He didn’t want to strike me from the rolls,” says twenty-nine-year-old Becca Cillian of her father. “But he sort of had to … he was the bishop.” She’s a solidly built young woman with a wolf-like grin and curly hair that tumbles in an exuberant cascade down to her shoulders. The fact that her own father excommunicated her from her Mormon faith has not visibly affected Cillian’s sense of self. “Dreams of glory,” she says with a laugh when the photographer asks for an arm-wrestling rematch. We step out into the backyard of her girlfriend’s house with Lucinda Williams’ feisty trill following us out into the sunlight, and Cillian begins to demonstrate her combinations. Her feet, of course, demand attention, carving up the ground beneath her into instant squares almost faster than the eye can see. As she continues, her self-consciousness drops away, and she’s no longer even showing off.
“I like boxing because it exercises your mind; it’s a mental challenge. I’m jazzed up to go into the dark place of the unknown,” she says. But this morning, what’s evident is light. Her face glows and she laughs and laughs at how easily she could knock me down with her right cross. When she talks about her day job and career path, she zooms into a discourse on the divisions between social work and social activism that have appeared in the past century. As she talks, her face looks just like it does when she’s boxing, beaming with an intense enthusiasm, combined with the subtle swagger of knowing what one is talking about.
Cillian is one of a close group of clients and staff at the Uppercut Gym, housed in Northeast Minneapolis. Like almost everyone else there, she is startling in her individuality, and at the same time is typical of the city, the time, and the country in which she lives. In one sense she is anomalous: a female boxer and a lesbian of Mormon extraction. In another light, she couldn’t be more representative. A social-work-studying dyke living in South Minneapolis? Narrow it down, please; you could be talking about any of a hundred people. Someone who ran up against a grotesque interpretation of the phrase “moral values”? Again, all too typical.
The Uppercut is itself fairly typical in that it’s one of many small business ventures set up in a formerly industrial urban area—lampshade shops, Tao-Chi studios, cafes, and tiny art galleries—but it’s also undeniably unique. The physical space is nothing like the grubby back rooms called to mind by too many schmaltzy boxing films. There are no old guys stubbing out soggy cigar butts while cursing inventively. There is no pickle-juice smell from balled up sweat socks, no peeling hunter-green paint, no thugs hanging on the sidelines, no aura of desperate hope. The walls and ceilings of this former light-manufacturing warehouse are painted a clean, calm white, slightly softer than what you’d see at an upscale clothing store.
On this evening Cillian is working the concession counter, along with a few other clients and staff members. It’s a Golden Gloves night—the gym is hosting—and the match begins shortly. The Uppercut’s owner, Lisa Bauch, glides through the crowds and the noise. Some people, paradoxically, look most relaxed, even bemused, when they are most tightly focused. Bauch isn’t one of them. She’s like a pale-feathered raptor, her blue eyes glaring with concentration. Sarah Mickelson, Bauch’s second-in-command, swoops from one group of people to the next, attending to last-minute details. With her jaunty head kerchief and sleek physique, Mickelson could be any bike-riding, nutrition-conscious U of M graduate student. “I’m not what you’d call an athletic type,” she says. “I was against sports. I only did this to have something to do with my sister.” Her sister has since been distracted by motherhood, but Mickelson got hooked on the activity, on the gym, and, later, on the diversity of her clients. This evening, though, her anxiety is as evident as her competence. Uppercut students are boxing in almost every weight category tonight.
By seven thirty, the space is almost full and the crowd of parents and friends is starting to settle in. Sometimes Minneapolis seems lonely, as if everyone has disappeared. You drive down empty residential streets with dark windows hiding invisible residents. Where, you wonder, did everybody go? Tonight, it seems like everybody is here. African-Americans, Latinos, pale-skinned people of Northern European extraction, all jostling and teasing, yelling encouragement. The Golden Gloves officials lend an air of control with their perfect posture, strong arms, and silver hairdos that recall Elvis. These are representatives of the Upper Midwest division of what is one of the oldest amateur sports associations in the U.S., and they carry themselves with an air of understated importance.
Bauch is a secretary and assistant regional director in the Golden Gloves organization, and likely to move up through the ranks. It’s not unheard of—there are some older female judges—but it is unusual for a slight blonde woman who looks much younger than her age to maneuver herself into a position of authority. You might expect to see someone who looks like Bauch in the ring, but she’d be in a swimsuit, holding up one of those cards indicating what round the bout is in. She might be the subject of jocular speculation and dirty jokes. No one looks at her that way tonight, or if they do, they keep it to themselves. This business owner and coach is as much a figure of authority as any of the strapping older guys.
The first match is in the 112-pound category; two thirteen-year-olds, still scrawny, go gamely through their paces. Then the 125-pounders come up; the bloody towel makes its first appearance after one kid gets off a surprise right cross. By the time the 135-pounders take the ring, the action is getting more plausible, and you feel as if you are watching young athletes who really know what they’re doing. One of them, a fifteen-year-old who later introduces himself as Scot Barton, has the cherubic face of a prepubescent, tomboyish girl. Any confusion, however, is put to rest by the sight of his thickening arms and stocky, hair-covered legs. His hair falls in his eyes, and he moves with the sturdy grace of a juvenile mountain goat. His mother, his aunt, and a few friends are sitting up close, cheering. His coach touches his arm and looks intently at him after he gets a bloody lip. In an age-old gesture of invincibility, he nods that he’s OK.
