Jesse's Blog

A Bad loss in Bremerton

This was at the naval base in Bremerton, it was my fifth fight and I was two and two going in. This was in 1983, I was 28 years old.  I was coming off a stoppage in my last fight. I was stopped on my feet in the first round of my third fight at a Kirkland, Washington novice tournament. My coach was pushing me to get back in there and he was right.  But my confidence was damaged which is common.  Fighters got fragile psyches’ believe it or not.  It’s not easy to get in there, especially after a bad loss, a stoppage, and some guys never recover.

Anyway, my coach is nagging me, “Take the fight, take fight, take the fight…”  I’m in good shape but my head wasn’t right and I didn’t discipline myself by cleaning up two weeks before the fight.  I mean I kept smoking pot, which a lot of fighters have a taste for.  You have to make the sacrifice for psychological reasons as much as anything.

I take the fight but I feel like in my heart I’m just going down there to lose. Ten of us go down.  There were a fair number of people there.  Boxing in the eighties was popular.  My fight’s coming up and I start warming up on the pads.  I notice my opponent, a Hispanic kid, looks scared but it looks like dumb animal fear.  It won’t help me. I can’t intimidate him. The guy holding the pads is a guy I spar with from the gym, a welterweight.  He tells me, “You hit like a welterweight Jesse.”  I’m a lightweight, two divisions below and I’m trying to take heart.

I climb in the ring and the canvas is all spongy.  It’s a wresting ring.  I complain to Decker, my coach.  He says, “It’s the same for the other guy.” He tells me to go to the body.  “It’s your head I’m worried about, not your ability.”  We start arguing before the bell rings.  I’m cussing him out and I go out to meet my opponent and I’m mad.  I’m throwing straight punches with both hands, a lot of punches and connecting and I’m hurting him.  Afterwards observers told me that it looked like the ref was going to stop it for me.

Suddenly I remembered that my coach had told me to punch to the body.   I drop both hands and start to punch.  Now my head is exposed.  I get caught with a left hook and dumped on my ass.  I get up and I am not hurt and I am frustrated.  I start walking in tight circles, a habit I had from the gym from when I was frustrated and didn’t know what to do.  The referee looks at me and waves the fight over.  I step out and that’s it.  It starts to sink in and I feel the humiliation.  I go shower and sit down in the audience to watch the rest of the card.

A black guy sitting in front of me turns around and he is looking at me with a mixture of pity and contempt.  I am stung and start making excuses.  He tells me if I don’t want to do it then I should be a referee.  He points to the ring, “That guy couldn’t do it and he’s a ref.”  “It was only my fifth fight!”  He shows compassion here.  He says, “This guy got stopped at the Golden Gloves. I was there.  I saw it.”  And this huge black guy, a heavyweight, turns around and grins at me.  This guy took the time to tell me the truth and I will never forget it.

Manny bought me a hamburger.  He wasn’t fighting that night.  Everybody knew I quit in there but they weren’t going to humiliate me for it, I was going to have to do that for myself, without anybody’s help. Ten of us went down and nine of us lost.  The States has a deeper talent pool.  I got a nice trophy: Canadian/American Friendship Boxing Match.  It was a runner up trophy but it was the biggest and best I ever got.  Better than the Silver Gloves Trophy.  The coming week it really sunk in.  The pain was like a death in the family.  It wasn’t remotely worth it.  Its okay to lose but it is not okay to quit.  Not when you don’t have to. I phone my best friend and mentor in boxing, Jamie Ollenberger. I’m telling him about it and I start crying.  He asks me what happened.  After I describe the fight he tells me, “You got into a war and you lost. It could have gone either way.”  He’s giving me another perspective.

I show up at the gym and Decker tells me that I have to decide if I want to do it or not.  Do I want to fight, because otherwise he won’t let me fight anymore? He tells me that if I just want to work out and spar and be a guy in the gym then that’s okay.  But I told him and I promised that I would rededicate myself.  I got more serious, not about training.  I loved training and I was always in beautiful condition.  Decker always said, “Physically you can beat them all, it’s your head I’m worried about.”  That’s the hard part about boxing.  If you haven’t done it, it is hard to convey the fear.  It’s not about getting hurt it’s about exactly what happened to me, a failure of will.

I won my next fight.  I clearly remember that they were lacing the gloves up right in the auditorium.  I was looking at my opponent and I was just barely holding my shit together.

When the bell rang I was alright.

I woke up on June 17^th 2007 and I had to go downtown. I had some business down there, I can’t remember what. As I got ready, shaving and showering and getting dressed I became aware that a heaviness was settling on me. I felt a weight; my chest felt constricted, my head felt like it was too heavy to hold up.

I finished up with my chores downtown and grabbed a bus up the hill. All this time I was trying to figure out what it was about.  My mom had died about a month before. She died of cancer and we, I and my sister, knew she was dying about six weeks before she did die. I was in mourning but it was actually a relief that she died because of the pre mourning, because of the anticipation.

She was in a coma at the end there. She was already gone.  So it was a relief to let her go.  But anyway it was a strange sensation. I felt this dislocation. I got off the bus and I was walking the three blocks to my apartment. About half way there I felt a blow to my chest and I said, “Oh!” I said it out loud.

