of Elizabeth Languor. She glanced up at me and stood without a word. I moved quickly past the rest of the people in the row and out into the aisle. I went to the lobby and put a dime in the Coca-Cola machine.

“They stood up for me,” I croaked. “They stood up for me. Sabu and Elizabeth Languor.”

I threw the Coke away untasted and rushed back into the theater. I haven’t been gone long enough, I thought. It’ll look funny.

The big production number was on the screen. Edward Arnold and Eugene Pallette and S. G. “Cuddles” Sackell had their arms around each other. They had just merged their three department stores. Sabu was on one elephant and Margaret O’Brien was on the other. They all seemed to be coming through the big Manhattan apartment right into the audience. José Iturbi’s piano was following them. Everybody was singing Sabu’s concerto. I was coming down the aisle while they seemed to be coming up it. It was thrilling.

I moved into my row. Already people were getting up to leave, but I pushed past them to get to my seat. They looked at me, annoyed, but made timid by my size.

When I got to Sabu’s and Elizabeth’s seats, they were unoccupied.

Boswell, I thought, mover of men!

The journal entry closes there. I was up most of the night writing it, and Felix Bush, the Schenectady Stalwart, beat me the next evening in a match I was supposed to win. Bogolub came into the locker room afterwards while I was still in the shower.

“Boswell!” I pretended not to hear him.

“Boswell?”

“Boswell, you in there? You hear me? You in there? Well, I hope you’re in there because that’s where you wash up and that’s what you are, you understand? Washed up! No more in LA do you wrestle for me in my gardens with the television and the hook-ups to San Francisco and all the way up to Portland, Oregon. That’s all finished, tanker. A guy that can’t win a fixed fight! Wash up good, you hear me? I’m paying for the soap and I say to you you are welcome because you are washed up in Los Angeles, do you understand me?”

“Yes. Beat it.”

“Beat it? Beat it? Do you threaten me, phony? I better not understand you to threaten me because I got guys who sell popcorn for me in this place who can whip your ass. You’re finished.”

I came out of the shower and went over to my locker. Bogolub followed and stared at me while I dried myself. It always makes me nervous when people look at me when I’m naked. Even girls. I turned my back.

“Dry up good, do you understand me?” Bogolub said.

“Please,” I said wearily. “Mr. Bogolub.”

“No no, my boy,” Bogolub said gently, “you miss my meaning. You shouldn’t catch cold. You missed a spot on your back. Where the yellow streak is,
that’s still wet!”

I turned to face him. “Look,” I said.

“Show me your ass again. I can’t stand to look at your face,” Bogolub said.

I shrugged.

“Why did Felix Bush beat you?” Bogolub demanded.

“I guess I was just bushed,” I said.

“Schmuck,” he said. “Pig-fart.”

“Get out of here, Mr. Bogolub.”

“Get out of here, Mr. Bogolub,” he mimicked. “Get out of here, Mr. Bogolub.” And then, in his own voice, “No tanker tells me to get out of my own place. You get out. You get dressed and get out. And that reminds me, I meant to tell you before. Why do you wear those crummy clothes? You look like something in a playground. I pay you. Wrestlers make good money. Ain’t you proud of your profession?”

“Wrestling is not my profession,” I yelled.

“That’s right. Not no more. Not in Los Angeles it ain’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay! You
bet
okay! A tanker who can’t win a fight that I go to the trouble to fix it for him. With rehearsals yet. Let me tell you something, Mr. America, let me tell you something about the economics of this profession.”

I looked up at once. There was fixing beyond fixing, and I was going to hear about it. It was all I could do to keep from putting my arm around Bogolub, from offering him a swallow of the mineral water that was in all locker rooms.

“You don’t know yet the damage you done tonight, do you, tanker?”

Better remain sullen, I thought. He explains because he thinks you’re sullen. Even in retreat, I thought, even in retreat I pursue. Even when I avoid them I embrace insiders, their silly trade secrets, their lousy shop talk.

