I Went And Read It

I WENT AND READ IT --- The following was received by the STRIFE production office. It is eleven sheets of printer paper from a public library — the library's name and a printing charge of $2.20 are stamped across the top of each sheet — stapled once in the corner, crooked. The printed text has been reproduced as printed. Everything in lowercase was written over, around and on the back of it in blue biro, and is reproduced in full because the man asked and because there is still no rule against it. --- [SHEET 1 — PRINTED] PROFESSIONAL MMA RECORD — JOHNSON, ROD Wins: 24 · Losses: 3 · Draws: 0 Wins by KO: 19 · Wins by TKO (ground-and-pound stoppage): 5 Title fights: 0 [HANDWRITTEN, ACROSS THE TOP] hello he said go and read it. he says it every time. he said it to the whole building at the last show under all them white lights and i thought, nobody ever goes and reads it. people just nod. so i went and read it. the library is open til eight. there is a lady on the desk called pam who showed me how the printer works and didnt ask me about my hair. two dollars twenty. i have kept the receipt because i keep receipts now, it turns out. --- [SHEET 2 — PRINTED: a fight-by-fight table, twenty-seven rows, dates and results] [HANDWRITTEN, DOWN THE MARGIN] i read every line of this. every fight. there is not one in here that is funny. not one weird one. no disqualifications, no no-contests, no "overturned," no "result changed on appeal." i have been in rooms where they didnt even have a piece of paper and i have got more weird lines than this man has. twenty seven fights and every single one of them ends the way it was supposed to. i have never seen anything like that in my life and i grew up next to a chemical plant. --- [SHEET 3 — PRINTED: "SCHEDULED BOUTS — CANCELLED / WITHDRAWN"] Opponent withdrew — injury (medical documentation filed) Opponent withdrew — injury (medical documentation filed) Opponent withdrew — no reason given [HANDWRITTEN, CIRCLED THREE TIMES] this is the bit everybody does with their eyebrows. so i want to be very clear because i am writing it down and things written down count now apparently. i am not saying anything about these three lines. i dont know anything about them. nobody does except them three blokes and none of them are talking, and i know more than anybody in this company about not being able to make somebody tell you something. two of them had paper. one didnt. thats all it says. i have read it nine times and thats still all it says. the posh fella on the desk thinks something about it and wont say. the nice lady on the desk thinks something about it and keeps saying the same sentence. people in gyms think things about it in three states. i dont think anything about it. thats not true. i think one thing. ill get to it. --- [SHEET 4 — PRINTED: a transcript of "Go And Read It," BCD 13] [HANDWRITTEN, BESIDE THE LINE "Ain't nothing about me is a rumour. Everything about me is a record."] i went and read it big man. i went and read all of it. and heres the thing about a record. its paper. --- [SHEET 5 — BLANK ON THE PRINTED SIDE. HANDWRITTEN, BOTH SIDES] right so this is what i actually came to the library to work out. i have spent a long time in this company trying to find out if something was real. static had four rules and he said they were real and everybody believed him and i didnt, because how would you know. you cant know a rule is real by reading it. you can only know by putting a thing in a mans hand and putting your chin up and seeing what he does. so i did. twice. same spot, same bit of metal, same face. and he opened his hand like he was putting down a spanner. i said to him, that wasnt it, you didnt even think about it. and i meant it. i went in there for one second where he wasnt sure, and i got nothing, because there wasnt one. it was real. it was the realest thing i have ever been hit near. so thats done. i left the bag. i dont need the bag. he can have the bag. and then about an hour before that, same night, same building, this fella walks out in a suit under all the lights and reads his own life off a piece of paper to eight thousand people and says go and check. and then goes in the cage and does exactly what he said to the minute. and then gets down on his knees next to the man he just broke and says you were here, thats all i wanted. and everybody went oh. and i went, hang on. --- [SHEET 6 — PRINTED: a newspaper sports brief, mostly blacked out in biro except one sentence: "Johnson, who has never been disciplined by a commission, declined to comment."] [HANDWRITTEN] never been disciplined. never. not once. not a fine, not a warning, not a point took off. thirty odd years i have been fined in places that didnt have commissions. static has four rules. four. he wrote them down. he knows exactly where his edges are because he put them there himself over something he wont talk about. this fella hasnt got any rules. i asked around. not about the three lines, i dont care about the three lines. i asked people in the building what his rules are. what he wont do. what his card says. he hasnt got a card. hes got nothing written down. he says he doesnt need it. he says he just doesnt. nobody just doesnt. i have never met a man who just doesnt. i have met men who wont and men who cant and men who wont on telly. i have met static who wont, ever, because of a thing. i have never met one that just doesnt, for no reason, all the time, and reads it out loud. that is either the most boring man in the world or it is the scariest and i cannot tell which, and i can always tell. thats the one thing i can always tell. --- [SHEET 7 — PRINTED: STRIFE roster page, "THE INTIMIDATOR" ROD JOHNSON, 1-0] [HANDWRITTEN, OVER THE PHOTO] he is very big. --- [SHEET 8 — HANDWRITTEN] so heres the one thing i think. a record is just what happened when somebody was watching. that is all a record is. it is the list of the times the lights were on. and he is the only man ive ever seen who turns the lights on himself. house lights, full white, every time. he makes sure everybody can see. and everybody thinks thats the most honest thing theyve ever seen and maybe it is. but i grew up in places where the lights didnt work. and the only thing i know for sure about people is what they do when the lights are off and nobodys writing it down. i am not saying he does anything. i am saying nobody knows, because hes never once been in a room where nobody was writing it down. hes made sure of that. on purpose. thats his whole thing. so the record is clean. fine. i read it. its clean. i want to know if HE is. and the only way i know how to find out if something is real is the way i found out about static. --- [SHEET 9 — HANDWRITTEN, LARGER] this is the part where i say what im going to do and then i go and do it. ive watched him enough. i can do his bit. there is a rule now. you dont get on the big card at the end of the year unless you stand up in the building and ask for it out loud and the other fella says yes out loud. i have never asked anybody for anything in my life. i just turn up. i turned up at this company in the middle of somebody elses match with a stick and they gave me a job for it. so this is new. im going to wait til hes done on saturday. i am not going to go anywhere near his match, i want that wrote down in the same pen as the rest of it, i am not going to be at ringside, i am not going to be in the corridor, i am not going to be anywhere that anybody could say afterwards that i was the reason anything happened. he would hate that and he would be right. after its finished. after the bell. at the door. im going to ask him. and i dont know yet what rules im going to ask for. maybe ordinary. maybe the other kind, where everything is legal and there is a bag in the corner with things in it and nobody takes anything off anybody. because heres a funny thing. if its hardcore, then nothing he does in there is cheating. everything is allowed. so if hes only clean because the rules make him clean, i will know inside about four minutes. and if hes clean anyway — if theres a chair right there and its legal and he just doesnt — then ill know that too. and that would be the second realest thing ive ever been hit near, and i would like to be there for it. --- [SHEET 10 — HANDWRITTEN] he will say yes. i know he will. i have watched him enough. he will say yes and he will say it loud so nobody has to ask him twice and he will tell me which bit of me is going to go and roughly what minute. i hope he does. i have never once had somebody tell me that and get it right. i would like to see if i can make him wrong. --- [SHEET 11 — PRINTED: the library receipt, $2.20, stapled to the back] [HANDWRITTEN, BENEATH IT] i kept the receipt. go and read it. rancid (below that, smaller, in a different pen, added later) tell pam thank you for the printer. she didnt have to do that.