MUSK AND MANHOOD by John Ellis

We had a punching bag set up in the garage of my Orange County youth. And boxing gloves that laced up your forearm. This was the domain of my dad and my brother. Dad kept the garage door closed of his makeshift boxing academy, creating this familial sanctum, private and secluded from the neighborhood boys, and expressly for us to learn to fight. After all dad was a football player, and boxed too. He was part of the tough-Jew club, not the nerdy, get straight A sort. My brother, fearless of punches coming at him, learned to pound the orb hanging down, 1-2-3, 1,2,3,4. 1-2,…..with a brutal rhythm that scared me at age 5 and 6. I’d flinch when my brother hit the bag, and I was several feet away!  I don’t remember dad spending much time with me in here, in his mighty world of musk and manhood imagined by a hard ball hanging from a hook-- with our ping pong table pushed to the side, making room for the sparring.

You can smell the car oil on the floor from our ever-present fleet of white Dodge Darts that dad bought used. Here in this indoor-outdoor room, that bridged the inside -- the world of mom, all that was artistic and erudite, that spoke to my sense of self, that spoke to fun and beauty and acceptance -- to the outside world -- pick up football games, ‘Smear the Queer’ on our front yard, fights with the neighbor boys that I stopped winning by age 7 because I didn’t know how to predict a left hook to the Adam’s apple after Jeff Byars’ dad must a’ taught him a thing or two in their garage.

When it came to fighting, I wasn’t a natural. But my brother Frank was. We fought. Brutally fought, my entire childhood. And well into my twenties.  Some highlights:  crouched in the corner kicking Frank off of me, the only thing strong enough to protect myself, my solid tap-dancing thighs, so he couldn’t start walloping me. I felt so helpless and brutalized by my brother who was almost 4 years older, completely overpowered. He would get a kick holding the pillow over my face until I panicked, thinking that I was going to die. Attempt to protect myself: throwing a solid brick at my brother’s face. It didn’t hit.