the 941

We were somewhere around Ted’s Shark Bar on the edge of Manatee County when the drug began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And just like that I was lost. I turned around. Turned around again, and thanked all that was holy I was not in some huge 1971 red Chevy convertible drawing every cop’s attention.

How do you explain being in a condition like this after only enjoying the aromatic bliss of some incense? You don’t. So get it while you can: K2 Summit, pictured at right and available at every smoke shop in town, probably won’t be legal for long.

No doubt you’ll soon be hearing more about K2, as everyone just starting to enjoy it knows. Even those who don’t think it’s going to be outlawed, like 20-year-old user Heather Bruenner, are aware that there’s something funny about the substance. Referring to the marijuana laws she’s grown up with, she says: “K2 has to be government-endorsed. Who does it better than the government, right? This is their way of getting us away from something they’ve claimed was bad for so long.”

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Ivan Valencia, Nelson Oliver and Tommy Pettiti (left to right) help the Sarasota Boxing Club get its new location in order

The door to the old Sarasota Boxing Club sits wide open, but not much is left inside. When I was here in August the place crackled with the energy of boxers, spectators and families.

It’s still hot in late October, but quiet. With one of the boxing rings and all the equipment now gone, ambitious weeds grow in through the gaps of the plywood hanging over the glassless windows. Footsteps echo off the concrete floor, metal walls and tin ceiling.

An orchard of dust and debris is scattered about the far side of the building. Coach Harold Wilen stands in the center of it all, talking on the phone. His old blue Hyundai has broken down in front of the Sarasota Boxing Club’s new location on the corner of 15th and Lime Avenue — on the edge of Newtown. He needs a tow truck before the sun goes down, and he needs a good mechanic.

My phone in hand, I rattle off the number to Jay & Dean’s and he taps it in. I mention he should save it and he looks up at me with a sheepish glance: “I’m not sure exactly how.”

He holds his phone out and I bend down, walking him through the steps of saving a contact. He thanks me, smiles and says: “Robin Givens was in for a private lesson last week.” No doubt about it the man knows how to take a punch. And he looks like he has gone a few rounds; losing the place where he’s lodged his heart for the past decade and a half to a man he trusted.

On top of that, he’s losing an ex-wife to cancer at any moment, someone still so close to him, that I feel the pain in his eyes when he tells me. The man needs to get to Lakeland, where she’s dying, and his car is not up for the trip.

A white pickup climbs backward up the ramp to the door. It seems official. They are taking the toilet — the SBC board of directors took a vote. They lost some serious donations: a boxing ring and the main support beam for all of the heavy bags, $15,000 worth of material given by their landlord, Harvey Vengroff, and revoked with their eviction. Put it all together and what do a bunch of guys with ricocheting emotions and a truck full of hand tools do? They talk about taking the damn toilet and leaving the brush, but I can see that Coach’s heart isn’t in it.

“She refers to him as ‘Michael,’” Wilen says. It takes me a second to snap back: He’s talking about Mike Tyson, Givens’ ex-husband. I nod. “She’s doing a movie here in Sarasota,” he shakes his head and looks up at me. “She’s a soccer mom, a very down to earth lady.” The man shows genuine wonder at the events that transpire around him. His ex will have died within 24 hours, and he will have buried more than her remains in the coming week.

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There are some things a human body can’t do without chemical assistance, a certain physique available only to those willing to climb the rarefied and dangerous heights of steroid use. But, thanks to both the reclassifying of anabolic steroids as a schedule III narcotic and advancements in new pharmaceuticals, juicers have found a whole new world of muscle-expanding drugs. A new generation of hormone therapy that carries its own risks.

My new authority on steroid use and hormone therapy, Joey O, had been juicing for years when he benched 555 pounds at the 190-pound weight class, five years ago. He was ranked 36 in the U.S., making him both freakish and awesome in equal measure. (Joey O would only talk to us on the condition that we only refer to him by his nickname, and that his picture not be taken.)

Joey O is five years out of the gym, 42 years old, a bit softer, a bit older, with a mud-thick New Jersey accent. I ask him about Meatloaf’s famous affliction from the movie Fight Club: “Bitch tits.” Joey O smiles and explains: “Bitch tits, yeah, your nipples get hard, they swell up — they hurt and you take your Nolvadex. Sure, you might lactate a bit, crack and bleed, but you’re ready and you take care of it before you’re needing sports bras and Band-Aids.”

