The lighter weights always fight first. The place was filled up now. My coach holds the ropes open and I step into the ring. He tells me this, "He didn't warm up. He's cold. Knock him out."

The ref asks me how I feel. I tell him I'm dying. He laughs and says, "You'll be all right."

Now all this time, the fear is indescribable. It had nothing to do with this kid or anything. There is something about getting into a ring surrounded by people watching you and fighting.

I'm thinking it's him or me. Over and over, like a drumbeat in my head. I felt like a cornered rat. Scared mean and viscous.

The bell rings. Like most fights I just remember fragments. It was the same combination, the whole fight, three quick, hard jabs and a right hand. The first knock down I thought he slipped. I didn't feel any contact. It felt like I was punching a sheet hanging on a line -- I was punching right through him.

The second knockdown was -- I started to get excited. I realized that I could get out of there right now! I never wanted anything so bad in my life.

And then it really hit me, I could win!

This kid was backed up on the ropes getting an 8 count.

The ref had waved me to a neutral corner. I looked to the corner where the judges were and there was a lady judge sitting there, she was blond and good looking.

Her lips were parted and her eyes were shiny. She looked hungry. They all did. I felt this huge rush of adrenalin. I started to jump up and down in place. The murder came up in my eyes and I turned my eyes on my opponent. I had picked up the count at five.

The ref waved me in and as I closed the distance I felt my head lower and my chin tuck and it was like I was outside of myself and within at the same time. But the point is that I was being careful.

I saw the brass ring. I had him on the hook and I wasn't going to let him off, it was him or me.

Three hard jabs and he brings his gloves in front of his face. He's trying to hide behind his gloves.

Now here is the peroration of my whole story. I saw an opening, a space between his head gear and his gloves. It was like the clouds parting for the sun. Time warped, slipped away, disappeared, it was a moment frozen in time. I was in hyper focus.

I decided that my glove would fit through that little opening. I pulled the trigger and knocked him out. At the moment of impact, I twisted my hip into the punch. I put my ass into it. A perfect right hand and the hardest punch I ever threw and I could really punch. That punch would have knocked out any amateur anywhere.

He went down and his neck was on the bottom strand and his eyes were wide open but sightless, he was out cold, out of this world. The doctor came running.

I looked into the audience. Two teenage girls, about 18, were looking at me, their eyes shiny with lust. I thought: so that's the way it is – power!

There was such a confluence of feelings going through me -- deep, deep pathos. I thought: this is one fucked up world.

I didn't prance around with my gloves held high. He was just a kid. But it was him or me. And I decided it had to be me.

So I hug this kid. He looked resentful. My coach is spreading the ropes for me. I tell him, "I still don't like it." Then I start snickering, "I could learn to like it." He tells me, "They won't all be this easy."

I beat the next guy. He ran and held.

There was a three-hour break until the finals. I was tired, I was emotionally spent. I didn't want that last fight. And I had seen the guy fight and I really didn't know how I was going to beat him.

I later learnt that he had lied to get into the tournament. He had 7 fights going in, instead of five. I had one, as I said. One of the guys he beat told me that.

He stopped me with a right hand that hurt me and I got an eight count and I rushed in and got caught again. I never went down. RSC.

Referee stops the contest and he stopped it in the second round. I was taking a beating.

Yes, I felt ashamed. A lot of people wanted me to win. There is a lot of racial shit in the states.

I'm not really a fighter. I made myself do it. I wanted to be like my friend, Jamie Ollenberger. I admired fighters. I got a very late start and what success I did have was because I had very heavy hands.

Once I asked a very good retired fighter and trainer, Hedgman Lewis, a welterweight active in the late sixties if I could even call myself a fighter. He said, "You got in there. You fought."

I didn't have much of a career. I was basically 50/50.

I think that I took the little studio unit on Third at Garcia shortly after I got my first middle-level job at the Union Plaza. I’d been dealing for six months when I got the Plaza. I was right on schedule, not that I could deal at all. My game was dice and that’s the hardest game, complex and fast.

