Laura Meets Jeffrey (20 page)

The 1980/81 boxing season was memorable because one of my regular opponents on Saturday mornings was Ryan O'Neal, the actor, and one tough Irish son-of-a-bitch. He was in terrific shape, with lots of great natural eye/hand coordination. He played racquetball several hours every day and had great wind, which is the boxer's secret weapon. He was a little bigger than me and a whole lot meaner.

I liked boxing Ryan. He had more reach, a half-classy style and was always an uphill battle. Plus he was an Irishman I could legally hit. Don't get me wrong. I love the Irish. I love Ireland. Two of my best friends are Irish. I love how green the country is, their lighter than drizzle “grand soft days.” I love Bloomsday and the complexion of Irish women. I adore Irish horses; their big boned well-muscled Thoroughbreds, Irish Draughts, and crossbred warm-blood sport horses. I can listen to U2, Thin Lizzy, Van Morrison and Irish accents all day long.

It's just that when I was a kid growing up in the Dorchester section of Boston, there were a few clans of Jews and Italians, a few blacks, and vast hoards of Irish. Most of the times I got beat up it was by some kid named O'Donnell or O'Connell or McMartin. The chance to hit an Irishman made fighting somebody better than me extra worth it.

Also fighting someone better than you is how you get better. An added bonus, and I must admit to irony if not sadism, was that it was satisfying to be able to punch someone that good-looking, like Ryan, in the face.

One Friday night a few months before I met Laura, when I was staying with Sherry, my Texas Tornado, I was stoned on some killer weed and watching TV while she was out with her friends. She'd left her nail polish on the side table. It was candy apple red metal-flake just like you'd see on a reconditioned '55 Chevy. I picked up the bottle, shook it and turned it upside down like a kaleidoscope. I opened it and took the brush out with a gob of polish on it. I looked for a place to paint it and settled on the nail of my left big toe. I painted the toe. I let it dry. I painted it again and again until it had the depth of an excellent auto paint job. I went to bed. Sherry came home drunk and randy. We had sex. I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning, went to the gym, fought, showered and got ready for lunch.

As I was coming out of the shower Ryan noticed my big toe on my right foot, pointed it out to Norman and said to me, “What the fuck is this, Jeffrey?'

I just stood there.

I paused, looked at my other unpainted nineteen nails, and then said, “Okay, I admit it. I'm five percent gay.” Norman looked at me with an extra wide smile, then looked at Ryan and said, “I'd even admit to that.”

During lunch I told Ryan I was going out to L.A. for a shoot that week and he offered to let me stay at his beach house in Malibu. I got to meet his sixteen-year-old daughter Tatum and one of her drop dead gorgeous 90210 girlfriends. The beach house also had the first walk-in closet-sized shower I ever saw with a dozen high-pressure heads.

Ryan once invited me to the opening of a Broadway show and at the party afterwards at Sardi's, I came over to say thanks. He was more than half in the bag. He grabbed me, set me down next to him, put his arm around me, and told his table filled mostly with fawning groupies what a great boxer I was. He said I had “a lot of heart.”

Saying a boxer has “heart” or courage is beyond saying he has craft or the luck of genetics. It's about personality, not just talent. And it's not a compliment given out lightly by one boxer to another, even if one is more than half-drunk. The looks I got from those girls couldn't be bought with money. One of them found me attractive enough to take home for a one-nighter. (I don't remember her name but she was very thin, screamed so loud it hurt my ears and urinated when she came which I found mildly erotic rather than gross.)

So I liked Ryan. It's hard not to like a talented charismatic movie star who treats you well and gives you compliments in front of slinky skirts and you get to fuck one of them. My problem with Ryan was in the ring. This was because his defense wasn't nearly as good as his offense. If you were willing to risk punishment you could get inside and hurt him. Then he'd get pissed—not lose his temper, just raise his temperature—and come back and savage you. And he had the tools to do the job. It was almost as though he needed getting hurt a little to get going.

