This collection of scenes, experiences and vignettes from the life of a willingly impoverished writer, numbers 83 attempts to preserve the lives of ordinary people and the varied landscapes upon which their journey plays out in words, including:
When Your Job Sucks, the prime steakhouses of the world and hipster health-food eateries are closed to you. Therefore, within this litany of job descriptions, that are hopefully worse than yours, the reader will find cheap-eating leads in the form of The Poor Tour and The Ghetto Gourmet, the author’s own answer to eating on less a week than most spend on their Saturday night dinner tip.
With footnotes, additional Caucasian-American slave poetry and biographical appendices by James LaFond, author of Stillbirth of A Nation and America in Chains.
In my late 20s there was a period of a few years, when I
worked 45-hours per week, kept a regular midnight to eight schedule and walked
home at a strolling pace, thinking of what I had read the previous day, what I
would write. During this period of the late 80s there was some black crime
infiltrating the area, but it had not become virulent and was confined to
night.
I worked in the 5900 block of Belair Road, U.S. Route #1,
which threads the east coast from Key West to Maine, back down to the 4700
block, an easy 2 mile walk. I lived with my wife and oldest son just below the
ridge line that overlooks the Herring Run Valley, a quarter mile above Holy
Redeemer cemetery, where my younger brother Gerard is buried. At this time,
the spruce seedling that Vance had planted when he was seven, was grown as tall
as him, a smallish 12-year-old boy.
My wife and I had grown further apart with every year and my
return to boxing had ended with injury, so I became lost in books, would only
watch documentaries on TV, and spent much time in the basement with my books
and boxing gear. She knew I was in no hurry coming home and that hurt, I
supposed.
I used to make a right turn off of Belair onto Woodlea,
which was a curving street that served as a shortcut to the portion of Southern
Avenue that met Luerssen, the street I was unsuccessfully buying a house on. I
had stopped walking up Southern. Bear, the savage black terrier I had given to
Rich the Prison Guard, had not forgotten me and would bark painfully for me to
come visit. When I’d get to the fence, Bear, all 15 pounds of him, would
savagely attack the pitbull and German shepherd he shared the fenced yard with, so
that I would pet only him as they gave back and cowered, and I scratched his head
and he snarled at me as if to say, “You gave up on me, you two-legged prick!”
When he would howl for me at the fence as I walked by, it
got to be too much, so I avoided it.
Rich told me once, when I came to visit, “I feed this
motherfucker steak, and when you show up I’m chopped liver!”
Woodlea was also a side street, no speeding jerks cutting 30
seconds off of their commute, like on Southern, which was a secondary street.
Once, as I turned left on the steep side street that crested
the ridge just above my house, the old Italian couple who kept a rose
garden on the side of their house befriended me, having seen me pass many
times. They were in their seventies. Asking if I was married, the old man gave
me a pair of roses for my wife and said, “If you ever get in trouble with her
you can stop by and pick her a rose.”
I often stopped and looked at that rose bed, but never did
take him up on the offer.
Further down the way, just above the old Hacienda Mexican
restaurant, which was, at this point a bake-off house for the Woodlea Bakery,
lived two old men. One always had a ladder leaning against his house, which
was a wreck, as was he, looking like some ancient peasant.
Next door lived a fellow who maintained an ornamental
garden, his house pristine, he dressed in slacks, dress shoes, shirt and tie,
even when watering flowers out front.
He had a light sweep of short hair which might have been
blonde before it grayed.
He was a gentle gentleman who often stopped, waved and
said, “Good morning.”
We spoke casually as I walked by on many occasions, usually
about the weather.
He was a nice, lonely man.
One day, a hot summer morning, as I trudged by in my frozen
food attire, carrying an extra shirt, he invited me inside for an iced tea, up
two flights of white, concrete stairs, into…a lady’s palace.
The living room was the sitting room of a delicate woman,
the kind of room my Grandmother LaFond would have arranged had she the space. There
were many brass-framed photos of a young man and a beautiful woman of the
delicate kind.
