Chapter 1, The Fight, and After.

“Everything Is a Weapon”

This is fiction. While the opening is based on a true story, (see my “Everything is a Weapon” on this site, ) It has been highly fictionalized.

I may decide to continue this, but I’m not sure where it should go. Any Ideas?

“Hey! Faggot!”

Just great, Tony was starting up again, and I’d had way too much of his shit lately. I was seriously sick of it. Four months into the school year, and he hadn’t found something else to attract his unwelcome attention yet. I’d had about all of those attentions I could stand, and I needed to do something about it.

I’d complained to the coaches in our Athletics class, the only class we had in common, and was told to: “Suck it up!” I’d complained to the counselors in Administration, and was asked: “Is it true? Are you a Homosexual? If it’s not true, and you that, what’s the problem? If it is true, then, again, what’s the problem?” This was the early Seventies in an unfashionable part of California, and Bullying laws wouldn’t even be heard of for decades yet. These days, those answers would have resulted in heads rolling in the coaching counseling staffs, and very probably in the school administration as well as a lawsuit and hefty fines. Back then it was “just what kids do.”

Add to that a certain ... ambiguity as to my own sexuality. Heavily closeted and never admitted to ANYONE, of course, and we have a somewhat explosive mix. Not gay, but not sure yet, either. Girls were starting to become very attractive. They were growing up, and out, in very interesting ways, and were starting to jiggle in ways that did odd and enjoyable things to my psyche. But I’d never, at that time, touched one “with intent.” I also knew that boys were getting interesting in different ways, and were a whole lot more available. I’d conducted some experimentation with friends that I could trust, and had found it very enjoyable, if not a steady diet. Leave it to say that I hadn’t expressed a full preference yet, and may not have known myself, which side I’d come down on.

I was a big and beefy kid. As a high school freshman I was over six feet tall, and about a hundred forty pounds. Tony, my nemesis, was actually a bit bigger, probably six foot one or two, around a hundred sixty pounds. Neither of us were actually huge, but definitely big for our ages.

I had another characteristic that attracted sometimes unwanted attention. I was always at the top of, or significantly beyond my classes academically. I found the standard subjects taught in the schools to be easy to handle and presented in at painfully slow pace. I loved learning new things, but the structure of the school just wasn’t capable of dealing with me and my talents. My homework was always done well ahead, to a standard well above what the teacher had asked, (if you don’t know which book questions the teacher is going to ask for, might as well answer them all.) Whenever the teacher asked me a question in class, I had the right answer, even if that wasn’t the one in the book, and I had proof as to why that answer was right. Yes, arrogant, I know, but I was a kid and didn’t know any better, and wasn’t observant enough to know why the rest of the class usually exhibited hostility. Some of that hostility broke out into open physical confrontations. After the first couple of times, this became something new and interesting to learn, and again, I began to excel. The confrontations became tedious, though. I came to a decision. I’d leave athletic competition to those that needed it. After all I had other paths to success available. This turned out to be a (mostly) successful strategy. My reputation became that while I didn’t start any fights, I always ended them. Quickly. “Don’t poke the sleeping bear,” seemed to be the consensus. It was a successful strategy until we transferred districts just before high school started.

At the beginning of the year we met to set classes and schedules. I was looking forward to trigonometry and physics classes. The first desk inside the hall was for the Athletics program, and it was manned by the football coaches. They took one look at my beefy six-foot plus frame and drooled, picturing me prominent on the ‘Front Four’ of a future football squad. Something I had exactly NO intention of pursuing. I think Heinlein’s quote about “sadistic gorillas in hobnail boots, jumping up and down on my chest” had something to do with that.

“Hey, kid! C’mere!” one called to me. “You wanna play football!” (Note: Not a question.) “You’ll love it!” The coach in question took my currently empty schedule sheet, and signed me up for the Athletics course, the feeder course for the school sports teams, before I could object.

