On Faith and Fighting

It has occurred to me that I am a bit like a Jack Russell Terrier. I’m small, weak and testy, but I bark like I can tear everyone else apart. I fancy myself a tough guy, imagining all sorts of scenarios where I crack someone in the jaw, land a spinning back kick or give one of those great head slams like Mel Gibson did to Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon. But when it comes right down to it, I have weak, gimpy hands that can’t hold a punch well at all, I’m not terribly agile or flexible and I’m pretty sure I’d get a concussion if I slammed my head against someone else’s. But still, it’s nice to imagine.

Early on in life I found, much to my despair, that I didn’t really believe in anything ethereal or spiritual. Oh trust me, I wanted to. I’m not pleased at all with the concept of mortality and I would be totally psyched to find that not only is there a heaven, it’s got beer and a kickass jukebox, but I’m not holding my breath. All I know or trust is the physical world; all I have faith in is people…which is a problem in and of itself because I pretty much hate everybody.

I think that’s why the idea of fighting has always been appealing; you get the rush and the affirmation of your “aliveness” through intense physical contact, and you also get to exercise your distaste for your fellow man. In a perfect world, every single night of my life would end by way of the bar fight scene in Hooper: my friends and I would get into a huge brawl with a bunch of strangers, and then we’d all laugh and make friends while lying in the street after being thrown out by the establishment. Then we’d fall asleep at my place drinking beer and watching videos of my old stunt gags.

But it’s not a perfect world. You can’t even get into a fight in a bar these days, you get tossed to quickly. Plus, most of the people I like enough to want to fight with don’t understand why my wanting to punch them in the face is a compliment. Nevertheless, I do what I can. I have a long-running slap fight with a couple of friends. It’s no fight club, but it does add a certain spice to one’s evening.

The truth is, I have been in a few fights in my life, but they weren’t pleasant. There was no bonding or catharsis; hell, I didn’t even fight back. There was only pain, humiliation and anxiety…hardly the stuff of a Hal Needham film. Here’s how my fighting career really went: I spent five years with someone who hated himself and hated me, he occasionally hit me, sometimes kicked me, destroyed some of my paintings and even once beat me with his shoe. (It would take too long to explain why this went on for five years. Suffice to say, imagine all the times you’ve felt like you had to punish yourself and then imagine doing it by way of a relationship.) In one particularly comedic instance — well, comedic to me as I have a horrible sense of humor — he broke his hand hitting me in the head. Yes, someone broke their hand over my head. That should be a cool story, but it isn’t.

These fights did the exact opposite of what the movies taught me fighting should do. They made me feel weak. They made me lose faith in the world around me, not to mention myself. They made me feel stupid. Ever since that relationship ended, I’ve been trying to redevelop the image of myself I had in my head, to reconnect with the bravado that had once informed my relationships and infused them with a reckless joy and playful fury. Slapping a friend every now and then, threatening to take them outside and kick the shit out of them, it’s all part of this warped way of reminding each other that we’re alive for now and capable of doing something ridiculous and unexpected. For me, it’s also a way of reclaiming the violence that marred those years of my life; to reassure myself that if ever put in that situation again, these gimpy hands of mine could take the fucker apart. Then I’d walk out the door, throw a match over my shoulder, and Remo Williams my way out of there.

I suppose I want to fight because I want to heal. I’m still angry and ashamed. I pick fights with my friends because I want to remember what it’s like to trust people to not really hurt you…or more to the point, to trust them to hurt you just enough to make you stronger. Is that healthy? I doubt it. But this is a matter of faith; I’ll work on mental health later.