There were photos—all framed in brass, of this woman as a girl,
as a baby and as a dancer. The type of dancing she did reminded me of ballet
but in a dress. I do not recall what he told me about her art. He was an expert
in everything she had done. He showed no interest in the drab job that had paid for this house and put his son through college. He spoke only of his dear wife,
the dancer and of his son, who had made good and moved off to start a family.
Here this man stood, alone, in his suit, having put on his
jacket to invite me in, next to a short man in worn and dirty work clothes, giving
a tour of the room that was the museum dedicated to his wife.
There was one particular display, a wedge-shaped
piece of elegantly tooled furniture with glass shelves that fit into the corner
of the room. Pictures of his wife winning awards for her dancing were there.
But the thing he treasured most was her brass slippers, made from a mold cast
of her baby shoes. These hung before a silver plaque shaped like a leaf.
He handed me the pair of shiny brass slippers to hold on
their watch-chain cord. Noticing that I was reluctant, he said not to worry
about smudging them, that he polished them every day when he talked to her. I
cannot recall any of his exact words as I had so few conversations with people
at this solitary stage of my life that I was unpracticed in memory. Unless it
was a work or violence situation I could not recall a person’s words.
While taking the slippers back and hanging them in their
place, the man, who never told me his name, as if that were unimportant, shed
silent tears and spoke of waiting too many years to be with her again, of how
he had begun to doubt God for taking her and prayed every day to be with her
again in heaven.
He was the gentlest, most wounded man I have ever met. His
skin was so soft and thin, when I shook his hand I wondered if he was well.
I saw him in his yard a few more times, stood and talked of
plants and things I knew or cared nothing about, like the weather.
Later that year, my life became hectic, work hours long, my
toil-stained mind work-absorbed with the nuances of my enslavement.
I never walked up Woodlea again, once the streets got rougher
and I began leading people that followed me up Southern, where there were more hard
objects scattered in the gutter to fight back with.
The last image I hold of him in my mind is of him standing
bent and tall in a cream-colored suit, watering plants besides the stairs as he
waved with a slight smile at my pacing and I aped him.
Ever since, any time I see a brass thing or notice my skin
thinning with age, I think of him crying, holding that pair of tiny brass
slippers in Her living room.
Let's take a break from talking about Sickness of the Heart and take a look at Modern Agonistics. This book is a highly readable account of your eponymous collaboration with Chuck Goetz, encompassing every kind of brutal combat you could think of, and most astonishingly, involving other characters who willingly participate in this practice.
My first question has nothing to do with all that. How do you keep records? As you know, I am a big fan of spreadsheets, but I have learned that you are unfamiliar with this marvelous technology. Yet you recount here information from thousands of encounters. How do you do it?
JL: We used small spiral memo pads and recorded our bouts, the first few years we did everything on a 5-point system. You start with five points and call yourself out when you take five points. A blunt hit was 1, a slash or non vital stab 2, and a vital slash or stab 3. So if you slash me once and I stab you twice, you call yourself out, scoring a 0 on defense and a 2 on offense, where I record a 3 on defense and a 5 on offense. We were trying to workout what worked, what happened when two guys just went at it with weapons. After a while, when more people were involved, we only used this for testing and I retired from keeping track of anyone’s record but my own, really as an experiment. I wanted to hit 1,000 stick-fights so that the math would be self-evident and match this up with my injuries, in order to determine how safe it was.
LL: James, the motto of Modern Agonistics is "As real as you want it." It seems like a core value of this endeavor is genuine, full contact, competitive combat. How do you find people to do this with? When you are training a fighter how soon can you tell if he will be willing to go the distance in this way?
JL: Chuck came up with that motto and he was my first recruit. I asked athletes, martial artists and assorted weirdos if they would like to try it. Roughly 90% of the martial artists recoiled in horror, perhaps 70% of the athletes did the same, and about half of the strange eggs, said, “Why not?” I found hockey and lacrosse players most amicable to fighting with weapons.
