Why I Started Punching Jerks Again

Men, please take this as the verbalization of fantasies I know everyone of you has had. Ladies, take this as an inside look at the hardwiring of the male mind...

Perhaps I've been watching too many mating battles on Planet Earth, but I'm beginning to think (once again) punching jerks might not be such a bad idea.

The current issue of Esquire brought out my inner Tyler Durden with a hysterical article called -- I believe -- "Why I Started Punching Jerks Again." I believe? I believe so because the online editors changed the title to "In Defense of the Fistfight." Shame on them. The original makes more sense, as it's first-person.

If you dislike some artful use of profanity, please close your eyes now. Here's the lead from Esquire:

This whole thing started -- or maybe it ended -- with these guys engaging in some ritualistic, Hare Krishna clapping shit. They were sitting at a table across the bar from my buddy, Phil, and me. We were trying to enjoy a quiet pint in our quiet local on a quiet evening, but these hippies wouldn't quit with their clapping. Swear to God, they might as well have been crashing cymbals in my ears.

I asked them politely to stop. "Make us," they said, and then they clapped louder, smiling their dirty-toothed smiles at us, twisting our nipples. One of them was named Jericho, I picked up. He was a skinny bearded guy who looked as though he'd wear Guatemalan mittens in winter. "Jerry," I said when they finally took a break, "come on over here, have a chat." He did, and shortly thereafter, he loosed a throat pony into my face. It was Jerry's bad luck that I had resolved to start punching people again.

It wasn't a snap decision. I'd reached the end of the road after what seemed like a perpetual assault from life's Jerichos -- the sorts of assholes who not only act like assholes but celebrate their assholedom: the grease spot who gave me the forearm shiver in our recreational soccer league and said, "It's a man's game, bitch"; the walnut-headed midlife crisis in his convertible who cut me off and then gave me the finger. It felt like they had me surrounded, clapping in concentric circles. I mean, Jesus, a skinny bearded hippie named after a biblical city had just spit in my face.

How'd we get here? Blogs are part of it, along with the incessant frothing of TV pundits and reality-show contestants, especially that lippy midget from The Amazing Race: Everybody thinks they're above being edited. And the saddest part is, the Jerichos are right to feel bulletproof. Somewhere along the way, we've evolved into a culture without consequence...

What?! Punch people in the face?! Read the whole article -- it's worth it.

I'm not suggesting that we just run around whacking each other in place of words. However, it seems to me that in this land of no physical consequence, where flaming is spreading offline, and where freedom of speech makes it alright to spit in someone's face but not OK to give them a judo chop in return... could something be wrong?

Born premature and small throughout school, I was on the receiving end of hazing for more than a decade, but I put up a good fight. Being small didn't mean I couldn't operate in a world with a line that, once crossed, meant you had to put up or shut up.

Now, I don't get in street fights and I don't recommend looking for them. But how do you uphold a certain basic standard of respect and gentlemanly conduct when the Jericho-like instigators seem to be multiplying faster than "u r a douche" comments on Digg?

Is there a chance that we would have fewer AK-47-toting high schoolers if it were socially acceptable to take of a glove, slap it across an offender's face, and issue the good 'ol "Sir, you have insulted my honor" challenge? I think a little fisticuffs would do most men a world of good, giving options to the masses who put up with too much, consequences to loudmouthed idiots who would then think twice, and a release valve to a gender that otherwise comes up with far worse things to do to men, women, wives, and children.

The real question is: how do you create a common social contract that allows for this type of correction without bullets or lawsuits flying? Is it possible, or do we have to continue to walk through a world that seems to consist of either Mohatma Gandhis or Joey Buttafuocos?

Ah...

Perhaps I'm just spending too much time in NYC and need to get away from all the I-bankers and crazies. I'm going to the gym.

Related links:

How to Survive a Physical Attack: Tips from a Pro UFC Trainer

From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks

Comments

[lungfish]

I agree with Pengun...
Start lifting weights... you grow so damn big so damn fast that its no wonder that even a lumox can do it. I put several inches on my chest and arms in a matter of a few months (with a good protien supplement) and the whole social dynamic started to shift. Very strange but positive...

I was having bully problems down here at the water with a nutjob that attacked me with a big chunk of lava after I stood up to him for trying to push me around. He is a local bully with some kind of disorder that makes him feel like he can tell people what to do, threaten them, etc. Who knows why... He was big, and over confident. I was smaller and accurate. The cops hauled him off to the hospital and then jail. Turned out that he had a history of being an asshole and that sunk his boat in ways that I never could have. All I did was wound his pride and disfigure him in a way that he will remember every time he looks in the mirror.

The big plus was that since I am not a bully, his own record was what sank him. It was clearly self defense, plenty of witnesses.

All I can say is that if someone is threatening you, do whatever you are going to do IMMEDIATELY. Follow your instinct and let the chips fall where they may. Just don't be the first into it. Try to warn them off loud enough to be heard. When they cross that line and make a believer out of you, act on your beliefs....

Its funny how quickly they go from bully to bitch when accountability for their behavior is demanded - once the cops and the attornies get involved you see what pathetic and sad people these assholes really are... and that includes females that think that they can strike, insult or spit on whomever they please...Once the hairy knuckled hands of the law start reaching for them get ready for the bs.

[LarryJones]

This is pathetic. So your rationale for assaulting people is "He started it!"?

[BufoAmericanus]

Funny...

I notice that there a lot (A LOT) fewer long-haired bearded types out there these days, (when they are multiplying faster than ever), than there were in the sixties, seventies, eighties or nineties. What I see more of are drunk frat boys with skippy-cuts, who imagine that they've been put upon more than anyone, and can't stand it anymore. Like the "Angry white men" of the eighties, except with less facial hair. More like college kids on their four year long drunken safari in the urban jungle.

[JustAnotherJoe]

Tim,

If I've learned one thing in life, it's never to punch a jerk bigger than myself.

[Nommo]

It is what happens when people think that they are "free", whatever the hell that means. Then, when this notion is firmly assumed into the national DNA, long after its rational reason for being has mutated into an abstract, it is just "freedom".

The original source of freedom was a war. Freedom wasn't free then, it is not free now. Like heirs to wealth, there is no respecting how free or wealth came to be.

Having said all of that, he should have cleaned the guy's clock when he first refused to stop being a prick, and just thought about how many people he would have made happy in that moment.

[RickO]

During my high school years in the 70's, the "bully culture" was quite a growing problem with the distinctions between predator and prey becoming more defined, and increasing in violence everyday (I was part of the prey) until one day, one of my fellow prey-species, a slight math tutor named Dennis, had enough. Rather than take on the smirking letterman, who'd caused Dennis so much fear and embarrassment, he pushed the bully down the stairs and ended his varsity football season. This alone was not a turning point but an instant of empowerment that fomented an insurgency against the predator class using tactics ranging from simply fighting back to acts of advanced chemistry. It was remembered as an era of societal-self-correction in the microcosm of my high school. To bad these things will land you in jail these days.

[PenGun]

Just lift weights. I'm 61 and after 4 years I'm pretty impressive in a T shirt. No one bothers the big ugly guy.

[tcagle]

Tim,
Try to avoid the urge to go Neanderthal.