“Contracts have been made, do you understand that? How am I going to juggle all those contracts? Bush was supposed to fight Fat Smith here next month. Maybe he won’t. Maybe you ruined it for him, too. It’s something I got to figure it out. How can Smith go up against him now? He was on the card right here last week and lost to the Chink. Maybe you don’t remember the terrific beating you give to the Chink yourself last time you was here, but the public remembers. So right away, it’s an overmatch. A winner against a loser. It’s inconsistent. Where’s the interest? A guy like Bush is supposed to lose in Los Angeles. All of a sudden he beats a contender.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. In the long-range geometry I had plans for you. Clean-cut. A Mr. Universe type.”

“I didn’t know about that,” I said.

“Big shot. Vigilante. Takes things into his own hands and doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“What difference does it make? So Bush wins one fight. Who’s going to think about it that way?”

“Think
about it?
Think
about it? Who said anything about anyone thinking about it? It’s the
feeling
of the thing. The balance. That’s what makes a good card. You queered that. Now I’ll have to readjust outcomes all the way up the line to get the balance back. And who pays for all that?
I
pay for it. It means new routines, new choreography, new identities, new costumes.”

“I’m sorry.”

Bogolub wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even mad any more; he was just thinking out loud. “Maybe I could mask somebody. Maybe some old tanker could come in masked. A new personality. That might fix things.”

“I could go against Fat Smith if I wore a mask,” I said. “Bush could fight my man.”

Bogolub was silent.

“That would restore the balance,” I said.

“Who you supposed to be fighting?” he asked finally. “The Grim Reaper, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll see. I won’t make promises. You’re still on my shit list.”

“I’m really sorry about tonight,” I said. “I was sick.”

He looked at me. He didn’t believe my excuse, but was grateful that I made one. “You’d have to change your style,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d
have
to change my style.”

It was because of Sandusky that I was wrestling. After our interview I returned to the only home I had: the gym. I stayed there, working out desultorily in the afternoons, sleeping there in the evenings. For about a week I simply drifted like that, knowing, I think, that sooner or later I would have to go back to my Uncle Myles. I was running out of money, I was getting bored. But mostly I was running out of money, since there is always something vaguely exciting about being on the bum. There wasn’t much I could do to make money. I couldn’t continue to throw cars into the snow and then pull them out—the work was seasonal. I stayed away from Uncle Myles because I believed, as I still do, that things happen. But lying on the tumblers’ mats at night, my only covers a half dozen volley ball nets (so that I felt oddly like a captured fish and dreamt of the sea), I knew that whatever was going to happen had better happen soon.

Then a week after I had seen Sandusky I got a letter from him. It was odd to think that the only being in the world who knew my address was The Great Sandusky. I opened the envelope.

My dear Boswell,

I have been thinking over your problem. I think it’s better to face things right off then to deceive yourself for a while only to find out when it’s already too late that you’ve just been kidding yourself along. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future but I can tell you that right now and for a long time to come probably the strong man game is dead. Now I say that speaking from a background of experience which covers I don’t like to think how many years. The facts are this: 1) That Vaudeville is dead and that let’s face it it was in Vaudeville that the real muscle money was made. It isn’t only strong men of course. Acrobats, animal trainers, all that crowd I used to tour the circuits with are in the same sinking boat. 2) There are still circuses and while it’s true that circuses have absorbed a certain number of the acts there was never any real demand for a strong man in a circus. Now I know, I know you always hear the term “Circus Strong Man,” but think about that for a minute. Did
you
ever see a strong man put on an act in the big ring? If you’re honest with yourself you’ll have to admit you did not. His apparatus is too costly and clumsy (and anyway who could set it up unless it was another strong man). No, your “Circus Strong Man” if the term means anything at all was a guy in a side show in a tiger suit, a freak with a bald head and a phony mustache. His size came more from good German beer than it did from training. You don’t want any part of that. 3) The carnival or “carny” as it is called
does
still use a strong man act, but more often than not it is faked and as with the side show it is not a good life. It is not clean and the traveling is not interesting. All towns you never heard of in N. Minnesota and etc.

