I couldn’t back down - my friends expected me to put the gloves on. They were all screaming words of encouragement that were drowned out by the thunderous roar pulsing through the room. The air was sharp - electric. My blood was churning through me as I nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ll fight. Give me the gloves. I’m ready. Who wants to go?”

My friend Rich Cassell had invited me to this party, and we’d been here for a while. I had been relaxing when the guy who owned the house yelled, “I’ve got two pairs of boxing gloves here, who wants to use them?” It was just a normal Uarts party till then, at a two story house just a few blocks South of center city.

Now it was different. The room was closing in around me as the people gathered in a tight ring. I slid my shoe along the slippery hardwood floor. Somebody had spilled something. My opponent emerged from across the room, parting two people and stepping toward me. His name was Juan, he was maybe ten pounds heavier than me, and he was staring me in the eyes. I didn’t look away.

“You’ve got this, J!” Vince Maliani yelled at me as he slapped me on the back. “You’re a boxer, you’ve got this, you’re gonna whup his ass, you’re gonna knock him out!”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t scared, but I knew what could happen. One punch could send me crashing to the floor. I felt the gloves slipping onto my wrists as my friend Rich pushed them on.

“I can’t wait to see this,” he said with a smirk. “You’re going to rock this.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“Alright, quiet down for a second!” The owner of the house said. “We don’t do rounds. You just keep fighting until someone gets knocked out or quits. Regular boxing rules other than that. Alright, touch gloves and let’s get started.”

I reached out and his gloves brushed against mine. We both took a step back.  Then it began.

I threw the first punch, a quick darting jab. He slipped to the side and I hit nothing but air. I wasn’t worried. I was feeling him out, getting his rhythm down. It would be a little while before I started throwing combinations. I’d been in the ring many times, and I knew the best way to start was slowly, to try and gauge your opponent and learn his style.

Juan knocked back my second jab with disdain - he used a simple hand block to deflect it. Then he through a powerful right hand counter that hit me hard in the forehead. I kept my chin low, but I staggered back a step. He pressed his advantage by adding four or five hard shots. I kept my hands high and deflected the first three with my forearms and gloves. The fourth shot hit me hard, and my vision went blurry. My eyes refocused in time to see the fifth punch hurtling toward my face. I dipped underneath it and his glove ruffled my hair, scraping along the top of my scalp. I stepped out of punching range.

I could see that Juan as confident now, eager to hit me again. But I’d recognized his weakness. His punches were wide looping shots, and he always lifted his elbow before he threw them, and choreographed his punches.

He stepped forward to continue his attack, but I hit him with a sharp jab to the chin. It was his turn to stagger back a step. I followed up with three more punches, each one thumping into his face.

I felt calm. All the quivering fear inside me had disappeared.

I shuffled forward, staying in my stance. He threw a punch, I ducked under it, and hit him in the body. He threw a jab, I deflected it with my glove and banged his face with a hard right hand. My fist throbbed from the impact.

I kept coming, flurrying, mixing different punches into the combinations. He was on his heels now, trying to get away. He backed up into the wall of crowd. They were screaming now, frenzied. I could hear my friends from the Spruce dorms yelling my name.

I hit him with a straight right handed punch, shifting my full body weight into it, feeling the effort from my legs drive through the target - his chin. He slipped up, and someone stepped between us. I couldn’t hear anything, but I saw him shake his head. He gave up. The fight was over.

My friends from the Spruce dorm surrounded me and started yelling, slapping me on the back - Bill Benton, Rich Cassell, Vince Maliani, Daniella Sansotta, Colin Balls and those were all the ones I could see. At some point Colin got his arm around my neck and accidentally choked me while trying to congratulate me.

I looked into the crowd and yelled, “Does anyone else want to box? I’m not even tired yet? Come on!”

And someone did. Taller than Juan, this guy was black, rugged looking, and  easily twenty pounds heavier than me.

“I’m down for whatever! Let’s go chump!” he yelled. He was with about fifteen other black guys, they all stood in various tough guy poses.

“Aight, glove up man. Let’s do this,” I said.

“Screw that! I’m from the hood, I don’t use boxing gloves. I know one way to fight and that’s street. Take off those gloves and fight me!”

I turned to my friend Vince and cocked an eyebrow.

“He’s just scared,” Vince said. “He doesn’t want to fight you.”

I turned back to him.

“Put the gloves on like a man and let’s do this,” I said. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just boxing.”

He smirked.

I shrugged. “No gloves no fight.”

“You aint shit.”

I smiled. “I can’t risk this face, man. I can see you have nothing to lose though.”

“What?” he said. One of his friends stepped up and yelled something at me, but the hum of the crowd drowned it out.

I turned, put the gloves on a couch, and walked back into the crowd.

There were a few moments of indecision before a pair of girls stepped forward to fight. One of them was my friend Daniella Sansotta.

“Is she really going in there?” I asked Vince.

“Yeah dude!” he said with a laugh. “She’s doin it!”

