Excerpts From Tom's Work
Duffy the Fighter
Smitty wrapped my hands and went through his routine. He didn’t mention anything about how this kid was the best fighter that I had ever been in with by far. He didn’t mention the Garden, he just said all the things he always said and he said them in the exact same way. I don’t think any of that was a coincidence.
I was the fifth bout on a ten-bout card and there was one more bout after mine before the live television started. Mulrooney was the main event and he brought in the Irish, both of the Irish-American and the recent immigrant variety. In Mulrooney, they had something to get behind, an event, right here in New York that they could come out to, get drunk and be Irish. Most of them would be in the upper deck and at $75 a pop you can’t rightfully call them cheap seats.
A guy in a blue blazer with a New York Athletic Commission badge on poked his head in my dressing room and said, “Time.” I felt that weird feeling in my throat and a flushing in my face like I do before any bout but tonight it was a little more intense. My legs felt funny underneath me like I had rented them. It was a little more than a little more intense.
I came out first for my bout because Marquason insisted on it in the contract. It’s customary for the champion to enter the ring last and that’s kind of been adopted by who’s ever the favorite to win. I walked through the hallway leading to the main floor and walked through the tunnel with the small scoreboard on top of it that you see on TV at about midcourt of the basketball games. I got my first look at the immensity of the arena, which was now three quarters filled. It was in the true sense of the word awesome. The crowd did their best to be indifferent to my entrance.
Marquason came into some rap song with an entourage of about 8 guys. His corner was worked by two of the game’s most famous corners, so you know that his manager thought a lot of him. The one guy was that fat old guy who looked liked Fred Flintstone’s uglier brother. Marquason was decked out in brand new gear with paid endorsements all over them and when he came through the ropes he ignored me and floated around the ring in a choreographed warm up. I got the impression that this guy hadn’t fought in a union hall or a high school gym—at least not in a long time.
Anticipating some Irish folks there for the main event I wore my green robe and my green, orange and white shorts with the shamrock in the middle. The ring announcer introduced us and when he said my name a roar went up from an upper deck section waving Irish flags. I guess they heard “Duffy” and the “Dombrowski” didn’t throw them. I looked up and it was a large section of people in green.
Marquason got applause but it was more subdued like the crowd was being introduced to some sort of boy prince. The referee called us to the center of the ring for the ceremonial instructions and we went back to the corner to get ready for the bell. Smitty slipped in my mouthpiece and the bell rang. I tried to focus on boxing.
I couldn’t feel my legs.
Marquason didn’t move-- he floated. The guy looked beautiful, like he was a body made just for this. My admiration was interrupted by his first jab, which hit me just under my right eye. It felt like someone hit me with a screwdriver. The kid was fast, had power and his punches were sharp.
I heard the ringside announcers say something about my knees buckling which I wasn’t aware of. I was aware of loud “oooh” that came from the crowd. It was what came after that really startled me.
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
The Irish were in the house and they were pulling for their boy. I got chills and I began to feel my legs and enter that state of mind where I’m just boxing.
The chills didn’t last long because Marquason stabbed me with his screwdriver again only this time he followed it with a right and I found myself on the seat of my pants. It hurt but I was all right and I sprang back up just in time to hear the bell ring. Well, I made it through one round albeit by getting totally dominated and knocked down.
I sat on the stool that Rudy slid through the ropes and sipped the water Smitty offered. Smitty spoke to me in his usual steady and measure pace but I wasn’t focused. My head was ringing and my heart was beating fast.
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
It was getting louder.
I was up off the stool at the sound of the bell for the second. Marquason started to screw around and treat me like a prop. It was as if I was a piece of equipment for him to use to get his win and even more than that, I was something to embarrass and show dominance over.
I threw some jabs that he caught with his gloves and I missed wildly with some hooks. He mugged at me, stuck his tongue out and did the Ali shuffle. I didn’t mind getting beat but I did mind getting disrespected. Okay, so the kid was near great and going to be great, but he didn’t have to make me into an asshole.
He kept doing this one move where he’d drop his guard, stick his head out and then lean in, begging me to hit him. Then when I’d move he’d flash a jab by leaning toward me that would stab me on the way in. Those jabs hurt but it was actually something I’d hoped he’d do after seeing him do it on tape.
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
Man, you got to love the Irish. I felt my fist inside the satiny Mexican glove and it was time to give my strategy a try. The glove was manufactured in such a way that it left some of the stitching exposed and that fact combined with Marquason’s eyebrow scar tissue was my shot. I knew my jab was good but I didn’t know if I could pull off what I wanted to do. Who was I kidding—this was my only shot.
Marquason started the hands-down-leaning-in routine again. I tightened my fist and waited. He leapt, I stepped slightly to my left and threw the hardest, stiff armed jab I had, just slightly off center to his right eyebrow. It caught and I dragged it across his eyebrow and forehead as hard as I could.