I remembered that today was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 78. She almost made it too. I got home and picked up the phone and phoned my dad, I choked it out, “Today—mom’s birthday.” I was sobbing. I told him that I couldn’t figure it out all day until I remembered. In fact it was a rare experience. It took hours for the feeling to materialize into a thought in my head

A story about nothing happened

Last Wednesday morning, early, like 2 am, I was laying in bed watching TV.  I always sleep fitfully because of my ruined back and chronic pain.  Sometimes I sleep with the tube on and the shows become incorporated into my dreams.
Anyway this informational comes on.  Back2life.  Do you have back pain?  I focus.  I saw the machine and I was going to switch it off.  I figured, “I can’t afford that.”
The presentation, the testimonials, then: “You would expect to pay $1200.00 for this!  800 hundred!  600!  500?  Three hundred dollars!!!  NO!  Five easy payments of $39.99!
I’M BUYING!  I pick up the phone; it’s a girl.  “Hello?”  “I want one!”  She gets my info and then it starts.  For an extra 29.95 I get the special mat, the ankle weights, and the memory foam insoles.  This is a traction machine.  I already get the memory foam pillow (99 dollar value!) for free. “Do you want the special mat, etc.?”  “Um…okay.”
“It has a one year warranty, do you want the five year warranty for an extra 6.99 per payment?” “Yeah, ok.”  “For another two dollars per payment you can get the lifetime warranty.”  I do a quick calculation.  How much longer do I figure to live?  Probably about another 20 years.  That’s not too bad.  I tell her, “Just give me the most expensive option.”  I get rush shipping for another 29.95 and pay it all at once.
“You should get it in three business days.”
I had been off work since the previous Thursday morning.  I’m waiting for a call.  Thursday I get the call.  Peter from scheduling: work tonight from 2300 to 0700 hrs at 600 Drake Street.  I got three weeks work in a rental tower in downtown Vancouver.

This tower is behind the Yale and the Cecil at Drake and Granville.  I take the train.  The buses are packed.  It’s busy downtown because of the Olympics.  Cabs, limos, people, lots of security and cops.  Young kids running around braying like donkeys.  “Heehaw! Go for the gold!”  “Yay Canada!”  “Yippie we’re stupid!”
I meet mobile at the site.  He walks me through and equips me.  It’s an easy site. I mean it’s not too bad.  13 stories.  A narrow, bland builder’s beige style studio and Jr. one bed rental complex, with the usual amenities.  No swimming pool.  It’s fairly tight with one hot spot, an alcove at the east side fire exit where crack heads congregate.
Between patrols I sit at a desk by the entrance and pretend to be friendly but I’m not very good at that.  Some people are nice.  I think this building might be the secret Chinese Embassy.
I go home in the morning and go to bed.  At about 2:30 pm the phone rings.  It’s Canada Post delivery.  It’s my machine.  I put on some boxer shorts and open the door.  I see Krause, the German guy who is on the strata council.  He drives a Volkswagen van and wants to take over the building.  He packs the meetings with proxy votes.  It’s in his blood.
He smiles and says hello.  He must want something: my vote.
A second later the hallway door opens and a large black man has my package.  “Sorry, I’m a day sleeper.”  He says it’s okay.  I drag the box in and go back to bed.
When I get up I put the machine together and try it out.  You lay on your back with the back of your knees draped over the machine and it rotates and vibrates for twelve minutes and I actually got some relief.  My back is making funny clicking noises but I don’t even give a care.
Fast forward to today and it’s my fucking Friday at last and Canada won a gold (like I care) and this morning at about 5 am I got a call from operations about crack heads in the hot spot and I went there from inside and saw them through the glass on the door and two young chugs smoking a tube and, “Get out of here!”  And they nodded and left.
I phone dispatch: “I got rid of them.”  ”Good!”
Another couple of weeks at this place and the Olympics will be over except for the amputee Olympics and “Heehaw!  We’re bland Americans!!!”

The ‘God’ You Refuse to Define
God exists outside of the realm of matter and energy, and either does not wish to make his presence known, or isn’t able to.
^^^ above re coma white

I almost addressed this before, what this kid says. I didn’t for two reasons; I don’t need any grief, because I don’t care what he does or believes, and the second reason is the first times double.

Maybe God is there for the asking, but you don’t know how to ask. How? You want to know? Not that you are close to wanting to know. I’ll give you a jumping off place. When this world isn’t working for you, when worldly rewards and pleasures can’t address the devastation in your heart, when you want for nothing more than a reason to exist, when you are at the epiphany of loneliness, then maybe you could ask. But ask nice.

It is an experiential equation. If you need proof before you open your heart; that’s not God. You want a celestial insurance policy, a big daddy. That’s petulance. God won’t come for that. Someone will be sure to point out my arrogance. How dare I talk about my own experience? But you’re fine, your life is okay, there is no punishment, no reward. You don’t have to “vote” for God. He/her/it won’t intervene in your world, this world.

I didn’t flip a coin, I didn’t do it “just in case”, it happened for me and nothing changed but everything changed. The world can’t change but I changed. I felt a healing begin on the inside and it didn’t happen overnight and it is not in comparison to you, or others. It is entirely personal and it is as personal as it gets. At the time I told someone, I told the guy, my witness, I told him that, “My mind says no but my heart says yes.” I couldn’t and still can’t get with organized religion. Atheism makes a lot sense to me. It sounds logical. Sounds good. Sounds right. Makes sense. Right. No God. Just the same, I’ll go with my heart on this.