by JD Hawkins
The last time I came to do a radio interview here I was restless, hungry, explosive, volcanic. A cocky, arrogant bastard. Now? Now, I’m just a mountain. Strong, silent, immovable. I’m going to have to be. Last time they called me Alpha Male it was ‘cause it was accurate, but now the name hangs around me like a bad joke, a failed promise.
The blonde stands aside at the door, and Butch says nothing, just pats me on the shoulder before I go in.
“…best hot dog I ever tasted, no joke—oh! Look who just walked in!” Tommy says, interrupting himself as the same long-haired guy pulls me into the same spot and hands me the same headphones. “Connor Anderson! Alpha Male—do we still call you that?”
Even Sheena laughs her husky laugh.
“You’re not gonna go easy on me, are you?” I say through a smile into the mic.
“Is that what you said to Hendrix?” Tommy says.
Sheena laughs again. “Don’t be mean.”
“No, I’m just busting your balls a little bit,” Tommy says, leaning forward and adjusting his mic. “Last time you came in here you were very confident.”
“Cocky,” Sheena adds.
“Right,” Tommy agrees. “And you were a favorite against Hendrix, and everybody was really excited about you. Now, you won that fight, as we all know, but on a technicality. Which some are saying shouldn’t even count toward your record, and some are saying should count against you and keep you away from the title shot. So? What the hell happened that night? I wanna hear it from you.”
Before I can answer, Sheena chimes in, “Did it go to your head?”
“Mmm,” Tommy says. “It looked like it went to your head a bit.”
I nod a little, but nothing they can say will rile me up. “Listen, I’m not gonna stand here and make excuses. I didn’t walk my talk. But like my trainer Butch always says: ‘We win, or we learn.’ You want my thoughts on it, I gotta hand it to Gregg, he fought better than anyone I’ve ever come across. And he had some bad luck in that last round, truly bad luck.”
“Very humble,” says Sheena.
“Gregg was really going in on you,” Tommy says through the side of his mouth, the expression of a reporter fishing for the answer he wants, “and he doesn’t usually showboat much, but there seemed to be a bit of a grudge between you two.”
I laugh a little. “Gregg knew exactly what he was doing. He’s a smart guy. I don’t have a bad bone in my body towards Gregg. He tried to get in my head, get an advantage, and it worked for him. I shouldn’t have bit, but I did, and all I can do is applaud him right now. Because we both know who really should have won that bout, and it sure as hell wasn’t me. Not the way I was fighting that night.”
“I get that you’re being very…what’s the word…magnanimous right now, but people were hoping for some pretty big things from you, and it seems like they were disappointed.”
“Very disappointed,” Sheena adds, nodding.
“And they have a right to be, no?” Tommy moves closer to the mic. “There was all this talk—a lot of it coming from you, Connor—and in the end, well…”
“I’m gonna stop you right there, Tommy,” I say, putting a little force into my calm voice so that it busts through his chatter like a wrecking ball, “who’s the main man right now? The champion?”
“Light-heavyweight?” Tommy says.
“Pete Foreman,” Sheena says, at the same time.
“Pete Foreman,” I say, pointing at Sheena. “Has he never lost a fight?”
“He’s lost a few, sure—but not for a long time.”
“Sure,” I say. “Gregg? He lost fights too. Everybody loses—it’s how you bounce back that matters. You wanna know the saddest thing about all of this?”
“What?”
“That everybody’s still talking about me, and not Gregg. The guy was amazing. If that shoulder hadn’t got dislocated, you’d be interviewing him right now and that title shot would be in his hands. So what I’m gonna do is, I’m not gonna take the Foreman fight for granted. I’m gonna work harder, train harder, fight harder than I ever have in my life. And after I take the title, I’m gonna give Hendrix the rematch he deserves.”
Tommy grins from ear to ear.
“Ooh!” Sheena exclaims, long and loud. “That’s the Connor Anderson I know!”
Tommy shifts forward, hand on mic. “So you’re not giving up the title bout, despite what people are saying, despite the fans calling for your head on a pike?”