It took me another ten months of working at the UP before my game really started to come together.

This particular game offered ten times odds on a quarter flat. And a quarter would move, in front or behind. That’s twenty-five cents; twenty-five pennies. There was no other game like that in Nevada and there are no more games of that sort anywhere, anywhere on the planet. So—I worked hard and pumped a lot of checks and I got good. I had the makings of a strong game when I lost the Plaza.

Anyway, I’m living in this tiny studio for eighty bucks a week. This place was considerably smaller than my current living room. I had a little two burner stove and a half fridge, the bed was in the “kitchen” and there was a little sitting area; the “living room”, and the bathroom had a shower stall, but it was okay because I like little places. It was good enough.

Tokes at the Plaza ran about 45 bucks a shift, and I got a free meal on each shift because these joints always do feed the workers, and sometimes the food is good like The Barbary had food from Michaels, a four-star Chinese restaurant. I kept maybe a little bit of snack food in my fridge. I forgot what the minimum wage was in Nevada in 1988; well I just looked it up, $3.35. So tokes are 225.00 + $134.00, no State income tax, minus federal tax, add it up and I don’t know. Not much money. But I could live. I even kept a car on the road and I insured it too, a 1976 Mercury Marques.

This car was bigger than my whole apartment.

I also had enough money left over to buy a quarter of pot from my boxman which I was really happy about. I wouldn’t smoke up before my game, although I did once when another boxman invited me out onto the fire escape on the second level of the hotel where the dealers lounge was. “If I smoke I’ll lump out!” “So what?!” He was my boxman for that particular shift. I’d even bought a lid off of him.

I respected the guy. He was a big tough guy. He looked tough in a polished sort of way. He told me one time, “Don’t ever hit anybody in the dice pit.” He broke a boxman’s jaw in Reno and he couldn’t work on a floor anywhere for seven years. He made a living as a limo driver and probably running low-level scams, like low weight dealing and steering men to women who sell their bodies.

We toke up and then I get down there and the floorman is giving me the fish eye. He knows I’m stoned. I have cotton mouth and I’m on the stick making dice calls. Anyway, I didn’t lump out too bad.

The people there really liked me. That’s no lie. People generally do. I’m a small, tough-looking guy, but my vulnerability and sincerity comes through. This is what I’ve been told.

I started out on day shift at the Union Plaza, but I was so brutal that they moved me onto graveyard until my game picked up. After about two months, I was moved back onto days and they took me off the extra board, which meant that I would be eligible for benefits after ten months. I never made it, but that is another story. I already told that story.

I found this place that rented furniture and rented an old TV for 20 bucks a week, an old box. I got it somewhere on Main Street I think. My place didn’t have cable, but I could pick up a few channels. On my days off I liked to smoke a joint, lie in bed and watch The Streets of San Francisco. This was a tough life that I was living, but I was enjoying it. It seemed colorful to me.

It depends on what your priorities are I suppose. The standard trappings of success didn’t appeal to me, not really, not enough that I would struggle through four years of college to get to it. Life’s too short. I didn’t expect to get this far as it is.

The tough boxman, who was a basically nice guy, I think he had connections, underworld connections, but I don’t know for sure. It’s hard to get back on the floor with a felony card. Any beefs or even a court-ordered rehab shows up on your gaming card. Your prints are attached to that card.

I gave about five sets of prints in Vegas over the course of my time there because I was going through FBI special investigations for my massage licenses. One time I asked the Reno jawbreaker he said something about layoff money, “What’s that?” “Oh, you’ll find out all about that stuff.”

I was so insecure about my game that it made me feel good to hear that, I was going to go through the whole subculture, although I never did get a table job. They are rare in Vegas now. I had shift for shift jobs, dice separate, the worst of all possibilities. My regular pot connection, nicknamed Bogey, the guy I got my pot off of, one time I was moaning about how it was taking me a long time to improve my game, “The ones that take longer end up being better.” “You think so?” “I know so...” And I never forgot his kindness.

