Out Of My Comfort Zone: Boxing Day, by Erika Robuck

By Erika Robuck

I live in a man’s world. Rather, I live in a world teeming with little boys.

I have three of my own. I have two nephews who are with my boys at least every other day of the week. My oldest son plays on a hockey team with the rowdiest bunch of boys you’ve ever met, and they all have little brothers.

Every one of my relatives who is currently expecting a baby or has just had a child is gestating or has birthed a boy baby.

I have a brother.

My last year of teaching I had seventeen boys and five girls.

Because of all of this, I’d like to think that I understand men, to a certain degree. I often find myself rolling my eyes or wrinkling my nose at the antics of the large and small men in my life, but their behaviors and habits don’t often surprise me.

I think that’s why I felt comfortable tackling Ernest Hemingway in my new novel during his Key West years. I’m comfortable around guys—and he’s the quintessential “guy’s guy.” Also, I grew up a mile from the water my entire life, so like Hemingway I connect with fishing and hanging out around harbor docks. I’m also a writer, so I can understand that mania on a deep level.

But in spite of all of this, I found myself squirming in my chair when I kept running across photos and anecdotes in my research of Ernest Hemingway boxing. He staged boxing matches in Key West, fought islanders on Bimini in the Bahamas, and sparred with literary greats. He did so much boxing, if fact, that I could no longer ignore it, no matter how unpleasant I found it.

There are many things I tolerate with my pack of little boys, but wrestling and fighting are not included. The inevitability of injury from that level of physical contact stresses me out, so I pry them off of each other as often as possible. I found myself avoiding the subject of fighting in my novel too, but the strides I had to take around it were getting wider and wider, and finally, I could no longer avoid it. I had no choice but to face the boxing.

I watched Youtube clips, did a little kickboxing, and looked at countless pictures of Hemingway with his fists flying. I hoped that would get me by enough to fudge my way through a couple of scenes, but then one of my main characters started insisting that he was a boxer. And the first scene of the novel suddenly demanded to start at one of Hemingway’s boxing matches on the poor side of Key West. I knew then that Youtube and exercise videos wouldn’t cut it any more. I had to go to a boxing match.

My husband was excited by the idea, and suggested we find a match and make it a date night. My idea of a great date night includes sushi, wine, and dancing, so the idea of watching oiled up, smelly, sweating people drawing blood from one another on purpose inspired quite a bit of eye rolling and nose wrinkling from me. But I have visited worse places for my fiction (including a morgue) so I tried to open my mind and embrace the new experience.

That night in February, the smell of exertion and the hum of adrenaline greeted us as we stepped in to the arena from the bitter cold. We had arrived a little late, so the light weight fights had ended, and the program had progressed to the middle weights. The crowd was energized and wolfish, howling at the boxers, slamming their fists, and shoving popcorn in their mouths. I was hot and uncomfortable in the scratchy wool of my jacket, and frustrated that I had gotten a babysitter so I could watch people beat each other up, when I could have seen that for free at home. In order to keep any sweat or blood from flinging on us, I led my husband to the nosebleed seats, as high up and far away from the ring as possible, where I took off my coat and pulled out my pocket notebook and pen.

The fight soon ended, and as the boxers left the ring to make way for the next weight class, the music began. Two fit young men climbed into the ring, tap-dancing and rolling their shoulders and heads to the cheers and jeers around them. When the music ended, the voice of the announcer filled the arena with his statistics and theatrics, and I had to admit that I got a small thrill from the energy around me. That thrill soon turned to an anxious rumbling in my stomach when I fully realized that these two fine physical specimens were about to start pummeling each other. The crowd hushed, the bell rang, and the dance began.

I say the dance, because the slow, circular movement of the men was almost hypnotic. I could feel the anger in one of the boxers clash against the calm in the other. I could see the sharp, crinkled eyes of the one challenging the large, serene eyes of the other, and I suddenly felt connected to the calm boxer. I mentally aligned with him and found my voice lifting with the others in the crowd when he made a good move, avoided a hit, or made contact with the other boxer. While I flinched at the sight of blood or the sound of a direct hit, I couldn’t take my eyes off the fight. When my boxer won, I was on my feet with the rest of the crowd, thrilled by the victory.

Gradually, throughout the next two fights, I no longer felt the need to turn my eyes away or flinch. I wanted my favorites to win, and I cheered them on without reservation. When I realized the seats were too far away for me to get the true flavor of the physical movements of the athletes, I moved down to the floor, ring-side. I watched the final fight of the night between the heavy weights from ten feet away, and I was thrilled by the performance.

When I returned to my seat, my husband waited for me with an amused smile on his face. As it turned out, I had enjoyed getting a babysitter to watch people punch each other, and not only that, I had pages of material and impressions for my novel. My character felt fully realized in my mind, and I had a new appreciation for one of the oldest sports in the world.

The places writing takes us are sometimes beyond the borders of our comfort, but it is in these places—the boxing rings and hospital morgues—that we sometimes connect to the subconscious pull that led us there from the start. The more I write, the more I come to understand my own feelings and motivations, and sometimes it takes a boxing match to bring that to life for myself and for the reader.

ERIKA ROBUCK was born and raised in Annapolis, Maryland. Inspired by the cobblestones, old churches, Georgian homes, and mingling of past and present from the Eastern Shore, to the Annapolis City Dock, to the Baltimore Harbor, her passion for history is well nourished. Her first novel, RECEIVE ME FALLING, is a best books awards finalist in historical fiction from USA Book News. Her second novel, HEMINGWAY’S GIRL, has been acquired by NAL/Penguin and is scheduled for publication on September 4, 2012. Her third novel, CALL ME ZELDA, will follow. Erika is a contributor to popular fiction blog, Writer Unboxed, and maintains her own blog, Muse. She is a member of the Maryland Writer’s Association, The Hemingway Society, and The Historical Novel Society. She spends her time on the East Coast with her husband and three sons.