an outtake/excerpt from I See My Light
Sometimes the best wins out, Murph thought. Most often the most corrupt does. Or the most dirty.
Politics of the day caused him to be thinking this.
So he remembered Isaac Logart, a Cuban welterweight in the 1950s. Logart was on the Cuban Olympic team and jumped off the truck in the United States, in New York, where he defected. He promptly became a pro fighter.
Murph met Logart in the 1970s in the hotel at which he started working. Logart was a pantry man there. He made coffee and toast and did a few other things, but not much more. He didn’t have much of a brain left and his speech was all slurred. He wore thick black-plastic eyeglasses that were always loose on his face so one of his regular motions was to keep pushing those glasses in place on his nose.
One thing about Logart, he had muscles. He had muscles like no other person Murph had ever known. He had muscles in places other people didn’t even have places, Murph used to say when describing him,. That’s how strong he was. Murph also kidded him all the time saying the coffee tasted like he’d put his socks in it.
Logart was one of several people personally responsible for making Murph a distance runner, the last one actually. Murph had just started running, not so much because he wanted to as much as because his wife, a modern dancer, had told him she didn’t want to be married to a fat guy and that he’d better start doing something about himself.
So it goes.
He started by walking in place in the apartment. Then he was running in place for more than half an hour at a time and then one time when he and his wife were up on the boulevard, out of the blue Murph just felt like running so he told his wife he’d meet her at home. He took off and ran all the way home.
That’s how it happened, straight up.
From there, Murph started going out to run, and one day when he’d run two miles he happened to mention it to Logart. Logart looked at him through those thick eyeglasses and said “Run four miles tomorrow.” Then he added, “In boots.”
That was how Logart was. You could ask him anything about boxing and he would teach you anything you wanted to know. But you could never fool around with him by faking going to hit him. If you did that, he was apt to knock you out straight.
They were talking in the kitchen one time about his career. Logart was a top contender, number one contender for almost two years but he never got a title fight. Murph was asking why.
“It’s all fixed,” said Logart.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“They wanted me to go down and I wouldn’t.”
“So what did you do?”
“I waited. I trained. I took lesser fights.”
“Why wouldn’t they give you a fair shot?”
“Cause I’d a beat them. I was better. They made me get out of fight-shape and get older and slower. And then they were dirty.”
Truth was that later in his career he fought and lost an elimination bout for a chance at the title. He lost, he said, because of the unwanted layoff.
Next Murph thought about a woman in his Master’s program. She really had little talent but she had really big tits. Turns out she screwed the professor and published a novel because of his backing.
Going way back was the head of the creative writing program where Murph did his undergraduate work. He got his job because of paternalism, not talent or qualifications.
It’s a complicated world, Murph thought. He could remember some of the rules of leadership. Most of them weren’t too pretty. And then there were our leaders, the American Politburo, liars, thieves, extortionists. Their major MO: spend other people’s money indiscriminately and promise anything to stay in power.