I shook my head and our group of friends pushed to the front of the crowd. As soon as the fight started, we started yelling as loud as we could. It was a clumsy fight, but some of the punches were landing pretty hard. At one point Daniella tackled the other girl and they wrestled around on the ground. I should have been reffing the fight. When they got back up they exchanged a few more punches and the crowd pushed forward to see was was happening. I couldn’t see what was going on, and then everyone relaxed. The fight had ended.

“Do you think I won?” Daniella asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied with a smile. “But I give you props for putting the gloves on in the first place.”

“Never underestimate me,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Okay, Maniella,” I said.

“Hey, don’t call me that!” she said indignantly. I started laughing and she punched me in the arm.

“I’ll box you,” someone said. I turned, it was my friend Anthony. “I been boxing for a year now, I’ll mess you up.”

I smiled. “Aight, let’s do this. We gotta get you a pair of gloves. Go find the tall guy with the beard, he’s the one that owns this place and the gloves.”

The party was jumping again, the dance floor was clogged with people. Anthony was pushing through the crowd trying to find the guy.

“Hey man, I think we’re leaving,” Vince said.

“Wait…” I started to say.

I could get out of the fight. I’d already won the first fight. What if Anthony beat the crap out of me? It would be embarrassing. I would be a hero if I just left now. I could just go up to Anthony and tell him I was leaving. What if I lost? He had boxing experience, he would be tougher than the other guy. I stood for a few moments and then turned to Vince and said, “I’m boxing again though, you sure you wanna leave?”

“Hell no, we’ll wait so we can watch you knock somebody else out,” Vince said.

The voices quieted to a low hum as I touched gloves with Anthony. I nodded to him and put my hands up. He started with a hard four punch combination.

I slithered under the punches, moving my head in u-shaped cuts, the leather brushing against my hair. I threw a jab into his stomach, it landed with a thump. He took a step back. He wasn’t hurt. I stepped forward, threw two punches that he blocked, and he hit me with a left hook. I felt my jaw move as his knuckles sunk through the glove. Solid punch.  He was getting ready to throw another. I stepped to the right as he came forward and he missed. I pivoted, threw a straight right that hit him in the temple. His head jerked to the side and he stumbled away. The ground was slippery from the spilled drinks, and he slid as he tried to regain his balance. He fell.

There was a roar from the crowd, but I knew it wasn’t really a knockdown. I waited for Anthony to get up, then we touched gloves and stepped away from each other. He came in low this time, trying to avoid my jab. I bent my knees, got low, and hit him with a crisp jab that jerked his head back.

I followed with a right hand, then a left uppercut that brought him up to a standing position. I wasn’t done. I unleashed four quick punches, focusing on hitting his chin so I could knock him out and end the fight. Anthony screamed and lunged forward with a right hand that smashed me back a step. My head was throbbing now, my eyes were tearing because he’d hit my nose. He pressed forward and I brought my hands up, deflecting punches with gloves and elbows as he threw a frenzied combination. I grabbed him in a clinch to stop the onslaught.

I pushed him off after a few seconds. He was breathing hard. I nodded to him, brought my hands up, stepped forward.

His fists blurred as they came toward me, but I moved. A shot hit me, but I took it, returned fire. He side-stepped, threw two punches, but they missed as I dipped under them. I hit him in the body, and he returned with an uppercut. I for a moment the pain brought me back to reality, sharpened the hazy edges of everything around me. I could hear the room again, could hear the melted yelling of the people around us.

“Gethimpunchyou’veduckjabgotcomeonfightkillhimlefthookknockhimout!”

Anthony grimaced in anger and pulled back his right hand. He started to throw the punch. I didn’t think - my mind was empty as my legs bent, as I dipped under the shot. We were at close range, about a foot away from each other now. He was slightly off balance, his right hand fully extended. My mind took the snapshot and reacted. I felt my body weight shifting as I threw a left hook.

The punch landed. Perfectly. I felt a shock go through my arm as my fist hit him. He was falling now, my body corkscrewed with the follow through. He landed on his side. A wave of sound hit me, and I people grabbing me. “OOOHH! YOU KNOCKED HIM OUT SON!” My arms were tingling, and I felt a scream rise out of me. I couldn’t hear myself because of the pandemonium around me.

A few minutes later the cool night air hit me. My sweat was almost dry.

“That was crazy right there,” Colin said. “You are a man.”

I smiled. “I think I knew that.”

“Well I did too, but you know what I mean.”

Anthony was walking with me.

“You were good in there.”

He shrugged.

“But you should use more straight, quick punches. You used to many looping shots that I could duck under,” I said.

He nodded.

“Good fight,” he said.

I nodded and smiled.

“Yeah. That was definitely a good fight.”

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“You wanna make some easy money?” Dave Schwarztbaum asked me.

“How?” I asked.

“All we have to do is tape a youth football championship game. I got the job from one of the coaches in the league. We’ll get paid around twenty or thirty dollars a piece.”

