Laura Meets Jeffrey (19 page)

“Some of the men who were whipping me were really into it just the way I like it and had just the right pace going. You know, because if you whip too fast, it's not enough—and I had to be able to
savor the feeling
of the whip!

“For me it was the smack of the whip and then savoring the pain,” Laura explains, “first the whip, and then the pain. And they were whipping me exactly right.”

Laura comes with nearly every one of them who fucks her long enough, moaning with each new load until her orgasms blur into one ecstatic cry.

I call for a break after a dozen men. The line is still long with many having gone back for a second turn. I walk around behind her just to see the come drip down her thighs, framed by an ass as red as any fraternity pledge's bottom on hell night. I grab a mass of come with my fingers and fling it onto the floor. I smear what's left on my hand on her ass and legs, spank her, then let the revelry continue.

I ask her after each man if she wants more and she says yes. Her eyes get drunker with each fuck. She whimpers and begs for more as soon as each cock pulls out. During the middle of some fucks, she shakes as if hit by an electric shock.

Laura never says “enough.” She doesn't come anymore, but there is no way she is going to say “no mas!” After two-dozen fucks (I've run out of condoms), Laura is physically exhausted and I tell the line the game is over. Laura comes back to life and screams, “Fuck me in the ass, Master! Please fuck me in the ass.”

Her beautiful ass is as hot as a heating pad.

I take off my pants. I'm not wearing underwear. I take my already hard dick, and rub it on her hot come-soaked butt. I work it into her bum using the ejaculate butter as lubricant. She is awash in it. It runs down her legs. I lean against her and move in and out and feel the fluid; some just given to her is warm at the top of her thighs and some, received earlier, is cold, all the way down to her ankles.

Someone puts a real popper (I could tell it was amyl nitrate not butyl nitrate) right under my nose, which helps spark my climax and makes the explosion more intense.

“Of course, Jeffrey would always come in for the fuck,” Laura laughs, “because I loved fucking him. That was another one of my favorite fantasies that we acted out—Jeffrey would let everyone get me all turned on—and then he would come in and insert himself inside my ass. Yeah, insert himself right into the picture, ha, ha, ha!”

We get dressed and we go home. We take a long shower together, fumigate, decontaminate, do more coke, and talk about the experience and fall asleep without realizing it.

I wake up the next day feeling her heating pad ass. I fuck her without her ever stirring or waking up. Her nose is filled with coke and she makes little snores the entire time so I know she is not dead.

28

The Norman Mailer/José Torres Saturday Morning Boxing Club

and my war with Ryan O'Neal

Other than fucking, my other great physical passion was boxing. From 1976 to 1984, I was part of a group that boxed about twenty-five fall, winter and spring Saturday mornings a year at the Gramercy Gym on 14th Street. The regulars were me, former Light Heavyweight Champion of the World Jose´ Torres, Norman Mailer, Norman's son Michael, and Norman's nephew Peter Alson.

We were joined by a revolving group of artists, writers, actors, lawyers, TV directors, college students, stockbrokers and even a Kennedy for a while. Most had boxed before. Some came fresh to learn. We all wanted something more exciting than tennis.

I was never blessed with much physical grace or more than normal coordination. What I brought into the ring was great stamina, fair size (just under six feet and 175 pounds), a low fear of punishment, and an aggressive willingness to mix it up. At my best I could be daring in attack and stubborn in defense.

I was an awkward boxer without much poetry, which in boxing can be its own reward. Being awkward makes you harder to read sometimes, often harder to hit and less likely to telegraph your punches. Ken Norton and Joe Frazier are two famous boxers who are considered awkward in style. Mike Tyson is another obvious example. What he lacks in grace he makes up for in power and courage. And teeth.

Saturday morning boxing protocol was simple. You'd fight a round or two, or rarely three. Sometimes Jose´, our coach, would suggest a match between two of us.

A pact between fighters would be made as to the level of contact. One might say, “Let's just practice for a round or two, I want to work on my jab,” or “I want to work on my defense so come at me and I'll just defend.” Or maybe we'd agree on light contact and sometimes full contact. We all wore mouthpieces and cups. Headgear was available, but I hated headgear. It interfered with my vision, was annoying to wear and the extra size made for a bigger target.

Everyone wrapped his hands with long strips of cotton fabric to protect against injuries induced by
punching
. Wraps make it less likely you'll hurt your thumb and reduce the risk of a fracture to one of your wrist bones. They maintain the alignment of the joints and add strength to your punch. Mostly I just loved the ceremony of wrapping before a fight. It's always a tense scene in every boxing movie. In real life you are the warrior preparing for battle. For real. Not a video game. Low tech. You against him. May the best man win.

