Tony

TONY

Pop always taught me, "Get strong or die. That's how it is in this world," And he was right. You can ask any of the people I've killed. They would testify to that very fact.

I grew up in Queens, New York City. My mother and father were Italian immigrants who’d moved here to set up a better life...all they ever really set up though was a pizzeria, and they’d worked there ever since. People told me my father had been a prized boxer in Italy, before we moved here. They said he could knock a man out with a single punch. That’s why they called him,“Tony the Tiger”.  I was the first born son, eldest of 4 boys, and generally known to be the toughest. Growing up in a house full of boys ain’t easy, for no one. It takes muscle. Every day was a constant struggle and a competition between which of us would do whatever it was the best, the quickest, and to the most approving acclaim of Pop. I ain’t too shy to admit, I was always his favorite.

“Get strong or die, Anthony,” that’s what Pop would tell me every saturday morning in the ring. Boxing was our way of bonding, a place were we we could meet life’s woes toe to toe. For me, there was no happier time in my life than when I was there with my Dad, watching him parade around the ring in all his former glory. I was proud to be his son. But more than that, I was proud to be somebody. A boxer, a fighter...a survivor.  Someone people could look up to, and respect. I was hooked. I wanted to be a fighter.

Boxing was also Pop’s way of teaching me about life. “Every blow you land, every wave of pain you feel is a decision that has to be dealt with. We must, in that quick moment, learn the deepest truth of life. We either fight back, or we get beaten down. That’s all it comes down to, son. And you know what? There’s really only ever one decision we really got: We fight. We get strong, we fight or we die. Remember that! Remember that everyday of your life, and you’ll be more of a man than I ever was.”

F**k was he right though. It started in middle school. For whatever reason, kids didn’t like me. Teacher’s didn’t like me. I wasn’t sure if I liked me! My memory of recess was always me being challenged to a fight by some punk older kid who had somehow heard from some other kid that I had told some other kid that I was the strongest kid in the school, which I guess kind of pissed them off because I was one of the littlest kids in school. That’s all it took. Rumours, and ego, man.

“Come on! Let’s see what you got you little Italian piece of s**t!” WWWHHHHAAAMMMMM! One solid uppercut jab to the chin, one shoulder press to the gut, and the kid was down for the count...every time...every year…

Pop taught me well…..

By the time I was in highschool, someone took notice. Tom Villani, gym teacher at Browning High, saw my potential. He knew I had the rigour and grit to be a fighter. When he asked me how I learned to fight, I told him, “My father. Tony Bellucci”. “The Tiger?” he asked. Damn right...

Villani saw in me the potential to go big. He saw me getting a scholarship into an Ivy League school through College Varsity Boxing, if my grades weren’t too bad, which they weren’t, and then go all the way to the top, to Vegas, to an MGM Grand headline fight; “Tony Bellucil vs. Whichever Miserable Sap Happens To Be In His Way”. Thing is, I saw it too. Didn’t seem far fetched to me. I’d spent my whole life fighting, getting strong. This is what I was good at. What can I say? I wanted to make Pop proud.

So I trained. Hard. Everyday. 8 hours a day at the gym. You can’t be anyone in this world if you don’t put in the time and effort to hone your craft. Mine was my body, and I was on top of that m**********r. The other was my mind. The agility and reflex needed to disengage another man who is dead set on murdering you is phenomenal. You gotta be like lightning, and come down like thunder on his body; you gotta be like ten thousand trains running into ten thousand brick walls at ten thousand miles per hour all at once. Like that.

One night after training, I’m leaving the gym when I see my then girlfriend Shirley talking casually to some guy by my car. I can’t f*****g stand it when another other guy talks to my girl! I stand by and watch what she does for a minute………..they talk, she laughs, he laughs, he talks some more, she gives him that cute look she gives me when she’s trying to seem shy but she isn’t...f**k then he touches her arm! That’s it..

“Hey, hey, hey! What the f**k is going on here?” I walk like I’m entering the ring on a sold out, heavyweight fight night. I catch his eyes and hold them in the heavy orbital gravity of mine. That’s right m**********r, look at these muscles...look at how big I am...

“Oh s**t, it’s my boyfriend,” I overhear her whisper to him, “Baby! What took you so long, I’ve been waiting forever”

“Don’t Awww, baby me….who is this piece of s**t?”

“Jesus Anthony, relax. I don’t know. He was just walking by and stopped to talk to me,” She crosses her arms and pouts like a seven year old.
“Is that right pal?” I ask Mr. Romeo, most kindly.

“Yeah. I was just leaving.”

“Why are you leaving in such a hurry, Romeo? The parties just getting----” I full on shift my weight from left to right, and in one clear fluid motion drive my left sledgehammer into the right cheek of his pretty face “----started”. . .

Blood bursts out of his nose. His right eye is bleeding bad...Oh s**t...

