Muhammad and Me

On June 3^rd, 2016, Muhammad Ali succumbed to his decades-long battle with Parkinson’s syndrome at the age of seventy-four. The news of his death was more sudden than shocking. People in their seventies who are afflicted with either variant of Parkinsonism are often seen to be on the decline. It was hard to view Ali in that light – as a normal human being. When he was hospitalized with respiratory complications on June 2^nd, the news caught many off-guard. But, this was Ali, and it wasn’t the first time he’d required such care in his later years. In less than twenty-four hours, he was gone. His condition steeply declined, and he passed away quietly, surrounded by family.

I cried when I found out about his passing. The flood of emotions that hit in that instant was unexpected, but in retrospect, made perfect sense. You couldn’t miss it; literally, every outlet was running a story on it.   More than a man, he was an idea. Or an ideal, whichever you prefer. Ali was a paragon of self-possession. If someone needed a blueprint for establishing one’s own identity, or for being unapologetically true to one’s own principles in the face of great resistance, they need only study the life that Muhammad Ali led. That’s what I did. I discovered boxing at the time in my life when I felt most isolated – during my senior year of high school and freshman year of college. Naturally, I discovered Ali’s life and trials at the same time.

I first laced up a pair of gloves on Saturday, January 28^th, 2012, at 1:00 PM. A crystallizing moment – I knew I was right where I was supposed to be. I’d never felt that before, and the self-assuredness that came with it was addictive. Muhammad Ali had turned seventy just eleven days prior, so many networks were still running his biopic – the one starring Will Smith – on repeat. That night, while I was still sore from working an entirely new set of muscles, I caught one of the screenings. It told the story of Ali, beginning when he won the heavyweight crown as the heavy underdog from the fearsome Sonny Liston in 1964, traversing the turbulent late 1960’s through the lens of Ali’s refusal to step forward in the draft, and ending with his epic knockout victory of George Foreman to regain his crown in 1974. Imagining the ending fight scene, overlaid with strains of “Tomorrow” by Salif Keita, still sends chills up and down my spine.

 

October 30th, 1974. Muhammad Ali shocks the world by knocking out George Foreman.

 

I immediately started watching his old fights, as I slowly progressed in the sport myself. Quite a few fighters have had movies made about them, whether they were major productions or not. However, Muhammad Ali is the only one out of that group who made the on-screen representation of his life look colorless and boring in comparison to the real thing. Will Smith did as good of a job as anyone could in portraying the man, but there’s only one Ali. Watching his fights against Frazier, Foreman, Liston, Norton, Patterson, Lyle, Cooper, Chuvalo, and many others, was breathtaking. He possessed speed like no other heavyweight, before or since. When he eventually slowed down to the point where he was getting hit, Ali also showed that he had a near-superhuman ability to take punishment. Yet, with all that skill, he was so much more than a mere athlete. George Foreman said it best, when speaking about his fight with the self-proclaimed Greatest of all Time, “Boxing was just something he did.”

That first year in boxing, I read everything about Muhammad Ali that I could find. It didn’t matter what it was – old Ring Magazine pieces, articles by George Plimpton, or the novels by Norman Mailer and Mark Kram – I devoured the pages by the hundreds. When I looked at Ali, I saw someone I could aspire to be like. Of course, very few fighters in the history of combat sports have ever come close to his level of success or ability, but the more I read, the more I realized for myself that there was so much more to him.

When I look back on who I was then, I realize that I needed that influence. The summer of 2012 was a crossroads in many ways for me. I was headed off to college in the fall and had absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had no concept of the fact that everyone else at that age feels similarly.

