Pain Don't Hurt

by Mark Miller

  And I didn’t have a choice. Because this was what the powers that be wanted.

  I was stomping at the ground by the time they brought me out to the hallway to walk out. Tommy’s big blond head was barely visible on my periphery. I refused to turn and look at him. Nothing personal; it was just better for both of us this way. We got the signal and started walking out. The crowd was booing me, ferociously. This was Tommy’s town. As we walked, they started playing a clip from an interview Tommy had done two days before. They had been very secretive when he had done this interview, and I couldn’t understand why. It all became apparent in the seconds it took me to get to that ring. I looked up at the screens just in time to hear him say, “Mark is from the Iron City, so that’s where his chin was forged. He’s really tough. But tonight, he’s my bitch.”

  The crowd roared with cheers. I whipped my head to look Tommy full in the face right before we entered the ring and just started laughing. “Really, Tommy?!” I shook my head. All right fucker, it’ll be like last time, only this time, you won’t get up.

  Tommy was in the corner shimmying like a show pony. First bell sounded. Let’s go.

  I came out baiting him. The game plan was to keep everything straight down the pipe, let him back me up, and then unload. Fighters get cocky when they think they are backing you up. They get brave. I let him drive me back a few times, clinching on him when he got close. He threw a few low kicks, and I checked them. He hated it. Absorbing the impact of a kick on your thigh is stupid, because you can’t do it very many times before your leg is dead. But if you lift the leg being kicked, stiffen the lower part of the leg, and “check,” or take the impact on the shin . . . Trust me. As bad as it might hurt you, it hurts them far worse. Tommy was pawing at me. I was circling out, frustrating him. He feinted a low kick and I lifted my leg to check, but he went for my back leg instead, dropping me to the floor. As I was pushing to get myself up, he placed his fucking foot on my back, as if he was going to stand on me while I was on all fours. The ref yelled at him to get back in his corner. I got up. A few more pitty-pat exchanges occurred and then I was back in the corner. Tommy had me angry.

  In Tommy’s corner he learned that he had a split over his eye. He also got told by his corner repeatedly to not “follow [me] around.” Tommy had a weak gas tank, and he tired easily. They couldn’t figure out how I had made contact with him, and now they were worried. Shit was happening that they hadn’t counted on, and Tommy was getting tired. I was in my corner fresh as could be.

  Second round started and he began pawing at me again, desperate to gauge distance. I threw a right kick slicing directly at the top of his thighs. It hurt him, and off of that I threw a knee directly to his sternum and circled out. Tommy followed me, followed me, followed me. . . . I threw a kick, and he checked it, but I got a solid jab and a cross off on him. The cross bobbled him. He stepped back. Eager, I rushed in and threw another big cross, which he sidestepped, and I threw myself off balance and ended up on the floor. Tommy came up behind me and pretended to hump my back. The crowd cheered. I have no tolerance for this bullshit. You wanna showboat, fine, but you better beat me decisively now; otherwise, you’re going to look like showboating is all you have. And I intended to exploit Tommy the next time he fucked around in there.

  The ref scolded Tommy, recommended that he cease with the shenanigans, and Tommy feigned feeling contrite. He came back with his paw bullshit again. Then he jammed me up, hugging on me so tight the ref had to pull him off. I could feel his breathing getting labored. I threw a spinning back kick that was ill timed; I didn’t have enough distance and I just knocked myself off balance. Pause; okay, back to it.

  I came out with an ax kick. Crowd liked it. Tommy flashed slight concern before jamming a kick into my thigh. I’ll take it for making you look like a boring pud. You got jokes? I got skill, motherfucker. We clinched up a few more times, and the bell sounded.

  I went into my corner, and Jason smiled and asked how I was feeling. “I feel good. And I think I hurt him.”

  “He’s not looking so fresh, Mark, that’s for sure.”

  And he wasn’t. I was pacing in my corner. Tommy was plunked on his stool heaving away. Big muscles need big oxygen. Tommy was built for looks, not stamina. I may not ever have had Tommy’s size, but I don’t wear out in the second. I started punching into my gloves with fifteen seconds to spare. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go.”