LL: One aspect I enjoyed, particularly through Evolutions 1.3 - 1.5 and beyond, is that you experienced a form of arms race, almost as though you worked your way through the development of weapons and armor through history, including crafting weapons and armor yourselves, as you and your training partners advanced and gained experience and skill. How much of this was a conscious decision to expand your armory, versus a natural progression?
JL: We wanted to try different weapons. It was gross act of morbid curiosity in many cases. The evolutionary aspect was just that, not planned. At first we added armor, then we took it away as we got better and narrowed the weapon set. If you are only dealing with one type of weapon you can minimize your armor, unless it is a pole axe or some other crushing extension weapon. We eventually settled for what most primitive warriors have settled with, using a round flexible stick to train, spar and compete with, as this generalizes to many other skills. We did not start out looking at it from an escrima point of view, but did end up using an escrima weapon set, stick and knife with limited machete.
LL: How did you come up with the idea to chain the opponent's weapons together? Has this ever been tried by anyone else?
JL: We didn’t chain the weapons together but held the chain between us, which gives the option to quit, by dropping it and keeps the encounter tense for spectators and does not allow resting. This was Hollywood inspired, I am afraid to say. I don’t have any historical basis for this. Gladiators were forced into close contact by a lanista armed with a prodding weapon. The chain was a way to replicate that forced proximity without getting extra people involved. We had enough trouble getting fighters, let alone officials. Besides, if there are officials for a new sport it can come under fire from the state athletic commission. Realizing this, we decided that taking responsibility for your safety and your opponent’s safety—by breaking off when the other guy is in trouble—was realistic practice for defending oneself on the street. This jived with the fact that more and more of our participants saw this as a type of reality based survival practice.
LL: This book has a lot of informative pictures, particularly in a yellow-walled, red-carpeted dungeon of punishment, as well as detailed instructions on stick fighting drills and techniques. Anyone who enjoyed Sean's recent videos (featuring James LaFond in a red t-shirt, and Sean Glass occasionally sans shirt) will get a lot out of Modern Agonistics, the book. How much do you think a fighter can advance through books and video?
JL: The “dungeon of punishment” was Sifu Edgar Livingston’s Tai-Chi school. He was aligned with Saint Jude’s Children’s hospital, the only honest charity we were able to find. We even got ripped off by the Maryland Diabetes Associate, who refused to credit us with the $260 donation we made because they said they only filled out paperwork on $1000 or more and the meathead I sent down with the money believed the thieves in their office.
Book learning combat depends on the person. In order to learn from books you need relevant experience and a partner. You cannot use a book alone unless you are an experienced fighter with some self-coaching ability. Realistically, books that I write as instructionals are reference works for trainers and coaches and for people who are being or have been trained and coached in similar activities.
Videos, on the other hand, are almost identical to the instruction had in the martial arts setting, which is a fair learning environment. The gym setting is better than learning via the ‘monkey see, monkey do” martial arts method. In boxing your goal is to be able to verbally coach a fighter who is looking at the guy that he is fighting while listening to you. In this sense the boxing and stick fighting books are much more useful for the coach than for the fighter. The videos are better for the fighter, especially the novice. Some fighters, with a governor on their ego and an ability to conduct an analysis of their body mechanics, have successfully become formidable combatants through books and videos. One of the ways this self-critique and self-coaching ability can be cultivated is by retooling your skill set in slow motion while you are injured.
LL: James, you cover scoring quite a bit here, including the importance of self scoring and the rationale behind determining when a fighter has been eliminated from competition. How does this fit in with your gaming writing? Do you have any active gaming projects right now?
JL: Once, when I was fighting Don Plot in 2006, with 10-inch polypropylene dagas I had him dialed in with the knife. He was just a stick-fighter and every time he advanced I stabbed him in the throat or face and the four corner judges saw no point. He looks at me, and says, “You better do it again.”