“No.”
“Why not? A lot of people are very against it, a lot of people wanna take your spot. And a lot of people are thinking it’s kinda crazy to give you a title bout against Pete—who’s twice the fighter Hendrix is—when you should have lost pretty dramatically to him.”
“I’ll tell you why not,” I say, feeling very zen. “That loss against Hendrix is the best thing that could have happened to me. I learned a lot from that loss; mentally, physically, even emotionally. If I’d have won that fight easy, without getting my ass beat first, without that technicality saving my ass at the last minute, I woulda come in here again and it’d be the same as last time—I’d crack a few jokes, head full of air, tell you all about how fucking great I am. But I can’t do that now. Now I gotta put that energy into my fighting, get my focus fully back in the game and start listening to the people around me. Fighters can be tough and cocky, but it’s when they start being humble that you start to really see how good they are.”
“Well speaking of cocky,” Sheena says, pulling some sheets from the side, “Pete Foreman has had a lot to say about you.”
“Oh yeah,” Tommy says. “He’s been talking a lot. You got those quotes?”
“Right here,” Sheena says. “So in an interview with some magazine he said: ‘Is Connor Anderson for real? I didn’t even think he was a real person until they told me I had to fight him. I thought he was a cartoon character, or one of those stunt wrestlers; he talks like one, and he fights like one too.’”
Tommy draws breath through his teeth.
“He also said,” Sheena continues, “‘I can’t even be mad at him, I’m angrier about the UFC bringing me amateurs like that to fight. Has anyone actually seen what he can do? I’ve got punching bags with better movement than him. Connor’s nothing but a big mouth and a big head—a head for punching. I’m not just going to beat him, I’m going to humiliate him, the UFC, and anybody who ever thought for a second that putting an amateur in the ring with me was a good idea. Maybe then I’ll get some real challengers.’ End quote.”
As she talks I feel it rise within me, red-blooded anger, pride, and arrogance. The sense of somebody pissing on my territory, the urge to set things right, to claim my ground again.
“What do you think of that, Connor?” Tommy asks.
“I think…” I turn around to look at Butch, his face not scowling, but waiting, anticipating, hoping. The face of somebody watching a horror movie at the point of no return. And then I think of Frankie, and how she might be listening to this radio interview right now, and how the last thing I want to do is show her my dark side again.
I ease back into the seat and lean toward the mic. “I think we’ll see.”
After the interview I step outside with Butch beside me. He pats me on the shoulder.
“Much better. Much, much better.”
I shake my head as we walk to the elevator. “Do you realize how tough it is? Saying nothing while everybody’s laughing at you, tearing into you like the clown at a kid’s party?”
“Lions don’t roar when they’re about to kill,” Butch says, pressing the button. “You feel bad now? Humiliated? Feel like everybody’s joking at your expense? Good. You’ll rectify that in the octagon. Not in the magazines and on TV.”
“People are gonna start thinking I’m scared,” I say, stepping inside after him and pushing the ground floor button. “That I’m rattled. Pete’s gonna think that.”
“Let him,” Butch says, his gaze cold and determined. “If he thinks y
ou’re afraid then he’s underestimating you.” Butch looks up at me, locking his fierce blue eyes onto mine. “Unless you actually are afraid.”
Butch searches for the answer in my eyes, no need for words. For some reason I think of Frankie again as I picture being in the ring with Pete ‘the Crippler’ Foreman and his trademark sneer, a body gnarled and knotted with muscles designed only to do damage, to break and bruise and cause pain. I imagine myself looking to the side, to that seat that was empty, only Frankie’s there now. Those eyes fixed on me, filling my body and soul with reinforced steel, with the power of serenity and strength.
“No,” I say to Butch. “I’m not afraid.”
His eyes linger for a second before he nods gently, and steps out of the opening doors.
The ability to eat pussy like a promiscuous lesbian is pretty much the closest I’ve ever come to what it feels like to be a woman. But when the time comes for Frankie to visit the gym and give a yoga lesson to some of the fighters, I start getting anxious about how it’s going to go down for her today. A woman as hot as she is, a room full of testosterone and aggression, it’s a recipe for disaster—or at the very least a sexual harassment lawsuit.