It would take a second to see if it worked.
He backed up and circled abruptly leaving his showboat style. He stopped throwing punches and looked preoccupied. Then I got my first sign of success. Marquason rubbed his eyebrow and looked down at his glove. There was blood and there was a lot of it.
The expression on his face changed a bit. Blood dripped into his eye and little by little his fancy satin trunks were getting stained. I threw a regular jab that he blocked but it was hard enough to force his own gloves into the cut. When he pulled back the cut had spread. It was now almost two inches long and it was a quarter inch deep. But was it enough?
The bell rang to end the second and there was a surge of activity around his corner. Back in my corner Rudy iced my shoulders and Smitty was saying something I wasn’t paying any attention to because I was trying to see around him into Marquason’s corner. I saw the New York Athletic Commission doc come through the ropes.
Oh please, please.
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
It was more than a minute between rounds, which means the doctor was concerned. He looked at Marquason turned and whispered something to the ref. And then it happened-- It fuckin’ happened.
The ref waved his hands over Marquason’s corner wildly and I watched. I couldn’t breathe. Fred Flintstone was throwing a fit, Marquason pushed the ref and was yelling and the ref approached the scorer’s table. I pushed Smitty out of the way to hear what he told the Commission table.
“TKO on Doctor’s recommendation,” he said.
I froze. Smitty froze.
The handsome ring announcer climbed in the ring.
“On advice of the ringside physician, referee Peter Conboy stops the contest. The winner by TKO, Duffy Dombrowski!”
I jumped in the air and Smitty and Rudy caught me.
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
“DUFFY, DUFFY.”
Oh, how you have to love the Irish.
Duffy the Social Worker
I was trying to catch up on my notes, which was mostly the equivalent to dabbling in fiction. Notes are supposed to be written in D-A-P format, which stands for Data, Assessment and Plan. The idea is to make each session with a client sound strategic and planned so that if a third party, like an insurance company, picked up your files they could understand the direction your client’s life was going. Unfortunately, the lives of most people, let alone the people who find themselves in need of our services, rarely work out in neat, organized ways.
Take for example, the session I did with Eli when he came back to treatment following the unfortunate Slurpy machine/public nudity incident. In our session behind closed doors this is actually how it went:
Eli: “I was so trashed that the towel headed woman looked like Diana Ross to me. Somehow I convinced myself that Mr. Endou was Barry Gordy and I know Mr. Motown gotta be in to some kink.”
Me: “But Eli—they don’t look even slightly black, they work in a Mobil station and she had on one those Paki outfits. Besides all that, they said ‘no’.”
Eli: “To me it was just one of Diana’s funky outfits and I thought she was playing hard to get.”
Me: “Whatever Eli—it’s pretty clear you ought to lay off the Olde English.”
Eli: “Fuck yeah—nothin’ but fuckin’ trouble.”
In my notes that session appears:
D: Client discussed self-defeating behavior patterns related to alcohol use involving poor relationship boundaries.
A: Client struggles with personal relationships and uses alcohol to facilitate social interactions.
P: Client to identify alternative means of making social contact without alcohol.
Notes like this make it seem like Eli is chock full of insight and I am the ultimate conduit to him seeking enlightenment. It’s not easy being a professional in the business of saving lives.
I had seventy-five records with a ton of these notes; a few treatment plans and treatment plan updates to do. It was boring and, as far as I was concerned, it didn’t really serve a whole lot of purpose except for the anal retentive of the world. Unfortunately, my boss was captain of the all-anal all-star team. My guess was The Michelin woman’s sphincter was so tight it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it would be for a raisin to pass through the entire length of her digestive tract. My apologies to the biblical scholars of the world and I sure wish I didn’t think in such visual terms.
Duffy the Pet Enthusiast
The next morning came a whole lot sooner than I anticipated. Having gotten Schlitzed the night before I didn’t anticipate rising and shining. I also didn’t anticipate my Muslim brother, Al-lah King the basset hound, barking incessantly at the foot of my bed at 5:04 am. For reasons probably only revealed to Muhammad, the short-legged pain in the ass wouldn’t shut up. I yelled at him, I threw pillows at him, I tried to throw the contents of the half empty Schlitz on the nightstand at him—none of it mattered. He was a barking machine.
I sat up in bed and got one of those waves of wishy-washiness that comes with an over integument in that product that made Milwaukee famous. Figuring anything to stop the racket, I stepped out of bed to get the long eared beast some food so he’d shut up. I was slightly dizzy when I got out of bed and when I stepped toward Al my barefoot splatted into something slippery, sending my vastly hung-over body to the hard tile. I had a good idea of what it was without looking, but, like a bad car wreck, I couldn’t not look. Sure as shit, it was between my toes and because of the fall, all over my foot.
