PORTLAND, Maine — Marlintini’s was a sprawling, raucous bar in southeast Alaska, and in the early 2000s when one could still light up a cigarette without breaking the law it had a permanent haze of smoke above tables filled with hard-drinking customers who came to watch the fights. The fights didn’t break out on the street; they were part of the entertainment, ten or twelve bouts featuring boxers from throughout the region, all part of a monthly event called Roughhouse Friday.
Jaed Coffin grew up in Brunswick and worked for a while on a lobster boat, but in his early twenties the currents and eddies of an unsettled life carried him to Alaska, where he started to box in a small-town gym. It was a revelation. “I had never been hit like that before, but I did not experience the impact as pain,” he writes in his new memoir. “I felt as though the man’s punches were trying to tell me something, tapping out their message in code.”
What happened to Coffin in and out of the ring in Alaska makes for a compelling story, one he tells in his book called, fittingly, “Roughhouse Friday.” An introspective and well-educated young man, he tried to make sense of his life through barroom boxing and its promise of something crude yet pure: “You go into a bar, take off your shirt, and show everyone how tough you are.”
Marlintini’s closed several years ago, taking with it the tradition of Roughhouse Friday. Coffin has done his part to keep the memories alive. “I think it’s important that we keep telling these stories, “ he says. “They’re rare experiences that not everyone has.”
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