We move around and I stick him again and he chuckled. “I guess you’ll have to rip my head off before they notice.”
What I did was lifted my foot for the next stab and made a theatrical kill and they called the point. This points up the ridiculousness of judges scoring any fight with blades. I am the most experienced knife and machete fighter in the United States [though certainly not the best] and I cannot watch two guys that I have trained go at it and know what happened. In many cases a fighter does not know that he hit another fighter, especially when they are amped up. Calling yourself out is the only way. This was essentially how bare knuckle boxing worked.
I used my role playing game designing projects to bridge the reality fiction gap for others. I did three, with none of them, including the last, being playable by video game paced minds. In order to accurately pursue a combat simulation on paper it needs to be conducted at a pace that is at least 100 times slower than the action being simulated. What I used these role playing designs for Tribes, Fights and Triumph for was transferring my combat experience into a form that made a combat scenario builder for writing fiction. Although I don’t write that way—I don’t plot fights—someone else who does plot action scenes could use it like that.
I have yet to convert my 200 page Tribes sourcebook into fiction. I am in possession of over 20 excellent illustrations for the World of Oth and, as soon as I finish Drink Deep of Night, Seven Moons Deep, The Spiral Case and Yusef of the Dusk, I intend to begin publishing pocket-sized paperback novelettes of about 700-800 words, with Richard and Joseph’s fine art work as covers.
LL: Readers, this book has a ton of highly amusing anecdotes, pictures of men trying to hurt each other while wearing gladiator gear, valuable and detailed instructions and more. We know from Winter of a Fighting Life what this book cost James to write. I think there is nothing out there like Modern Agonistics, and strongly encourage you to pick up a hard copy or Kindle edition.
JL: One final word, Lynn. When I was promoting events for charity, I made sure that I stocked the front row with a few blood-thirsty babes, to whom I gave free tickets to and it worked like charm—with those meatheads fighting like savages for female approval. Thanks, Lynn, for reminding me of the good old days. I hope some young guys out there have some of their own to look forward to.
PS: Don't miss this video of James and Damien (a prominent figure in Modern Agonistics) fighting. James is using a sword and shield, and Damien is using a pole flail. More videos are available at James's main site, under the Modern Agonistics link.
James LaFond has been banned from a writers’ group because of the content of his work, barred from the AAMMA because of his writing, barred from USA Boxing because of his involvement in stick-fighting, rejected by four publishers on politically correct grounds, dumped by nine women, kicked out by three women, attacked by members of six black ghetto gangs, targeted for death by BASH [Baltimore Area Skin Heads] and the Wasted Youth [white street gang], threatened by three police officers, harassed by eight police officers, chased through the nighted streets of Baltimore by feral pit bulls, pursued through the streets of Baltimore by numerous pairs of rednecks in pickup trucks, was once chased down a back alley by a gear-head in a yellow mustang, was once hunted through the ghetto by a scorned psychobitch with a blade, has been homeless, was once barred from three high school classes for reading, walked away from an $80,000 a year management job without giving notice to take up writing for an annual salary of $198, will be homeless, has turned down 13 promotion offers and 9 management positions, and is generally regarded as either insane or eccentric depending on which Baltimoron you ask. Taboo You is his advice for living such a life if you so choose, and how to survive with dignity, as an individual, in our sick tribal world.
This troubling memoir chronicles the aggression of ideas that fuels the violence and inequity that engulfs us. The author, James LaFond, recounts tales of prejudice and hatred as he retraces his life from innocent boyhood, through a troubled youth and savage adulthood, and into fatalistic middle-age; a life lived within a violent, fractured, self-hating society at war with its own reason for being.
Winter of a Fighting Life is James's "kinetic memoir," a walk, at times a shuffle, down through the memories of his relentlessly tested and injured earthly coil. The book includes several pictures of the rarely seen author. Readers with a medical background may take interest in the photos as well.
