The Ballad of Ari Brenner: A Dancer in the Ring

That kid, oh man, never appreciated me. He’s so ungrateful after I taught him everything he knows. He acts like he climbed up all by himself. I didn’t coach the guy to think he was better than me, that’s for sure.

I knew that the kid was a fighter since the time I saw him slap away the swimming noodles I would shove in his face while he slept. He got lucky that I chose him. I was the best coach money could buy, and how much did I charge him? Nothing! Granted I stole out of his piggy bank every other weekend, but I spent half of that on cocktail parties I invited him to.

He hung me out to dry, but I’ll gladly say he’s the best fighter I ever met. Maybe I did bring him along too fast, but he got the hang of it eventually. “Remember, Ari, don’t tell anyone you’re twelve or they’ll disqualify us.” The kid had what every coach dreams about: a killer instinct and facial hair that grew very early on in puberty.

“Ari, keep your gloves up!”
“Stop punching me! Why are you at recess?”

Every kid in junior high needs some time to go out and make friends without having his coach whispering pump-up music in his ear, and after that episode I respected the kid’s space. I only talked to him in the classes where he sat by the window.

He was one of those fighters who’s shy out of the ring, but you should have seen him that week when I paid a girl at his school to be his girlfriend. Of course, after that week was over, she left him. When I told Ari, he wouldn’t stop talking about how she was going to tell everyone that I paid her and that now he’d never have a girlfriend. But you know how it is with Ari; it’s always my fault.

You try and try and look what happens. All those times I paid for him to come to the strip club when he was in junior high, and now the kid is twenty-three and won’t even speak to me. Every time I send him corn from the field I used to make him plow he just shakes me off. Every time I find out what his new phone number is, he acts like he doesn’t even know me:

“Kid! When you were in your prime, you coulda taken the title twenty times over. If you just woulda stuck with me!”
“NO! I went to college and now I design book covers. Stop calling. Stop sending grip tape. Stop trying to win me over with hookers. It’s over.”

Maybe I wasn’t the best father. Fine. But my real children didn’t need me that much anyway. One’s a social worker and one’s doing something that doesn’t involve any athletic talent. Point is, Ari was like a son to me. The son I always had but better.