So all the old showcases for a strong man act are gone, Vaudeville being the main one. (Now some of my friends think that television may bring new inroads but, frankly, I cannot agree and I think they are just kidding themselves and whistling in the dark. What would be more ridiculous than a guy claiming to have force lifting weights on a little tiny television screen? Those weights would look like six- ounce balls. No, definitely not. Besides, in an act like mine was, there had to be audience contact and on television you couldn’t have that.) Now there’s one other thing to think about as you probably know yourself. I am referring to the so-called “physical fitness magazine.” Well go ahead if you want to but if I had my way they wouldn’t be allowed to sell them. That world is just inhabited by a bunch of queers and fags. How would you like to have it on your conscience that some nut is using your picture in a magazine to jerk off in front of? It’s worse than the carny and more filthy and I wouldn’t think you’d want to touch it.

Well, you must be asking yourself, what does all this mean for me? Where does all this leave
me?
Well frankly, and I say it right out because I don’t like to see you break your heart, it means
that there’s no place for you in the strong man game!
Face it now, Boswell, I tell you like a father.

However, I have been thinking that there’s one area left that I haven’t mentioned and that’s wrestling. A lot of the boys go into that and make good money and a famous name and it’s not a bad life. I know what you’re going to say, that wrestling is fixed. Well it is and it isn’t. What I mean is that there
are
clean wrestlers and even those that are fake have to demonstrate a mastery of the different holds and etc. And don’t think it doesn’t hurt when you get slammed around like that! Of course you know how to fall but plenty of bones are still broken. So don’t kid yourself about that! After all, they’re really
wrestling.
Only the winner is fixed. And what does an artist care about that, right? It’s the form of the thing. The same as in weightlifting or anything else.

Now I don’t know whether this sounds like good advice to you or not. Maybe like most young men you would prefer to beat your head against the wall than learn from an older person’s experience, but I think you’re more sensible than that and so I took the liberty after you left me of writing to an old friend of mine who actually used to manage me at one time, maybe you heard of him—Mr. Frank Alconi—about you who now handles wrestlers and promotes matches in Jersey City. He wrote back saying that he is always looking for big strong boys like yourself for the ring world and that if you are interested he will forward train fare, coach of course. His address is Frank Alconi, 9 Water Street, Jersey City in New Jersey.

Do as you please, but I think this is the best thing. Whatever happens good luck to you. I sign as I used to in the old days when it meant something.

Yours in Force,

         Felix Sandusky

P.S. Where are the poses you promised? I want to see that neck.

I wrote Frank Alconi for the money, and he sent it, and I went to Jersey City and became a wrestler.

I became a wrestler, I suppose, because, resolutions or no resolutions, it is an integral part of my character to take advice from the great. A reflex action. Go with the experts, I always say. There’s no father-figure crap about it.
My
father is dead.

I never sent Sandusky a picture. He had to be made to understand that it was my neck and I did not intend to do any better by it than I did by myself. There would be no silk shirts around it; I would not flatter it with ties. I wrote Sandusky once thanking him for his interest because that is good sportsmanship. Otherwise, when I was in St. Louis I sent him passes to the matches and that was the end of it. If he was so in love with my neck he might want to be around when it was strangled.

Frank Alconi put me to work at once. I was already strong, of course, and Alconi said I was a natural and anybody Felix had faith in by Jesus he had faith in too. But for a long time I didn’t know what I was doing. I went wearily up and down the East Coast between Jersey City and Raleigh, North Carolina, precariously ambulatory, describing my sensations to myself in a kind of hospital shorthand—restive, critical, grave. Indeed, my memories of those first weeks are chiefly memories of liniment. My body was like some great northern forest, one part of which was always on fire. The other wrestlers kept telling me what a good sport I was and visited me at the rubbing table afterwards. Beating me up made them feel young again. They seemed to like to feel my muscles. I can remember more than once, lying on the rubbing table near unconsciousness and death in the unheated basement of a civic auditorium, looking up into the loveless smiles of ancient apes, having them stare down at me lost in wonder, and then, tracing their prehensile fingers over the bumps and hollows of my flesh, pointing with inverted pride at their own tough and lumpy bodies, which looked, from the angle at which I saw them, like great hairy mounds of red meat. Then these fellows would shrug, pull on their pin-striped businessmen’s suits, snap their
Wall Street Journals
smartly under their armpits, and go off with a wave to lose themselves among the traveling salesmen in the hotel lobby. In those days druggists went blind mixing special liniments to keep me alive.