Fight Me IRL Bro
Come At Me

I have never been in a fight, in all my years of life and experiences of "What are you lookin' at?!" I became a fan of mixed martial arts a couple of years ago, via a backwards Jordan-Peterson-to-Joe-Rogan path, and for the first time I understand sports fandom: you wish it was you, you think it is you, sinking the three pointer or popping up Overeem's recessed chin with your balled up hand and rotating his brain into unconsciousness. But I understand something else now: you really don't want to fight someone who can fight – who is athletic (strong, fast, good endurance) and experienced, and perhaps some other ineffable quality having something to do with social skills (this is my weird theory – that fighting is necessarily relational and if you're a social creature you do better at it). Now, it seems like more people can fight, so staring contest risks have gone up. But this is what guns are for, or even a dagger in a necklace sheath for when some Jiu Jitsu blue belt is simulating a sex act with you on the cold hard ground. Of course you go to jail for murder or malicious wounding or disturbing the peace, but you Remain a Man.

In preschool, every day a gang of kids chased me on the blacktop, and I ran. I guess they did it because I gave off signals of weakness – unwillingness/inability to defend myself – that predatory children picked up on. One day I gave up, stopped, started crying, and uncontrollably blurted out some words I don't specifically remember but that I think expressed a release of tension, how upset I was, "go ahead, do your worst," or "how could you?" I do specifically remember some words by one of the kids, a girl: "Well at least we made him cry." What else did they want to do, for which making me cry was an acceptable substitute? Another event I wish I could go back in time and alter. This is why I don't like people: their natural instinct is to attack the weak, like Sun Tzu. I feel like if I'd realized that early, or been told that, things would have or could have been better. Standing up to attack just didn't occur to me, and it might be too late for me to really learn this. I guess this is a kind of stupidity.

Then there was Allen. Allen was a dumb American kid, and he looked genetically odd – he had a big upper body, small lower body, kind of a squished face, and waddled around like a gorilla on its hind legs. We went to public school together all the way up through high school and lived in the same apartment complex. He loved football and pro wrestling, and said to me, after I had suggested wrestling was fake, "Wrestlemania 2?! That shit is REAL." One day, for no good reason, Allen followed me on the sidewalk home from school, said "I'm sick of [something or other...my face?]...I'm sick of YOU," and started punching at my head. I didn't know what to do – defending myself didn't occur to me, just as it had not that day in preschool with the pack of kids chasing me or countless other times where someone attacked me verbally. Luckily these were little kid punches that didn't do much. I sometimes fantasize violently about these scenarios – about going back in time with the ability and desire to hurt people, but those fantasies often realistically end with expulsion or jail or etc.

I don't want to sound like I'm bitter or angry at Allen and want to slander him, but I am and will. In high school I think most people were kind of aware that he was borderline retarded or inbred or something; his father had worked as a janitor at our elementary school, and wore a long beard, back in the 80s, before long beards were normalized somewhat. I asked him, "Are you Allen's father?" and he nodded a solemn yes. Someone told me Allen was the first in his family to graduate from high school. I saw him years later in Gaithersburg, after I had gotten fat, and he mirthfully accused me of being a beer drinker. I said no, just too much food, and he replied "Yeah, and BEER!!!". Still later he was my Facebook friend and commented on my posts exclusively with emojis. I think he ended up doing something like contractor work...drywall and stuff like that. Allen has his own story featuring unique complexity and pain and joy (he once posted on Facebook that he missed his brother), but here he's just Allen the Inbred Hulkamaniac.

In 9th or 10th grade, a friend, Max, and I were on a sleepover, and we snuck out to climb onto the roof of an outdoor strip mall. We saw some people and their car in the parking lot below, and thought it would be fun or funny to throw tiny rocks at them. We did, and heard "We're coming up to kick your ass!" We didn't think anything of it til three "headbangers" – long-haired, earring-wearing tough kids who listened to Motley Crue et al until hip hop took over that sociological slot around about 1990 – climbed up onto the roof with us.