  Tommy pulled himself off the stool, a deep breath following before his mouth guard was put back in. He met me in the center and hugged me. Third and final round. I appreciated it. Not two seconds later he clinched me up again and turned me around to face the crowd. This time, I showboated. Throwing my arms up and shrugging at the crowd as if to say, “Hey, he clearly came here to hug, I came to fight.” The crowd cheered for me. Tommy shrugged and looked irritated. I had gotten his goat.

  I threw a kick and it grazed the top of his cup. I paused and offered my glove. Nut shots happen in fighting; they aren’t intentional (unless you’re a complete dickweed and you don’t trust your skill to get you by), but it’s only right to put your glove out if you think you might have grazed a guy. It’s the universal sign for “My bad; sorry, dude.” Tommy patted at his groin for a second, then gave me a glove bump, as if to say, “All good.”

  I threw another kick, and Tommy grabbed my leg, backing me into the ropes. As my back was against the ropes, I felt him cranking my leg higher and higher. . . . This motherfucker was trying to dump me through the ropes. I pitched my body forward as the ref pulled him off of me. . . . But I was firing on all cylinders now. I was done fooling around.

  I came straight at Tommy with a series of jab/crosses, three to be exact. The third cross dropped him to the canvas. Tommy was, as they say, “on funny street,” looking to see which house was his. His legs were rubbery as he got to his feet at five in the ten count. He rolled his eyes and marched around the ring, trying to tell everyone watching, I’m fine. I’m totally fine. The ref waved for us to go back to it. I rushed in to finish and he kicked my legs out. I got up and threw a kick as Tommy landed a cross. We clinched up and were broken apart. I had a fuse burning behind my right elbow; I wanted to hit him hard. Then my opening came, and I hit Tommy so hard his head went winging to the side. If he hadn’t been backed up to the ropes he would’ve crumpled. Instead he leaned on me and locked his arms around me for balance. Once again, we were broken apart and told to go at it once more. I fired off a few more shots and the final bell sounded. The bravado melted, all the showboating stopped, and the hostility faded. Tommy crossed the ring and hugged me, even planted a kiss on my cheek. I smiled. We thanked each other’s corners. Fighters play reserved and bitchy until the fight is over; after that, unless I really never liked you, there’s no reason to hang on to it. We just beat on each other for nine minutes. I’m over it.

  I stood in the middle waiting for the announcer to read the decision. . . . Split decision. That means two judges had it one way, and one judge had it another. I started praying my ass off. Come on, damn it, just give it to me, I earned it. . . . The announcer read that one had it scored for me, another had it scored for Glanville, and the third judge had it for me. I fucking won. The crowd lost its mind. I bowed to them. Shit had just changed in an instant. I had just avenged that loss.

  On my way back to the lockers, fans were throwing things at me to sign, girls were grabbing me, and guys were patting me on the back.

  I walked into the back as Mo walked out for his final fight. My high from my win was keeping me elevated, but this was serious. My mentor was fighting the final fight for a tournament. I kept my ears open to listen.

  The commission came into the back and started looking me over. I started getting incredibly antsy. I’m fine, I just want to hear about Mo. Round after round passed. At the third I couldn’t figure out just by listening who had it. Then I heard it announced: draw, one more round. In K-1, if a draw is declared, then the judges can request that the fighter
s fight another round. To get another round in the third fight of the night is a nightmare call. Mo had just gotten it. I was ready to throw those commission guys off of me and go running out to the hallway to watch. Mo’s final round started. I was fidgeting in my seat.

  The round went to a decision. This could not have gotten any more stressful. I needed him to win or my win wouldn’t feel as good. I actually cared about him. His wins mattered to me almost as much as my own. The announcer began to read the final decision. Split decision. Holy shit, I’m going to have a heart attack tonight. I listened. . . . Mo won. I let out a bellow so loud the entire crowd in the back fell silent.

  After a few minutes Mo came sauntering in. He looked around, and his eyes settled on me. He walked over and stuck his hand out, and the first words out of his mouth were, “How did you do? I couldn’t hear it, how did you do?”

  I stood there stunned. . . . “I won, Mo.”

  “Oh, that’s great, Mark! Congratulations, good!”

