Pain Don't Hurt

by Mark Miller

  We walked to my room. Shelby reached for my hand right before I opened the door and squeezed it. This was fucking terrible. She was without a home, and here she was trying to comfort me. It was too much. I opened the door and set my one bag down on the small desklike table. I flipped on the TV and it was set to Cartoon Network. “Hey, at least I have cartoons!” I said, and tried to crack a smile. Shelby wasn’t smiling. In fact, she had started crying again.

  “Try to sleep, Mark. Tomorrow we will figure out where you are going to go. I’m sorry. . . . I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.” And she closed the door.

  I sat on the bed and stared out the window. I had fucked up absolutely everything, and now I had almost nothing left. She apologized to me. That’s the kiss of death right there in a friendship. “I’m sorry, but you’re not worth my time”—that’s the subtext.

  I had the option to go eat, as there were small centers around me with food, and while I didn’t have enough to make rent, I had plenty to buy food. I opted instead to ration the two protein bars I had in my bag. I didn’t want to go outside. There were restaurants outside, but there were also liquor stores and bars, two of each, very close by. I knew where I would end up if I opened the door. I had called Matty and talked for a while. But I wasn’t safe and I knew it. Hours passed. I lay on my bed just staring at the ceiling. At some point I decided to do some push-ups and crunches inside the room and then took a shower. More time passed. It was approaching midnight. This is what they mean by “white-knuckling it.” I was sweating thinking about a drink. I had forgotten that I had Ambien in the bag I packed, relics I had never even touched from many years before. I found them in that hotel room. The idea of getting a drink and taking a fistful of Ambien sounded like the best and worst idea simultaneously. . . .

  Then there was a knock at the door.

  I pulled back the curtain and saw Shelby standing there in sweats and Ugg boots, with puffy eyes and one of my oversized hoodies on. I opened the door.

  “Have you even eaten, because you probably haven’t, knowing you, and we have food at the house.” She wouldn’t look at me but she couldn’t help herself. I don’t know why she showed up, why she refused to just let me go. I deserved it, and she would have been right to do it.

  “I ate some protein bars. Didn’t really want to go out for food, there’s liquor stores and stuff. . . .”

  She nodded. “I half expected to come here and find you drunk already.”

  “Nah—I mean, I thought about it. But that really wouldn’t make anything better, would it?” I was trying to convince myself of this as much as I was her when I said it.

  She laughed a little. “No, it would not. It would make things worse. And I might have needed to hit you again.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, that was a good swat, still hurts a little. So did you steal that sweatshirt from me?” I tugged at the sleeve.

  “Yeah, it’s the least you can give me.” She looked up at me and those big eyes filled up. Suddenly she hugged me, sobbing into my shoulder.

  “Shelby, I’m so sorry. . . .” I had no idea what to do anymore. No idea.

  “I can’t bear the idea of you here, just hating yourself all night. You won’t sleep. I know you won’t. Just come to the house. She already said it’s fine. I’ll put you on the couch. We’ll figure out what to do with my furniture tomorrow.” She turned to walk outside.

  “I already called a local place; they can move it all and store it within five miles of your mom’s, and I have enough money to do that. Plus, you will never have to pay the storage, I can promise you that much. And, Shelby, I’m really really sorry.”

  She turned and looked at me and half smiled. “It’s okay, let’s get you out of here.”

  The most heartbreaking part of that was, she meant it. She had already forgiven me. And to this day I don’t know what I did to deserve that, but I am grateful. I am grateful.

  chapter seventeen

  Learning is not child’s play. We cannot learn without pain.

  —ARISTOTLE

  Shelby?! Can you please mow the lawn today? Or can one of you do it, please?”