The condition is medically known as gynecomastia and occurs in anabolic steroid users when their bodies go into distress over the amount of testosterone present and begin to manufacture corresponding amounts of estrogen. Nolvadex — Tamoxifin, as it’s now sold after its patent expiration — refuses to allow estrogen to bind or find a home. It’s used in the treatment of breast cancer. A second option is taking birth control, yet another cycle in the steroid user’s regime, though most of these drugs are injected to avoid dilution by the liver, which happens when the drugs are taken orally.

In the movie Meatloaf is undergoing hormone therapy. Joey O just started the same program: weekly doses of testosterone (“test”) and the option of more frequent human growth hormone (HGH) injections.

Even with the image of a cracked and bleeding chest in mind, I can’t stifle a laugh. Joey O’s style is toned down a bit from Suncoast living, but he is still the guido’s guido. He stands about five feet and five inches tall — with coarse black hair starting at his fingers, running up his arms and billowing past the collar of his shirt to his head, where it’s slicked back and just starting to thin. And if you don’t know him, he comes across like he sports a rather sizable chip on his shoulder.

With this in mind I ask him about his balls.

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Marie Selby Botanical Gardens’ stink-bomb flower, the Dracontium, raises a koan-like question: If a plant smells like rotting flesh in the jungle and no one’s there to smell it, does it stink?

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The overhead door to the Sarasota Boxing Club is wide open on a bright August afternoon.

I glance around the metal building, looking for fans. There are none. I look for A/C — nothing. It’s crowded. I weave my way through boxers, girlfriends, kids, trainers. I look around again for a fan, some kind of relief. I can’t feel anything but the hot, still, athletic-smelling, damp air.

A half-dozen boxers, hands taped, work the bags. The sharp staccato of the speed bags punctuated by the whump-whump whump-whump-whump of the heavy bag hits. The two boxing rings are occupied. The canvas on both looks moist, mildewed. I wipe sweat from my eyes.

A buzzer screams over my shoulder. I jump. The two heavyweights in the west ring split. Coach Harold Wilen (pictured at right) works one guy over for a minute, verbally and physically salving and invigorating, then runs to the other corner. “Some guys you slap; some guys you kiss,” Wilen, 64, tells me later.

He doesn’t have far to bend down to the fighters on the stools; the guy can’t be much over five feet. He’s all wiry, muscled energy — hair just going grey, moustache and thick glasses.

The buzzer sounds again and the two fighters rise. They walk to meet and start pounding away on each other, the heavily connecting swings adding a smack-thud contribution to the din.

The first rule of Sarasota Boxing Club is: Keep your hands up. The second rule of Sarasota Boxing Club is: Keep your chin down. The third rule of Sarasota Boxing Club is: Try to keep your ass off the canvas.

Each fighter is trying to live all three. Both are monstrous, with up to 1,000 pounds per square inch of punching power. One black, one Latino and covered in tattoos, their arms slice the air, stirring up a breeze I only imagine I can feel.

“This is not golf,” Coach says. No kidding.

BUT THIS IS home for Coach Harold Wilen. Not the place where he keeps his bed or the place he shares with a wife he no longer knows. This is the place he brings all the love and respect he has for his two life passions: boxing and helping kids.

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Not just for your ho — you can eat too!

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Webster University–Sarasota/Manatee
8043 Cooper Creek Blvd., Suite 101, University Park, 800-820-8207 or webster.edu/sarasota

People with advanced degrees earn $23,396 per year more, on average, than those with bachelor’s degrees. Time, we’re reminded, is money, and Webster University is another school that understands what this means for the returning student.

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Florida State University Regional Medical School Campus
201 Cocoanut Ave., Sarasota, 316-8120, or fsu.edu/education/regional/sarasota/default.asp

“Doctor, doctor give me the news; I got a bad case of lovin’ you…” A little classic rock throw back for all the Kid Rock fans.

Anyway — if you’re a third- or fourth-year medical school student, Florida State has one of their regional campuses down on Cocoanut Avenue. Say you’re a far-sighted medical student looking to assist medically underserved populations, or perhaps you’re just sick to death of Tallahassee. FSU’s regional campuses — of which there are eight, including two rural centers — allow clerkship directors to coordinate students’ rotations locally.

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USF Sarasota-Manatee
8350 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 359-4200 or sarasota.usf.edu

The University of South Florida is one of Florida’s top three research universities and the ninth largest university in the country, with 46,000 students on four campuses.

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Ringling College of Art and Design
2700 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 351-5100, 800-255-7695 or ringling.edu

When you talk to Ringling graduates, they’re pretty honest about their opinions regarding themselves and their education. Ringling is a world-class art and design school, with computer power rivaling that of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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