FIRST, a statement of skin-deep alienation: what am I doing in Section 128 of the Boston Garden at seven o'clock on a Saturday night? This is a lot of bullshit. I have been writing for this paper for nearly three years and they give the one ringside pass to a photographer. A photographer! Well might you ask what the world is coming to. There is no respect for words. As usual, nice guys have finished last.

This is my first time here at the end of the Riverside line, and it does not take long to realize that the name "garden" is hopelessly inappropriate. Unless it refers to a terrarium somebody forgot about for three years so that everything inside it has rotted, providing mulch for all the worst fungus and scumcrawlers in God's imagination. Everything is painted in aggressive tempera paints, greens and reds as flat as a Boston accent, and a horrible school-bus-yellow. I don't have to tell you what school-bus-yellow means in this town. I am beginning to get nervous. The American flag is hung up backwards, at least from where I'm sitting. There is a loud menacing rumble and whistling from the heating system. I am nervous, nervous. All alone up here; no one in section 128 stupid enough to come for the preliminaries. I am tense, I am nervous. I get up to get a hot dog.

On the way I pass a man with a Marvin Hagler T-shirt. He has a goatee and has shaved his head shiny bald, just like the Champ. That's a real fan for you.

The hot dog stand smells horrible. There is this terrific bad smell and it can only come from the hot dogs and still I put one in my mouth. Everyone I see is ugly. They are all ugly, ugly. Boxing is like a dirty rain filtering through the air of the city, bringing all the worms to the surface. I have never seen so many pork-pie hats in my life. I pay a dollar sixty for a cup of beer and head back to my seat. I am nauseous. I am hoping I can hide.

The first preliminary bout has already begun. A guy named A1 Stiles is fighting a guy named Mario Moldanado. They are middleweights. Stiles cannot even afford a pair of boxing trunks; he fights in a pair of blue terrycloth shorts. He had entered the ring in a robe of the same material. K-Mart coordinates. Neither one of them can fight. They hardly throw any punches. They miss the ones they throw. Nobody is watching them anyway.

And there is no noise, just the rumble of the heaters. There are hardly any people here yet, just the seats, the ugly colors.

I look over the railing. Down near ringside someone has spilled beer on the man in front of him. Spilled beer all over the plaid jacket and the girlfriend's llama coat. The man in the plaid jacket is angry. He is shouting and brushing the beer off his jacket. He jabs his finger at the man with the beer in an expression of anger. Jab, jab, jab.

Now the bout is over. Stiles is in the opposite corner giving Moldanado a hug. This impossibly fat guy from the Stiles' team is follwoing him with the K-Mart robe, but Stiles is all over the place. He hugs his trainer. He goes back to hug Moldanado again. The decision comes: in six rounds, by unanimous decision, Stiles. He goes and hugs Moldanado again. The fat guy is still trying to get the robe on him. Stiles seems happy he has won. Secretly he must be ashamed. He has not landed a solid punch all night.

Something at the heart of the whole thing is disgusting. This is not boxing on television. Where the fuck is Hemingway? Where's Papa? There are just these two guys with nothing to lose and nothing to win missing punches in the middle of this silence and this indifference and the noise from the heaters, rumbling, rumbling. I am beginning to be very scared. An enormous sourness fills me. What is wrong with us?

A local fighter named Robbie Simms is fighting a fellow named Herrington. Herrington looks unhealthy. This is good. It is like that old joke when you hear that someone is dead and you say, "I didn't even know he was sick." You would not have this problem with Herrington. He excudes cancer. When he dies in the second round he has died of natural causes. Simms is Hagler's half-brother. Two Cains, no Abel.

Next there is a fight for the New England championship, pitting a feather weight of great appeal from Dedham with the unlikely name of Freddy Roach against the current champion, Joe Phillips. Phillips looks greasy. Roach is pretty sly and pretty soon he takes command. But I am filled with loathing. I go for another hot dog.

When I get back there's this boohoo sprawled across my seat. He is recklessly drunk. I am scared. I am filled with loathing. I go to my seat and he gets my drift and moves over. "Relax, man," he says. I hate him, I am filled with loathing. I want to go home, where my room is warm and my sheets are clean. I hate the pressure of his leg against mine. I am filled with loathing. He is screaming in a Latin accent.

"Kill him! Knock him through the fuckin' ropes! Knock him through the fuckin' ropes!"

"Kill!"

"Fuck!"