Hello, children. I am Brother Grim. Would you like to hear a true story?
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BOXING DAY
Once upon a time there was a young woman named Jennifer. Jennifer lived in a place known far and wide as the City of Angels, which Jennifer liked because she considered herself a Born Again Christian, and living in a city of angels was fine by her.
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Jennifer lived with a man named Robert. They met in church and were married a year later. The day after their first Christmas together, she found Robert’s secret briefcase hidden in the apartment bedroom closet.
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The briefcase was large, hard shelled and had a combination lock with three numbers on rotating dials set side by side. It was very heavy. She shook it gently, but didn’t notice any peculiar movement. She had no idea what was in it.
She tried to open it (of course), but it was locked and she could not open it. That is when she realized the brief case belonged to Robert, because she would have remembered buying something that could lock.
She put the briefcase back where she found it and walked away.
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But the next day she was in the closet again looking at the secret briefcase. She looked closely and noticed that the numbers on the combination had changed. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. She memorized the number combination showing – 0-8-7 – and placed the briefcase back in the closet.
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A week later, she checked and saw that the numbers had changed to 4-2-7. This meant that at least twice in as many weeks, Robert had opened the lock, gone into the briefcase, and jumbled the numbers when he relocked it. So Jennifer began to check the briefcase every day. Every day she tried to open it, just in case Robert forgot to jumble the numbers to set the lock.
One day the briefcase opened.
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Inside, Jennifer found a pair of musty, sweaty boxing gloves, a stack of magazines and some video cassettes. Tucked into one of the organizer pockets inside the briefcase, Jennifer found a bunch of letters from men addressed to Robert at his office.
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Jennifer read the letters and looked through the magazines. She even watched one of the videos. The magazines and videos showed men – and sometimes women – boxing and wrestling.
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Jennifer learned from the letters that Robert would regularly go to the Olympic Gym near Downtown L.A., rent a boxing ring, and box with strange men—rarely the same man twice.
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The Olympic Auditorium then.
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They’d punch and pound and smack each other and then afterwards they would perform unnatural, sinful acts upon themselves as the other watched. The letters would end with promises that the writer would inflict great bodily harm upon Robert the next time they met at the gym.
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Naturally Jennifer confronted Robert about her awful discovery. She let him come home to find her sitting on their bed with the briefcase open, reading his letters.
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Robert admitted everything—the boxing and the unspeakable, sinful acts. He admitted that he lied to Jennifer – that when he said he was working on weekends he was really meeting strange men at the Olympic Gym.
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Robert admitted lying about playing rugby as a subterfuge to explain the injuries he sustained boxing.
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That night Jennifer slept at her friend’s house and the next day she moved her things out of the apartment she shared with Robert. She resolved that her marriage with Robert was over because lying, Jennifer knew, is a sin.
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The Olympic Auditorium now.
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