As I have mentioned before,
I mostly like SMA even more now than I did 20 years ago. No one
had a T.V. and there were just a few places to hang out at night.
You were pretty much there for the stories I’m about to tell
you.
On occasion I will change a name to avoid a fistfight or hurt feelings.
Otherwise everything I tell you will be the truth as I saw it. Of
course, different people see the truth differently.
Rosanski
Steve Rosanski was known to some as New York Steve. Others
preferred Scumbag Steve. I just called him Steve. The scumbag thing,
‘scum’ for short, partly came from Steve’s habit
of saying disgusting things at importune times, and partly from
his Mayflower Madame story. The first day I met Steve he told me
the story himself. He started by asking me if I knew who she was—how
could I not know, she was the Heidi Fliess of our time. The media
had hammered the public with the story, and like all good Puritans,
the majority of Americans love a good sex scandal.
Steve told me she had been his old lady. And when she hit the headlines,
Steve went to Penthouse and sold nude photos he had taken of her.
Unfortunately for Steve, his ex got a court order and squashed the
deal. “Now people call me a scumbag,” he complained,
“Fuck them.”
He told me she would have done the same thing in his place, and
in this he was probably correct. I liked Steve, he was a very loyal
friend. Although we would later have a falling out over his month-long
reign of baseball bat terror inflicted on a pudgy guy who Steve
felt had betrayed him. He took this sort of thing seriously. But
that’s another story.
Grimone
Joe Grimone was a retired golf pro, who as a result of
his moderately decadent lifestyle, would occasionally show the wear
and tear of his overindulgence. Periodically he would pull himself
together, stop drinking, start playing basketball with some guys
at the park, and would begin to rapidly show signs of what could
be considered good health. I also liked Joe, when he wasn’t
drinking. So did a number of women. He was also very big and very
strong. I once witnessed him run through a set of calisthenics not
long after having consumed an extraordinary amount of alcohol.
One night Steve and Joe were watching a game at Casa Mexas, the
once popular sports bar on Canal St., and got into an argument about
some thing stupid I’ve forgotten. Steve made mention of Joe’s
increasing girth and of his tendency to drool when drinking. Joe
didn’t mind the drooling crack but you could tell the part
about his weight really hurt him. Joe, jamming his finger at Steve
for emphasis, challenged him to any three sports, claiming he’d
kick Steve’s ass. One thing about Steve, he never struck me
as stupid and proved me right that day. Steve shouted back one word:
“Boxing.”
Steve had grown up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood and I was pretty
sure he could handle himself. Nobody could be that rude and not
know how to fight. I could see in Joe’s eyes that he had not
really anticipated boxing as an option, but he quickly snapped back
and threw his ace in: “Basketball.”
Now that I think of it, seems strange he didn’t choose golf.
But then I guess “Golf!” just doesn’t have the
same resonance when you’re in a macho barroom stand off.
Joe then turned to me and asked me to pick the third sport. “Three-block
foot race on Mesones through traffic,” I threw in. They were
O.K. with that. I figured maybe Steve had an edge here, having grown
up in the city, he had probably run through his share of traffic.
Joe was from the suburbs, and that’s never has been good for
much of anything. But Joe had been playing basketball so, surprisingly,
he had some wind.
Steve figured he was a shoe-in for boxing and tried for a while
to make sure it would be the first of the three sports. Steve’s
strategy, as he freely admitted, was to damage Joe to the point
that running or playing basketball would be out of the question.
As an informal arbitrator, I decided a toss of the coin would determine
what event would come first. We tossed, Joe won, it was basketball.
I was given the responsibility of finding a ring, headgear and boxing
gloves. There would be an entrance fee, and by the anticipation
in the eyes of the Mexas crowd, I started to see an opportunity
here. If I could figure out who was going to win I could offer odds
and make a little dough on the side. We would split the door three
ways.
I told the two of them they should take two weeks to prepare for
the big event. This would build up some general tension, anticipation
and buzz on the street. I was sure I could get Joe and Steve yelling
at each other a few times in Mexas prior to the fight, just like
Ali and Foreman leading up the Rumble in the Jungle.
Joe had a strategy of his own and ran it by me one night. He held
his arms out at full length showing me their superior reach. His
plan consisted of placing his left hand on Steve’s head and
landing a haymaker with his right. He said if he missed he would
jab with his left and start over again. He demonstrated and threw
a big loopy punch that a blind man could have blocked.
However, as it whizzed by my nose at about 90 MPH, it occurred to
me that sticking up an arm in an attempt to block that punch would
result in nothing more than a broken bone. I wondered if Steve had
enough skill to evade Joe’s punch and counterpunch before
the next one took his head off.
 I
watched Joe practice his loopy punch from a sort of modified golf
stance. This stance seemed to keep him from throwing himself off
balance, something you don’t want to do against an experienced
fighter.
As I watched Joe throw 90 MPH punches at an imaginary Steve, now
including some hammer-like overhand chopping motions, he explained
to me those were for the top of Steve’s head. He then stopped
to ask if that was legal. Then Joe returned to practice his 90 MPH
haymakers, and still wasn’t breathing hard.
I decided I had better get bigger gloves.
As the event grew closer I started thinking more and more that someone
might actually get hurt. Steve was honing his normally angry state
to a fury and Joe was punching a tree like Rocky punching meat,
making that tree shudder. And I began seeing the possibility that
what had started out as a fun event could turn ugly.
Then it was over as fast as it had started. A couple of nights before
the fight Steve made his ultimatum that if boxing wasn’t first,
he was out. I pointed out that it wasn’t logical for Steve
to have the arbitrary right of first choice against the coin toss.
Inside I was feeling great relief, while a little sad, that the
great event would not happen. Joe said he was willing to concede
to Steve’s wishes and box first, but I said no, that on principal
he shouldn’t go through with it.
All three of us had recovered from a bad case of testosterone poisoning
and I think we were all feeling great relief. At the time I think
I wrote off Steve as a punk. In retrospect, maybe Steve had seen
it as a no-win situation. I think he knew I wouldn’t let him
dictate the conditions of the bet. And I can’t imagine Steve
backing down. In the end, he probably saved us from a bloody outcome
and perhaps deserved to be the one with his fist in the air. Or
maybe he was just a crappy basketball player. |
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