No, Barton’s mother says later, the blood doesn’t bother her. Her other son has had two major knee reconstructions from playing soccer; this is much safer, she thinks. Barton doesn’t win his match this evening; he’s a little rusty. A year ago, his grandfather died. Boxing was what they did together. Everyone else is here tonight, though—his mother, his big brother with the bad knees, his friend, his friend’s pretty, sparky girlfriend. The moment he gets out of the ring, it’s teasing and flirting and horseplay all around.
The evening progresses and the guys get bigger, the footwork fancier. The white towels get bloodier. Bauch and Mickelson are coaching their respective students, leaning in close, speaking low, their hands miming the patting-down of invisible pillows, soothing the stress before it grows unruly. Like all of the coaches here, they communicate with a calm, almost parental manner. When Jeffery Ratcliff, Bauch’s student, loses by a narrow decision, she seems to have taken the hit herself. She leans into him, searching his eyes for signs of distress. “We’ve got to get him back here,” she says later. “We don’t want one loss to mess with his head.” It must be good, having someone so efficient looking out for your mental well-being.
Though not a total triumph for Uppercut (other gyms do better this particular evening), the night is nowhere near lost. Uppercut’s heavyweight, Alex Vasquez, dominates the ring, even agains
t the longer reach of his opponent, winning in an easy decision. A week later, before an evening sparring session, Vasquez and his cousin Alfonso, who also coaches at the gym, are still feeling good about the fight. Vasquez is stocky and pleasantly thick. In contrast, Alfonso is built like a panther or an anaconda, lithe but solid. These cousins found each other when Alex arrived in East St. Paul from Los Angeles, where he was getting in “too much gang trouble.” Do these two big, strong Latin dudes have any problem working out at a gym run by women? Do they mind having a tiny blonde boss?
“Not at all,” Alfonso says, while his cousin nods in agreement. “Lisa knows what she’s doing. That’s all I care about.” Alfonso is one of those guys with just enough felinity around the eyelashes to make him appealing to women, which may be why he seems so poised and comfortable talking about himself. He has just got off work at Target, where he is in employee relations. What he does there is mediate disagreements before they turn into conflicts. So yes, he does like to let off some steam in the evenings. Alex is a mortgage specialist and does most of his work on the phone. They regard boxing as a sport, primarily, a way to challenge themselves, rather than a way to prevail in a fight or even as self-defense. Clearly, that is not what boxing is about for these two gentlemen. Cillian had said earlier, “My favorite sport is engaging my brain.” Watching Alfonso and Alex spar, it becomes clear that they are using just as much conscious thought as built-in reflex.
At first glance, Adam Langino and Chandra Clarke seem like two very different specimens. Adam seems to be an almost archetypal boxing enthusiast—“I’m Italian,” he says. “So of course I watched the Rocky movies, and that inspired me.” Really? He’s not just yanking chains here? “Really,” says the twenty-three-year-old law student from Suffolk County, Long Island. Forty-three-year-old Chandra, on the other hand, was inspired by the pounds she lost after gastric bypass surgery. The initial weight-loss operation got her believing she could move her body around without passing out, and she’s now lost seventy pounds doing circuit training. She has long dreadlocks kept neat by a hair band, and works for a public management agency that oversees a housing project in Minneapolis. The up-and-coming young white lawyer and the African-American community organizer both cite the same thing when they talk about the gym. “Community,” they say. For both of them, the gym functions as a club, a social identity. It’s worked its way into the fabric of both their lives.
One of the youngest clients at the gym is also one of the fiercest. Seventeen-year-old Dagne Willey is up for a handful of college hockey scholarships. She’s being recruited by women’s teams, but right now she plays with the boys. She’s still wearing her glitter eye makeup from a school rally last night, but her hair is pulled back and the bulky sweatshirt she’s wearing makes her look small. She doesn’t look like a boy and she doesn’t look like a girl. She looks like an elf who could beat you up. Her face is a poreless mixture of youth and hope, shyness and self-confidence. All her life, she says, she’s been playing with the boys in the neighborhood. She claims she’s never felt excluded by those boys, or judged by the girls. Loath to talk about herself, she lights up like her coach Becca Cillian does when the subject turns to boxing. Of course it’s a great workout. If you go three minutes without getting totally winded, it means you’re in great shape, but what the kid really likes is the mental challenge. If you were simply to look at her, it would be alarming to imagine this little girl on a hockey rink getting cross-checked in the corners. But watching her box, she radiates a humble fearlessness and calm calculation—qualities every girl should take with her when she leaves home.
Cillian said she likes the way boxing gives meaning and gravity to her words. A few months ago, a drunk on the light rail put his hand on her thigh. “I looked him in the eye and calmly said, ‘Don’t touch me.’ But it was my knowledge of boxing that made that statement real.” She likes knowing her words aren’t just empty threats, but units of real meaning. Willey is getting a lucky start in whatever life she ends up living; her words are already welded to her actions.