Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter by Michael J. White

Author:Michael J. White [White, Michael J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-five

If you’ve ever been a wrestler, or ever loved one, you will probably be familiar with a phenomenon referred to as “muscle memory.” As Coach Grady would likely reason it, in the moment of my opponent’s clumsy attack my muscles simply reacted as they’d been trained to react over the course of a few hundred freestyle practices when I’d been pressed to exploit the vulnerability of overemotional opponents who in the final minute of a losing match would often launch forward in frantic, spread-winged anger. Though I was never honestly convinced of this reasoning, I pretended to be convinced of it for the following afternoons of jobless seclusion, which were largely dedicated to bong hits and soap operas in Zach’s bachelorized bedroom during his day shift up at Gordo’s. (I have no idea what strain of cannabis Zach was smoking at the time, but it was potent and forcibly reminding of the antidrug counselor back in Davenport who’d warned us of the twelve-year-old marijuana addict whose testosterone turned to estrogen, causing his testicles to shrink and his mammary glands to swell until he’d grown a pair of little boy breasts.) More than once I discovered, halfway through one convoluted drama or another, that all the actors were speaking Spanish. I constantly peered through the basement windows for signs of Sigma Pi posses on patrol. Even more upsetting than my paranoia was the moment I came to the understanding—during a double feature of softly upsetting commercials for adult diapers and laser hair replacement—that a dear, intangible part of me had just broken away, setting sail for nonviolent adventures among moralistic peoples.

But I already decided to avoid the specifics of those first maddening weeks of grief, and have now clearly regressed. I scurry ahead to events more apropos to my relationship with the Schell family, beginning with my two unplanned encounters with Mr. Schell. The first of these occurred at the Seventy-third Street YMCA, which I began attending in an effort to restore a modicum of emotional and cognitive stability. (Colin Franzen, who worked at the front desk, offered me a membership discount usually reserved for stroke and car wreck victims in rehabilitation.) By then I’d more or less regained my appetite and was benching as much weight as ever, a feat no doubt motivated by the conceit that Katie Schell was my invisible spotter, urging me on for additional repetitions that in reality put me at risk of having to crawl out from under a two-hundred-twenty-pound bar pinning me to the bench. But the first hour or two after exercising were my most optimistic of the week, and the Saturday morning I encountered Mr. Schell was no exception.

That day I arrived to a shower room that was empty aside from the one old guy who was always there scalding himself in a cloud of steam. I chose a showerhead at the far end of the row and began lathering myself, taking pride in the noticeable swell returned to my shoulders and chest, the cable cord veins in my forearms.

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