“Well,” I told myself, “it’s a PE credit. I have to take one anyway. I might as well try it out. Maybe I’ll learn something new.”

At the first class meeting I met Tony. We were the two biggest in the class, and both apparently destined for the football team. (I still had no interest, but I couldn’t convince anyone of that.) I don’t know what his thought process was, (if any, ) or who he talked to and what was said, but Tony was apparently of the opinion that he had to severely dominate whoever was second to him in order to secure his social position, and that would make the rest of his life go pretty well.

The abuse began in that moment.

“Hey, faggot!” were the first words I ever heard out of his mouth. I remember that my initial reaction was confusion. Did I know this guy? I didn’t think so. I did as I’d been trained to do and ignored him. That wasn’t the end of it though. Not by a long shot.

Since I’d given up interest in athletic pursuits, I really wasn’t very good at them. That’s polite. The truth is that I really sucked at them. Couldn’t throw, couldn’t catch, and I ran slow. Tony vigilantly watched and waited to leap on each of these failings, and loudly proclaimed them to anyone who would listen as further evidence of my ‘faggotry.’ He was really invested in trying to dominate me, and was starting to work his way through my defenses.

On this particular day the coaches had a meeting. I never knew, nor was I interested in learning, what that meeting was about. The important part was that they left us to our own devices in the locker room. So naturally Tony decided to start in on his favorite entertainment. Me.

“Hey! Faggot! Yeah, you know I’m talking to you! Don’t you dare ignore me!” he shouted.

I don’t know what made this time different from literally hundreds of others. Maybe it was the lack of adult supervision, maybe it was the phase of the moon or alien influence. Maybe it was just “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Whatever the reason, I snapped. I’d made my decision. I wasn’t going to take his shit any more. Ever. I’m seriously not proud of what I did next.

“Faggot, huh?” I shot back. “do you even know what that means? I seriously doubt it. You don’t strike me as bright enough to know what you’re talking about, ever. You just repeat animal noises you’ve heard shouted at you!”

“Huh?” he said. This was going seriously off-script for him. When you bullied someone, the victim was supposed to run away, cry, surrender, try to reason with you. Some weak response. Not get up on his hind legs, get into your face and hit you with in surprisingly weak spot. “Ya know, weak, slow, geeky. Faggot!” He thought he was on stronger ground here.

“First, asshole,” I replied hotly, “that’s not what the word means. Particularly not when you use it. Second, If I’m so weak, slow, and faggoty, take your best shot! Prove what a big man you are, try to beat me down!”

“What?” He was seriously in the weeds now. Again, the bullied was supposed to run away or surrender, to acknowledge your superiority. Not demand a beating.

“Go ahead. Take your best shot,” I taunted slowly, as if I was explaining a difficult concept to a child. Probably not far off, really. “Show everybody here who the faggot is.”

Since time immemorial, when two guys get to raising voices at each other, and violence starts to crackle in the air like electricity before a lightning storm, a fight ring forms. The uninvolved and bystanders sense some bloody entertainment about to begin and flock around. Not too close, you wouldn’t want to get involved in the action, but close enough to get a good view. Our ring was forming, there in that locker room.

Tony saw that he was gathering an audience. He didn’t want to be seen as the bad guy, and may even have been able to walk this very confusing situation back, if a voice from the ring hadn’t shouted: “Beat the faggot down!” He was looking out at the ring, judging their temper and attitudes. I was a veteran of many such scraps, so I was watching his eyes and body language. I saw his first moment of decision. He was going to try to save some face.

He said, “Fine, you want me to beat you down? Meet me...” He was probably going to set someplace out of general adult view. I didn’t give him the chance.

I interrupted him. “Trying to back down? Chicken shit faggot! Right here! Right now! Or shut the fuck up, forever! What’s wrong? Afraid of the geek? Come on!” I shouted. “Faggot!” Yeah, they was definitely over the line. I had a plan, and in support of a combat plan everything is a weapon. Particularly the things that your opponent thinks can’t be turned against them.