My first girlfriend, who I’d traded virginities with on prom night (yes, I know how cliched that is,) dumped me halfway through the summer. In retrospect, I think we were heading towards an ending anyway. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back was my non-attendance at a party that we were supposed to go to together. Late one afternoon in early July, I was scheduled to spar. I was a total novice and all of 163 pounds…and the only other fighter who showed up that day was a heavyweight. My trainer threw me in with no instruction on how to deal with a larger fighter and, as a result, I took the worst beating I’d taken to date. He all but threw me around the ring and ended it with four straight hooks to the head. Left-right-left-right. Two to each temple, and I finally took a knee. Truth be told, I think I could’ve taken more, but I knew I had to drive myself home afterward. It wasn’t a short trip, and I was seeing spots. I fought back the tears in front of my then-trainer, gritting my teeth all the while. When I got to my car, finally got a look at myself in the mirror. My head was pounding, and I couldn’t keep my vision in focus long enough to get a decent look at my face. Didn’t matter. I could feel the bruises and scrapes. I broke down on the drive home, and knew I couldn’t go to the party that night. I barely wanted to be around myself in that moment, much less a bunch of people I didn’t know. Physically, I could suck it up, but psychologically, I was a total mess.

I called my then-girlfriend on the way and told her that I wouldn’t make it. I tried to explain myself, but admittedly, didn’t do the best job of articulating where I was coming from. The next day, I was planning on calling her to promise to make things up to her when I got the “we need to talk” text. I really did love her, and I tried to tell her. I knew from early in the relationship, but could never say so, not even when I was faced with the end. I’d seen too much of the bad side of love in my parents’ marriage, and the words stuck in my throat when I tried to say them. To say that I choked on them is not hyperbole.

As minor of a relationship as it was in the scope of my life, that hurt worse than anything I’d previously experienced, and that pain lasted entirely through my first semester of college.

Soon after, I began to live with my father for a time. More out of necessity than anything. My mom was experiencing some financial difficulties, and we both knew that the only way I’d make it to my first year of college was with his help. He owed nearly $12,000 in back child support payments, and even with a job that paid six figures, getting him to pay what he owed weekly was like pulling teeth. Even when our relationship was at its best, as it was for those six weeks, we had almost weekly screaming matches. If it wasn’t that, then it would take a subtler form. Maybe a snide comment about being bruised after another sparring session, or about how I needed to make more friends. I hid from it by training obsessively. I was unemployed but still woke up before 6:00 AM to run, then spent two-plus hours a day at the gym.

That ordeal made me realize how lacking I was in self-confidence. The happiness I thought I was feeling was coming entirely from being in a relationship. I had no ability to self-validate or be content with myself. I didn’t know who I was, aside from the fact that boxing felt right for me. So, I looked at Ali’s life more closely. The brash confidence, living by one’s own principles, and discipline in all things. He was the only positive male role model I had at the time, and I had never even come remotely close to meeting the man. I feigned the confidence, occasionally going so far as to mimic his speech patterns. Laughable, I know. But, this was the pattern I followed for roughly two years until I was legitimately confident in myself. That finally happened the day I changed my name.

I had wanted to change my surname from Ostroski to Donnelly for years. From my father’s name, to my mother’s maiden name. I even had entire notebook pages filled with my revised signature. One day, after a year and a half of not having any contact with my father, I filed the paperwork with the town probate court. I didn’t care how my father felt. Muhammad Ali didn’t care how anyone felt when he changed his name from Cassius Clay, to Cassius X, to its final form. He just did it. It was his life, and he took it in his own hands.

 

Confidence: I faked it ’til I made it.

 

On August 3^rd, 2014, I became, legally, Sean Patrick Donnelly. Even though he loved me in his own way, I won’t pass on my father’s legacy, or name, to my children. This is my life, and I choose to live it as authentically as I possibly can. I haven’t looked back since that day. Not even when my father took his own life three days later. As painful as that was, I knew that allowing the weight of it to slow me down wouldn’t do anyone any good. Even if his meandering suicide letter implied that my non-contact and name change were to blame.

Muhammad Ali was far from perfect. The cruelty he showed to Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell in the ring after they refused to call him by his chosen name used to confuse and startle me a bit. However, changing my own name gave me a little perspective on that. For better or worse, I’ve had similar incidents; from an acquaintance who said, “I’ll just keep calling you ‘Ostroski.’ It’s easier to remember,” to a sparring partner who spoke poorly about my father’s suicide behind my back, I’ve had to protect the name I now carry. I calmly informed the former that his using my old name again would merit a physical response. The latter of the two paid for his words with a terrible beating in our next sparring session. There were witnesses present at both occasions so, thankfully, I haven’t been required to so since. It’s a principle that I very much live by. I have one name, and I’ll do anything required to protect it.

