"SPAH."
Huh?
"Spah."
I'm talking to Caña, my Dominican trainer, as we stand in the center of the Church Street Boxing Gym, a windowless meat locker two stories below ground in downtown Manhattan. Since I've been training here for eight months, three days a week, I'm fluent in Caña's broke-tooth version of English. R's become h's. T's are dropped. "Uppercut" is "oopah-cooh." And much to my disbelief, Caña is saying that he actually, finally, wants me to engage in glove-to-glove combat—to "spar."

A frizzy-haired macho man in his late thirties who appears to subsist solely on grapes, Caña tosses me a groin protector. On goes the padded diaper, the moronic-looking headgear, the heavy lace-up gloves.

The other people in the gym—the heavy-footed Asian and the crazy Cuban shadow boxer, the southpaw heavyweight from Togo and the gym's one (classy, raven-haired, Italian) woman—continue their speechless workouts. A few clinch the five leather heavy bags hanging in a line from the grimy ceiling. One person rhythmically paddlewheels a speed bag in the corner while another grabs his sweaty clothes from the bank of creaky metal lockers on the parapet above the ring.

With the A/C either nonexistent or broken, three propeller fans strain to keep the cavernous den less than sweltering in the summertime heat. Faded cutouts from Boxing Digest, newspaper clippings, and old title-bout posters cover the once-white walls, earlier champs staring down stoically, reminding me that boxing is a lonely sport pursued in a crowd.

For months, I've pictured this day with all the anticipation of a debutante imagining her lakeside wedding. I'll take my corner and refuse the small stool, preferring instead to stand and shake out my muscular arms. Just before the buzzer, I'll nod to my cornerman, who'll give me a squirt of water. I'll bump gloves with my brawny opponent and then...bggggt! I'll probably get my ass kicked. But at least I'll have finally sparred, joining the ranks of the mute, nameless badasses I've been training with.

A sound interrupts my reverie: "Hello."

I turn to face the voice and discover that it's coming from a polite-looking, thirty-something white guy with a goofy smile and bony elbows.

"Where are you from?" he asks.