All through this, Al never stopped with the racket, though I swear to God, I thought I heard him laughing through the barking. I hopped to the bathroom to stick my shitfoot under the showerhead and for some reason the sight of me hopping threatened Al. He growled and jumped at me, again striking me in the nuts and sending me sprawling, shitfoot and all, into the bathroom wall. I now had a streak of dog shit throughout my house, poo between the toes and a bump on my hung-over head from the second of two falls in the last forty-five seconds. This is not what I consider nursing a hangover.
Duffy's Friends - the Fearsome Foursome
The Foursome hung out at AJ’s all the time. It was some sort of modern existentialism or something but they were never not here. They sat in the same order, drank the same things and pretty much covered the same things in their conversation. Rocco’s newspaper reading served as their current events course in their daily curriculum.
In addition to the Foursome and me there was also Al and, right now, Al was leaned over the bar scarfing down a cheeseburger. He had ketchup on his ears and he ate the burger like he was starving. Then he started to lick the plate clean and with that he pushed it across the bar. Before I knew it, Al was completely on top of the bar pushing the plate down to TC.
AJ, the owner and the bartender, gave me a dirty look and whisked the plate out from under Al’s nose.
“Duffy—he’s not supposed to be on the bar. For Christ’s sake, he’s not supposed to be in here!” AJ said.
Al is a basset hound. He looked confused when AJ took his plate away but he coped with it well by laying down right in front of TC’s B&B. He burped and went to sleep.
“Duffy! His woo-woo is touching my snifter!” TC said.
“That sounds kinky,” Jerry Number Two said.
“What the hell’s a ‘woo-woo’? Rocco said.
“Woo-woo? I wanna know what TC’s snifter is doing on the bar.” Jerry Number One said.
“I didn’t think it was a ‘woo-woo’ I thought it was a wee-wee…” Rocco said.
“It’s still touching my glass. Man, he does this to me on purpose.” TC said.
“You think Al has a frottage thing going with your B&B?” Jerry Number Two said.
“Frottage? That’s the French word for cheese, right?” Rocco said.
“Frottage cheese?” Jerry Number One said.
“On a dog, I think it’s called his ‘cookie.” Jerry Number Two said.
“Only on a female,” Rocco said with confidence. “Cookie refers to the female gerontology.”
“It’s ‘winky’ isn’t it?” Jerry Number One said. “Or is it a ‘wanky?”
“I think it becomes a ‘wanky’ if you touch it too many times,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Isn’t it just a pecker?” Rocco said.
“Not on a dog—that’s impolite.” Jerry Number One said.
“Oh, that’s impolite—but the fact that it’s touching my drink doesn’t bother anyone?” TC said.
“Frottage is rubbing up against things for sexual pleasure,” Jerry Number Two clarified.
“Who wants to rub up against cheese?” Jerry Number One said.
“Mostly, the French,” Rocco said.
Fortunately, for all involved, Al awoke, turned around and took his woo-woo-wee-wee-wanky-cookie--- but certainly not his pecker-- and sat back down on his bar stool without any hint of frottage induced sexual pleasure.
When I didn’t know what else to do with my time I went to AJ’s. With very little going on in my life, but a lot of things racing through my head, I needed the group therapy that AJ’s offered.
“It’s all based on shittin’ the bed when you’re a kid,” Rocko was saying.
“I thought it was wetting the bed,” TC said.
“Why would shittin’ and pissin’ in the bed make you a serial killer?” Jerry Number One asked.
“How would you like to sleep in a shitty, wet and uriney bed every night?” Jerry Number Two said.
“That would stink,” TC said. “Hey, doesn’t setting small animals on fire have something to do with it too?” he said.
“It must be a big bed,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I don’t think they have to set the animals on fire. I think those are two separate categories,” Jerry Number One said.
“Separate from what?” TC said. “What if they sleep with an animal that wets the bed? Does it still count if they kill that animal? It could be justified, you know,” he said.
“When I was a kid I had a hamster that slept with me,” Jerry Number Two said.
“So?” Rocko said.
“He caught fire accidentally,” Jerry Number Two said.
“In bed?” TC said.
“Yeah, there was pot involved. He survived though,” Jerry Number Two said.
“How?” Rocko said.
“I pissed all over him,” Jerry Number Two said.
“That’s disgusting,” Jerry Number One said.
“You’re telling me,” Jerry Number Two said. “You ever smell urine-soaked, burnt hamster?”
“That’s enough to put a guy on a killing spree,” Jerry Number One said.
Duff Raging
“You lookin’ for somethin’?” Calabrese said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was hoping to get some DVD players.”
“Some?”
