When my eyes adjust to the dark I
am sitting between Dudley and Chester, two stools from each. I'm glad
you're here, Godfrey says. Otherwise I'd have to take a busload of those
goddamn freaks to the TV studio myself. What are you talking about, I ask,
not knowing that the studios send buses to convalescent homes and halfway
houses to fill seats, especially in the off season. On my first excursion
to Joker's Wild, Bobby marries his coin purse and says he will always be
true. Don helps Lola burn holes in her bra with his Parliaments. The Tax
Man is flying alongside Ada's window and she begins to cry. Ariel stops
writing Ray Gun and begins to pray. Her prayer is answered, and the Tax
Man is gone. The farm is saved. We go to a nightclub.I dance with
Patty Pineda, the first woman licensed to box. A TV ham keeps cutting in
while I 
demonstrate Ray Johnson's snake dance, but Patty brushes him
off with quick
swishes of manicured fists. When the ham gets the gall to ask me outside,
Mazurki looks at him like he would for John Ford and says, You wanta fight
Lowell, you gotta fight me first. Ilene and I were the only visitors at
the three-ring match the State Boxing Commission arranged for Patty--to
see if she could box. Her opponent was a former Sugar Ray Robinson
sparring partner. He had just finished teaching Sylvester Stallone how to
box for a movie called Rocky. Ms. has rejected the photographs Ilene took
of Patty turning into a boxer. The editors don't think women should box,
but women do.