Fight, Bull
A friend of mine, a longhaired, bearded carpenter, told me a story about a
time he boarded a city bus in Fresno, California, and nearly resorted to
violence —the kind of violence they write stories about in the daily paper.
Your memory isn’t even working normally. It could happen to you or to
me. It could happen any day. The carpenter remembers climbing the steps
into the air-conditioned bus, his eyes quickly scanning, surveying the
space as he walked the narrow path to an empty seat.
The army had taught him to see, to be aware of danger, but I’m not sure
he expected this. An overweight girl followed behind him, nobody he
knew. Just a girl. A big girl he’d seen waiting at the bus stop. The two of
them moved carefully, close together through the door. If you didn’t know
you might think they were a couple. And before either of them could find
a seat, a noise rose up from the back of the bus, an unmistakable ruckus of
sound. The carpenter couldn’t miss it. Others must have noticed too.
Three boys began to hoot and laugh, mocking the girl, mooing like a cow
at her and slapping their thighs in hysterics. In a situation like this, your
mind, you’re in a combat situation. Your mind is functioning. You’re not
thinking in a normal way.
The carpenter found a seat near the girl. She tried to ignore them, but
they kept going, kept mooing like cattle. They weren’t happy with simple
humiliation. This carpenter boiled and watched and listened to them,
trying to tamp down his anger. It was wrong, what they were doing. The
girl took their abuse for a few blocks, took it with her chin down, tucked to
her chest. Eventually she moved to another open seat near the front of the
bus. You are so hyped up. Your vision actually changes.
It’s not long after this that the teens started in on my friend, the carpenter.
At first he didn’t understand, didn’t realize they were calling him
‘‘Geico,’’ and saying, ‘‘Hey, Geico? Geico?’’ in reference to the insurance
commercials featuring hairy-faced cavemen. But eventually he too understood
that they were mocking him for his appearance. He wore a full
beard and long hair, sometimes a vest and blue jeans. He wore functional
glasses with black frames. They called him caveman.
Perhaps because there were three of them, they felt safer, stronger, more
brazen. Perhaps they baited him because they hadn’t seen this bearded
carpenter, in an e√ort to defend his friend, grab a belligerent drunk at a
party, slam him against a wall, and throw him to the ground, hadn’t seen
this carpenter deliver a swift, violent kick to the drunk’s head, and certainly
hadn’t held him back from kicking again, caving in the drunk’s skull.
Would he have done it? I don’t know. But I saw in his eyes that he could do
it if he wanted to. When I’d held him back, my arm across his broad chest,
my mouth whispering into his ear, ‘‘Easy, brother. Easy,’’ I also knew that I
was holding myself back too. How quickly we can cross over.
Your field of view changes. Your capabilities change. What you are
capable of changes. You are under adrenaline, a drug called adrenaline.
And you respond very quickly, and you think very quickly. They mocked
him because they could, because this man, this bearded carpenter, was
too smart to bite, because he had already turned the other cheek. He
ignored them. Or tried to. That’s all. You think! You think, you analyze,
and you act. And in any situation, you just have to think more quickly
than your opposition. That’s all. You know. Speed is very important.
Even in that moment when the encounter went from offensive to
threatening, as one boy came and sat down across from the carpenter,
staring openly, daring him, taunting him openly, he didn’t take the bait.
The boy leaned over the aisle, cooing, ‘‘Geico, Geico. Geico,’’ close enough
to smell, and as he twisted his face close, trying to catch the eyes, he said,
‘‘Geico?’’ again like a test, right in this bearded carpenter’s face.
This better man didn’t smash the boy’s young face, didn’t beat his head
against the floor or one of those metal poles until it split open and blood
bloomed from the crack. My intention was to murder them, to hurt them,
to make them suffer as much as possible. He didn’t produce a gun suddenly
there in his hand, didn’t shoot all of them, didn’t put a hole in the
last boy’s back, a clean round hole like a birth mark. If I had more bullets, I
would have shot ’em all again and again. My problem was I ran out of
bullets.