“As many as you got,” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Can we deal?”
“What you want with a lot of ‘em?”
“What’s this?” I said. “What do you care?”
“Just curious.” He sipped his drink and broke the eye contact. “You got money on you?”
“Yep.”
“Follow me.”
We walked out of the front of the club and around the corner. His white Lexus SUV gleamed in the moonlight. He had custom gold trim all over the obnoxious thing. He walked ahead of me with an arrogant street swagger that I’m sure he had honed over the course of his life.
Calabrese was my height, about six foot one and he was ripped from the weights. He put the key in the back of the car and lifted the door. There were boxes neatly stacked with all sorts of electronic stuff, like DVD players and boom boxes all the way up to the front seat. It was like a rolling Radio Shack.
He looked at me a closely.
“You’re the fighter ain’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I recognized the old school flat top. You’re not real big for heavyweight—what you go about two ten?”
“Yeah, just about.”
“I got a question for you,” he said with a half smile. “How come you keep fighting even though you hardly ever win?”
The thing people don’t understand about boxing is that it’s a whole lot harder to do then it looks. The pitty-pat you see on TV is actually guys getting punched in the face really hard. Assholes like Calabrese who thought they were tough didn’t have any respect for it. He figured I was a bum.
“I like it, I guess,” I said.
“Well,” he laughed, “maybe you could get a collection of your losses on DVD and watch ‘em over and over before you go to bed every night.”
“Or maybe I could get a hundred fifteen pound girlfriend,” I said, “and beat the shit out of her to make me feel like a man.”
“Hey, fuck you asshole.” A prominent vein in his neck throbbed. “Mind your business or you’re bound to get hurt.”
Calabrese straightened up and took a step toward me with his chest out and his eyes glaring. It probably scared the hell out of street guys, but stepping forward was a bad idea.
I threw a good straight jab with my right hand and it landed squarely on his nose. Fighters know the sound; it’s not a big “whack” like you hear in the movies. It’s more of a low muffled crack like when you crack your knuckles really good. The best part is, it really fuckin’ hurts and it makes your eyes tear up so you can’t see.
Instinctively, I followed the jab with a left cross smashing both his hands and his nose this time. You can’t spend twenty years boxing and not let the cross follow the jab. The punches were automatic, like they couldn’t not come.
Calabrese writhed, moaning like a guy who hadn’t been hit before. I dropped a wicked body shot into his solar plexus. He let out a loud groan, grabbed his stomach and fell, doubled over on the pavement. His face was covered in blood and he was rolling around on the pavement with one hand on his midsection and the other over his nose. That was probably enough but then I remembered Sherrie—and a flash of the helplessness and fear she must have felt ran through me.
That was it.
“I wouldn’t mind this on a DVD, asshole,” I said, grabbing him by the neck and slamming his head into his gold chromed bumper. His big head made the sound of a pumpkin getting smashed and he fell backward behind the SUV. He was on his back; his face was a burgundy mess.
“Please, please…” he said in what the great philosopher Mike Tyson once called, ‘womanly noises’.”
“Fuck you,” I heard myself say and I slammed him face first into the bumper again. He fell backwards onto the pavement.
“You know what asshole?” I knelt with one knee on his chest and grabbed him by his silk T-shirt. “They’re gonna know inside that you beat a little girl. This is what your life is going to be like for the next few years.”
I took his cell phone out of his pocket. He was bleeding all over my jeans, my hands were covered with his blood and he was gagging every now and then from the bleeding. I called AJ’s.
“AJ,” I said, “put Kel on.” Calabrese didn’t move under the pressure of my knee. Kelley picked up the phone.
“Kel?” I said. “I need you to arrest somebody for me.”
“What?”
“I happened across what I think is some stolen merchandise.” Calabrese groaned a little under my knee. “I’m on Allen, that alley around the corner from Cinderella’s. Oh, and the guy got banged up a little.”
“Duffy—are you fuckin’ nuts?”
“Kel—I think I’m going to get going,” I said. “I probably don’t want to be around here much longer. Can you do something official for me?”
I hung up. Calabrese was unconscious and wasn’t going any place for a while but I didn’t want to take any chances. I hoisted him up fireman style and loaded him into the driver seat behind the wheel. There was a roll of duct tape on the floor so I taped his hands to the steering wheel and figured it was time to go. I closed the door to the back of his car and headed to the Eldorado. A set of parked headlights had appeared a couple hundred yards down the street. I didn’t know who or what it was and I didn’t figure it was in my best interest to hang around and find out.
I gunned the Eldorado and headed to the Moody Blue as fast as I could. I turned up the eight-track just as Elvis was finishing up the Glory Hallelujahs in The Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was the last part of a song he did called the American Trilogy.
We sang it together all the way home.
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