“Tony? What the f**k did you do?!” Shirley falls into a hysteric black hole. My heart suicides in after moments later when I look closer and see that I’ve completely shattered his eye in. There’s nothing left...just an empty skull socket! F**k! Is this f****r even breathing!?? I frantically touch his chest and can’t feel anything. Nothing! HE’S DEAD! I grab his wrist and try to feel where you’re supposed to, like on the wrist before where the hand starts...I can’t feel anything! But maybe that’s only because I’m so f*****g scared right now. Shirley is heaving and panting... I press my ears to his chest. I listen….Lub dub, Lub dub, Lub dub….he’s f*****g alive! We call the ambulance and hope to God that by the end of tonight I’m not on my way to becoming a convicted killer…………………..

…...yeah, it’s bad...by the time we get to the hospital, I’m told by the cops he died from internal bleeding...and well losing his f*****g eye. And then it’s a whole f*****g affair. I get arrested. Booked, and put behind bars, where I face the loneliest night of my life. All I can think about as I wait for morning is my poor Pop...damn, this gonna hurt him….they wake me up, place me before the judge, and I’m told by my lawyers to waive my right to a trial. Done. Then they tell me to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Okay. The lawyer pleads that I’m a good college student, and am a talented athlete with a promising career. Somebody buys it because I’m convicted of manslaughter, but only sentenced to 175 days in jail. I cry and thank God for a million and one things all at once. The general publics reaction isn’t too happy, especially from the family. “A colossal miscarriage of justice,” The victim’s Father calls it….

Look, I never meant to kill the guy. I only wanted to…I don’t know, seem stronger in a situation where I felt weak…

Well jail, isn’t that bad. 175 days passed by like the tossing of playing cards. I would do push-ups, read, and think about what I was gonna do when I got out. Shirley never visited once, so f**k her….I get out, and try to get back to my normal life. Only things weren’t the same, or more to the point, people didn’t treat me the same. Everywhere I went, people met me with scornful eyes. Mothers covered their childrens face whenever----of course I had been a big f*****g story on the news! “Tony the Tiger Gets Convicted of Manslaughter/ Sentenced to 175 days” Headline murderer. Welcome to your new life, Tony….

But of all places in the world, the one place I didn’t expect  to shut me out was the ring.

I stopped getting fights. That hurt. I guess, no one wanted to fight a convicted killer. Even though they'd known it was only manslaughter, baser judgements prevailed. I guess I don’t blame them. I’m dangerous. They think I should still be behind bars! Maybe they’re right…

The only place I was still welcome was home. “Hey son, this is just life giving you a hard punch. You gotta get back out there and fight back...” Mom and my brothers all helped me grieve my long lost life. I spent months without even leaving the house. I decided to give up boxing, for good, against my families objections. I never wanted to step into that ring again and fight another man. I didn’t want to be a spectacle anymore. I was too ashamed to face the world. No more fighting. No more winning. It was over. I was done. Fin.

Then I get a phone call….

It’s Thomas Villani telling me Don Berry wants to fight. Great...just when I had given  up hope, hope finds me. Thank you, Don. Yeah, my whole spiel about not fighting? Bullshit. I just said that cause no one would fight me! Now Don wants to fight? Yeah, I could go a round...that’s all itll take. One round, Don.

After all, what are we without our ambitions? Our dreams? Our desires?  People like to pontificate that we are motivated by our desire to succeed, to amass a substantial wealth, respect, and influence, and then die...but that’s an illusion. The truth is what separates the losers from the winners, the remembered from the forgotten, is a desire to have a defining purpose. That’s what we’re all really after. A purpose. The winner searches for a sense of purpose, not an aim, or a goal, or a desire..but rather a purpose. Not money. Not power. Not celebrity. The fighter searches for a purpose that satisfies everyday of his life. All the success and bullshit that comes after is quid pro quo.

What can I tell you? Long story short, I win the fight in the first round...one punch, that’s all it takes. Knock out Tony,  just like his father...just like that night….and it’s over. . lights, camera, glory…..

It’s the night after the fight.  I’m having a little victory celebration at one of my favorite Brooklyn hangouts, “The Trash Bar,”. I’m drinking beers, I’m doing lines, which I don’t normally do, but f**k it! It’s the first time in a long while that I’ve felt happy to be alive again. I feel so goddamn happy. I’m back... After the fight, I got calls telling me I’ve got more fights lining up! The phones literally going off the hook! Everything’s going to be alright.

And somewhere around the corner of that thought and doomsday ave, I see Jack Vance.

Now Jack isn’t dressed like your typical junky, drunk hooligan bar fly. He’s wearing a black dress shirt, possibly Armani, a nice watch, black slacks, and black ankle high boots, like he just got back from some Armani funeral. Now he’s sitting at the bar with the hottest girl any of us have ever seen, when suddenly we see him pass her over a white envelope, and judging from her more than cagey reaction, we know what’s inside. In an instant, we know what Jack does for a living. Then we see Jack do drugs right at the f*****g bar after she leaves. Now we know what state of mind Jack is in…we know what you got in your pockets, Jack. We know a lot about you….