The day after Ali passed, there was a boxing card on HBO. All present observed a moment of silence, and a ceremonial ten-count to commemorate the life of boxing’s greatest ambassador. During his pugilistic career, Ali was involved in a record-setting six Fights of the Year (as awarded by Ring Magazine.) It was only fitting that the main event of the boxing card immediately following his death should live up to that standard. Orlando Salido vs Francisco Vargas may have ended in a draw, but I can guarantee that precious few of the spectators present that night in Carson, California, remember that. Much like Ali had done throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, the fight left viewers feeling privileged to have bared witness.

He was a transcendent figure. I’m white, and was born thirteen years after his last professional bout, so the fact that I’ve been so inspired and molded by his life’s journey is simply remarkable. His influence has spanned across six continents and as many decades, to all demographics. At the end of the June 4^th, 2016 HBO fight broadcast, analyst Max Kellerman summed Ali up perfectly. “I’ve spent way too much of my life preoccupied with Muhammad Ali: watching him, listening to him, reading about him. I’ve seen him in crowds, and everyone looks at him like, ‘Muhammad, it’s me’.”

So many of us felt a personal connection to him. Out of all the other principles and lessons I took away from looking at his life, there is one story that stands out to me.

Ali was walking through Miami, where he trained and lived, with a friend. When they encountered a homeless man, Ali gave him some ridiculously large donation. The friend said something to the effect of, “You know he’s just gonna blow that on booze, right?”

Ali responded (I’m paraphrasing,) “That doesn’t concern me. If he wastes what I gave him, he’s the one who has to answer to himself and to god for it. At least I know that I tried to help him.”

That, more than any other account of his life, is the one that I’ve most tried to live by.

Happy birthday, champ. And thank you.

~Sean Donnelly

 

There was only one Muhammad Ali.

 

Dear Boxing,

You’ve given me far more than I ever could have imagined. When I first stepped into a gym on that winter day in early 2012, I had no idea what I was really getting into. I had always wanted to try, but never got around to it. My family never had the spare money. Having the power, heat, or water shut off were regular occurrences, and I can remember many times when there wasn’t enough food around for the next meal. You weren’t a priority, and for a long time, I totally forgot about my desire to step into the ring.

All of that lit a fire in me, though. I was already withdrawn, and a bit of an oddball, which invited criticism from many of my peers. It did little to help my already-quick temper. I struggled in my interactions with others, aside from a couple of friends that I was lucky to have. For the most part, I emulated what I saw at home, which was to respond to most situations with anger. I really didn’t know any better. I wanted so desperately to learn to fight. I was aggressive and hyper-competitive in everything I did, so it seemed fitting.

My parents always had me enrolled in baseball – just the town rec league. I grew to love it, but never felt like I was totally fulfilled by it. I became good enough in my teens to make it onto a few all-star teams, but my head was almost always elsewhere. One of the enduring pleasant memories of my early childhood was listening to my dad talk about the golden age of heavyweight boxers in the 1960’s and 1970’s. As difficult as it was for us to get along, we could always talk about boxing. The way he described the epic rivalries between Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, and Kenny Norton was so captivating. Those men seemed like gods to me, and all I wanted was to follow in what they had accomplished. Or, at the very least, take part in the sport.

But, you were put on the back burner again when my parents split up. I forgot about my desire to fight for a time, even though the fire inside me remained. From ages thirteen to sixteen, I lapsed into depression, which I’ve been dealing with ever since. My mom and dad appeared so intent on hurting each other throughout their lengthy divorce settlement and child support disputes, that I began to feel even more alienated than I already was.

I smoked and drank too much in high school. Mostly to minimize the emotional strain on myself. I had no way to channel all the dark shit that was floating around in my head on even my best days. During that time, the couple fights I got into were – scary. If nothing else, I learned that I genuinely enjoyed dealing out physical punishment. That used to frighten me.

My life changed one day in the middle of my senior year of high school. It happened in British Lit. We were finishing up a unit on the ‘Carpe Diem Poets,’ which included an in-class viewing of Dead Poets’ Society. At the end of the film, Mr. St. George gave us all an assignment; “Go out and seize the day by doing something that you’ve always wanted to do, but never had the time or courage to.”