  Shelby’s mother was hollering down the stairs. I learned quick that her family didn’t walk up and talk to each other much. They either yelled or they texted. Her mother had taken full advantage of our being there by handing out chores. Shelby’s mother was an interesting woman. She was smart, she was hardworking, and she gave the impression of being a woman who was wholly disappointed in life. She sighed a lot. I mean big, heaving sighs, three to an hour often. The kind you do when you are trying to exhale and let go of being wound up, because she was. She was wound up. She wasn’t a bad person, she was just wound up. She and Shelby’s dad had divorced over fifteen years ago, and it seemed like she’d just closed up shop since then on ever trusting anyone. She had a touch of bitterness toward men as well, one she didn’t hide very well, but that I could understand. Shelby’s father cheated on her. The personal relationships between married couples are just that, and who was I to judge? Plus I knew that it’s never black and white. But her mom never got over it. She was still pissed off, and it seemed like she might stay that way forever. It was a shame, because when she actually let go and just decided to be happy, she was pretty awesome. Gail, Shelby’s mother, was a small woman with bobbed blond hair and icy blue eyes; she puttered around a lot, and when she had guests there, she perpetually looked for ways to do for them. It was the Southern in her. Born in Texas, she tried to feed you, gave you shelter, and then put you to work. She was one of the more generous folks I’d ever met, but her generosity came with strings; sooner or later you had to give back, and right now, I had to go mow the lawn.

  “I’ll do it, Gail!” I shouted up. Right as soon as I finish this conversation I’m having online.

  I had been utilizing social networks more and more to try to see where I could get a fight. I was offered one in Philadelphia, an MMA fight where I would be expected to sell tickets. Shelby forced me to turn it down. “You’re better than that. Don’t ever accept anything beneath what you are worth. Plus, you are a kickboxer, not an MMA fighter. Do what you love.” She was right. But she might have been forcing me into the poorhouse.

  After returning to the loft months before, we had found the place ransacked. The building hadn’t done a good job of keeping out thieves, and one of the things stolen was Shelby’s computer, which had contained loads of pictures. She was heartbroken. I knew who did it, but it wasn’t worth pursuing beyond the criminal report filed, and I learned my lesson. I had had just enough money to pay movers to package everything up and move it to storage close to her mother’s house. We could have done it ourselves with a rented truck, but I didn’t want her to have to watch as everything was carried out. It was already hard on her. After that, I was pretty much broke. I took teaching jobs here and there, pawned some things I had bought when I was a wealthier man, but really what I needed was to fight.

  On the weekends we had taken to having late breakfasts with Shelby’s father, who lived just a ten-minute drive from her mother with his gentle girlfriend Shayna. Shelby’s dad, Steve, was something else. Meeting him made her make more sense. They were almost identical personalities. Her father was a lawyer. A good-guy lawyer, so he wasn’t rich. Gentle, empathetic, a creative storytelling force. At five feet eleven with a well-muscled build even in his sixties, he was athletic, almost hyper, and childlike. He talked too much, he laughed too loud, and he made jokes constantly. But he was wonderfully kindhearted, and while I had felt that I needed to win her mother’s approval, I felt that her father accepted me right away as not just a friend of his daughter but as part of his family. One day in talking to him I opened up and voiced my desire to fight, not just look for odd jobs. He phrased it perfectly: “You need to fight not just for money, but for yourself. You have unfinished business.”

  I had met a man online named Dave Walsh, an avid kickboxing fan and keeper of one of the top kickboxing
websites. He was a fan of mine, a fan of all kickboxing really, especially from back in the old K-1 days. K-1 was virtually gone now. Its ownership had changed hands, and once Ishii was no longer in charge it just disintegrated slowly. There were few kickboxing promotions out there, as MMA was eclipsing it. The only promotions that were still doing shows and that were worth anything were in Europe. Dave had started asking around. He wanted to see me come back too, and he believed he had found something.

  A new promotion had fired up called United Glory. The promotion itself was being put on by the same people who had started the kickboxing gym Golden Glory, which in its heyday had produced two K-1 Grand Prix champions, one of them, Semmy Schilt, having won several times over. Golden Glory was one of several major kickboxing gyms and was notorious in the world of kickboxing, both because of the fierce fighters it produced and also because of how they treated those fighters. The stories of fighters getting fed to the wolves by Golden Glory were long. They liked to chew American fighters up, use them to promote their own homegrown fighters, who were Dutch. They also had a long history of people running from the promotion post signing. They didn’t have a perfect sheen to them, but then again, neither did I. Dave mentioned that this new promotion had expressed interest. Now, with whatever fan base I still had egging them on to put me in the show, I was booked. I signed offline. I had a fight.

