He was black by American racial terminology but in actuality he was more the color of untanned leather informed by a lifetime’s worth of calluses, hard knocks, and hollering. The blood had risen to his face so often that his mug had darkened into a kind of permanent rage-color.

I was still breathing hard. After all, I’m past fifty.

“Why you wanna put yourself down like that, LT?” the veteran trainer said. “You coulda been sumpin’.”

He wouldn’t have been talking to me if any of his young prospects were in the gym. Gordo hovered over his young boxers like a mama crocodile over her brood.

I slumped down on the floor, letting my wet T-shirt slap against the wall.

“That’s just not me, G. I never could take any kinda order or regimen.”

“You know how to hit that bag three times a week.”

“Is that enough?”

The sour-faced little guy frowned and shook his head, as much in disgust as in answer to my question. He turned away and limped toward his office on the other side of the big, low-ceilinged room.

After five minutes or so I made it back to my feet. I pawed the bag three or four times before my knees and hips got into it. After a minute had passed I was in a kind of frenzy. Before, I had just been angry, now I was desperate.

I think I went to Gordo’s just so that he could kick me in the ass. The foundation of our friendship was the simple fact that he never held back. I was a failure because I wasn’t a boxer—at least in his eyes. He never cared if his boys lost, only if they didn’t try.

I pounded that bag with everything I had. The sweat was streaming down my face and back and thighs.