Everyone in class started talking to each other about what he (it was an all boys’ high school) would do to complete the assignment. I heard everything from getting an ear pieced, to taking a day-trip to New York. For some reason, you resurfaced in my head. The more I thought about you, the more I became totally hooked on the idea that I would find a trainer and at least try boxing. I just didn’t want there to be any regret when I look back on my life in twenty or thirty years. I had to do this for my own peace of mind.

So, I found a local gym, and booked a one-hour session with a trainer there. It was just going to be a standard mitt workout with some teaching of basic fundamentals, but it was more than I had done in a formal setting before. As soon as I had my wraps and gloves on, I knew it felt right. The trainer put on his body shield and focus mitts, and put me through my paces. I was sweating buckets within a few minutes, but it was already the most rewarding thing I had done. After showing me where to place my feet when punching, the trainer called out the first combination: one-two, left hook to the body, with a cross upstairs to finish. Immediately, he backed up and said, “Jesus, you hit hard.” All I could do was smile and shrug.

That, and my first sparring session a week later, had me totally hooked. Mike Tyson said it best; “It was love at first fight.”

I have no idea where I’d be without you. I wouldn’t have Meiya, Coach Rocky, or so many of my friends; Hector, Alfred, Allen, Sacha, Cara, Sam, Chris, Calvin, Anthony, Mike, and too many more to name. I wouldn’t have progressed enough in school to know that my other true calling is to be a writer. I don’t know how I would have gotten past my father’s suicide without you. Ultimately, I’m the one that had to persevere through some very public and devastating losses, but still. Saying that you’ve given me everything is not an overstatement.

Relief. If you’ve never fought, it’s tough to capture the feeling of getting through a hard, ten-round sparring session.

I love everything about you – the early mornings, running in sub-zero temperatures, hitting the heavy bag until I can’t lift my arms, and the headaches after a hard sparring session. Even the losses…I’ve learned far more from my losses in the ring than I have from my successes anywhere else.

You made it possible for me to believe in myself, even when I’ve had to go home and cry in frustration after taking a tough loss or a beating in sparring.

You’ve allowed me to dream. For most of my childhood, I was only focused on survival. I couldn’t consider anything that wasn’t directly in front of me.

You’ve broken my heart before, and I know you will again, but I’ll always come back to you. I know I have what it takes to be a champion. However, even without the physical and mental gifts that I’m so lucky to have, I don’t think I could possibly give you up.

I am a fighter.

I always have been, and I always will be.

~Sean Donnelly

Growing pains. It’s tough to learn in this sport if you haven’t been beaten up at least a few times.

Fairway

Fairway

November 21, 2016

It’s 1:00 AM, and I just can’t seem to get comfortable in bed. I have a fight later today, and will be weighing in in a little more than five hours, but that’s not what is keeping me awake. Well, not really. I’m a little nervous, and I have a terrible case of cotton mouth from water deprivation. Can’t put any more weight on… But I’m used to all of that. It’s par for the course before a fight.

Meiya is sleeping peacefully next to me. Lucky.

I look out the window and listen to the ambient noise that’s coming through from the traffic below. Normally, I’d be irritated to hear anything at this hour in the morning, but now I draw a little comfort from knowing that others are awake as well. I feel out of place here. I’m caught up imagining the crowd at my fight this coming evening. If the member portraits in the hallway outside our room, and in the athletic facilities below are any indication, they won’t be my kind of people. From dignitaries, to former Olympians, to ex-presidents. Even a young Donald Trump…I think his hair was real then. Who can be sure? All of that, and I still wanted to be here. The Arthur Mercante Collegiate Boxing Invitational at the New York Athletic Club. I earned the right to be here; I’m the best fighter on my team by far. If only I could just put it all together in the ring, where it counts. Even if the idea of a bunch of trust fund kids and scumbags from Wall Street critiquing my performance tomorrow is making my skin crawl.

My coach’s room is just down the hall. If I text him about this, we could probably talk. He hasn’t slept much since Vietnam, so I’m almost certain he’s awake as well. I have to smile, since lately, my insomnia is starting to rival his.

