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Chapter One
What the hell are you looking at?
Part 1
Cities are great incubators for highly evolved animal behaviors. Jam thirty rats in a space better suited for fifteen rats and you have the same sort of churlishness that was an earmark of pre-9/11 New York, where in the 1970s-80s swelter of returning Vietnam vets, junk (and the junkies to go with it), punk rock, and disco. You could find a fight as easily as a randomly exchanged glance. Reckless eyeballing, different from its Jim Crow southern variant, took on a whole different meaning in my NYC roman à clef. While this is a monograph about fighting it's also the story of a fighter. As I stood on a sidewalk a block or so off of Eastern Parkway at a rundown park on the edge of Crown Heights, I knew what I was hearing even before I knew what to do with what I had heard.
What the hell are you looking at?
Depending on your age, disposition, race, socioeconomic makeup, half-empty-half-full outlook on life, and where you come from, you're liable to do any number of things at this here juncture in time.
You:
1. Keep on walking: Not such a bad option—if you're a priest. Or David Carradine in that TV show Kung Fu. It shows a remarkably adult take on separating that which is important in life from that which is not. It also shows that you're a non-confrontational puss.
Exceptions: When you're well dressed, in a hurry, and/or with a date. These three in concert, the perfect storm of Unlikely To Roll Around In The Dirt With Morons, when in evidence will also make you a prime target for morons. Like running from a large angry dog or not snorkeling in Florida swamps, no one will think less of you for doing this.
2. Act like you didn't hear anything: This is a mere variation on number 1. A more pathetic variation, incidentally.
3. Go nuclear: You know it's coming. And you know what the "it" is that's coming. Forget about doing any sort of meeting halfway. You know there's a point at which you figure out that your garbage disposal is not a spoon washer but a spoon bender, and that point could be now.
So you . . .
a. Attack: Call it a preemptive strike. While this is much harder to defend in a court of law, in the eyes of the habitués of the street scene this sort of bravado is the stuff of legend.
b. Start screaming: Animals do this all the time. It's a kind of mimicry and the thinking of those who study animals is thus: if I can convince this angry Puerto Rican that I am a rhino, he will be frightened. This may or may not work. Remember—duress constricts vocal cords. Constricted vocal cords can thrust you back to puberty. Is Urkel a tough rhino? No. No, he is not.
c. Flee: While this clearly lacks any sort of couth at all, when combined with b) and even in odd cases with a), it makes for a bouillabaisse of semi-effective coping and survival strategies.
Drawbacks: You may still get your ass kicked. Savagely. By men with no appreciation for your theatrical tour de force. While summer stock may beckon, it'll have to wait until the bruises clear.
4. Do what I did: Negotiate: The key to any successful negotiation is your ability to convince all and sundry that your willingness to go 3a) or 3b) is higher than their willingness to do the same. Moreover, since willingness is only part of the pie here, ability is a factor as well, so you best develop some ability or learn to mimic it. Ability mimicked badly will weaken your negotiating posture, as it makes an ass beating more than likely. But how do you negotiate your way around What the hell are you looking at?
Easy peasey. The answer is: "you."
Now his choices are highly limited: escalate, or decide that you are the bigger rhino and walk away. In my non-fictional rendering, however, he chose the former. Yes, he escalated by returning with the age-old and surprisingly useful Oh yeah? And like the rising hands on the baseball bat of one-upmanship this was spoken as he was closing the distance betwixt us, before he concluded that thought with You like what you see?
Your turn. Escalate or de-escalate? Now, be careful here. This is the trickiest part of your negotiation as animal brains reign and even something said to de-escalate might get used to escalate.
For example:
You say, No, man. Forget it.
He says, So now there's something wrong with my face, fuckface?
So if you're hellbent for escalation, like I was, you say something like what I said when I said, I don't know what I'm seeing. There's a certain genius to this line. Or at least as much genius as a ten-year-old is likely to be able to bear. The genius comes from the fact that you have now said something confrontational, but confusingly confrontational. It's the functional equivalent of telling a girl when she asks you if those pants make her look fat: "Fat's the least of your troubles, baby."
So now he was facing me, I was facing him, and it was looking like a draw. Almost exactly like a draw, in fact. Yes, a draw right up to the very moment that he bliztkrieg'd my face with several well-placed blows thusly concluding our lesson and my failed attempt at negotiating a fruitful settlement.
Now, what went wrong?
The sage observer will recall Tuco from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: "If you're going to fight, fight. Don't talk." So here begins the cavalcade of wrong: letting any angry person get too close, trying to debate a moron, and finally, hoping for the best on a planet where that's the least likely . . .
Fight
Excerpted from Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking by Eugene S. Robinson
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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