Again I saw the decision in his eyes. His posture changed as he committed to his strike. He thought it was a game-ending sucker punch, but I’d seen it coming before he moved. He swung a right haymaker with a loose fist. I turned slightly to my right side and took the punch on my upper left arm. I felt the punch, but it did no real damage. It was his first and last solid strike of the fight. I needed that for a couple of reasons. I needed for all of the witnesses to see that he had swung first, and that the punch landed. When the inevitable investigation happened there would be no question of who started things. I also used this strike to judge what kind of a fighter I was up against. He had strength, that could not be denied, but he had obviously always relied on size and intimidation when things got physical, if they ever had for him. He had little experience and almost no skills. We really had no business being in the same fight, but just as he’d committed, so had I.

I opened up on him with a head-rattling, right cross to his jaw. This dimmed his lights for a few seconds and loosened a few of his teeth. Unbeknownst to either of us, I’d cut a knuckle on one of those teeth. That was the only injury he managed to inflict on me that day. I still bear the scar, though.

He came out with a straight jab. I ducked under, locked his elbow, and used it as a pivot to swing his whole body, banging his back into the corner of a bank of lockers. Use what providence offers, after all.

He attempted a right-hand body blow. I blocked it easily, and followed up with a kick to his balls. Might as well get this farce over quickly.

Popular media has some crazy ideas about hand-to-hand combat, probably because the writers have always done everything they can to avoid being in a fight. Usually they show someone take a shot to the nuts, their eyes and knees cross and they slump to the ground, out of the fight. Probably with aa low, pained moan. The truth of the matter is that while that that nut-shot will take them out, it isn’t an immediate thing. Particularly when the recipient is hopped up on adrenaline. In that case the pain will overcome them eventually, but ‘eventually’ is the operative word. There’s a good twenty to thirty seconds before it really takes effect. In that time, in a fight, an opponent can really mess you up, and has a lot of motivation to do so.

“No fair,” Tony called.

“Stupid faggot!” I shot back. “Whoever told you that any fight would ever be fair? Do you see any referees or gloves? You chose this fight! Don’t even think to cry if you can’t handle what that means!”

That got his blood up, and stopped him thinking, which was what I’d intended. In a fight everything is a weapon. The goal in a fight is putting your opponent down and rendering them ‘combat ineffective.’ Everything is to be used toward that goal, and everything that you use to achieve progress toward that goal is a weapon.

He tried a return nut shot, but I was expecting that, too, and blocked it easily. My return was a right-hand dagger punch to his solar plexus. That’s the little triangle formed by the bottom ribs right where they meet the sternum. It’s a risky shot. Too high, or off to either side, and you’ll break your knuckles. Done properly, and the strike will paralyze the victim’s diaphragm, the muscle that controls breathing, for up to a minute. It’s kind of hard to keep fighting if you can’t breathe. Like I said: Everything’s a weapon, even the very breath in his lungs. I got him right in the soft spot there. The strike takes immediate effect, but he still had a lungful of air. I needed to do something about that. The fight was really over at that point, I just needed to convince him of that.

One body blow emptied the air out of his lungs. Another jaw shot rattled him again. Okay, I admit it, that one was just purely abuse. Only for spite. Then he tried to inhale. He found that he couldn’t. I could see the panic in his eyes. It’s understandable. He had never had his own body disobey him on that kind of fundamental level before. When something that you’ve relied on and taken for granted for literally your entire life is suddenly taken away it can be a terrifying experience. But, that’s the thing about a good solar plexus shot: It takes away conscious control of the breathing reflex. That won’t kill you directly, but you sure feel like it could. Even if you pass out, your body will take over with the autonomic breathing reflex, but until you get control back, the two systems conflict and make deliberate breathing almost impossible. Your body disobeying you on such a fundamental level in the middle of a fight generally means that something has gone very wrong for you, and you need to do literally anything to get out of being where you are.