But I don’t have PTSD. Not me. Right? Nah. I don’t need to see anybody. What’s a therapist going to tell me about myself that I don’t already know?

I could talk to coach now. I know he’d be happy to listen, but at this hour, I think it would be more counterproductive. I need to sleep.

I wish it were easier for me to talk to people about this stuff. To ask for help when I need it. Funny how my surrogate father is far more willing to listen than my biological father was. I still feel as if I’m imposing on him when I do open up though.

Now, hunger pains accompany my growing thirst. Five more fucking hours. Why am I even doing this?

February 2008

I was at the old house, in my childhood room in Cheshire, Connecticut. As I sat on the edge of the bed, I found myself holding back tears. I didn’t want to be there. Any happiness I had felt – or thought I felt – in this house was long since gone. Every single fond recollection of the time when my parents were together was tainted with the tension I always felt around my father. I once overheard a family friend call him a “carrier.” Carrier of stress, unease, discomfort, what have you. I could feel it even then, a good thirty feet away, separated by multiple walls. He was in his home office, furiously toiling in search of a job, which would ultimately prove futile.

Under the conditions of my parents’ separation and impending divorce, I was obligated to spend every other weekend with my father, besides seeing him once a week for dinner. I fought my mom every step of the way on that. Those weekends were miserable, and this one was living up to my expectations.

Sitting on my bed, I couldn’t tell if the tears were from anger or profound sadness. Maybe just teenage angst. I was thirteen, after all. What a wonderful age.

It was a gloomy, cold Sunday. I guess I was just running out the clock. Waiting until I could go back to the apartment my mom and I shared for a few hours of relief. Even that would be fleeting; the next day, I’d start another painfully awkward week of middle school.

I wanted to lie down. Maybe stare up at the ceiling for a few hours. Nothing was all I felt like doing. I didn’t have any vitality for anything else. But, my stomach started to growl. I realized that it was well past noon, and I hadn’t eaten yet. I wanted to ask if we had any food in the house, but I’d already been screamed at twice that weekend. Once, for talking to my mother on the phone, and once for…search me. Being in the way, maybe?

While making as little noise as I could, I snuck downstairs to the kitchen and checked the pantry. Nothing. Some flour and sugar. A few old extract bottles whose contents had solidified around the caps, making them impossible to open. In the fridge, it was more of the same. Quarter-filled condiment bottles about to expire and some grated parmesan on the door, with nothing on the shelves. As I contemplated going to the basement to look for something canned on my dad’s storage shelves, I noticed how cold it was. He could barely afford food anymore, so the fact that the heat and power were even still working was a miracle.

I didn’t have much luck in the basement either. There were only a few cans on the shelves – mostly expired green beans and corn. And one lonely, expired can of chili. It had only gone bad a couple of months earlier, though.

I could call my mom and ask her to bring something. I knew she would, but at the expense of my peace of mind for the rest of the day, or longer. My dad would have a coronary if he caught me on the phone again or knew why I was calling her. So I could either go hungry, or risk catching something from whatever might be festering inside that can. My stomach growled again, and I let out an involuntary sigh. I hadn’t eaten in almost a day.

“Fuck me, right?”

November 21, 2016

And now, I’m hungry by choice. What kind of bullshit is this?

Whatever. He wasn’t all bad. Honestly, I felt a little sorry for him, since I could see through it all. Whoever said that my father was a “carrier” was right. Above all else, he was a carrier of insecurity. His constant attempts to compensate for everything that he wasn’t made those around him anxious. Always living above his means at the cost of financial stability. Always having to be the funny one: the life of the party. It was painfully obvious to me that that wasn’t him. I could recognize that he was more of an introvert, like me. Not that he would ever admit that.

I wonder what he’d think of me if he could see me now. Of how far I’ve come as a man since we last spoke. Of how far I’ve progressed in boxing. What would he think of Meiya? He wasn’t all bad. I’d want them to meet. I think.

The more I think about that, the more desperately I hope for some kind of afterlife. And the more I’m convinced that it’s just some fairytale we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night.

I still have his ashes. They’re in a container somewhere in my mom’s apartment. His last will and testament stated that he wanted them spread somewhere on Cape Cod. My parents and I used to vacation there when I was a kid. One to two weeks every summer for six years. He paid for it with money he didn’t have, which he and my mom fought about constantly. He just had to rent out a beachfront cottage, go to high-end restaurants, and splurge on everything.

