Mike Tyson stuck his tongue in my mouth. He stuck his tongue
in my mouth and wiggled it all around. He stuck it way back there so that
I thought I would gag on it but I didn't, I didn't dare gag on it, I was scared
to gag on it because I was scared that he might take offense if I did.
We were standing at the top of some stairs going a long
way down. This was in a banquet hall. He'd been telling me about his change of
heart since becoming a man of God.
I was scared being so close to the edge of these very steep
stairs with a man like Mike Tyson. There was a gleam of the old madness in
his eyes leftover from the days when he brutally knocked men out cold
even bigger than himself within seconds of the first round, threw couches
and armoires through plate glass windows of New Jersey mansions, drove
Bentleys into trees and dragged women down hallways, stairways, walkways by
their hair to curbs. This gleam was in his eyes even though his mouth was
moving around words about God and remorse and redemption and living the right
way.
He was saying all the right things, the good things, all the
things you wanted him to say, but there was still that gleam of star-fire in
his eyes.
I don't like to prejudge anyone, not even by past
reputation. I like to hold open the possibility that we're all capable of
change, even profound, unlikely, yes, even miraculous, impossible change. Even
Satan must theoretically be capable of change. Otherwise, what hope is there
for anyone, or this world?
But, let's face it, this was Mike Tyson. His periods of
sanity have been notoriously short-lived, subject to sudden and unpredictable
eruptions of violence that have consistently defied explanation. Time and
again, just when you thought he'd gotten his head on straight, he'd lose it.
Bad things followed. Things that were recorded in the headlines of
tabloids that for once didn't have to be made up.
We were both attending an event being held in his
honor.
We had been standing there talking. Rather, he had been
talking. I'd been listening. The whole time I felt that he was perfectly
capable of throwing me down the stairs at any moment. That he could lower his
shoulder and give me a shove without hardly knowing what he was doing. I could
hardly think of anything else. I don't remember what he was saying.
The gleam in his eyes signified to me that he was
beyond good and evil even if he wasn't aware of it himself. He could
do anything, good or evil, at any moment.
This was Mike Tyson.
This is what He was.
Mike Tyson was God, I thought, and a shiver of
transconscious recognition went through me. Of course. Revelation, when it
comes, is the most obvious thing in the world. Like a freight train.
Standing there at the top of those elegant stairs carpeted the deep
rich color of wine or spaghetti sauce or blood, I realized that Mike Tyson was
god, or the very closest thing to God I was ever going to be so close to ever
in my mortal life. At the foot of those stairs I could picture my body, small
in its elegant black dress, broken like a hieroglyph.
Mike Tyson's tongue was way back there in my throat,
tickling that thing back there, that little thing that looks like a punching
bag, a speed-bag, I think they call it in boxing, the uvula is what
the anatomist calls it. It's the thing that helps you talk,
forms consonants; it seals off your nasal passages so that
you don't breathe in foods or liquids, so you don't drown when you
drink a glass of milk. His tongue was pushing that thing back and I felt
like I might start gagging, but I didn't.
I calmed down and let him wiggle his thick, fat tongue at
the back of my throat, groping around back there, searching for what? It seemed
as if he were trying to tell me something. His tongue was moving around in
this very intimate way, trying to impart some message, a secret,
perhaps. This is like glossolalia, I was thinking. This is Mike Tyson
speaking in tongues.
It's like a communion or a baptism or Moses hearing God
talking from a burning bush.
I stood there petrified until it was over, which took a long
time.
I had forgotten all about the stairs.
I had forgotten all about everything.
When it was over, I could barely make my way over to the
wall furthest away from the stairs. I fell heavily into a chair. I sat there
for a long time feeling as if I were under water. Or as if the world was under
water and I was looking down into it.
Months, a year, two years later, Mike Tyson's tongue is
still in my mouth. It will never truly be withdrawn. Once Mike Tyson's tongue
has been in your mouth it stays there forever. Once you're kissed by Mike
Tyson, you stay kissed. I feel it in there now, that tongue, wiggling around,
fat like a bloated snake, saying something or other.
But what it's saying I can't say.
Mike Tyson's tongue has swallowed my tongue, it has taken up
residence, rooted to the back of my jaw, and I can't spit it out.