  He looked . . . relieved.

  “Mo, who gives a shit how I did? You just won an eight, man! That’s fucking crazy, man! You won!”

  Mo shrugged and just said, “Yeah, but you won too, so that’s good.”

  As he walked away I felt for the first time what it must feel like to have such a familial bond with another person that you celebrate their successes as much as you do your own. Where you don’t compete with them to be better. Where your successes are allowed to be your own. And I felt that that feeling was returned, by one of the greatest American fighters who has ever lived.

  chapter eight

  If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

  —EPICTETUS

  In every one of the fighters I met I was searching for a connection. I was searching for a brother, not unlike the one I felt I had lost—and I lost Colin many years before he died. I loved my brother. Just admitting that makes me feel like someone opened up my rib cage and ran their fingers over my guts. I don’t know if I have ever admitted that before now to anyone but him, and even then, it was so very long ago. But I did. I loved Colin so much that it was torture watching him break down, and turn into what he became, and lose all of the traits that made him what he was to me. What hurt the worst, though, was feeling him abandon me and, instead of acting as my big brother, becoming a person I had to worry about, a person I almost had to shield myself from. He was supposed to be my protector.

  Colin Kelly Miller was born July 30, 1962. Colin’s mother was one of the many marital casualties my father left in his wake. Colin, being the by-product of their brief marriage, split most of his childhood between our house and his mother’s. I never met his mother, even when we would take him there, as she would stay cloistered in her house, never come out to say anything, probably because my father was always there, and my father was not exactly on good terms with any of his exes. He wasn’t really on good terms with anyone.

  Even though I have five other brothers and sisters (that I know of), Colin is the only one I ever knew. Colin was ten years older than me. When I was five years old Colin was fifteen; he was tall back then, five feet eleven, with blue eyes and gritty good looks in his youth. He always looked older than he was. He listened to Bob Marley and ZZ Top, and he had a way of “holding court” with people. Colin was charming and incredibly manipulative. While I learned how to fight, he learned how to beg, borrow, and steal his way through life. Most of the people Colin ran across never knew that they were about to be swindled. Most of them never knew to blame him after they had been.

  Colin was a button pusher. One of those kids who liked to push people to see what would happen, a trait I may have, to some degree, learned and adopted. Where Colin was more naturally aggressive, I was more resilient. Colin liked to provoke my dad, liked to stand up to him, get in his face in the beginning. I knew well enough to keep my fucking head down, and even that didn’t always help. Colin just didn’t bounce back as well from the consequences. After every time he and my father would go at it, Colin would disappear for a few days. He would run out the door with a bag slung on his back grunting curse words and blistering epithets at my father, all forced through gritted teeth that were holding back sobs. It got to him. He would always pause at the door to glance back quickly, but Dad never chased after him. Not to punish him further or to hug him in apologetic contrition. Once my dad was done kicking the shit out of you, he was done with you, period. “One crime, one punishment,” he used to say. The cruelty in the house wasn’t something Colin could hunker down and absorb the way I had tried to do. Colin was a violent-tempered crustacean pulled out of his shell, totally vulnerable and ill equipped to be in the family he was born into. I often wondered if subconsciously he went at my dad hoping that over time he would be able to form a callus over himself against the physical and emotional brutality. Let’s face it, we all want to believe that we can survive the ugliest of wars when they come to us, and we all cringe at the recognition of our own frailty. Colin was sensitive naturally. It was what made him so empathic, and therefore capable of tapping into people’s simple needs and making them like him, trust him, so he could get exactly what he wanted from them.

  Around the time Colin turned sixteen he was getting in a lot of trouble. I wasn’t privy to a lot of what exactly was going on then, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to ask questions. I found out bits and pieces via my mother. Drugs, car thefts, prostitution rings, robberies, scams, assault . . . The arrests piled up. He was never around. And he wasn’t right anymore. If it wasn’t one drug it was another, or booze, really whatever he could get ahold of. He became a garbage can, just filling up the holes with quick escapes. At eighteen Colin got arrested for being part of an auto theft ring. The judge gave him two choices. One, hard time. Two, go into the military. Colin was secretly terrified of prison. Plus, he knew enough to know that as far as the public is concerned, you come out of prison, you’re an ex-con. You come out of the military, you’re a soldier. Regardless of what the person has learned or not learned, one affords a far better tint to be cast over them.