They were mad, or pretended to be. One threw a looping punch at me and I ducked it perfectly and instinctively; my finest moment, ever, in life. Another punch caught me on the ear but didn't do much at the time. Then for some reason, the three of them (there were two of us, the rock throwing sleepover mates) backed off and said something like "Don't you EVER think of trying to fight back again!" After they left we heard the banging of a car having its body beaten in, and we surmised that the headbangers were destroying what they thought was our car (we had walked to the strip mall from Max's house). Max later told me it looked at the time of the incident like I was getting into a martial artsy stance, unbeknownst to me, and I did duck that punch like Jackie Chan. So I dunno...maybe some instincts were kicking in, and the three headbangers thought better of what might have happened if they'd pushed it further. That's a fantasy, anyway. My ear was black and blue the next day at school, and Max and I cooked up the story that he'd whapped me on the head with a pillow and the zipper had caught me. My friend Phil said that this had been obvious as a lie after I told him what really happened.

Maybe also in 9th or 10th grade, Phil and I were accosted while we walked home from another strip mall (these were and are sort of the essence of Gaithersburg). Some Black kids thought, or said they thought, they had seen us at a party the night before and that there had been some words exchanged or altercation or something, and didn't believe our denial even though it was the truth. I remember the words "...'cause he was with his boys" (maybe just one of us was suspected, but now, there was guilt by association), in a mocking performative tone, to explain why we had acted the way we supposedly had. Their reasoning for not accepting our defense of mistaken identity was: why would you allow us to stand here talking to you at length over this if it had not in fact been you? In other words, a random disinterested victim of mistaken identity would have said "hehe no" and walked away immediately when asked, as opposed to standing there grounded by the demands of discourse; pretty shaky argument, in my opinion, but maybe there was something to it and it was weird that we stood there interacting instead of immediately leaving. We were intimidated though, and when you're intimidated you stand there. One of the Black kids punched Phil in the head, not very hard I guess, but no one did anything to me. A couple of days later Phil and I armed ourselves with sticks when we made another trip to the outdoor mall (I don't remember what we were doing either time...buying candy? Playing arcade games? Renting VHS movies? Something like that), but didn't see anyone.

And, later: I was in the McDonald's parking lot, waiting for my aunt, when a panhandler decided he didn't like me. I have theories on why: 1) he thought I was a fellow panhandler standing around aimlessly dressed in sweatpants and flannel and whiskers, and this was his turf, or less plausibly 2) he was a shop owner I had bought from then disparaged on Yelp, who had threatened me via private Yelp message and then recognized me in real life, which is not as crazy as it sounds – that owner had said he used to be homeless and in fact had "never left" the streets, plus he sort of looked like the bum in the parking lot. I'm now pretty sure it was just #1 though. Anyway, he approached after I got into my aunt's car, punched the air near my half-open car window, called me a bitch, then said to "get out of here!" as he walked briskly away. I just opened my eyes wide and made a "what the heck?" shrugging gesture.

But probably the worst was when a visibly drunk maybe 60 year old Black man deliberately bumped into me while I was browsing in a bookstore. I looked over at him to see what was going on, and he stalked back and said "Do you want to say something to me?!" with a furious countenance. I managed to meep out "Maybe you should watch where you're going". He replied with some recital on how he was a Vietnam vet and could go off at any time, etc. I think he was drunk and disturbed, and wanted to pick a fight with the biggest guy he saw, which was me. Or, I reminded him of some demon. I think he was waiting for me to take a swing -- a test, which in retrospect and with a more logical writer's mind, I believe I passed, although I think about this incident a lot and how I might have responded less fearfully. But the fact is, I don't know how to fight. I don't know how to defend myself. And even if I did, I would be too scared to do a punch or kick or takedown or whatever. So maybe appearing afraid and just saying "yes, sir" til the assailant's ego is fattened and he goes away is the best course, even though it feels bad for years.

As has been documented several times, I don't respond violently. This might be good, but this might also be bad, because it seems to extend into utterly failing to defend myself when I should, although I have instinctively stood up for people a few times, including one super cool incident at a concert where I broke up a fight. But it stands in contrast, and maybe has a lot to do with my gothic fantasies of horror movie calibur, eye-gougey, face-bitey violence against people who have antagonized me in any way. Inner therapist says my inability to stand up for myself even in mild "Hey, I don't like that" ways has generated these fantasies. I just need to remember to say something – anything – if someone is doing something I don't like. "Hey, I don't like that...please stop" works. It doesn't matter if my voice shakes or it doesn't come across as cool or professional or adult or whatever. I wish I could have learned that early, and I hope I can remember and execute it from now on.