I still don’t understand it. He always spoke so nostalgically about our vacations in Dennis Port that I’ve begun to think that he lived in his own reality. Did he just block out the fact that we would routinely have our power or water cut off? That we once went without a landline for almost a year? Or that his friend had to drive to our house while we were away and rip foreclosure notices off the front door? It really is amazing what I thought was normal back then.

His thought processes still confuse me. Did he think he’d earned those vacations? His constant heightened stress levels may have led him to think so, even if his bank account balance didn’t quite agree. Am I still grieving, or just struggling to understand? I think, in all honesty, I mourned his loss bit by bit in the years leading up to our estrangement and, ultimately, his death. As it became apparent that I’d never have a serviceable relationship with him, I think I started to distance myself emotionally.

It was what I had to do. All I could do.

I can’t help but imagine what I’ll feel as I scatter his ashes on the Cape. Out of the fourteen years that he and my mother were married, I think his only escapes from reality were those vacations. Two weeks per summer for six years. Twelve weeks in fourteen years. He always wanted us desperately to be that rich, globetrotting family. He’d talk about vacationing in Europe as if it were totally feasible. Not some pie in the sky fantasy. Even as a young kid, I could see it for what it was. I didn’t particularly want that life for myself, but it made him happy to think about. And if he was happy, it meant that he wasn’t on my ass about something. Like my getting a B+ on a test, or “disrespecting” him in some trivial way.

Oh well. Everyone has issues, I guess.

Of course, that final memorial act could quickly go wrong. All it would take is a slight change in wind direction at precisely the wrong moment…gross. Stop it.

A salvo of car horns reaches my window from seventh avenue below.

For some odd reason, the movie Due Date comes to mind. A typical odd-couple type comedy where an eccentric aspiring actor, played by Zach Galifianakis is forced to drive cross country with a hi-strung businessman, played by Robert Downey Jr. Galifianakis’ character just so happened to be carrying his father’s ashes in, of all things, a coffee can. He had planned to spread the remains near the Hollywood sign before making his attempt at silver screen stardom. However, one macabre mishap during their trip led to the father’s ashes being mistaken for coffee grounds.

After the ensuing disgust, accompanied by dry heaving and gagging, Galifianakis quips, “In life, he enjoyed coffee. And in death, he was enjoyed as coffee.”

I let out a snicker as I bring a hand up to my cheek. I can only imagine. What if that happened to me? It certainly wouldn’t make for as poetic an ending for him. I imagine he’d be at least a little pissed off if he could see it happening. After all, he preferred hazelnut flavored beans to plain.

That does it. I snort a little as I rush to stifle a laugh. I look over at Meiya to make sure I haven’t woken her. I’m shaking from holding it in and, all the while, I know I shouldn’t be finding this remotely as funny as I am.

After a couple of minutes, I’m able to regain some composure. I take a few deep breaths and look out the window again.

He wasn’t all bad.

—

2:00 AM

We used to go golfing together. It was one of the few things that always seemed to bring us together no matter what else was going wrong in our lives. It didn’t matter how bad the court battles between my parents got, or what terrible argument we had gotten into over the phone that week. We could always go out onto the golf course and just talk.

“I always play better when I have you out here with me,” he’d say. Often after we’d both ripped drives up the center of the fairway. We needed some distraction like that to connect. Neither of us was ever much good at expressing ourselves otherwise. At least to each other.

The more I think about that, the more I find room to forgive him. He really was trying. But I think, sometimes, his inability to communicate was from some fear of screwing me up like his father did to him.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that parenting, in a way, can be thought of as damage control.

I’m not forgetting all the difficult times. However, when I remember my father, I’d like those late afternoons on the golf course to stand out more than everything else. Highlighting the more pleasant memories doesn’t have to mean forgetting the negative. That will always be there, but I don’t think that dwelling on it will help me either.

2:30 AM

I sink under the covers, and lean over towards Meiya. After kissing her on the forehead, I roll over and try to get some much-needed sleep. I have a fight today.

End

~Sean Donnelly