The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Inside Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions

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 ==II==
+Our first face-to-face meeting is at the weigh-in. He wanted to dispense with it and turn in a morning urine specimen instead. The boxing commission
+put the nix on that idea. Oh, he knew who I was before the weigh-in. We had traded photos, autographs, and once I had anthologized him.
+But face to face on either side of a big metal scale with our robes on and Teddy White rubbing my back while I stare bullets, that is something else
+again.
+He nods, I look away. He can afford to be gracious. If I win, I’ll make a
+handsome donation to UNICEF in his honor. For now, I button my lip. He
+chats with White about convention sites, claims that because of tonight he’ll have an insider’s if they do the ’76 one in the Astrodome.
+I come in at one hundred forty-four and three quarters, thirty-four-inch reach. He is two hundred fourteen and a thirty-inch reach. He spots me the reach and eighteen years. I give him seventy pounds and a ton of reputation. He has enough grace under pressure to teach at a ballet school, but the smile discloses bad teeth. I’ll remember that. His body hairs are graying. I can see that he has not trained and could use sleep. My tongue lies at the bottom of my mouth. “Good luck, kid,” he says, but I have removed my contact lenses and only learn later that it was the Great One in a magnanimous gesture whom I snubbed because I had to take a leak.
+==III==
+The Dome is a half-empty cave. At the last minute they lowered all tickets to a buck, and thousands popped in to see the King. To me the crowd means {{pg|507|508}} nothing. It is as anonymous as the whir of an air conditioner. I stare at the
+Everlast trademark on my gloves and practice keeping the mouthpiece in
+without gagging. “Stay loose,” Teddy yells over the din, “stay loose as a goose
+and box like a fox.”
 {{Review}}
 {{DEFAULTSORT:Inside Norman Mailer}}
 [[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]