  I don’t know exactly how long he served for. I know that he was eventually kicked out. I don’t know the specifics, but I know that he got out of serving a prison sentence, which was all he cared about. Shortly after leaving the military, he came home for Christmas. I was fourteen or so then. Colin walked in wearing a ZZ Top T-shirt that looked like he had slept in it. I knew immediately that he was different. He was distracted and sort of vacant. He sat down next to me and started small-talking. About the snow. About the food Mom had made the night before. Then suddenly he started talking about Dad. Dad wasn’t in the room, but I remember how nervous I felt, knowing he could walk in at any moment. Colin leaned in close to me, his pupils shrunken. He told me that Dad had beaten him so bad one time that blood had flecked the walls, where he could see it spray every time a new swat landed. He told me that Dad had beaten his mom up, that she had told him about how horrific it had been being with him, how violent he was. He regaled me with tale after tale of his having to fight to survive, how he had been beaten nearly to death multiple times. My head was swimming with wondering what was real. Why the fuck was he telling me this? And if this was true, why had he left me for so many years to deal with this, to defend myself alone? He told me that he couldn’t forget about those times. He told me that every time he tried to sleep he would wake up fighting the sheets, terrified that Dad was there. He said that he just needed to get out of his head, and that was why he did so many things that got him in trouble.

  I don’t know why he felt compelled to share this with me. Colin always had an agenda. No story was ever delivered without a reason. I just don’t know what the reason was. Why at that moment did he decide to tell me all of that? Was this his sick way of bonding with me? Of sharing that he somehow knew how bad it could get? Was he trying to protect me? Was he telling me in his own way to get away? God knows we never spoke about it bef
ore or after that. I don’t even know if all of what he fucking told me was true. And I can’t fucking ask him now. . . . Not that he would tell me the truth if I could.

  The next day he left. He seemed rushed. Just told everyone he had to go, and he left. The day after that, very early in the morning, the phone rang. It was an odd time for a phone call, so I strained to eavesdrop, as I was curious. It was Colin calling. He was in jail. He had left the house and driven as far as Ohio. Once he got there he had gone into a bar. My heart ached. Colin in a bar was a bad thing. I never saw him actually take drugs, but I saw him drink an unholy amount on several occasions. Like other addicts, he might start off slow, but it would snowball quickly into a slew of shots and bottle purchases, and then the real “fun” would begin. It was never “just one.” Never. Colin didn’t need a lot of time to escalate either. He could put away a lot of booze very quickly. Apparently he had wandered out of this bar, and no sooner had he gotten behind the wheel and turned the key than the cop behind him hit his lights. He had been waiting for Colin to come out. Colin was sitting in some shit jail in East Bumblefuck, Ohio, drunk and giving my dad his snake-oil “feel sorry for me” spiel to bail him out. My father was pissed off, and for once I didn’t really blame him. Colin didn’t even try to avoid trouble anymore. He just did stupid shit constantly and with such arrogance, or maybe he just didn’t care. Either way, he still hated being in a cage, and there he was pleading on the phone with the most unsympathetic human being on the planet to get him out. To my utter shock, my dad agreed. The condition was that Colin had to handle paying back the bail bond on his own and that he had to show up for his court date, which he too quickly agreed to do. Bail was posted and Colin disappeared into the ether. When Colin’s court date came up, he never showed. That day my dad turned to my mother and said, “I am done. I am done with him, forever.” And he held to this promise. Years would pass and Colin would call on birthdays, on Father’s Day. My mother would always answer, and Colin would ask to speak to my dad. She would come up with some watered-down excuse, say he was in the bathroom or busy. Meanwhile my dad would sit close by, waving his hand and mouthing the words “No, no, I won’t talk to him.” This went on for years. He froze him out completely. I felt stuck. I couldn’t fix the relationship between them. I couldn’t save my brother; he didn’t want to be saved. I wavered between agonizing yearning for him to be in my life and roiling anger at him because he didn’t want to be there enough.