The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Read Free

cryptic punching combinations known only by our little secret society of pugilistic initiates. My guys delusionally believe that these numbers will deceive my opponent, his entourage, or any intrigued backstage observer into believing:
    1. I know any genuine punching combinations.
    2. I am prepared to deliver them on command.
    3. I have faith in my ability to punch.
    I’d like to just level with these lummoxes and tell them that we’re not fooling anybody. But my guys and their little bemitted hands need to feel like they have a purpose, a sense of mission. We’ve got about twenty pairs of focus mitts at our gym, in various sizes and various colors, and they’ve brought them all . They are stuffed in a bag bigger than the guy carrying it. I can imagine the fighters we’ve left behind, bereft in the absence of focus mitts, pathetically holding up rolls of toilet paper for each other to punch like a cargo cult with a rattan airplane—stubborn, delusional optimists awaiting our inevitable, triumphant return. While I am warming up Saturday night, if any of the talismanic status-confirming mitts should go missing/lost/stolen, there are myriad replacements on hand. There will be no desperate dash to a sporting-goods store to purchase new ones. They’ve made sure that there are mitts aplenty to hold for a guy who can’t, and doesn’t want to, punch anything . Punching things hurt. Damn, typing this hurts.
    We finally reach the terminal. Slightly winded.
    Check bags, then quickly off to join the interminable, annoying, redundant security cattle drive—shoes in the bin, all metal objects, blah, blah, blah. I head through first because I know that at least one of my guys will forget he’s wearing a belt with a metal buckle, requiring its hasty, clumsy removal, followed by his ridiculous-looking attempt to hold up his baggy, rumpled pants, which will most assuredly fall down at one point to reveal his disgusting underwear.
    I head through the ominous detector without sounding any alarms. A second later I hear a buzzer go off behind me and crane my neck. Just as expected, one of my guys is pushing his way backward through the now backed-up line of grumpy fellow travelers, removing his belt. He puts it in a bin by itself, where it rides alone through the X-ray machine like a kid on an otherwise empty special-needs school bus. I roll my eyes as he shuffles along, holding up his pants with one battered, gnarled hand. As he retrieves his belt and begins putting it on, I wait for his pants to fall down and display his retched underwear, but that never happens. I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, our luck on this little journey may be turning around. Then, just as I’m looking around for a vendor where I can grab a pop culture magazine for the flight, I hear the perfect Stepford-wife voice of the gate attendant over the airport’s P.A system, cheerfully announcing the last boarding call for our flight.
    As we begin to run, I wonder if the beltless genius has managed to buckle up. I also wonder how many focus mitts he decided to include in his carry-on, just in case.
PLANE
     
    Sitting down. Time to relax and focus on the big day ahead of me? Not exactly. The bro sitting next to me has his darling little music-supplying device hanging around his neck, the headphones clamped to his ears, listening to tunes to “get into the zone.” “What zone is that?” I wonder. And why he has to get into it, only he knows. It’s not like he’s fighting anyone. But there he is, maxing out the decibels so that everyone within the ten-seat blast-zone radius is assaulted by his cheezy metal music. He is cranking the tunes so loud that his head, which is huge and utterly empty, functions like a boombox speaker, amplifying and projecting one awful, interchangeable anthem of sonic misery after another into my already frazzled consciousness. I feel as if my collarbones are vibrating and my molars are about to crack.
    I lean as far away from the