User:Chelsey.brantley/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Line 108:

“Don’t forget the game plan,” Teddy is yelling from my corner. He wants

my help in pulling the blackboard through the ropes. I come out of my {{pg|510|511}}

my help in pulling the blackboard through the ropes. I come out of my {{pg|510|511}}reverie to help him. Oh, I have been waiting for this moment, and now but

for good old Teddy I might have forgotten. Like the most careful teacher printing large block letters for an eager second grade, I inscribe and turn to four sides so all can see, “The Naked and the Dead Is His Best Work.”

When Norman reads my inscription, he is swishing Gatorade in his

mouth while his second, Richard Poirier, applies with a Q-tip glycerine and rosewater to the Mailer lips. When my barb registers, he swallows the

Gatorade and bites the Q-tip in half. Poirier and José Torres can barely keep

him on his stool. They whisper frantically, each in an ear. Archie is across the ring getting a quick shine from a boy who manages, on tiptoe, to reach

with his buffing cloth up to the apron of the elevated ring. Arch kneels to tip

with an autograph.

When the bell tolls round two, I face a Mailer who has with herculean effort

quickly calmed himself. He has sucked in his cheeks for control and

looks, for the moment, like a tubercular housewife. I see immediately that he

has beaten back the demiurge. We will stay in the realms of the intellect. His

gloves are completely laced and his steps are tight and full of control. He dances over to the ropes and beckons me with an open glove to taste his

newness.

Who do you think I am, Norm? Didn’t I travel half a world with no hope

of writing a book about it to watch Ali lure George Foreman to the ropes? Not for me, Norm, is your coy ease along the top strand. I’ll wait and take you in the open. You see, I learned more than you did in Africa. While you holed up in an air-conditioned hotel and resurrected those eight rounds for your half a million advance, I thumbed my way to what was once called Biafra. I went to the cemetery where Dick Tiger lies dead of causes unknown at age thirty-five in newly prosperous Nigeria. How did you miss Dick Tiger? You who were the first white negro, you the crown prince of nigger-lovers, you missed the ace of the jungle. Yes, he was the heart of the dark continent, the Aristotle of Africa. A middleweight and a revolutionary. While you clowned around with Torres and Ali and Emile Griffith, Tiger packed his gear and headed home to see what he could pick clean from the starvation and the slaughter. He went home to face bad times and bad people and was dead a week after his plane touched down. Where were you and the sportswriters, Norm, when Dick Tiger needed you? I at least made the trek to the resting

place of the hero, and it was there in the holy calm of his forgotten tomb that I vowed to come back and make my move. No one offered me a penny {{pg|511|512}}

[[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]

@@ Line 108: / Line 108: @@
 “Don’t forget the game plan,” Teddy is yelling from my corner. He wants
-my help in pulling the blackboard through the ropes. I come out of my {{pg|510|511}}
+my help in pulling the blackboard through the ropes. I come out of my {{pg|510|511}}reverie to help him. Oh, I have been waiting for this moment, and now but
+for good old Teddy I might have forgotten. Like the most careful teacher printing large block letters for an eager second grade, I inscribe and turn to four sides so all can see, “The Naked and the Dead Is His Best Work.”
+When Norman reads my inscription, he is swishing Gatorade in his
+mouth while his second, Richard Poirier, applies with a Q-tip glycerine and rosewater to the Mailer lips. When my barb registers, he swallows the
+Gatorade and bites the Q-tip in half. Poirier and José Torres can barely keep
+him on his stool. They whisper frantically, each in an ear. Archie is across the ring getting a quick shine from a boy who manages, on tiptoe, to reach
+with his buffing cloth up to the apron of the elevated ring. Arch kneels to tip
+with an autograph.
+When the bell tolls round two, I face a Mailer who has with herculean effort
+quickly calmed himself. He has sucked in his cheeks for control and
+looks, for the moment, like a tubercular housewife. I see immediately that he
+has beaten back the demiurge. We will stay in the realms of the intellect. His
+gloves are completely laced and his steps are tight and full of control. He dances over to the ropes and beckons me with an open glove to taste his
+newness.
+Who do you think I am, Norm? Didn’t I travel half a world with no hope
+of writing a book about it to watch Ali lure George Foreman to the ropes? Not for me, Norm, is your coy ease along the top strand. I’ll wait and take you in the open. You see, I learned more than you did in Africa. While you holed up in an air-conditioned hotel and resurrected those eight rounds for your half a million advance, I thumbed my way to what was once called Biafra. I went to the cemetery where Dick Tiger lies dead of causes unknown at age thirty-five in newly prosperous Nigeria. How did you miss Dick Tiger? You who were the first white negro, you the crown prince of nigger-lovers, you missed the ace of the jungle. Yes, he was the heart of the dark continent, the Aristotle of Africa. A middleweight and a revolutionary. While you clowned around with Torres and Ali and Emile Griffith, Tiger packed his gear and headed home to see what he could pick clean from the starvation and the slaughter. He went home to face bad times and bad people and was dead a week after his plane touched down. Where were you and the sportswriters, Norm, when Dick Tiger needed you? I at least made the trek to the resting
+place of the hero, and it was there in the holy calm of his forgotten tomb that I vowed to come back and make my move. No one offered me a penny {{pg|511|512}}
 {{Review}}
 {{DEFAULTSORT:Inside Norman Mailer}}
 [[Category:Short Stories (MR)]]