The object of our fights wasn't to destroy our opponent, but to gain advantage. The main difference between us and most amateur or school boxers was that we hardly ever went for that fourth killer punch or combination after we had already stunned our opponent with a great two-or-three-punch attack. And we never went in for the cold-hearted fifth. Knowing you could have finished him off sufficed. He knew it. You knew it. The other boxers and friends watching knew it. That was enough. Nobody kept official score because we all knew the score. It was boxing's version of catch and release.

Maybe you'd come in with a medium tap to exploit that second opening, or rarely, a third or fourth opening, but it was bad form to come back with a haymaker. Sometimes it happened when tempers flared, but losing your temper is more likely to harm you than help you in boxing, so tempers are tempered. It's part of the Zen of Boxing.

Some trainers preach that a professional boxer needs to be having fun because boxing is a job, and nobody can do a great job if they don't like what they're doing. Losing your temper means you are not having any fun. More important, losing your temper takes you out of the fight, steals your energy, and wastes focus on emotions. Your opponent becomes a personality rather than just some force with a specific set of fighting tools trying to kill you.

Fighting is about instinct and not thinking. Once the bell rings it's best if it's all autopilot. Your game plan, based on you or your coach's perceptions of your opponent's strengths and shortcomings as matched to your tools and weaknesses, takes intellectual awareness. Stay away from his lightning quick right. He gets tired out quicker than you so make him move a lot. Work his body and wear him down before you try to take him out with a headshot. In the ring, this thinking needs to be driven into your subconscious and modified into instinct. Lose your temper and your game plan goes out the window and a different instinct, blinded by anger, takes over. Once at the gym, we were all compatriots on the same team and nobody wanted to do real damage. That was the convention.

My fights with Michael Mailer were consistently the most punishing. Norman said it was because we were too equal. Michael and I liked mixing it up not because we hated each other but because we loved each other. I had known him since he was three-and-a-half years old when we lived in the same house. I'd carry him on my shoulders sometimes and go shopping. He was curious about everything and I'd answer questions.

As boxers we had different skills and advantages. He was a teenager, faster and a more refined boxer. I was early thirties, bigger, heavier and stronger. We were equally brave so altogether it was a brutal combination. Norman had us fight less as the years progressed when the damage and the Saturday afternoon headaches got more intense. (As a post script: In the late '80s when Michael was at Harvard and had fought in Golden Gloves contests, and he was closer to me in size and strength, we boxed a round in his basement in Provincetown and I was totally outclassed. I couldn't wait for the bell to ring and refused to fight a second round.)

The overriding joy of boxing, beyond the primordial mano-a-mano triumph of winning, is that you are never more alone, never more tuned into your own body, never more self-reliant and in control of your own destiny. Sex may be more enjoyable, but boxing is more exciting.

Your vision changes when you fight. All your eyesight abilities join together to concentrate on one job in a very small area: his fists and their relationship to you and your fists and their relationship to him. That's all there is. It's like the distance/velocity screen on the inside of the Terminator's bioelectrical optics system, except without the heads-up display.

You know exactly when you are within his reach, when he is within yours. This doesn't mean you are always right or are fast enough to react but whatever you can do, you're doing. In some small way your life depends on you and ancient fight/flight programs deep inside your hard-drive are activated. It's as real as anything gets for middle-class guys, barring a mugging at gunpoint.

There is no outside world—just your feet, your hands, your wind and some other guy trying to hurt you. Maybe he makes a certain breath sound just before he throws a right. Maybe he wipes his brow with his left glove before a right hand uppercut. Maybe he telegraphs his cross with too much recoil. Maybe he bluffs a left jab too often just before he throws one. Everything means something. It's chess and Grand Theft Auto and playing football and a hockey fight.

Your head is empty except for the challenge in front of you. It's not just visual focus. It's complete focus. Time also changes. You cannot believe how long three minutes can be if you get hurt in the beginning of a round and you know he's hot and you're cold.

Every bodily system is maxed out or shut off to let other ones work harder. If you are not used to it, you'll be exhausted in under a minute. Some guys are exhausted immediately after the first time they're hit. Guys in good shape from singles tennis or running marathons would come down to the gym, try boxing and be out of breath in forty-five seconds. With a guy throwing punches trying to hurt them, their adrenalin burns up and they are quickly spent.

No activity in the world burns calories faster than boxing. I don't mean hitting the heavy bag or jumping rope, I mean being in the ring with someone else who wants to smash your fucking head in.

I could box six rounds at my best. Most of the Saturday morning civilian boxers could go three or four, maybe five. What it takes to go ten or twelve professional rounds is inconceivable. (They used to have fifteen-round fights, but they stopped them; too many injuries after round twelve.)

