"Big Guy"

I knocked a kid out with one punch, once.

Didn't expect that, did you?

Neither did his friends. They stared at him on the ground, stared at me, and scattered to the four winds.

Neither did I. I stared at him on the ground, stared at my fist, though fuck, I killed him -- and scattered right after them.

My stepdad surveyed the little stick-figure of a stepson he'd inherited and told me if you ever get into a fight, punch first. Of course, this was after he taught me how to make a fist. Before he did that, I'd tuck my thumb into it. Good thing I never tried to punch anything like that.

I took his advice to heart. I tried very hard not to get in fights, and to be honest usually I didn't realize I was in a fight until I'd already taken the first punch (and like as not burst into tears, clouding my already iffy vision and making me even easier pickings). But that day...in the Berkshire Club in London, fifteen years old...

Some kids were picking on me. I was shooting pool with a friend of mine, and these strange kids were picking on me, for reasons unknown to me but perfectly understandable to a wide range of bullies dating back seven years or so. They were doing things like pulling the cue out of my hand as I was lining up a shot, or "accidentally" hip-checking me, or picking up the balls on the table and rolling them around. Then throwing them at me. After one bounced off my head, I'd had enough. My friend -- Tim, his name was -- ran to find an adult to intervene, while I drew what little there was of me to draw up and started yelling at the primary bully. His eyes flashed in a way I'd seen countless times: some people only fully come alive when they're beating somebody up. Seven years of bullshit like this had coalesced in my gut and suffused my entire body. I found myself in a red haze.

Time slowed.

I saw his hand beginning to come up, a fist beginning to form.

If you ever get in a fight, punch first.

I shot my own fist out and it connected with his chin. It hurt me. It hurt him worse. Down he went as if poleaxed. For about a second and a half I felt a grim and steely, glorious feeling: this is what it's like to win for a change.

Then I almost puked. Then I ran.

There's a scene in one of the Callahan's Place novels by Spider Robinson very similar to this, except it's  a knife attack, the little nerd--who's actually a tall beanpole of a nerd called Long-Drink McGonnigle--flicked his jacket off and out and caught the knife in it, and then rather than knock his assailant out, he actually stuck him and killed him. McGonnigle goes through the exact same sequence of emotions...a shot of glory, followed by the realization that he was no better than the people who had battened on him--a deep, shameful feeling that hurts worse than any punch. Then the fear. I didn't kill the little prick who had been pissing me off, but I thought I had. Reading that scene all those years later, I thought, my god, somebody gets it.

I haven't exactly shunned violence all my life, because it often seemed to come and catch me unawares. But I have -- with that notable exception -- shunned perpetrating acts of violence, against things (pointless) or people (painful). Vandalism of any kind has always outraged me, dating back to earliest childhood, and violence against people, even on a screen, well, I used to react as if I was the victim.

Take that mindset and mix it thoroughly with the aftereffects of seven years of relentless bullying. I am a veteran of the "-ies". Wedgies, swirlies, wet willies and noogies, along with (so far as I know) unnamed acts like being inverted and shoved face first into a full garbage can, or that fun game where you're pushing backwards by Bully A while Bully B crouches on hands and knees behind you so you go arse over tip. Notebooks confiscated and soaked or shredded so often I just stopped using them. Lunches pulled out of my lunch box and stepped on. And of course simple but very effective random punches, slaps, and ball-squeezings. Every man knows what it is to be kicked in the nuts: I'm here to tell you some things are worse.

You end up with an ironclad belief in your place in the world. You are small fry. The Big Guys of the world fuck with you for sport. At first you resent it...eventually you have little choice but to accept it.

My parents put me in karate lessons. They got me a black belt membership that must have cost them a great deal of money. I never got a black belt. I never got any kind of belt. I learned a couple of katas and how to block high, middle and low (a lesson I wish I'd learned years and years earlier), so it wasn't a complete waste of time. But despite my Sensei taking a special interest in me, I could never manage to kick much above knee level, and as far as touching my toes in the stretching exercises beforehand? Forget it. Which is what I did with the karate soon after.

I have it on medical authority that this is a consequence of being more than two months premature, or more precisely the lack of physiotherapy for preemies in 1972. Stretching would help, for me, but I will never be as flexible as the average person.

To recap: constantly picked on, made the victim of pointless violence, completely inflexible, with (oh, yeah) poor eyesight and zero eye-hand co-ordination. Glasses, which were treated very differently in the 1980s. Slightly effeminate, which of course made me a faggot. You get the picture. Probably the scariest thing is that I could go on.

But I didn't.

__________

We haven't bought a pizza from Pizza Pizza for more than ten years now.

Eva's brother Jim was over, and here I have to stop dead.

Jim is the kind of guy who strikes fear into me. He was employed as a bouncer in a bar at 17..a scant few years later, when some asshole decided to break a 2X4 over his head, Jim responded by saying "that wasn't smart" and throwing the jerk through a door.

I once watched Jim carry a couch up a flight of stairs. A full sized couch. By himself.  Jim Hopf is quite simply the anti-Ken.

(He's also a devoted and loving father and husband, gruff but beyond gentle unless provoked, with a quick wit and unassailable loyalty, among many other qualities. But what you get from a glance at him is this: don't get into any kind of pissing contest with me, because I will outpiss you without unzipping.)

Anyway, we we had ordered pizza and wings. It didn't get here on time. When it did, it was cold. So we sent it back. And when the delivery guy came back up the walk, he dropped the wings... and picked them up and stuffed them back into the box and handed the box to me. He also said something derogatory about Eva.

You don't do that around me. You don't disrespect someone I love.

I puffed up. Jim told Eva later that it was at that point he truly understood that I loved his sister very much...and also that there was more to me than he'd seen.

I'm sure that little confrontation wouldn't have come to blows. I threatened Pizza Prick's job and I threatened his boss with widespread media exposure, but I didn't threaten his safety.

But you know, I guess I can look threatening. I'm still kind of surprised at that. It's happened a few times since and bigger people with, you know, muscles actually retreat. I tend to forget that: it doesn't jibe with the image I still have of myself. I'm as pacifistic as they come, really...a lover, not a fighter.

But I'll fight for what I love. And I'll damn well fight for who I love.

My other love says I have the strongest hands she's ever seen. She's almost echoing Eva, who has made similar remarks over the years (but Eva's brother is Jim, which makes Eva's sincerity on this point a little hard to believe).


That love calls me "big guy", which makes my heart go pitter-pat every time. At first I figured she was just referring to that heart, which is the one part of me I've never doubted the size of. But thinking back...that may not be all she means.

I'm stronger than I look.

But smell isn't everything.