James LaFond 2026
Dust Cover
In 1998, in South Baltimore, at Riverside Park, Chuck and James started Modern Agonistics, for the purpose, in Chuck’s words, “Of not being pussies,” of looking at pain and the danger posed by another man who might step up to us in this vaginal society as “no biggie; fun actually, if you think about it, and if you don’t [think about it], “a good ole blast.” Since that time, James has done a terrible job promoting the concept, and is currently haunted by a severely judgmental muse.
Before I go is a book born of two deathbed vigils, with two souls who disagreed about EVERYTHING. It is a mission based on the author’s neglect of those two people and of the mission he set for himself in 1998, along with Chuck, who he also carelessly lost contact with as life led him impulsively along.
Agonistics is an ancient term related to the training of men preparing for a sacred combat. Before I Go is intended to provide ethical and practical advice for men engaged in the combat arts for the sake of honor society experience, inner improvement and functional defense within our unmanly matrix.
Guru Rick
In July 2018, as James headed west through Pittsburgh to live in a Portland, Oregon garage, he was reunited with Rick. His only childhood friend had been busted by the FEDS for growing legal weed in Nevada and lost everything, and trying to rebuild life back in Pittsburgh, which he hated, scene of sorrow for him it had been as a homeless young man. James had given up on everything but writing, had cast aside the “fight stuff.” Seated in Rick’s Land Rover, that had no floor so that the blunts he smoked while driving could be dropped while being pulled over by cops, sat in a wife beater with a terrible little bird on his shoulder, muscular and ripped. James looked up and complimented his friend on how great he looked. Rick looked down at James, rolled his eyes and delivered these strident, searing words while glaring at the distended gut of the smaller man, “I never figured you for an eater.” James began to make excuses, torn hip and all that, and Rick calmed him, “I love you no matter what. You don’t need to make any excuses—besides, our decadent civilization selects for your ‘dad’ body type.”
“Aghh! Bro, just tell me what to do…” And Rick coached James down from 231 pounds to 155. When suffering from Covid in 2022 so bad he wanted to die, and was no longer afraid of heights and agreed to shovel snow off a steeply pitched steel roof, James was most likely delivered from the ever-thirsty Reaper by Rick’s words. Fat middle-aged men were dying.
From December 2020 thru July 2025, Guru Rick, battled cancer. He did not let his mother or Mister Grey tell James, because he wanted his old friend to enjoy the western life he could not. He battled it like a savage, refusing pain meds until a few days of hospice, riding himself to chemo on his Harley, so he could cut lanes and park on the hospital sidewalk. During their visits the two old goons watched faith, nutrition and fight videos. Rick, who spent 30 years in Vegas, had a very low opinion of MMA and its top fighters, “Some of them are nice, some are assholes. But it’s all a show. They have play dates with their kids, then pretend they hate each other. It’s going to end up like pro wrestling, with all the trash talking, like black boxing.” Then we viewed bareknuckle boxing in three conferences, “Jimmy, this is bullshit. The hands are taped up just like gloved boxing!”
I explained to Rick that the first generation of postmodern bareknuckle fighters had no idea how it used to be done, and were reverse-engineering gloved boxing and would require at least a generation to reinvent the wheel. “Dude, you coach, you’ve written hundreds of books. It’s like taking a shit for you. Clue these guys in so we can have a sport that is not GAY!”
“I don’t write combat books anymore. I’m shot, have no name, was an amateur loser—nobody will care.”
“Fucking excuses, man. Jimmy—we are almost dead—you are hanging between two sticks like a limp dick and I have to approach a slice of bread like its Everest. These young dudes who are tough enough to fight—even in these gay fucking venues—in this bitch-ruled world, they deserve some guidance. Title it Before I Go.” That was in 2023, when I was crippled.
He never wrote it. On July 14 2025, as James left the dreary east to seek the soft embrace of a western woman, not a shrew of The Beast, Rick gasped from his deathbed in his jagged whisper, “Remember, Before, I, Go.” James failed to say good bye, hoping Rick would make it until September, and neglected to write the book. Rick, who remembered the name of every high school mate, had become friends with “Jim” at 13, because they were both without friends and became default allies against, “this sick fucking world,” as Rick called it from age 13 to 62. Four times over 40 years James lost contact with Rick, neglecting his only childhood friend, only to be contacted by him again. After processing the remaining property of his Eskimo Father-in-law, lost to cancer, his Haida Mother-in-law to strokes, who followed close behind Rick, and Rick’s belongings sorted before his broken-hearted mother, all in 2025, passed another. Now stacking the remains of his recently deceased mother’s antique business, James is haunted increasingly by Rick, usually seated in a smoking jacket with motorcycle boots propped up on his mother’s delicate velvet ottoman. James has grown fat again, and has ironically been contacted by men interested in bareknuckle boxing.