  I ran to find Shelby. My heart was screaming at me. I found her sitting in her room, looking shocked as I walked in, flushed. “What the hell . . . why are you out of breath? You know, you should mow the lawn, because—”

  “I have a fight,” I said, overenunciating each word so that I couldn’t be misunderstood. Her jaw dropped.

  “Where? With who?” she asked, getting up slowly.

  “Moscow, in May. With United Glory. It’s a kickboxing fight. Against Nikolaj Falin.”

  Her face fell. “The guy that just went three rounds with Gokhan Saki before losing? Fuck, Mark . . . couldn’t you get a build-up fight?”

  Gokhan Saki, a man I am proud to call a friend, is to this day one of the highest-ranked kickboxers in the world, and in my eyes he is currently the most talented. Gokhan is a new breed of kickboxer; unlike the monsters of old K-1, he is a small heavyweight, only about six feet tall and two hundred twenty-five pounds. His opponents frequently are five to six inches taller and outweigh him by forty to fifty pounds. Gokhan is fast, lightning fast, with unlimited ability, allowing him to throw kicks from impossible angles. He is tenacious, bullying his opponents and attacking relentlessly. Most of Gokhan’s fights end quickly. While he had beaten Nikolaj, it had taken him well into the third round to do it. Nikolaj was a multiple belt holder in various parts of Europe. Fighting out of Germany, he was six feet two and two hundred thirty pounds with an incredible physique, very hard punches, and a strong chin. This was not an easy fight. This was not a fight I was supposed to win.

  I looked at Shelby, who was worried. She’s a ride-or-die sidekick, but she’s also a realist. Her expression said loud and clear that she felt this was a bad idea. She wasn’t going to blow sunshine up my ass and tell me she thought I could win without proper training. Hell, she didn’t really think I had much of a chance of winning anyway. I needed to convince her that this was what I needed to do. And I knew how. I had a secret weapon.

  “I think I’ve found a place to train, but we’ll be doing a lot of driving. I’ve tracked down my old friend Rob Kaman, and a boxing coach. They have a gym down near Santa Monica they’re working out of, and they said they would work with me. I can’t go wrong with Rob, and wait until you see who else I’m going to be training with. . . .” I threw a big grin at her and she went pale.

  “Rob fucking Kaman? Oh my God, Mark! He’s . . . a legend! You know him? Who is the boxing coach? Who? You have to tell me who. Don’t do that to me, Mark. Who?”

  “Buddy McGirt.” Her face went from white to beet red. She was opening her mouth but making no sound. She looked like someone had put her on mute. Finally she gathered herself enough to squeak this out:

  “Rob Kaman would have made me feel intimidated enough. But I can’t stand before Buddy, Mark. He’s . . . He’s my hero.”

  “I know. And now he’s going to be my coach. One of them. If he can guide Arturo to a victory, I think he can help me.” I’m a smooth motherfucker when I want to be. I wouldn’t call what I did manipulation, just a clever delivery of facts. Everything I told her was true; I just waited to tell her in order to get her to support me on the idea of this fight. Now, now, she was on board.

  I had tracked Rob down a few weeks before. If you search Rob Kaman’s name you will come up with a myriad of listings and descriptions, one of which will repeat frequently: “the greatest kickboxer who ever lived.” And that very well might be the truth. I had no contact information for Maurice anymore. The old number was disconnected and I couldn’t track him down. He was my first thought, even before I got the fight; I knew I needed a coach. If I couldn’t have Mo, Rob was as good a choice as anyone is ever likely to have. The trouble with Rob is pinning him down. Rob is a world traveler at heart. Since he’d retired from fighting he had become a globe-trotter, teaching seminars and attending fights all over. He was a gentler soul now, a far cry from the Dutch fighter he used to be and whom so many were downright afraid of. His leg kicks used to sound like a cannon being fired (actually they still did). Now he was more interested in connecting with his students, really getting their minds clear, making room for the training to sink in. I had set a time to go down to the gym and work with Rob and Buddy, a sort of tryout to see if they would indeed be willing to take me on as their fighter. I was both excited and nervous. I knew I was physically in shape as Shelby had been kicking my ass for months. But I was afraid of how my technique had held up.

