but I felt the imprint of his knuckles on my face for days.
It was the first time I’d been punched.
I’d been in scraps before, but the thing about scraps in the boys’ school I went to, they were all about grabbing each other by the shirt on the shoulders and pulling, like a strange undressing wrestle.
When the bell rings, I take off my left glove. The knuckles on this hand always throb after each round. I practise the swivel in my hips. One of the trainers has told me I’m too stiff, I need to relax into my shots. Keep my knuckles on top. Every movement is still alien to me. You watch the way fights are choreographed in films, and each punch is syncopated to a stirring score, each movement, every duck and weave, is a seamless piece of a dance. Here in this gym, the walls drip with the splatter of several people’s sweat. Here in this gym, the old hi-fi that still has cassette decks spits out Ed Sheeran or whoever is big on Radio 1 at that time. Here in this gym, the most balletic of boxers are the ones under eighteen. Here in this gym, you see interlopers like me. We who need this bag to represent something to us. Each sound is like tapping a sofa – flat, undramatic, clunky. Usually, the bag is a manifestation of ourselves. The implication, when we shadow-box, is that we look at ourselves in the mirror, because the first person you have to defeat in the ring is yourself. You box yourself in the mirror. You visualise your face on the bag.
Most people are here because they never defeated that person in the full-length mirror. You can tell, we’re the ones whose eyes never leave our reflections as we move around the gym.
The bag, you are never allowed to let drop, not if you want to be quick.
I put my glove back on.
When the bell rings, I launch at the bag with power this time. I jab, jab firmly, then follow it up with a powerful cross, a pow to the centre of your face. Immediately I duck and arch my entire body in a semicircular movement to the left. As I rise, I meet the side of the bag with a left hook. My left hooks are telegraphed from miles away. It’s as if I need the duck and weave, and the big powering up of the arm to act as my inner force. I need those movements to make my hook an effective one.
When we eventually fight though, you’ll see it coming from miles away and step out of it, and I’ll drop my guard and you can strike everywhere.
You and I train at different times. I’ve chosen my hours to coincide with when I think you’ll be at work. My lifestyle allows me to be here at unsociable hours, when the club first opens. All the while, you’re at work.
I wonder if you think about me as much as I think about you.
I vary the combo this time and follow the left hook up with a right hook. The bag is swinging about on the chain wildly.
I saw you in the city centre last week. It was the first time I’d seen you in your normal clothes, not your boxing gear, and it shook me. Not that you looked like a regular person. More that you being a regular person made it harder for me to visualise your face on this bag. You wore a white shirt. Polyester. I could see through to the outline of a vest. You wore grey trousers, and worn black shoes. You had one hand in your pocket, and the other held your phone to your ear. You were listening intently and looking up at the sky as you paced. You didn’t see me. I stopped and waited for you to notice me. But you didn’t. When I saw you had breezed on past me, I turned and followed you. I wanted to see where you went when you weren’t at the gym. Who you were in your real life. I got twenty steps before I realised I was exhibiting problematic behaviour. And I only realised I was exhibiting problematic behaviour because I walked into the path of a bike as I crossed the road behind you. The cyclist swore at me – unnecessarily probably – but it was enough to shake me.
What did I observe in those twenty steps?
That you walked with confidence.
That you had to look upwards in order to concentrate.
That your entire body seemed relaxed. You looked like you belonged in that body, you owned that skin, no one had ever given you a reason to doubt yourself.
It made me angry. That you were seemingly at one with yourself.
I told the cyclist to go fuck himself, and turned around, returning to my office, to my desk. I stared at a half-drunk mug of coffee and picked it up. The cold of the handle against my fingertips as I gripped it tightly was a comfort. My colleague Chloe passed my desk and looked at me quizzically. I put the mug down and smiled at her, banging at the space bar on my laptop to wake it up.
‘You OK?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I replied, quietly, and with enough finality to show her that she was not to enquire any further.
The second time I was punched, I was on a train coming home from London. It was late and I was drunk. I played a film on my laptop and pointed myself at it while I ate chicken strips, dipping each one deep into a small carton of barbecue sauce. I was too drunk to concentrate on the film, but it was action-packed enough to catch my attention occasionally. When I finished my McDonalds, I shoved all the detritus into the paper bag and shoved it under my seat in an effort to pretend the entire shameful transaction never happened.
The barbecue sauce must have slipped out of the bag because I felt a shuffle in the seat behind me turn into a shouting man.
‘There’s shit on my shoe,’ he bellowed to the empty carriage.
I looked up at him. He was greying, wearing a blue raincoat of the kind that only businessmen with no imagination seem to purchase, and clutching a can of Fosters.
I looked down at his shoe. He wore black dress shoes. I could see a speck of burgundy on the right one. Presumably some of my barbecue sauce.
‘Sorry boss,’ I muttered and offered him a napkin.
He launched himself at me with his fists. He punched me twice in the face before I could react. In launching himself at me, he lost his balance and fell on me. I was so shocked. I sat there flinching and cowering, waiting till he regained his balance and stood up.
I cried.
I could feel his knuckles embedded in my cheek. I could feel the slime of his neck sweat by my mouth. I turned back to the laptop and carried on watching my film. As if nothing had happened. He straightened himself up and apologised, before picking up his bag and disappearing down the train.
I sat there, rooted to the spot till my station arrived. I ran off the train, down the steps, and up the other side to the exit. I ran out of the barriers and I ran to the taxi rank. I jumped into a car. As the car pulled away from the station, I saw him emerge, eating a chocolate bar and staring at his phone as if he had not a care in the world.
I didn’t tell my wife I’d been assaulted. I don’t bruise, and so apart from my cheek being tender to touch, there was no sign of the impact of his fists on me. I got off the train in fear. I hurried to the ticket barriers. I prayed for a short queue for taxis. I couldn’t rationalise the casualness of the assault. I couldn’t bring myself to comprehend the escalation from a dab of barbecue sauce to a full-blown attack. All I knew was that I was attacked, and ultimately that it was my fault for being careless with my rubbish and for not reporting the unnecessary reaction sooner.
The day I signed up to the boxing gym, my wife asked me what had brought on the sudden interest in the sport.
‘I just want to protect myself,’ I said.
‘Then