One of the benefits of boxing is that you must work out, you must run, and you must not smoke. There are no options. You cannot fake it. The best reason to make sure you work out and don't smoke is so you don't get beat up on Saturday. It's point-blank motivation. A sign over the door of the gym where we boxed said: CONDITION IS A STATE OF BODY NOT MIND. I loved it. I read it every single Saturday. It was dead on. It doesn't matter how psyched up you are if you are not in shape. In boxing you can't cheat life.

After boxing we were all noisy celebrating our testosterone in the locker room and at lunch we tasted the laughter of gladiators who survived. Four to ten of us would head out to a local greasy spoon, take over the back room and relive our best moments of the matches, trade filthy sexist jokes and enjoy camaraderie that you can only get from sports that are this violent. You can't get it from golf. Guys fighting a weight problem like Norman and myself enjoyed only a few gourmet meals more than we did our hamburger-dripping-with-fat, any guilt absolved by diet amnesty earned from a morning of boxing.

Boxing is a way to earn self-respect, deepen the dialogue inside, add gravitas and take yourself seriously. You walk different every moment of the day and your level of self-respect is visible to others and your vibe elicits deference.

When I was with Laura, I tested the old boxer's myth about the benefits of sexual avoidance. Also, I wanted to see how drugs would affect my game. So I boxed once after staying awake all night at an orgy. I boxed well rested without sex. I boxed once on speed, once on coke. I never boxed on pot because I could tell that was a no-no. The last thing you need is some mind-altering drug that will affect your sense of distance and time.

I surprised myself by boxing well even after a sleepless night of sex. I couldn't box as many rounds as usual but the rounds I boxed were more than decent. I felt like a warrior and fought like one. The drugs had strange effects. With speed I was more aggressive and certainly had more stamina, but I made more defensive mistakes and missed more than usual. I felt invincible. I took more of a beating because I actually wasn't more invincible. It's like the “Sign over the Door” said.

I understood why the Nazis gave speed to their fighting men. You don't need to eat, you don't need sleep and you're irritable and aggressive. But, they lost the war because the reality of war is also just like the “Sign over the Door.”

Doing coke made me more defensive and less offensive. I didn't like that. It made me feel too self-conscious, which for boxers is the kiss of death. I boxed only one round and quit for the day. Boxing is about letting go, living on the edge of instincts, not intellectualizing them. You don't have time to think. Thinking about the actual fighting while you're fighting is bad. Being conscious of your game plan is like taking more than 3.8 seconds to read a billboard when you're driving. It's a message, but it's not there to distract you from your driving.

You can't process thought as fast as you can react. Boxers train hard and that's where thinking comes in. You fight a zillion practice rounds with your coach yelling stuff like “Keep your hands up,” “Stop pulling back with your jab and telegraphing it,” “Keep your elbows in,” or “Stick and move, stick and move.” Practicing is about thinking. Fighting is about being. It's the great physical existential equation. That's why many intellectuals love boxing and that's why no stupid boxers become world champions. To be great, you need to have the machine, the attitude, the brains, and the skill.

Unless you had a miserable headache, which is how many of us spent Saturday afternoons—and evenings, and sometimes Sunday—or unless you were injured, sex was definitely enhanced. This was true for me and for several fellow boxers. We talked about it. Sex or not having sex, as far as I could tell, had no effect on boxing. But, boxing does have a tremendous effect on sex.

Sex, as we contemporary American Homo sapiens interpret it, unlike boxing, is one of those activities that goes beyond the
“
Sign over the Door.
”
With sex, the state of your physical plant is superseded by who you think you are. No fuck makes you feel more “man” than the fuck after boxing, headaches notwithstanding. Even losing a few rounds gives you a tough-guy edge. And winning is pure aphrodisia. Self-respect makes everything more intense.

After expending all that energy and releasing all those hormones, then taking a long shower, eating a good meal, and taking a restful nap or a leisurely walk, you're loaded for bear. You have made a prodigious offering to the God Of Manliness and in return your balls will be thrilled to pump you a special load.

I did notice one thing—in retrospect. The more I got into S&M, the more aggressive I became as a boxer and the more chances I took in the ring. My style got more frontal, more risky. I took more hits, and gave more. I used to feel bad if I hurt someone. Then I didn't feel bad. Then I liked it. Then I lived for it. I became less generous and more exacting. I felt tougher and thought I was becoming a real fighter. I enjoyed more and more the breaking of eggs for the omelet, which is the psychic bottom line.

José Torres once told me that when he was a kid he liked fighting and hurting other boys. He liked punching them in the face. Maybe being a sadist was the necessary part of being a winner in boxing. I was getting better and stronger and all the hot sex was making me feel more manly. It was only later that I realized that I was just becoming more violent. In every way. A couple of times in the ring I paid for the extra aggression.