The carpenter didn’t do any of these things because we have long since
left his story and drifted into a story shaped by Bernhard H. Goetz and his
gun, his fear and rage, and by a culture that embraced the expectation
that violence is the easiest answer. In 1984, the year I turned thirteen,
Bernie Goetz took a gun onto the Number 2 subway train in Brooklyn and
shot four unarmed black men who he claimed had threatened him with a
screwdriver. He was later acquitted of all charges except possession of an
illegal firearm. I was gonna, I was gonna gouge one of the guy’s eyes out
with my keys afterward.
This bearded carpenter didn’t go after the eyes, didn’t even tell me that
he wanted to. Like me, he doesn’t own a gun, certainly wouldn’t carry one
onto a city bus, and doesn’t seem capable of such melodramatic violence;
perhaps it’s because this man, though he too grew up with Goetz, is no
vigilante nor stock character of the eighties, and he knows how to control
his violent capabilities. He knows his limits and switches and how to lock
them down. His story thus became a vessel for my own imagined defense,
my own burdens of fear. I remember this carpenter’s story as both a
warning and a lesson. I try to open it up again here on the page, to see
again how he resisted the urge, how in the face of a threat, he turned
inward, looked away, and waited for the bell to signal his stop.
Perhaps you’ve never stood before a mirror as Robert De Niro does in Taxi
Driver— stripped to the waist, lip curled in a snarl, arms flexed— and
practiced intimidating facial expressions and quips. You fucking looking
at me? Maybe you’ve never said things that Clint Eastwood says in Dirty
Harry, lines that Charles Bronson delivers in Death Wish, or lines from
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Russell Crowe, or someone
else. You feel lucky, punk? Perhaps you’ve never imagined or pretended
how you would fight your way out of a tough situation, never dreamed of
movie-quality, Gladiator-style vengeance against the men who harmed
you or your wife or mother or brother or, worst of all, your children.
If so, you’re just a very different sort of person. I do this. Or I did as a
boy. It seemed a normal response to the 1970s and 1980s. I’ve had very
few opportunities to ever put the lines into practice, but I’ve spoken those
of Al Pacino and De Niro and Bronson— or I’ve imagined myself speaking
them—and I’ve internalized stories focused on the violent unhinging of
one man’s world, and I’ve imagined myself capable of movie-quality violence,
pictured myself doing terrible things to people as a way to protect
myself or my family.
In the original Death Wish, Paul Kersey’s wife is beaten and his daughter
raped and brutalized by a gang of thugs who follow them home from a
supermarket. His wife dies and his daughter is left in a catatonic state. It’s
an awful scene. Devastated by the attack, Kersey, played perfectly by the
painfully wooden Charles Bronson, takes a business trip to Tombstone,
Arizona, where he visits the famous OK Corral. As if some seed of this old
cowboy story takes root, an idea sprouts in Kersey’s head, an idea clouded
with an anger to which many people in America could apparently relate.
He returns to New York, bent on vengeance, and proceeds to systematically
hunt down people he considers of the same general kind as those
who attacked his family, providing Bronson with opportunities to deliver
his own brand of Hollywood vigilante cowboy violence.
In one particularly eerie echo of the Bernie Goetz story, Kersey buys a
bag of groceries that he doesn’t need and carries them onto a subway
train. He sits there like a spider lurking on his web, the bag of food
dangled into the aisle like bait, and when a boy bites, grabbing for the
groceries, Kersey shoots him dead.
If you’re susceptible to such films (and I apparently have a predisposition
to them), you find yourself both emboldened, even empowered, by
these stories and troubled by the violence, the fear and anger, the distrust
and racism that lurks within many of them. Eddie Murphy used to talk
about the ‘‘Rocky effect’’ in his stand-up act, that indestructible, invincible
feeling that Italian guys get after watching Rocky, as if empowered by the
film they too are capable of going toe to toe with a real-life Apollo Creed or
Clubber Lang. Right or wrong or just a reality, such movies begin to shape
our interactions with the world, and it seems that real trouble comes
when our imagined defenses, shaped as they are by violent fantasy, slam
up against a real threat.
