A few months ago one of my cousins asked me if I still get in fights all the time. I laughed and told him no. Actually, I get asked this question a lot, but haven't fought anyone in 6 years. Not because I don't want to kick someone's ass sometimes, but because I chose to not be that person anymore.. Friday night I was out with friends, having too many drinks and a great time. I got in a conversation that escalated and I was able to shake the shittiness of that person. I walked away after the exchange and the potential for it to go south:
"I'm a pro-life attorney"
"Oh wow, that must be complex, you must have to be guarded with that in certain circles"
"No. You're either with me or you're evil."
"Really? you don't think there are gray areas?"
"No, It's simple. You're evil"
"Well, I'm a Catholic who deals with a church that supported slavery and pedophilia. You don't think there are gray areas?"
"No, you're evil"
Now I can't say that is *verbatim as he spoke,* I mean I was definitely drinking, but that's what happened in the conversation. I walked away. Then he would look at me and tell me I was evil. Many times. I'm many things: funny, charming, gregarious, guarded, aggressive, tenacious, etc. I'm not evil. After the 4th or 5th time I yelled at him to "FUCK OFF!" in a way that would've made a needle scratch on a record if it were in a movie. Everyone in the bar looked at me like, "whoa, is everything cool Jules?" The bartender gave me another drink and I spent the night rolling my eyes in contempt at the asshole who kept calling me evil.
See, I used to fight a lot because people would push me, thinking they could take advantage of me. The thing is, I learned how to push back. I'd stand up for myself, and then for friends who needed help, and then I'd just jump in something I had no stake in. Sometimes it was the right thing to do and I'd be proud of being able to help someone out of a jam. Other times, I'd put myself in a bad situation without needing too. I learned how to beat people well and found it useful until I almost ruined my life.
What I learned from wrestling only prepares you so much for defending yourself and defeating another man. One-on-one it's very useful, but with 2 or 3 people you need to be able to back those people off as quickly as possible. Sparring is great for that, putting someone in a scissor lock isn't. Especially when his friends start kicking you in the head. I went down to Southside boxing. Hand-speed, head-speed, footing, position, repetition, evasion, deflection, countering, and technique all became my focus for the next two years. By the end of the first year I sparred for the first time at welterwight and those punches landed well. The problem is, I took a lot too. Over the next year, I learned technique. Some of it dirty and legal, some of it dirty and illegal. You remember when Mike Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear? Those headbutts happened, they hurt, and they were effective
When I went to boarding school, it was an isolating environment. With so few people, clicks formed. Mine was Mike, Nick, Omar, Sam, and Yosuke. We had each others back like a biker gang. Nick and I were close because we each had taken another person's position on the football team. Nick became QB1. He was a dirtbag friend, but he was my dirtbag. In the locker room junior year, the former QB1, Brian, confronted him in the shower, pissed that he "lost his position to a chink." I remember Nick correcting him that he "was a gook," and headbutted Brian. Coach Zappas and I held back the other players and let them settle it. It was a brutal 5 minutes. Nick beat him until we realized he wasn't going to stop. I had to pull him off and sent him to the Visiting showers so he could clean up. Brian limped out and went to the nurse's house claiming he slipped in the shower.
The guy whose position I took was a thick, bulldog of a boy named Matt. It wasn't that he was bad at his position, he just got complacent. He was pissed and rallied a bunch of other guys who liked him and came after me before study hall. I was smoking a butt with Nick and Yosuke and 4 of his thick-headed friends came at me.
I told him, "talk to me later." He refused and got really close to my face telling me he was going to kick my ass.
"You don't get to get everything you want."
I told him I get to take what I earn.
He pushed me. I put out my butt, walked up to him and headbutted him. I remember blood being in my eyes, but it wasn't my own. He grabbed his nose and dropped to his knees. I kicked him back, straddled his belly and beat him across the mouth and chest until Nick pulled me off.