LL: James, this book starts out as a humorous medical diary and reminiscence. How do you stay so sanguine about the damage you have suffered and the ongoing pain you deal with?
JL: The pain of a man’s damaged tendons, ligaments and nerves are nothing compared to the pain of being a soft little boy unable to preserve even a shred of autonomy in the face of a bullying world of sadistic teens and adults. I can only imagine how much more it would hurt to be a soft, helpless man and that cures me of second guessing my combative pursuits.
LL: I can't detect any trace of self pity in the telling of these injuries, especially notable in the cases where you weren't asking for it (when you were attacked at work or injured in the course of your work). How does the ability to recount your struggles without a tone of complaint fit into the masculine virtues?
JL: The discipline of accepting the outcome of combat is ancient and is pursued by me in my writing as a means of self-teaching. The writing helps relieve the nagging doubts. Placing myself in perspective as an idiot kid who didn’t see it coming helps round out the experience which becomes part of the evolving self.
LL: I want to explore the nature of different masculine relationships, which are mostly hidden from me, but which I find fascinating and without which a man's life would surely be missing something of great value.
There were many passages that struck me as meaningful, particularly those with your brother, your BB gun battles, Lions and Tigers, and of course your one great fight with him. You emerged from that fight with a lifelong truce and friendship.
You have also written many times about the Banno family, and this passage about a match with Dante illustrates the relationship between youth and respected elder so beautifully:
Dante said, from the not so cozy confines of our bloody clinch, “What are you doin’ Mister Jim? You’re fouling me.”
I growled, “And when I’m done thumbin’ yah I’m tossin’ yer ass down the stairwell!”
“Why Mister Jim?”
“Because yer killin’ me kid!”
Dante then broke the clinch and said to the gathered witnesses, “I quit; I’m done—draw. Anybody else wanna go?”
Has your combat practice brought you deeper into these relationships than might otherwise have been, especially given your Taboo nature?
JL: This past weekend I met two emasculated young men who fairly winced at my presence as if the testosterone wafting off of my heavy brow ridge and back hair might poison them. In this and many work and social situations I come off and feel like a relative badass. But among fighting men, men who were trained and born to fight, I am a fourth rate physical specimen. The only area, as a fighter, in which I rate as formidable is the psychological one. This has been ingrained in my through competing and training with real “studs” like Dante, and has shown me my place, as a fringe character, an adviser, an interloper, a coach, a trainer, a scout, a writer. I’m enough of a man that the truly bad men respect me, but not so caught up in physicality and ego that I can’t bridge the emasculation gap to the drones of the Dark Mother. I am also better at adapting than more formidable men because I’m used to working from a poor leverage position. The fighting arts have taken me from castoff and tormented nerd to alienated whack-job young man to crackpot old man. The prerequisite of being a taboo man is lethality. I have developed that. The prime requisite is alienation which God gifted me with when he set me apart and beneath the rest of my kind.
LL: I want to tie this in to your recent writings on The Vile Root. Without spoiling the book for readers, I want to ask you if some validation or support from your family might have changed the course of your fighting career? Would it be reasonable to wonder if they had taken an interest in your pursuits, that you might have been satisfied sooner, and changed course to seek other activities? Or were you destined to live this Fighting Life?
JL: What my family was drove me to the fighting path. Their support may have resulted in me going to college and becoming some repellent cipher or a scholar. I am lucky that my family swallowed the Great Lie with such gusto that it repelled me and set me on my way. Physically, I never possessed a pro quality body, which meant that I would accomplish less and stay in it longer, which is a not unremarkable pattern. Few coaches excelled at a pro level and few pros excel at coaching. Also, where the accomplished elite fighter shies away from humiliating himself by showcasing his diminished ability, the mediocre fighter often gets better as he ages since his entire game is skill and learning, so he is tempted to hang around, knowing he’s better than he was when he was young.
LL: Thank you, James.
There are three ways you can own "Winter of a Fighting Life," as a PDF directly from the author, in paperback or Kindle edition:
