Menthol cigarette butts were crowding the bottom of a green beer bottle on the floor, ash clinging to the neck. I accidentally kicked it over and everyone laughed and pointed. My mother had thick hair under her arms. I could smell it. Yes, she must have been wearing a tank top. No bra. I could see her breasts distinctly, and I didn’t like how they felt on my cheek when she pulled me in for a cuddle. She had bad breath. But I still didn’t want her to let go of me.

Then the fight started. Everyone was screaming even though all the boxers had done was walk into the room wearing silly robes with sequins on them like weirdly musclebound wizards. They made their way into the ring while the room became even more claustrophobic with screaming and mentholated smoke. In opposite corners of the ring two black men bounced, both already glistening with sweat. While they threw practice punches into the air and wiped sweat off their faces with their gloves, I checked out the people in the audience. There was a blond woman in the front row with a lot of jewelry. I wished I could get a better look at her but she was mostly obscured by the boxing ring. She was sitting next to a man with a deep orange tan.

No one here can see me.

The bell sounded and the boxers began to circle each other. I didn’t understand how they were actually going to do this. It seemed like it would be so easy to dodge a punch in a ring that big. I suppose it didn’t occur to me that surviving the fight wasn’t the point. After a while my mind started to wander. I watched the strata of smoke in the air, concentrated on the gentle way they hung there. Every time someone leapt up in anger or excitement and broke through my layers of smoke, I hated them; they made them move too fast, disrupted the subtlety by being so brash, jumping through the pretty gray smoke ribbons to scream at the TV like agitated seagulls. Their bodies were made of noise and ash turned to mud with cheap beer.