Four old men sat outside. They were smoking USA Golds and trying to remember something, they just couldn't remember what it was. Their hands trembled and the smoke off their cigarettes danced with it as their empty eyes tried to grasp what they were just talking about. These are the old timers, and they spend their days at Joe Hand Boxing Gym, combing through recruits and offering advice when they could. All of them oddly looked the same. All fighters do. Their noses are flattened and the concussions of blunt force trauma of decades mushed their brains into pudding. We know now that there are long-term effects of being hit repetitively in the head, in the 1970's nobody thought about it.
I walked past the group, their smoke made my stomach turn, and it followed me into the small gym. I picked up a bloody bandage and threw it into the trashcan next to the unmanned front desk. Nobody was ever there.
By 9:00 most of the young bucks had gone home, except the wildlings, and the place was quieter. No kids jawing off or ripping the other's headgear off to get in some meaningful hits. Just the regular, brutal wet pops of contact on a sweaty face and gym sounds. The speed bag was always my favorite. The rhythm lulled me into an almost hypnotic state. DIG-duggdugg- Dig-duggdugg- Dig-dugdug- dig-duhduh- dig-duhduh-diguhduh-duguhduh-diguhduh, and so on and so on for hours and hours.
What I liked about Joe's was it felt like a gym my Dad used to work out at. They never installed air conditioning. They had a fan, but it only blew hotter air around in the place. Joe's had surpassed the smell of just sweat. The average person might run a few miles and think they know what it smells like, but it's not even close. I smelled something like it once at the end of a marathon. It's sweat mixed with desperation and blood. Real pain. Try cutting twenty pounds of water weight, and you'll see what odors come out of you. It reminds me of that coppery taste of blood mixed with dirty underwear. It wasn't pleasant, but it kept out the faint of heart.
I walked toward the heavy bag and started wailing. I always liked the first few minutes when I would hit the bag. I did it like a young man just letting it all out. My hands untaped and raw to build up callous, and I could feel the duct tape holding the bag together stick to me, and it added a small, almost inaudible, "pop," you could hardly make out through my exhaling, the percussive BOOM of the bag, and the rattling chains that held it up. It almost sounded like when you take off a piece of scotch tape from a hard surface. Almost like it was tearing at the seams with each hit, struggling to stay sewn together.
Exposed brick lined the walls, and the only break from it was old boxing flyers of the old men who were outside smoking when they meant something. There were also signed pictures of guys who I knew but more that I didn't. The walls would almost absorb the sound, like no matter what you did or said, it took it right out of that hot, stale air.
A bell rang in the corner and two kids, maybe sixteen, started sparring. One of them was mouthier than the other. Now, between the dull, dying sounds of the gym, through the smell, through the guy skipping rope, and me hitting the bag, it all blended together. DIG-duggclank-Dig-Fuckyoudugg-Dig-siksiksik-pop-duhPOPOP-dig-yomotha-uggSHIT-ripsicclanksicsic-diPOPdu-ding. All while fresh cigarette smoke wafted in. We loved Joe's.