The Hotel just north of the Plaza was called the Park Hotel. I just spent twenty minutes trying to find the genealogy of The Park which should be the rubble underneath the Main Street Station which also rose and fell a couple of times. I’m certain it was called the Park Hotel and Casino. Leave a comment if I’m wrong.

One night I ended up hanging out in there with a blackjack dealer and a dice dealer, both ladies. The dice dealer, she was a good dealer, a strong dealer. In my journey through the Vegas casinos, I did not encounter too many female dice dealers. They were not really welcomed in a dice pit. They had to have a pretty tight game or they would be ragged on unmercifully, but, on the other hand getting hazed was just part of the business.

I later worked with this lady, the dice dealer, at the Barbary Coast. They asked me about her, and I told them she could deal. I mean we both came from the Plaza except that I got fired and she didn’t. Well, we were hanging out at the Park for some reason, and I told the blackjack dealer that I had some speed at home. I lived four blocks away. She came over and I gave her a bump and then she left.

Christopher Columbus day is a big deal in the States and particularly for Hispanic people, I suppose since it was a Spaniard that invented America. My little crib is on the north side of the building. I’m working a day shift and they are playing the Mariachi music and drinking, getting drunk, and I go outside to get my smokes out of my car and I go out there without a shirt on, a clear statement of machismo, and a provocation to their dinosaur brains. Then I’m telling them can they please keep it down as I have to work tomorrow, and there are three of them out there in the back yard and this is a small house. It was mixed zoning I guess. My building was just a small one story two-sided unit with maybe seven units on each side.

I tell them I am going to call the police and that was a mistake on any number of levels. So one of the more drunken vatos jumps the fence, “You call policia?!” I’m looking at him and he lands a shot on the left side of my face. I’m debating whether to punch back and I picture the other two jumping the fence and I cuss the guy and go back into my apartment.

The police show up about a half an hour later, and it’s a man and a lady. They talk to me and they talk to them and the one lady cop takes the lead and says that they say I started it and if I want to lay charges I will have to come down to the station and it’s their word against mine and that they are very busy and they don’t have time for this. I feel my heart congeal with hatred but they go away and the guy that hit me throws a bottle through my window, busting the window and I cower in my bedroom and it settles down and that’s it. The next day I went over to the lady of the house and I apologized for calling the cops, but she says she doesn’t blame me.

Not long after I got another apartment, bigger and better, on the south side for the same money. My fortunes continued to improve and I even bought my own TV and a better car, a Toyota. Towards the end, I was working at Caesars and saving money. That was the last place I lived my first time around in Vegas.

Las Vegas police are not to be messed with. They are dangerous and corrupt, reputedly.

They have been known to murder people that they don’t like, like the black floorman who worked at one of the better casinos, I think he worked at the Nugget. They busted down his motel room door unannounced and choked him out and killed him. He was in there with a prostitute. He was sleeping and they busted right in. His name was Charles Bush.

There was a big stink about that. LA police are the same from my limited personal experience and from what I’ve read and heard. I was accosted by two cops in West LA one time and they were aggressively abrasive. “Is that your car?!” It was a1971, two-door, blue, Dodge Polara with a big dent in the right rear quarter panel. “Why? You want to buy it?” “Why are you here?” I was going to my second massage school in Santa Monica and a classmate asked me to do an exchange. He lived there in West Hollywood. Cop, “Are you gay?” “No.” “Is he?” “I think so.” This is what I mean. But we did the exchange and he didn’t do anything wrong, so...

I’m kind of all over the map with this piece, just like my life maybe. They had a big, big scandal involving the Ramparts division when I was still living in LA. 70 officers were implicated in some form of misconduct. Only twenty-four were actually found to have committed any wrongdoing, with 12 given suspensions of various length and 7 forced to resign or retire vs. getting fired, and five were fired outright. 106 prior criminal convictions were overturned and the city paid out 125 million dollars in settlements.