Bad day for a Boxer

Was it really that bad? Did the situation degrade this quickly and this horribly? I’m not bad as a person. A few sins here and there but those don’t even come close to what’s after me. Multiply those heartless whop thugs by thirty thousand and maybe we are closing in on the same ball park, you know my friend? I bring fists and they bring guns. I pack ice they pack heat. Never enough, and my girls are involved in this whole debacle. When my women are involved then things get way out of hand.
“Where to,” The driver utters in the deep Brooklyn accent. Is he another Joey Gazzo from the south side? It’s always hard to tell in this town, if he is, this will be the shortest and bloodiest cab ride in Brooklyn history. Nothing has been going well in the past month. I am a shadow of myself, loosing weight weekly and I haven’t slept in days.
“Where too buddy?” repeated the driver slowly rising to a calm anger.
“JFK and fast,” I mumble through two newly broken teeth.
“Your going to have to rob a bank to pay for the fair,” He chuckled shifting the old clunker into drive. He was old and balding, poor guy. He wore a cheap hat perched neatly on his almost invisible bald spot. The kind of cheap hat they sell in Italian pawn shops. Three bibles were neatly stacked so he could see the oncoming traffic. I suppose the noose tightened ever so quickly when you think about it. First the bank accounts. The Bank accounts are always first. That sad look in the teller’s eye when she told me my checking account had run drier than the river Jordan. That’s impossible I told her. Must be some mistake made by one of your spear carriers behind the computers. I just reimbursed that account with six hundred dollar! That’s just impossible! I was screaming at this poor women by then. She cowered before me huddled behind Plexiglas bullet proof windows. I knew I was in a corner now. No way out. I took a heavy swing at the glass and broke two knuckles. The pain was impossible to cope with. I nearly stole morphine from a hospital for it two days later. Breaking Plexiglas feels mighty good though, good on the soul that is. Pretty good for a run down boxer I’d say. George Forman said I had a right hook that could sink a ship. He gave me a free grill after saying that, nice guy, bad career choice. I suppose it is all Vinny’s work, the bank that is. Would you believe me if I told you that I had dined at Vinny’s lovely abode? I wouldn’t believe it myself. If some two faced shmooze came up to me hollered with his voice raised loud for the world to hear, “I eat dinner with Vinney “The Gas Piper” Gazzo,” and know his mistress personally.” I’d punch that little shit in the face right after that last word left his unclean lips. Drinking and Eating with New York’s most notorious mob boss isn’t as gratifying as it sounds. There’s no brass band playing, or magnificently warm sweeping feeling traveling up your spine. He puts his pants on one leg at a time except then he goes and kills people. He’s just like every one of us. Except he owns all of New York and has personally taken an intense revenge to have my corpse be paraded around the street, hung from the highest street lamp with the sign magnificently stapled to my chest proclaiming with a prophetic message

Don’t Fuck with the Gas Piper!

I suppose it is good to be the crime lord of New York. No ones chasing you or after your girlfriend. It’s all because of that stupid fight, that one god damn fight. How could I be so stupid? Honestly they should tie me up and ship me off to Bellville for the rubber room treatment and five cozy injections a day. No matter what don’t fight too hard. It went about as well as the Bay of Pigs operation. STOP, now imagine this, I was supposed to go down in the fifth, as a fat cleanly laundered paycheck with forty thousand dollars is casually being deposited in bank account #435254432-AFDGET-564345. All the while two kilos of Columbia’s finest export being put in my mailbox. I was not supposed to kill Gazzo’s prized fighter!!! Dave if you had just gone down in the fifth you would be sipping vodka screwdrivers and enjoying the lovely scenery of the Canary Islands while hitting on women ten years younger than you. If you played those dice right Dave you might even be currently getting your nuts rubbed by a brunette stripper coming off the night shift right out side my favorite club Knockers. Dave you are one dumb asshole. I smile at myself as the cab flies through the New York side streets. The glare of traffic lights and smog of thousands of desperate people all living together in the endless urban suffering that is the South side Bronx. We see a deadly sin on every street corner and we do nothing. That is New York. We thrive on the greed, lust, and envy of others. We are the despicable race that is humanity.
“So what happened to you buddy? You look like shit dipped in sugar” chuckles the driver through the fat stinking Cuban cigar in his mouth. The smoke drifts hazily to the cap roof and settles there undisturbed until it is swept out the cab drivers window. It stinks of old fish in this cab.
“Got into a fight, a bad one” I mumble. There are already three broken teeth and a fast swelling black eye on my broken and jarred face. That’s without all the emotional baggage of living the ever so posh lifestyle of hiding for two months straight and sleeping on my best friends kitchen floor. My coat has deep holes in it and my shirt is tattered and torn in various odd places. The driver stops at a red light and stomps his Cuban into the cheap upholstered leather seats. We get cut off and the cabbie jams the breaks sending me into the hard glass divider. I feel a nail being hammered into my jaw and I recede quickly in the utmost excruciating pain. A molar glides gently from my lower lip and lands on the stained brown floor board. I’m getting very old. No I’m seriously getting really old. The kind of old that entitles you to getting walked across the street by boy scouts. Old for a boxer is the kind of old I am. 78 is my magic number. Every boxer has so many fights in him. “Well be there soon,” says the cab driver. False comfort doesn’t help me. We took the wrong turn three blocks ago………