I don’t remember which one of us had the idea first, but somehow somewhere we all agreed to rob the fool. Yeah, we didn’t need to, it was kind of just to teach the punk a lesson. I mean, the energy he was giving off that evening? He was dangerous, he was out for blood. We needed….no, we were meant to intervene. Plus, we’d get all his drugs and bash his pretty face in...

We kind of slyly, offhandedly weave our way down to the end of the bar, where Jackie Boy is drunkenly swinging back and forth between existences. We laugh at him as we hover over, with all the assurity a pack of lions shows before their prey. I start,

“Crazy night we’re having, bud”

“...what?” is all he says.

“Yea, it’s really one for the record books. Hey! I’m Tony! Nice to meet ya!” I reach out for a handshake that doesn’t happen, “Now that we know each other, how about you buy me and my friends a round? As a sign of friendship? Looks like you can afford it, pal.. or maybe…” I lean in, “...maybe you hook us up. With a bit of what you gave that girl.... ” I let the silence dangle between us for a few moments, then we all break out a boisterous laugh…

“Yeah, Tony, that broad was high-class. I’d spend a few hundred for her, at least.” then Vincent adds, “See if he’s got an eight-ball on him.”

“Oh sure, I’ll buy you guys a round…” he says  before breaking out laughing, then continues on, “...this bar…. is a seething pool of incest and debauchery; a clustering together of all the negative forces and icons that hold this American institution indivisibly in place and in measurable summation of Law and Order,” he gets up, “...and in accordance with the constitutional amendments for sovereignty and dignity; and the everlasting pursuit of happiness; and the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God,” he picks up a beer bottle, “I declare my inalienable rights to be... inalienable!!! Good God! Look!” he drinks the whole beer in one gulp, “There! The waitresses!  waitresses wear it on their faces! The barkeeps in their rags! The saints hide it in their robes!And all the holy wayward drunks lost on Route 66 still trying to get their kicks wear it on theirs dicks!” and in that instant Jack smashes the beer right into my face…

The next few seconds pass by too fast for me to remember…

...a flash of pain….I can’t move or see anything..,the bar is spinning out of control…I slam someone’s head against the wall...I fall down... my mind pants out of exhaustion… I see dark red…. I lose consciousness….

I come to.

I’m in a hospital. I’m handcuffed to the bed. There’s a few officers and doctors around me. Outside I see through the pale glass my Mother and Father crying in the waiting room. What the f**k is going on?

“Easy there. Take it easy, Anthony. How do you feel?”

 I feel like death. I try to look around the room. I can’t. It hurts. I close my... eye? What the f**k!?

“You had a serious injury, Anthony. We had to..uh, remove your right eye.”

Remove my eye? I reach up with my hand and everybody moves to stop me, but the Doctor lets me proceed. I slowly bring my trembling hand to the right side of my face, closer..closer, closer, closer...and land on soft, grainy cotton. They’re right. It’s gone. I can’t feel it anymore. I break down like a baby.

“We’re so sorry, Anthony….”

So am I. But after my wailings and sobbings have died down, I notice everybodies still on edge….

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember? You were in a heavy altercation with another man. In Brooklyn... I don’t know how to tell you this, but he’s dead. You’re going to jail, Anthony. I’m sorry,”

It’s alright. It’s not too bad. I mean, Pop always taught me, “Get strong or die,” Well, I’d done just that, hadn’t I? Why did I feel like I was dying then? Like I was losing my soul, my life, my memory, my mother’s love, my fathers pride? Like I was being erased from my own life, that all meaning for life was fading faster than the white flash of the camera that captures the glory of the moment, but not the moment itself...worst of it was I’d been in this place twice now only this time I had one less eye for it. Tony the Tiger was dead. There was no room in the world for a one-eyed boxing champion sensation. I’d never win another fight, and with my record now…? No. I m done. It’s just as good. The world is more trouble than it’s worth...and I’m not strong enough to pretend to matter anymore. . .

A couple months into my prison sentence, I decide it’s time.

Certainty. There are few things in life that we can say we know for certain. We can say for certain we are awake, for instance, because we can feel weight the pain of our bodies. But beyond that, life is very much like a dream. We have no idea what’s going to happen next, or what consequences our next thoughts will bring. We only live on the precipice of a feeling...that’s all. Death is the only thing we can know for certain. We know it’s happening to us, or that we’re bringing it to others. Ask any fighter, he’ll tell you. Anyways, my time is up. I never amounted to anything, I never would, so why stick around making everyone feel sorry for me?

My heart weighs as heavily as championship gold, and for the few instants before I slam my head into the concrete wall, I think about Pop, and how he used to laugh together in the ring when I was kid. I think about Mom and her beautiful laugh. I think about the crashing sound of the wall into my brains, the reverberation of pain echoing loudly within the walls of my skull...then I don’t think anymore… I don’t feel...I see, a river of red, flowing carelessly down to a pretty horizon...