The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf, is a children’s classic with pen-
and-ink renderings of a young bull who is not like the other bulls. While
the others are out in the fields butting their heads and stomping their feet
and acting, in general, like young bulls, Ferdinand repairs to the shade of
his favorite cork tree, where he prefers to ‘‘sit just quietly and smell the
flowers.’’ Despite his individuality or perhaps because of it, Ferdinand
grows to be the biggest and strongest bull of the bunch. Soon the men in
funny hats come to find the fiercest bull for the bullfights in Madrid.
Ferdinand, uninterested in the men or in fighting and being fierce, returns
to his favorite tree for some rest and relaxation. But instead of
sitting on the grass he sits on a bee.
The bee, being a bee, stings him and Ferdinand leaps into the air,
snorting and pawing the ground. Because of this display, Ferdinand is
mistaken for an aggressive, fierce bull and shipped o√ to Madrid in a
rickety wooden cart. He’s thrust into the ring, called ‘‘Ferdinand the
Fierce,’’ and surrounded by fans clamoring for blood as well as all the
lovely ladies with flowers in their hair. The tension builds around the
pomp and circumstance of bullfighting as the bandarilleros, picadors, and
the matador all parade into the ring. Ferdinand finally makes his entrance,
trots out to the center of the bullring, plops down, and promptly
refuses to fight. He sits there just quietly and smells the flowers on all the
ladies. He is unquestionably heroic. The matador, who can’t show o√ with
his sword, is shamed to tears, and Ferdinand is shipped back home to his
favorite cork tree.
Published in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the book has often
been called a ‘‘political’’ text and Ferdinand considered a pacifist character.
The book was banned in Spain, burned as democratic propaganda in
Germany, and even regarded in the United States as being detrimental to
its efforts during World War II.
Ferdinand, it seems, was one of the first hippies. In the face of ritualized
competition, cultural homogeny, and violent aggression, he resisted.
When misjudged, pushed into the ring, prodded and provoked, he
chose the path of nonviolence. When expected to fight, he stopped to
smell the flowers.
Mike Tyson once said, ‘‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the
face.’’ I have a plan for even the most ridiculous threat situations. I even
have a ‘‘First Day in Prison’’ plan. It has di√erent variations but, unlike the
Ferdinand scenario, my plan doesn’t rely on passive resistance. No, it
involves sending a message to other inmates through unnecessary and
extreme violence. It involves compound fractures, crushed windpipes,
and other really gruesome stu√. There’s no good reason why I have a plan
for my first day in prison except that I’ve seen too many movies, but I don’t
think I’m alone in my tendency to mentally script out a response to seemingly
unrealistic threats.
I think most people do this. At any given moment, we might project
ourselves into an imagined near-future and see our new self acting and
reacting to threats and dangers. This is what allows us to drive a car in
tra≈c without freezing up. And such quick, dynamic, and imaginative
thinking is at the heart of the dilemma I’m trying to explore. This acting,
this fear-driven role playing, is a desperate sort of practice for the violence
that many of us are raised to believe will inevitably befall us. And it
encourages us to live in between the present and the potential future, a
kind of liminal space wherein all possibilities are a matter of statistics.
Our loved ones will be threatened or killed. Trusted institutions will
fail to protect us and may even victimize us. We will be attacked. Our
friends will turn on us. It’s just a matter of time. We will be jumped,
mugged, punked, or sucker punched in a bar. Or we’ll simply be targeted
at a party, one of those end-of-the-year parties at which everyone is drunk
and loud and laughing, when everyone is letting out a lot of stu√. No
matter how hard we try not to, how innocent we might be, we know we’ll
be pushed into the cage of an old story, forced to play a role that quickly
transcends our imagined practice.
