On the fistfight

I have a strange obsession with fistfights. It comes from my being bullied throughout junior high and loathing myself for not standing up to the kids who picked on me, then feeling the wonderful rush of it all after I reached high school and started to fight back. I found that I had sort of a knack for it, and I’ve since held on to that as a proud part of my identity, although I must admit that I’m probably much softer now than I was then.

Hardly an instance passes when I take a long walk in the city and something I see doesn’t flip a switch in my brain and start it reeling into daydreams — some more elaborate than others — in which an aggressor enters my midst and I am obliged to defend myself or someone else by bludgeoning him with my appendages. I imagine all sorts of variations to the initial scene, in depth and with emotion, and before I know it I’m seven blocks further along than I was. These are the things that happen in my head.

I’ve isolated two rational, almost conflicting personal perspectives on fistfights. The first is that they are a totally pointless and therefore a shameful waste of energy and misdirection of rage. I’m reminded of some Dead Prez lyrics: “You talkin’ ‘bout niggaz hatin’ on you. I’ll tell you who really be hatin’ on you: The motherfuckin’ police and the judge and the DA be hatin’ on you, nigga.”

I’m interested in violence and how it can be used constructively, and therefore I think of it often in political terms. Violence can be used constructively by freedom fighters who overthrow oppressive governments and liberate those who were previously persecuted. Violent acts can create focal points that draw the public gaze to an unjust institution, as when a militant group bombs a symbol of that organization and can communicate its rationale for the attack to the people, thus exposing the injustice. When I think of two drunk construction workers clutched in mutual brutish embrace rolling around on the floor of a bar, sweating and struggling and pawing at each other in the throes of a physical altercation, I can only think: “No, boys. Direct your anger at the State!” As long as imperialist governments are acting in tandem with multinational corporations to reap profit at the expense of and maintain power over the Third World and the international proletariat while denying the people the chance to pursue any life that is not bogged down by the tedious chase of capital, part of me thinks there is absolutely no excuse for the average person to engage in fisticuffs. Why not throw your shoe at a president instead?

On the other hand, the real possibility of an asskicking can work wonders for smartypantses and rich kids to keep them from feeling too superior (although it may be much more effective for the former — as my friend always says, “Never beat up a rich kid, because he’ll hit you with his lawyer”). I might be, according to any number of select criteria, simply and objectively better than hundreds of thousands of people. I might be smarter, savvier, more compassionate, more ethical, a better friend and son, drive a cooler car and fuck hotter lovers than what could amount to the population of an entire metropolis, but I know in my heart that, given the right circumstances, a terrifyingly large number of those people could beat the living shit out of me and there would be absolutely nothing I could do about it. I try to remember this, and when I do, it humbles me.

There will be a part of me deeply saddened if I go through the rest of my life without getting in another fistfight. I am neither a domestic terrorist nor an urban guerilla, nor do I have any idea of how to go about becoming one. I have no plans of becoming a police officer or joining the army, but I remember the pure rush of life that comes with the immediate threat of violence and the urgency to exert violence back. So, as dumb and wasteful as they may be, fistfights are really my only option.

It has been nearly five years since I got into what I would consider a real fight. I was on a porch at a college house party late at night and made a loud comment toward some of my friends who were running naked down the street. A young man leaving a party next door misunderstood me and thought I was directing an insult at him. The surliness with which he approached me in response to what had appeared to him an affront did little to persuade me to bother explaining the whole thing. There was also an underlying tension to begin with between the house he was coming from, which often hosted parties for lacrosse players and other swarthy jock types, and the house I was at, which had been christened “the Gangsta House,” because its residents were all gay and seemed constantly troubled by angst.

Some words were exchanged between the young man and myself. He reached back and in what almost seemed like slow motion swung a roundhouse right fist at my head. I leaned back to dodge the blow easily, cracked him in the face with the thick-bottomed bourbon glass I had in my hand, threw him onto the hood of a car and was about to commence pummeling when three of his friends accosted me from behind. I fell to the ground, but not without taking one of them with me. I remembered some advice once given to me by my brother, who went to West Point and actually took college classes in hand-to-hand combat: “The last thing you want,” he said, “if for a guy to straddle on top of you and start wailing on you. What you do in that situation is reach up and grab the guy by the front of his shirt, pull him down close to you, then roll him over and get on top of him.” I executed two thirds of this tactic — the grabbing of the guy and the pulling him down, so his face was right next to mine — when I realized I had probably gone far enough because the guy’s friends were attempting to kick me in the head but more often than not landed their shoes square on their buddy’s cheeks. By that time people were crowding around and, my friends at that particular place not being the type to jump into a brawl on my behalf, the situation diffused after a couple seconds and nobody really got hurt.

I long for the fistfight at the same time I loathe it, and cannot help romanticizing the times I’ve spent with it. Maybe it’s a guilty pleasure, or a childish nostalgia that would be utterly foolish of me to recreate. I imagine myself somewhere in my forties, just having divorced whatever wife I had at the time, suffering the gastric acids in the belly of some career I hate, and rather than go down to the dealership and buy a sports car or some hunking fast motorcyle to relive my youth and fulfill my mid-life crisis, I will head back to Wyoming, where fistfights are practically still legal, find a mildly tough oilfield hand and badger him until he kicks my ass.