The Boxer

By the time I heard about your troubles it was old news. The envelope I received had my name and address smudged across the front in ball point ink. Inside, neatly folded, was a sheet of white, lined notebook paper on which you had written in your well-rehearsed handwriting.  There was something very earnest about it, as if you were back in school, constructing the alphabet with care and symmetry, intent on not making errors.

“I don’t belong here. I belong in the vast open outdoors, in the thick forests and open fields,” you wrote. It was important to portray your sentiments as precisely as possible so that I, an outsider on the outside, could fully take in the meaning of each and every phrase. 

You were leading me on a path back to when you were invincible, with a crooked smile and a broken nose on more than one occasion.  Your friends thought you were tough and nicknamed you “the Boxer.” I’m not sure if it was to mock you for your talent as a street fighter, or out of respect for your expert kick-boxing skills. You were a charmer, a protector, someone I trusted.

When convicted of first degree murder and possession of a firearm, to those same friends you become “a Criminal,” spending forty-five years tucked away in the California desert where there were no seasons and no open fields.  You ran circles in a cage with no purpose, no direction. It was just aimless movement keeping your body a well-oiled machine. 

You told me that they let you exercise at all hours of the day, even when it was dark. That was your time, when the quad was empty, and in the silence you could hear the rhythm of your heart as your feet hit the dirt. 

You liked the odor of the no nonsense soap they gave you there. It reminded you of the household soap your mother used to hand wash your clothes when you were just a Jew boy to your Soviet classmates. They declared you a Comrade and slapped you on the back, tied a red scarf around your neck, and told you that you were going to change the world, that you were indispensable, irreplaceable, a Pioneer...  a gift to father Lenin himself. 

In your twenties, you were quiet and disciplined and you found your comfort zone in the US Marines, defending the greatest country in the world. The country that gave you a future…  and put a gun in your hand.

I was seventeen when you took me up to Mulholland in your car. It was slick and the engine was tweaked, impressive even when it was standing still. We sat on a brick wall overlooking a lit-up L.A. You took off your shirt, and in a dance of truth or dare, I took off mine.  

Together we spent time reaching for adulthood at cheerless gatherings where the lights were low and the music too loud for conversation, where strewn about on random, sagging couches with faded upholstery, breath to breath, we wished ourselves into our happily ever after.  

This once shared uncertainty propelled me to come and see you.

When I came to visit, and I only came once, you reeked of the past and of the hidden courtyards and alleys of our Motherland with its resilient vegetation. You too had grown into a chestnut tree with spiny thorns, or perhaps into a weeping willow, turned inward on itself with an arthritic trunk. 

You sat next to me on a blue bench the color of the ocean, your head shaved, smooth and unfamiliar. I was not a family member, I was not family.  I was just a non-believer. I believed that good intentions could lead to disaster.

You wanted a photograph as tangible proof of my presence, evidence of that unlikely visit in a space filled with vending machines and steel benches stirring with women wearing their Sunday best, leaning on their men’s shoulders like sad birds perched on a live wire. You stretched out your arm and I was wrapped within it, standing awkwardly still... like flamingos, leaning into you on one leg for balance.  The photographer said “smile” and you did. Who would see that photo of the two of us in an imaginary wood, taken against a backdrop of flat, make-believe hill tops? Did you look at it and think about how much we’d changed?  Did you show it to the other inmates?... Did you say, “This is my... friend”? 

My teenage memories of you were triggered by the songs of Billy Idol and Prince’s “Purple Rain”, the image of your car speeding down the 405 freeway in the heavy evening air with the windows down, and me changing into my “cool party clothes” in the back seat.  

“Don’t look,” I shouted. You didn’t. But I could hear you laughing.

I wanted to defy... but not to disappoint. That would have been too painful. I had been brainwashed into thinking that my own body would revolt against me and that I would wind up pregnant or addicted. My mother’s biggest fear was that I would have nine abortions before the age of twenty-five, like my cousin, and think nothing of it.

Secretly, I wanted to know about your love life. There were cameras everywhere... Did their intrusive gaze follow you into the cracks of your most intimate spaces? Did the guards watch you even when you were together?

Your skin was tanned into a burnt caramel glaze, and smooth like a candied apple. You were nervously rubbing your palms against your knees.

“There will be more appeals,” you told me. The first two had not go your way.

“I’m hopeful. It’s not so bad in here now that they moved me to the minimum-security compound.” You paused and looked around the room. 

“You expected something different I guess.” Your laughter was earnest.

In truth, I stepped in blindly driven by my curiosity, and now I was ashamed. 

“We are not like animals in here you know.” You looked at me wistfully with your blue eyes that have a hint of grey. Your tone of voice was low and questioning.

“I know...,” I said, and instantly felt predictable and awkward. I wanted to know how your lips managed to curve upward and still form a smile. 

“My parents come and visit once in a while. They don’t come as often though, the drive’s too hard on them now.” 

I nodded in agreement. It was a seven-hour drive to no man’s land and an endless road to regret.

To get your mother’s number I had to forage through the Russian grapevine. Once a chemistry professor in the ex-Soviet Union, you were her only child.  I wasn’t sure she would remember me.  Forlorn, on the other end of the receiver, she tried to explain between sighs and intermittent “Oi Boje”, as if pleading with God would alleviate her burden in recounting the events.  For you God was never in the picture, he was not in your peripheral vision, nor did he block out the sun. Your faith was as spotty as the random patches of green grass in the recreation yard.   I heard… “he had a gun”... “surveillance camera”... “he took the blame”. Nothing she said surprised me, for you existed in the physical, tactile realm. You needed to lean into things with your body, letting it do the exploring for you, letting it take all of the blows. I felt her desperation, her utter helplessness at losing you to a confined life. It was as if she had buried you alive.  Now her time was consumed by trying to maneuver through the complexities of the American judicial system, hiring attorneys, filing for appeals... which up to now had served only to deplete what little savings she and her husband had managed to put aside. 

All around us there was noise. Behind you there was a couple sitting too close together, the side of their hips were touching, as they attempted to caress one another.  On the floor next to them their children’s laughter blended with the reprimanding tone of the guard who was walking by. 

“Watch it now... be good you hear.” His reproach was almost obliging as he patrolled the room. His gait was slow, he seemed at ease in his role as guardian. 

“People here have families and lives which the prison gates cannot keep out,” you said. But this was not what I wished for you. 

I wanted to leave before our time was up. It was hot and the sound of the coins being dropped into the hollow of the vending machines was incessant. There was an eager battle for the Doritos, Twinkies and Coke before they all disappeared. Food from “the outside” was only allowed once a week and it could only be handed out to the inmates by their visitors.

You sensed my discomfort.  I was, after all, a novice at dealing with incarceration. 

You stood, composed, and waited for me to put my arms around you in a tight embrace, and when I pulled away I waved as if we had just casually met on the street and were going to see one another tomorrow. 

“Please write,” you said. I said nothing because your letters frightened me. 

I walked out through the metal detector and onto a barren, flat terrain. I looked down and saw my shoes covered in dust. It was arid and the sun, blinding.

On the drive home I took the scenic route. I turned onto Pacific Coast Highway and felt relieved when the ocean come into view. The water looked a cold steel blue, not unlike the color of your eyes on a winter day, when the pupils retract and all I could see was a beckoning abyss.