The thing is, it’s not so much her I’m worried about; it’s me. Everyone in the gym knows that Frankie’s mine—or as close to ‘mine’ as you could call whatever me and her have going. But it’ll only take one over-the-line comment and I’m going to start bashing heads. I learn two things about myself in the hours leading up to that class: one, I’m the possessive type, and two, I like Frankie enough to be feeling possessive about her.
I shouldn’t have worried.
“Ok everyone,” she starts after introducing herself, “so today I’m just going to go through some basic positions that are going to really help you when it comes to balance, and controlling your center of gravity even when you’re surprised.” She looks around the room to gauge the men’s attention, but what she sees is a dozen grinning, slightly-sniggering faces.
I watch from the side, standing next to Butch, who’s folded up his brow the way he always does when he’s studying something intently.
“Oh, I know all the positions already,” says Tony, a flyweight shaped like an upside-down Eiffel Tower, “doggystyle, sixty-nine…”
The fighters laugh like high school kids, and I lurch forward, but Butch holds out an arm to stop me.
“That’s really funny,” Frankie says, smiling along with the rest of them, “but I doubt you’re any good at them.”
The fighters laugh even harder now, a laugh of surprise. The teacher saying something she shouldn’t.
“Oh yeah?” Tony says, deflecting the insult with a one-sided grin.
“Yeah,” Frankie says, walking toward him confidently. “You’re a boxer, right? What you’re used to doing is planting your center of gravity and throwing punches out of it. But when it comes to sex—or fighting on the mat, which is what I’m here for—having big biceps doesn’t count for anything. It’s not just core strength, it’s balance, composure, channeling your whole body weight around that center mass,” she says, standing right in front of Tony.
Frankie has them enraptured now, their childish laughter gone, replaced by the kind of self-conscious humility you get when you realize you’ve picked the wrong fight.
“So,” she continues, “you can sit around and crack jokes about how good you are at fucking for the next hour, or you can take the class and actually learn something that’ll make you all better fighters.”
Frankie looks around at them, their faces blank and focused now, apt pupils, then walks back to the front, flashing me a sly wink and a deft smile as she does so. I don’t even bother trying to hide my own grin from the other guys. Jesus, they don’t make many like her.
If Frankie’s show of balls didn’t humble the other fighters, her class definitely did. She puts them through their paces, forcing them to contort their bodies in ways no fighter ever does. Bulging biceps and ripped abs irrelevant as she makes them use muscles they never realized they even had, the fighters toppling over on their mats and grimacing with the strain of bizarre balances and awkward positions that Frankie makes look easy at the front of the room.
The fighters disperse, full of new aches and appreciative comments, and Frankie winks again at me as she moves back to the empty locker room, the one Butch uses for speeches usually, but which today is the lady’s changing room. I watch her go with a sense of wonder and admiration, before Butch spoils the view with his liver-spotted head.
“Do you want my advice?” he growls, reluctantly.
“What?”
“Here it is: you take whatever it is you have with that girl, and you make it as permanent as you can, as quickly as you can.”
My expression freezes for a moment, before cracking up in a shocked chuckle.
“What are you talking about, Butch?”
Butch looks at me and shakes his head.
“I don’t know what the fuck the Lord was thinking putting a girl like that with a fool like you, but he doesn’t make mistakes twice. That girl’s got more sense, more talent, and more balls than you’ll ever have. Don’t you dare fuck this up for yourself.”
“Christ, Butch! Where the hell is this coming from?”
“Forty years of marriage!”
“But all you do is complain about your wife!”
“‘Cause she’s batshit crazy! And she’s the most terrible woman I’ve ever met. But she’s got fucking backbone,” he says, before turning and jabbing a finger at the locker room. “And so has that girl.”
“Thanks for the dating advice, coach. But I’m not exactly looking for a forty-year marriage at this stage of my life.”
I turn away but Butch grabs my arm and pulls me back to face him.