I did Taekwondo for maybe 18 months around 1991 or 1992, attaining the rank of "Dan Bo" – the belt before black – but I think the school was not good and/or I was not good at fighting. I was good at executing the kicks and maneuvers, and I treated it more like a body movement or dance class than a fighting system, which I believe was encouraged. That said, I also believe (and saw some evidence of it) that if you're good they pull you aside and enter you in tournaments on the school's behalf, which did not happen to me. Some of the McDojo'ism (McDoJANG, technically, since TKD is Korean) was my fault, but not all of it. I never wore or was encouraged to wear a cup or mouth guard, in all my months there. Once I was sparring with a long haired muscle bound guy and he kicked me hard and straight ahead with a side kick or back kick – WHAM – right between my legs while they were spread with my foot in the air. By some grace he hit me harmlessly on my sit bones, and we just stood there staring at each other for a while, contemplating the potential gravity of that situation. Another time I got slapped in the face by a crescent kick by a pointy hyper-intelligent science student who was there with his kind hearted headband-wearing father, and was apologized to. Yet another time I gently wheel kicked a middle aged Iranian woman in the head and apologized as she complained of dizziness. She was a religious devotee of the schoolmaster, and said at one point that she had "dedicated her life to one person." Yet another time – the only time at that school I wore a padded jacket – I was sparring with Nick, one of my first and longest-held American friends, shortly after having (temporarily) dumped him in concert with Phil, and he basically and I think angrily kicked my butt, although he didn't hit very hard. But he connected much better than me and seemed to have an organic sense of "the fight," at least in a point sparring sort of way, rather than just a series of disjointed artistic leg flexibility exercises, which was sort of how I regarded Korean Karate. My only injury in my year of Taekwondo came from overstretching my right hip, which was exacerbated in Yoga many years later and now pops deliciously sometimes. So yeah...I think mostly the fault was mine, as opposed to the school catering to children and suburbanites and other people who didn't want to get hit in the face with flying feet. I'll probably never know for sure, but I think I would be bad at fighting.

In 2018 I tried Jiu Jitsu. In group class I got confused and frustrated attempting some drills and left in a huff, telling them it was not for me, but I arranged a private lesson with the second-in-command, an ex-military guy with a mohawk and tattoos, who I'm pretty sure was homaging Connor McGregor and who told me he might have fought in the UFC were it not for some circumstances. I liked him, and we got along. We did some stuff: I was in the "mount" position, which is to say I was on top of him with his legs in the air and my genitals noticeably against his anal region, and he was just talking to me cheerfully as if there was nothing at all weird about this. I guess I'm just a homophobe, or a homo, or something. He did a weird thing where he seemed to purposefully hit his head on my knuckles, and I reflexively apologized. He didn't react. He had me do an ankle pick type maneuver – grab his leg and lift it up to get him down – and he said I did this well, that he had tried to make it difficult but I had succeeded in spite of this; yay for me. We were talking about headlocks and how they are not really effective or useful, and I saw a sort of opening or possibility where I could just pick up his legs and drop him on the ground, and demonstrated this (he was much smaller, although in better shape and scarier looking). But mostly, the mnemonic takeaway was that he bruised my trachea with a choke. I didn't notice at the time but it swelled up later, and I visited the doctor, who was horrified at my choice of recreational activities but liked that a fat guy was exercising. I think a Jiu Jitsu class could be fun although injurious, even if it didn't amount to anything practical; it's hard to feel lonely when you're in such intimate, ahem, contact.

I have issues around fighting; I've never done it and I question my masculinity. Because I was always a pussy and wouldn't defend myself even when I should have, I maintain "Fight Club" fantasies of "I can't possibly be a proper man if I've never been in a fight." That's silly but what is true, I think, is that you can't be a proper human if you don't stand up for yourself in some way. Now my leg is messed up, and I've been watching MMA and realize I don't know anything. I'd have to cheat in a fight, which I guess is really the thing to do – I think there's a notion that fighting is some kind of noble contest where you square off and tap out, but really it's more about slamming heads into the ground, running over people in the parking lot, or drone strikes on elementary schools.

I don't know how I'd react to killing someone. I fantasize about it when I get angry, but I don't know how it'd play out for me psychologically. Briefly in the early 2000s I tried out the first person shooter videogame "Counterstrike" on my Windows laptop. The first time I needed to shoot a non-player character, I couldn't -- I experienced a painful resistance that caused me to wince and felt almost like a physical barrier. After a few seconds I overcame it, pulled the trigger, and didn't have that problem anymore. So maybe real life would be like this but more so; I think soldiers have told similar stories, about how killing gets easier. But it's nice to have some evidence of not being a complete psycho.