The Monkey Look

by F. X. Toole

I stop blood. I stop it between rounds for fighters so they can stay in the fight. Blood ruins some boys. It was that way with Sonny Liston, God rest his soul. Bad as he was, he'd see his own blood and fall apart.

I'm not the one who decides when to stop the fight, and I don't stitch up cuts once the fight's over. And it's not my job to hospitalize a boy for brain damage. My job is to stop blood so the fighter can see enough to keep on fighting. I do that, maybe I save a boy's title. I do that one little thing and I'm worth every cent they pay me. I stop the blood and save the fight, the boy loves me more than he loves his daddy.

But you can't always stop it. Fight guys know this. If the cut's too deep or wide, or maybe you got a severed vein down in there, the blood keeps coming. Sometimes it takes two or three rounds to stop the blood, maybe more‹the boy's heart is pumping so hard, or he cuts more. But once you get the coagulant in, sometimes you need another whack right on the cut itself. That can drive the blood away from the area, so now the stuff you're using can start to work. What I'm saying is there are all kinds of combinations down in the different layers of meat.

Some fighters cut all the time, others hardly ever. It's not something a guy can do anything about, being a bleeder, any more than a guy with a glass jaw can do something about not having a set of whiskers. I don't know if it's the bone structure around the eyes, or something to do with the thickness of the skin. Some guys get cut damn near every fight, and it doesn't take long for a bleeder's eyes to droop from severed nerves. They develop a monkey look around the eyes. Nature builds up scar tissue to protect the eyes, but in boxing the scar tissue can be the problem--the soft skin next to the scar will tear free, because of the difference in texture.

Boy gets cut, I always crack the seal of a new one-ounce bottle of adrenaline-chloride solution 1/1000. When it's fresh, it's clear like water, but with a strong chemical smell. The outdated stuff turns a light pinkish color, or a pale piss-yellow. When that happens, it couldn't stop fly blood. I might pour adrenaline into a small plastic squeeze bottle if I need to use sterile gauze pads along with a swab, but I never use adrenaline from a previous fight. I dump it, even if three quarters of it is left. This way it can't carry blood over from one fight to another, and none of my boys can get AIDS from contaminated coagulant. I'd give AIDS to myself before I'd give it to one of my boys...

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F. X. Toole lives in Hermosa Beach. This is his first story in print.