Miss Bet
After sending Rick’s mom, Punky, a very kind letter concerning the passing of her son, James’ mom, who disapproved of all of his fighting, traveling, drinking, womanizing and writing activities, confided in him on December 21, 2025, “I want to devote the rest of my life to bringing joy to other people.” Mom was experiencing some unexplained pain. James did not halt his life to come take care of Mom, like his brother and sister did. As with Rick, he simply visited his ailing dame, who the black folks attending her, and his Jamaican fighter, Incognegro, called Miss Bet. Incognegro was crushed to hear of Miss Bet’s passing, “Just three months ago she was so sharp—and she’s gone.”
Miss Bet loved it when Incognegro and his well-behaved progeny visited, and had been looking forward to having the 14-year-old daughter help her sort her antiques, which she fancied gifting to girls and young ladies, a champion of feminist principles, that she was. Once, when Miss Bet was introduced to a very feminine slave girl by James, she bi-passed her son, hugged the buxom one, and said, “Oh, baby, I am so sorry!”
“About what?” wondered the soft one.
“You are dating my son—and not the good one! If you need anything, call me.”
She then turned to James, who she refused to name anything but ‘Jimmy,’ doing her best on behalf of the delicate world to quash the ego of the beast she brought into it, “Please be good to her!”
So, the day Incognegro was informed that his children had inherited 500 antique books, and that Miss Bet had passed, he asked James, “Does this mean I don’t get invited over anymore? I got the distinct impression that I have made so many appearances at Miss Bet’s, especially when you are always reminding, ‘bring the children,’ so that your mom’s liberal heart might experience some joy on your account.”
We have been marooned in a world that is so configured as to turn us against each other. On Miss Bet’s passing, at 127 AM, Monday, May 4, when the errant son who had barely returned in time to hear her last gasp, woke from her bedside, alone, to summon the nurse, that hoarse rasp of a once articulate philosophical foe signaled the passing of exactly fifty years of ethical debate that never descended to hate. This reminded him that Rick had as yet been unappeased, and that Miss Bet most certainly agreed, as she had declared from her hospital bed and hospice bed, “You know, you are such a Neanderthal!”
This is the one thing upon which Miss Bet and Guru Rick agreed. To satisfy both these closest ghosts requires some workable form for Neo-Neanderthals to combatively interact in a fashion that will benefit woman kind. Miss Bet had often expressed confidence that her son would not harm women. In hospital, when the kind African Nurse, who should have been named Nubile, entered Miss Bet’s curtained alcove to check on her, James turned down the sound on the bare-knuckle championships. [Miss Bet had grown too feeble to handle the remote, so Women’s College Basketball was swept away by ring card girl festooned Polish MMA.] The goonson admired the miracle of curvaceous improbability before him, to which, Miss Bet, in extreme agony as she was, took note, and said, “So nice to see you. Have you met my eldest son?”
The woman looked over her shoulder, causing him to momentarily stop trying to figure out if one of her thighs was thicker than her waist, and observed, “Oh, I see, Miss Bet. Your son is standing strong vigil over you,” with a knowing grin.
“Exactly, there you have it, a cave man. We do need strong men, don’t we?”
“Yes Miss Bet,” agreed the nurse.
Such are the ghosts that rasp and glance [Rick never talks in the writer’s dreams, but uses telling glances] in the fitful nights of a writer yet to find success, stuck in the body of a fighter who has fared far less.
I will do my best, this late spring and early summer of 2026, to translate a codex of traditional manly activity, functional and relevant within this world that demands we instead be a sissy. I promise, Miss Bet, that not a woman will be harmed or affronted, which my caveman brain reckons is not possible since they won’t be there.
-JL, from Miss Bet’s card playing chair, where she was known as “Bad Betty,” Wednesday Morning, 5/6/26
