Friday, March 23, 2012

Watching the Fight


I drank Coors Light when I watched the fight on a t.v. set up outside a garage-lined backstreet off Front Street, Philadelphia. Felix "Tito" Trinidad versus William Joppy at Madison Square Garden. Men got off work to see El Gran Campeon. Men who worked under the hoods of cars with their hands and had hard greasy stubs as fingers. Men with suntanned arms who drove trucks and cranked gears. Men who were detectives who carried guns under their shirts. Men who knew someone that had got shot. Men who married their ex-girlfriend's sister's cousin at Edison High School and when things didn't go well, they went back and married their ex's. Everyone met at baby showers. I cried and looked at my own hands. Soft, smooth, the only thing that they worked on was my jagged nails. I rotated between standing outside the periphery of the men's huddle and swaying off to piss beer water behind the garage. These men were real, what I wanted; I could never belong here, but I could try, pretend to, and drink Coors Light.

-by David Ocasio

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