  On the day I was set to go to the gym, Shelby drove me by way of the Pacific Coast Highway, the beach on our right almost all the way to the gym. It was comforting and gentle, a great contrast to what I was walking into.

  We parked the car on a small side street near a strip club that was next to the fight gym. I do not know why, but this happens more than you know. Real gritty fight gyms stationed right next to strip clubs. Shelby didn’t know that Buddy would be meeting us first. For as long as I’d known her she had talked about Buddy and Arturo’s working relationship as though it were holy. It had set the wheels in motion for her to even try to pursue fight sports, and here she was about to meet one of her biggest heroes—and we were both about to meet one of the greatest boxing coaches of all time. I had butterflies, and I didn’t know who I had them for more.

  Shelby ran to a nearby gas station to stock up on protein bars, trail mix, anything that they had, as she knew I was going to be working for a while (I had tryouts back-to-back with each coach) and I would need to eat fast. I wandered in and put my bag down to find Buddy leaning against the ring, his aviators hiding dark eyes. He smiled a big smile and held his hand out. “Mark Miller, is that you?”

  “Sir, yessir. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I stuck my hand out and he clasped it inside his. Buddy isn’t a big man, but his hands are big, and they bear the years of his profession all over them, from being an incredible fighter to being one of the greatest coaches the sport has known. “Well, Mark, let’s get you warmed up, get your wraps on, and then we’ll get you shadowboxing.”

  Buddy was walking to the side of the ring to set the timer when Shelby came walking in at a good clip. She didn’t see him at first, so she just moved in on me quickly. It wasn’t until she was standing right beside me, explaining everything she had in the bag she was carrying, that she saw him sitting in a chair next to the ring, flipping around on his phone. She froze. She knew he was going to be there, and yet she looked more shocked than she would have been had a grizzly bear been perched beside the ring swinging a stopwatch around one claw. I smiled.

  “Oh, really quick, Mr. McGirt, this is Shelby. She’s my strength and conditioning coach, and my best friend. You�
�ll have to forgive her, she’s normally a talkative and outgoing girl, but she’s quite possibly your biggest fan in the world and she’s a little starstruck right now.”

  Buddy stepped forward, grinning, and stuck out his hand. “Well, the pleasure is all mine, ma’am. How do you even know who I am? You are too damn young.”

  Shelby wasn’t talking. So I piped up again. “Your work with Arturo changed her life—”

  Suddenly she interrupted and rattled off a frighteningly precise retelling of the entire third Gatti–Ward fight. It was comedic and endearing, and so uncool. She followed it up with, “You’re my hero, sir.” Something I had never heard her say to anyone or about anyone besides her father.

  “Well, thank you so much. Now, the real question is”—Buddy pulled his sunglasses down onto his nose and peered at her with narrowed eyes—“where are your gloves?”

  Shelby looked confused, as though she didn’t understand the question.

  “Well, bring ’em next time, because I’ll be damned if you are going to just sit by the sidelines and watch.” Buddy McGirt had just told Shelby—not offered, told her—that he was going to train her.

  I finished warming up and Buddy lined me up on a bag. He had me throw specific combinations for about thirty minutes, making small adjustments each time. Buddy reminded me a little bit of Maurice, calm, specific, never critical or cold. I have a habit of criticizing myself loudly when I know I’ve not done something correctly; Buddy would admonish me and say, “That’s my job, now, you’re going to take my job from me picking on yourself like that.”

  After I worked the bag, Buddy switched to mitt work. Buddy moved fast and tight, forcing punches to come short and quick. He forced me to follow him or control the work by cutting angles. He bullied me and got me to spin off throwing hard hooks. Every time my right landed properly, Buddy shouted, “Now you’re cooking with grease!” The work went on for another thirty minutes. I was tired. Seven or eight rounds on a bag, seven or eight rounds on mitts. Now he wanted me to end on a speed bag. Two rounds’ worth. And Rob hadn’t even shown up yet.