Matt's friends pulled him up and took him to the nurse's house to wake her up to patch him up from a fall. I looked at my friends and told them, "I'm surprised those assholes didn't try to jump me."
Yosuke said, "They tried," Apparently, they all wanted to touch me up, but he did a showy kick to intimidate them. He was always surprised stuff like that worked because he was a slight Japanese guy, maybe 5'4" if he was lucky.
The rest of high school, we would get in encounters like that and it was OK because we were young and tough and thought it was a part of growing up. There was a time where, in front of an Eat N' Park, Omar's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend showed up threatening him, swinging a God damn chain. Omar and Nick distracted him while I snuck around and jumped on this guys' back from the roof of Omar's car. Omar was pissed at the scuff marks, but I told him that he could paint them over or get beaten with a chain. He thanked me for having his back.
The fights kept going on and I kept engaging in them through college. They would always include big egos and always ended with blood and broken cartilage. The last two in college were the following: 1) I got in a fight with a drunken SAE who harassed me about using shared stairs. He said some mean, racially charged words words and we exchanged blows. It was pointless, nasty, and I temporarily lost a contact lens in my eye. My right eye still gets dryer than it should very easily. 2) A guy who barely knew me cornered me in a basement stairwell with his friend and tried to choke me out. I was almost knocked unconscious until I put my finger in his eye and pressed. I remember hitting his frat brother in the throat and bounding up the stairs, hands shaking, not sure why that happened. The next day, I went to their fraternity meeting and asked why he came after me. He thought I was someone else - a guy who started seeing his ex-girlfriend and he wanted to kill that guy. Karma can be a bitch.
It all changed the summer of 2006. I finished college and was waiting tables. Actually, I was busy drinking at the Green Leaf and having a great time while sending out resumes, going on interviews, and avoiding too much responsibility. I hung out with work-people, friends and family from home, and visited DC on odd weekends. One weekend, I went out with my cousin-by-marriage, Nick. Nick's a nice guy, but always gets into trouble. This time, we went to a local pool hall/ strip club in Newport News called The Kat Klub. It's a dirtbag, shithole. You would think it was straight out of a movie how bad it was. The problem with that night was that we found out his ex was dancing there. He lost it. The one thing you don't do at a strip club? Get on stage. The thing Nick did at the strip club? He got on stage. He wanted to rescue her, but it was pointless. She made her choice and he was having none of it. He tried carrying her off and she pushed him away
The bouncer rushed at him to get him out. I pulled him off the stage and the bouncer came from behind me, lunged at Nick, and punched him clean in his face. Then he tried to lead my now bloody and dazed cousin out by the shirt collar. I was having none of that. I grabbed the nearest thing to me, a beer bottle, and smashed it to the point where the neck was all shards. I leapt at the bouncers' back and pushed all my weight into the guy and he fell to the ground. I sat on his back and held the bottle to his face. I told him he made a big mistake. The thing was, I was making the big mistake. Everything really slowed down because what could've happened next could end the life I was working on. There were consequences to everything I did next. My hands were shaking because I didn't know what to do next. I was in the moment where everything was supposed to go wrong. It already was, but I didn't know how to stop it. I was surprised by Nick grabbing me by the shirt collar and pulling me off the guy. He told me we needed to run and we did. We got in his beat-ass pickup truck and sped out of the parking lot with the bouncer and manager running out a few seconds after we hopped the curb.
The place was cash only, so we didn't have any record of us being there, but I still don't know what would have happened that night if Nick hadn't grabbed me off of the guy. Would I have shoved that bottle into his face? Would the manager have come out with a gun? What would happen with the cops? I never ever thought I'd be in a situation where I might go to jail, but I put myself in one without thinking. It was when I really understood how choices matter. Not just in the moment, but before a moment arrives.
I haven't gone the route of a complete pacifist, but I don't seek out those situations anymore. Now, I avoid them. I think that fire died down. Luckily I didn't burn anyone too badly.
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