One Saturday morning Ryan brought Farrah Fawcett down to the Gramercy Gym to watch him fight. She was a little shy and wore no makeup at all but was still the ultimate teeth-and-hair babe. That day, in front of his poster-babe, he and I decided to go two rounds of medium-hard contact. The first round was lots of dancing and a few good no-damage shots both ways. He was showboating for Farrah a little and I let him get away with it. Why not? Bringing women in to watch was permitted, but it was a rarity. I should have known he might be extra brutal that day but wasn't smart enough to adjust my game plan, or smarter yet, to avoid fighting him altogether.

In the second round after a no-big-deal series of trades I hit him with a left to the body, right to the face combination that stung him. Then I saw that pissed glare in his eyes and in the split second he took to recompose himself, I saw another opening and banged him with a hard right cross to the mouth.

I had already scored against him and could have—should have—probably been more forgiving, especially in front of Farrah. He half smiled around his mouthpiece then stormed at me with a bombardment, two three-punch combos one after another. I backed up and defended without sustaining any real damage. I thought I saw an opening as he was moving back and then, “Fwapp! Fwapp!!” He hit me with two in a row, killer force, straight lefts to my head, then neck, connecting so hard I could barely breathe. I back-pedaled and fended off his blows as best I could, caught in the slow motion twilight zone of every second taking at least half a minute.

I could tell something was wrong with my neck but I didn't want to stop the fight. I hid behind my fists to protect my face and neck and took half a dozen bruising explosions to my body. Then an uppercut to my chest just between my elbows lifted me and made me wheeze. I was in pain all over. Finally the fucking bell rang.

Ryan was awesome, relentless, and I was beaten badly. I was spent. I was hurt and talking funny—like speaking through a gravel filter. If I had been alone, I would have been crying. Even in such a macho environment I couldn't hold back a few tears. It was obvious I needed medical attention. José looked scared. Ryan looked scared. Norman looked scared. Farrah look horrified. I left, hailed a cab and went directly to the hospital. I cried all the way.

The doctor said I had a bruised larynx and a broken blood vessel in my neck that might need surgery. He said we could wait a day and see whether the swelling went down, but that he wasn't hopeful. Then, right in front of me, he made a call and booked the O.R. for Sunday. I left the hospital thinking that I was a schmuck for misjudging Ryan and for not having the sense to pull that second punch in front of his girlfriend. Lots of guys would have killed for Farrah Fawcett who weren't even sleeping with her!

When I saw the doctor the next morning he said he saw some improvement, that my injuries looked slightly more promising and that we could put off surgery for another day. God knows where the improvement was because I was puffed up, in agony, and could barely speak or swallow.

Next day felt even worse for me but I was a bit less swollen and I looked much better to the doctor. He said I was coming along nicely, and that my voice would come back to near normal even if the one injured larynx didn't heal. He said that mysteriously one larynx compensates tonally for the other and in most cases the regular voice comes back. I never knew that larynxes were such devoted and clever friends to each other.

A few days later the swelling was down fifty percent. The doctor said I'd be good as new in two to three weeks. Four weeks later I went back to boxing and the week after that Ryan came to the gym. I ventured into the ring with him for two rounds of light contact. Whether he was gentler, which I believe he was, or I was less infuriating, or because we adhered to the rules of lighter contact, it went well. We had a good time and traded some decent blows without blood or injury.

The next week I went two rounds of full contact with him, held my own pretty much and gave nearly as good as I got. I hit him really hard in the middle of the second round with a right hand lead that split his lip. A tiny trickle of blood appeared. I felt vindicated. Then scared. He licked the blood and smiled at me without that pissed-glare. He came back and hurt me with a series of body punches but didn't go head hunting. Neither of us pulled a punch, but neither of us went for a kill. I would say I lost by a close decision.

One Saturday morning five months later when I am living with Laura, I decide to bring her down to the gym to watch. She, being a peace-loving, mostly vegetarian, hippie-hooker cokehead masochist, doesn't like fighting and in her own warped jealous way, admits that she doesn't want to watch me hurt someone who isn't her.