“A woman like that, Connor, can make the difference between achieving every dream you’ve ever had, and sitting in a bar as an old man talking about how you lost those dreams to anybody who’ll listen.”
I look at Butch, feeling mute, held there by the fierce honesty in his eyes.
“Jesus,” I say, once I break myself from them, “you really know how to kill a mood.”
He sighs deeply and walks away shaking his head, leaving me standing in a daze. I turn my eyes back to the locker room Frankie entered, and start walking.
I go through the door to the hallway, then stand outside the door and knock.
“Yeah?” Frankie calls from inside.
“It’s me,” I say.
“I’m changing.”
I can’t keep the grin out of my voice. “Do you need any help?”
She doesn’t say anything, but I can imagine the small smile she’s probably wearing right about now. The door clicks open slightly, one of those mesmerizing eyes in the gap, a hint of her smile below it.
“I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling,” she says through a mischievous giggle.
“I’ll give it to you for free then,” I say, with even more roguishness.
Frankie laughs gently and opens the door. Maybe it’s ‘cause I feel like a big bad wolf, or maybe it’s that I notice she’s clutching a towel to her bare torso, but I can’t help myself. I push myself against her, mouth pressing on hers, hands around her waist, tongue inside her, guiding her back, back, across the room and up against the locker with a loud slam, her semi-wet body as soft and sweet against mine as satin sheets.
I pull my mouth away from hers, hot breath mingling in the air between us like steam, my eyes drawn to the curve of her lips, lush and pouted and red.
“You were fucking fantastic out there,” I growl, snatching another juicy bite of her mouth at the end of the sentence.
“You should see what I can do in a private locker room,” she hisses, attacking my lips with the same ferocity.
I get drunk on her, lose myself in the sucking of tongues, the biting of lips, body swollen with lust for her. I step back to whip away the towel and unsheath firm breasts and a tight stomach like
a deadly weapon, throwing myself onto her body again, magnetized by her beauty, pushed by my own admiration for this woman who can walk into a room of fighters and not flinch, can hold them all in the palm of her hand. This woman who can walk through the shit of the world and come out of it still smelling so sweet and still looking so pure. This formidable, confident, and mind-blowingly sexy woman.
I’ve got to have her, to lay claim to her, even if that claim is the ability to make her come, to make her moan with pleasure, to make her feel me inside her so deeply that there’s no way she could deny the mark. Butch’s words ring in my ears: a girl like that… They ring with the heaviness of church bells, incessant and deep, because I know they’re true. I know there’s no other girl like Frankie, no other girl like the one who’s wrapping her naked legs around my waist, who’s scratching at my back, who’s got her fingers in my hair, pulling my tongue into her throat…
Somehow Frankie slides away, her curves too supple, her body capable of too many twists and spirals. I turn around to find her in the middle of the room, looking in her sports bag. In this brief respite I pull off my shirt, kick my shoes off and drop my sweatpants, cock hard and erect, my hand on it like a wielded sword.
Frankie turns and holds up the square packet, hard to notice next to the dance of her breasts. I hold out my hand, but she doesn’t oblige. She tears it open and steps toward me, takes the condom out with slender fingers, and puts it in her mouth, on her tongue.
She kneels in front of me, eyes locked on mine, her mouth round and warm. I growl when her lips touch my cock, tongue pushing the condom over the head, over my shaft. I bury my hands in her hair, take a fist of it. My cock hard enough break steel, her mouth hot enough to melt it. She pushes the condom all the way with her hand, and I pull her head away and lift it up to my face, her perfect body stretching down to the ground like a landscape I want to ride into and never come back from.
“Close your eyes,” I say, on lips so close to hers she can hear the hardness of the command. She smiles and obeys.
I bring my hand against her breast, smacking it, watching the ripples of her skin turn into shivers down her sides. I do it again and she hisses like hot steam. Hard nipples between my fingers on one hand, her head held back by my other, I press my teeth into her exposed neck, feel the tender gasps of her throat under my lips. I dance my fingers down the lines of her curves, toward hips that sway with the heat between them.