I agreed to do the job. A few days later I got a call from Dave at the appointed time - 8:30. I opened my eyes and forced myself out of bed, and got the cameras and tripods. I met up with Dave and we took a taxi out to Runnemede, New Jersey.

“Are you sure no buses or trains go out to Runnemede?” I asked Dave.

“I googled it last night and nothing goes there. This place is out in the middle of nowhere. But they’re paying the cab off so it doesn’t matter to me.”

“That coach is loaded.”

“I want you to know something, that isn’t going to be here. This is actually the semi-finals, and his team isn’t playing in it. He wants us to tape the game so he knows their plays and stuff.”

I smiled and said, “So we’re spying for him, and his team isn’t even here.”

“He’s still in Miami actually.”

“Damn, this must be an important tournament.”

“If anyone asks why you’re here, say you’re taping it because you want to start a youth football league for underprivileged kids in Philly. And you wanna know the rules.”

When we got to Runnemede it was starting to rain. The event was going to be held at Triton High School. There were tons of fields that - the grass wrapped around the school and stretched in every direction. There were no signs on the fields, but crowds of spectators rimmed each field as the dozens of teams played. I turned to Dave.

“Which field?”

“Field Five.”

We looked at each other and laughed.

“Now I’m glad we got here early.”

We walked from field to field asking the age group of the teams playing. A referee was walking by and we stopped him and asked him if he had a schedule for the games. The teams were playing at 2:30.

“Dave, I thought you said they were playing at 10:30.”

“Apparently I was wrong. We’re a little early.”

And that was when the drizzle started to thicken a bit. And the clouds darkened. And it started pouring. I hunched over the video equipment, to shield it from the rain.

“All we need to do is find a restaurant,” Dave informed me.

“I could be asleep right now,” I grumbled.

After walking through the bustling town of Runnemede, we found a small pizza shop. We got some food and camped out there for about four hours. There’s a Saturday afternoon for you.

When it was time for the game to start we got out to the field, and we set up the cameras, Dave was behind the end zone, I was at the fifty yard line, shooting from the side. The first five minutes of the game were captured smoothly - and then my camera ran out of battery. I called Dave and told him.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I thought the battery was full. I gotta find a power outlet, I’ll be back for the second game.”

The high school probably had some power outlets. I ran over to it, and found an open side door. I let myself inside, and started looking around. Finally I found a band room, and I plugged in the camera. A while later the schools fire alarm went off. I have no idea why. I grabbed my camera and left before anyone could come and find me creeping around the school. I sprinted out to the field and started filming the second game.

When we were done filming we called the taxi company and got more bad news.

“We don’t pick up from Runnemede, we can only drop people off.”

I broke the news to Dave. We walked away from the high school and to a dunkin’ donuts, where(ironically)we found a couple of cops. We asked them if there was any public transportation around, and he said there was a bus stop nearby. He told us where to go.

When we finally got home Dave got a phone call.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“It was the coach who hired us.”

“He better be paying us extra.”

Dave smiled. “He said he’s going to donate the money to a charity of our choice.”

“You’re kidding.”

His smile faded. “No man, I’m serious.”

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In Visual Communications Studio we were assigned a photography assignment. We were supposed to look focus on things with vibrant color and interesting composition. Although we were supposed to take about fifty pictures, I got carried away and took over four hundred. These are some of my favorite shots.

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I liked one of my homework assignments. Yeah, I actually said that. For my collaboration and spontaneity class we had to make a thirty minute presentation. There were five people in our group including me, and at first we thought about doing a Powerpoint. I suggested we make a video instead. The had to be about group influence, so I wrote out a concept for a script about gang violence. There were two writing for film and tv majors in our group, so they each wrote half the script and gave it to me a couple of days later.

That’s when the fun started. I got a bunch of people together and gave them roles. There were about a dozen of us in total, and it was my job to direct the filming and try and get them to do their jobs. Nobody actually read the script, and before long the scenes were completely different than I’d imagined. In a good way. There was a fight scene in the script, and they all ran in at the wrong time and started beating on him. They threw in yo mamma jokes and ridiculous comments throughout the scenes. Somehow the serious scenes still managed to tell the story, and the slapstick comedy actually made the movie better. Our teacher almost fell of his seat laughing when we showed the movie in class. All in all, it was a success.

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Someone came up with the idea of going to my friend Jon Casey’s house this weekend. He lives in Cherry Hill, about a half hour drive from here. We decided that the fourteen of us were going to have a bonfire in his backyard. I called up my Dad and asked if we could borrow my fifteen seat van so I could drive everybody, and that’s what we did. When we got there we built up the fire, got the grill heated up, and made burgers and hot dogs. As we sat around the fire, we told story after story. There were a few ghost stories, a few ridiculous stories, true stories. When the night was over we my friends all piled into the van and drove back into the city. I picked up my Dad on the way so he could take the car back, and we got dropped off right outside of Spruce.

Here are some pictures:

Before we left

Getting the fire started

Chillin’ around the fire

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