Ryan, whom I hoped wouldn't be there, is. He flirts with Laura as he does with every pretty girl. Laura is not a big fan of his and is not too impressed. She doesn't send much back to him. It annoys him slightly. Great. Just what I need. Ryan O'Neal with a prickly edge.

“Fighting's not my cup of tea,” says Laura. “I don't get it. I don't really understand why two people would want to throw punches at each other. Norman used to say, ‘It's about courage. You never know what you are going to do until you're standing there and someone's throwing a punch right at your face. It gives you a certain kind of strength and courage that there's really no other way to get; you never know what you would do unless it's happening.'

“Jeffrey was always kind of macho. I don't think he ever showed any kind of fear or hesitation in any situation. He had this machismo thing, where if somebody came up against him, he would always kind of be ready to meet them more than half way. He would always be in their face with, like, ‘Oh yeah?' It was an important thing for him to always show strength. Boxing was where he could prove it and his personality was looking for a place like that.

“Boxing is nauseating to me. It's so not where we are going as the human race evolves. But it fit in with Jeffrey's Chinese zodiac birth symbol, the dog. He was like an alpha dog. Alpha dogs are like right up there ready to fight if necessary. And it works in dangerous situations, like some of the clubs we would go into could really be quite dangerous. But it made me feel comfortable because Jeffrey's vibe was ‘Be nice and I'll be nice. Try to fucking mess with this and you'll be sorry.' Jeffrey wasn't looking for trouble but he wouldn't put up with any bad vibes toward him or me.”

My first round that morning is with Norman's son Michael. We fight as we often do to a damaging dead-on draw.

Then I box a practice round with José Torres. Boxing with José is a blessing. He is so good he nails your every opening with a little signal tap. He never hurts you. He never hurts anyone on Saturday morning. He just points out your vulnerability and then tells you how to correct it. You can come after him with all your heat because it is impossible to touch him. It's like racing across the Atlantic, me in a single engine prop plane and him at Mach 2 in the Concorde. He hadn't fought in the ring in two decades but still is in possession of all the reasons he was World Champion. Boxing with José is better than slow-motion videotape and computer-enhanced training devices. He is a genial litmus test for everything you do wrong.

After sparring with The Master, I stupidly accept Ryan's challenge of two rounds of medium contact. Right away I can tell we have two different ideas of medium contact. Ryan is throwing really hard stuff and rather than wuss out in front of Laura and ask him to back off, I crank up the volume. He comes at me. I move in on him. We are both on fire. It is full contact. I know after one minute into the first round that this will be a real chore. That is okay. I'm up for it.

Next, I'm looking up at the ceiling. I never see the punch. I never feel the fall but I am on my back. I lose a moment in time. Jose´ tells me to relax and breathe. I didn't get knocked out but I sure did get knocked down for the first time in my life. It's just like the scene in movies with the circle of people over you and the light in the middle. I notice how filthy the ceiling is. Laura is crying. Ryan looks down with real concern. José is half-laughing, the proud rodeo dad smiling over his kid who just got bucked off his first Brahma bull. I start to get up and Jose laughs and says, “Stay down. This isn't fighting for money.”

Ryan O'Neal, my nemesis, had struck again!

I get up glad knowing I don't need to fight him another round. I feel fine. No pain. No swelling. He just hit some knock-down button on me I never knew I had. José says that it's often the punch you don't see that shuts out your lights.

Laura stops crying when she sees I'm all right. We go back to our apartment. I take a shower and then a nap. I awake, eat, and without any S&M weirdness Laura and I make love. She is very tender, submissive as usual. I am the wounded gladiator being cared for by his loving slave girl. In boxing, even coming up short in front of your woman has its own charm.

* * *

In 2009 just after I started the rewrite and edit for this book, Mike Lennon, Norman's friend, archivist and now biographer told me about a piece Norman wrote for
Esquire
magazine in 1993 that I didn't know existed. It's an account of my battle with Ryan O'Neal, the one witnessed by Laura. As Norman recounted: