The first set went six-love. So did the second. We were about nine-love in the third when Fielding said, ‘You want to play or you just want to hit?’
‘… Let’s hit.’
Finally a bell rang, and Sissy Skolimowsky appeared with her coach. Fielding appeared to know this chunky, white-skinned girl.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hey, Siss,’ said Fielding. ‘Okay if we watch?’
She was already on the line, starting work. ‘You can watch,’ she said, ‘but you can’t listen. Shit!’
But I was staggering off by this time. Ten minutes later, I was still slumped wheezing and gagging on a director’s chair in the ante-room when Fielding trotted up the steps. He squeezed my shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, I…’
‘Relax, Slick,’ he said. ‘You just need to sink a couple of thou into your backhand, maybe a grand on your serve. You should quit smoking, drink less, eat right. You should go to high-priced health clubs and fancy massage studios. You should undergo a series of long, painful and expensive operations. You ought to — ‘
‘Look, shut the fuck up, will you. I’m not in the mood.’
‘Your funeral, Slick. I just want you to stick around for a while. You’ll be a rich man by the time I’m done. I just want you to enjoy.’
Pretty soon, Fielding jogged off back to the Carraway. I went and sat next door in the changing-room. I stared at the pimpled tiles. I thought if I could just stay completely still for the next half an hour, then maybe nothing too bad would happen. One twitch, I reckoned, one blink, and the changing-room was in for some restricted special effects … Then six huge guys came in — I guess from the squash courts, down the passage somewhere. These gleaming, stinging jocks were all shouting and swearing and farting as they stripped for the shower. I never saw their faces. I couldn’t raise my head without copping an open-beaver shot of some armpit or scribble-haired backside. Once I opened my eyes to see a great raw dick dangling two inches from my nose, like a pornographic reprisal. Then they had a ten-minute towel-fight. The chick in the smock even poked her head round the door and hollered at them through the steam… I couldn’t take it any longer. I weepily gathered my street clothes and crammed them into the duty-free bag. I hit Sixty-Sixth Street in sweat-looped tanktop, knee-length Bermudas, black socks and squelchy gyms. Come to think of it, I must have looked exactly like everyone else. My body craved darkness and silence but the sun’s controls were all turned up full blast as I screamed for cabs in the yellow riot of Broadway.
——————
There is only one way to get good at fighting: you have to do it a lot.
The reason why most people are no good at fighting is that they do it so seldom, and, in these days of high specialization, no one really expects to be good at anything unless they work out at it and put in some time. With violence, you have to keep your hand in, you have to have a repertoire. When I was a kid, growing up in Trenton, New Jersey, and later on the streets of Pimlico, I learned these routines one by one. For instance, can you butt people (i.e. hit them in the face with your face — a very intimate form of fighting, with tremendous power to appal and astonish)? I took up butting when I was ten. After a while, after butting a few people (you try to hit them with your rugline, hit them in the nose, mouth, cheekbone — it doesn’t much matter), I thought, ‘Yeah: I can butt people now.’ From then on, butting people was suddenly an option. Ditto with ball-kneeing, shin-kicking and eye-forking; they were all new ways of expressing frustration, fury and fear, and of settling arguments in my favour. You have to work at it, though. You learn over the years, by trial and error. You can’t get the knack by watching TV. You have to use live ammunition. So, for example, if you ever tangled with me, and a rumble developed, and you tried to butt me, to hit my head with your head, you probably wouldn’t be very good at it. It wouldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t do any damage. All it would do is make me angry. Then I’d hit your head with my head extra hard, and there would be plenty of pain and maybe some damage too.