This is how the real story goes: You’re sitting at a table talking with a
group of friends and colleagues at a backyard party. It’s spring and things
are blooming in the Central Valley. You’re just having a few drinks, not
standing out, not being loud or obnoxious, not making yourself a target.
But from nowhere it seems, the husband of a friend punches you in the
shoulder. You see his swing in your peripheral vision and barely have time
to flinch. He punches you hard. Then he laughs. He’s drunk. Says, ‘‘Let’s
play the Fight Club game.’’
You want to tell him that this isn’t that kind of party. Instead you say,
‘‘No. I don’t want to play the Fight Club game.’’ You look up at him. ‘‘Please
don’t hit me,’’ you say. You’d rather be like Ferdinand smelling the flowers.
‘‘Smell the flowers,’’ you want to say to this man.
But no . . .
He hits you again.
‘‘Seriously,’’ you say. ‘‘I don’t want to play. Don’t hit me.’’
He’s laughing now.
Someone else says, ‘‘Don’t. Don’t do it.’’
But he doesn’t stop.
Instead he swats you open-handed on the back of the head. Like a punk.
Like he’s cuffing a mutt. Like you’re his dog. And this does it, this wounds
your pride. This is all it takes for you to cross over. He punks you in front of
all these people, makes you look the fool. You’re old enough, smart enough
to know that you should turn away or turn inward. You should be the
bigger man by refusing this lowly role, but you just can’t do it.
You feel a tide turn, as if his dither knocked something loose and
rattled a side of yourself that you keep caged up. You’re six foot three and
weigh 250 pounds. You have a sizable scar on your face and a protruding
brow. Some people think you look intimidating, especially when you
shave your head down to stubble, and you’ve sometimes relied on this
image to keep you out of confrontations. But you’ve never really been in a
fistfight in your life. You’ve been able to blu√ your way out of most situations.
You’ve never been pushed over the edge. Your father always told
you, ‘‘You never start a fight. But you finish it,’’ and you took this to heart.
You tried to prevent this one. You tried to warn him not to hit you. You
don’t like to be hit. And though you didn’t know for sure what you would
do until he hit you, when he smacks you in the head, you know instantly
and immediately that you will finish it, you will hurt him, and you will
make it abundantly clear that he does not want to play this game with
you. And almost as quickly you also know how the violence will happen.
The whole scene runs through your brain. You rehearse your lines and
moves. Time seems to warp and bend to the story. You’re playing a role
you’ve rehearsed in front of a mirror. You stand up slowly and push in your
chair. You know there is menace in these actions, know that your calm will
make you seem even more frightening. You’ve seen this in a movie somewhere.
You don’t say a word as you turn to him. And at this point he’s
backing up, away from you, grinning stupidly. But it is too late. He’s
crossed a line. Or you have. Perhaps an invisible line between reality and
fantasy— a line that honestly worries you. But you’d made it clear. You’d
asked nicely. You told him you didn’t want to play his movie game.
Everyone watches and listens like an audience. You step up to him and
grab him around the throat with your left hand. He’s smaller than you but
not tiny. In one big heave, you slam him against the outside wall of the
house. His head thuds dully on the wood siding. With your left hand still
on his throat, lifting up ever so slightly against his jaw bone, pressing him
into the wall, you point your right index finger into his face and say, very
slowly, ‘‘Don’t. Fucking. Hit. Me,’’ and then you let him drop and you walk
away.
When the show ends, I step away from that version of myself and
quickly realize that it was one of the most intense physical confrontations
I’ve ever been in and something I never want to experience again. The
adrenaline flush leaves me tired and shaky. I want to vomit. And shit. And
cry. And then die. It was terribly uncinematic. At first I was afraid I’d
seriously injured the guy. I’d clearly overreacted to what wasn’t a real
threat, clearly allowed him to push all my buttons and flip my switches.
Later, and for months afterward, I would be plagued with guilt and regret
over the incident, replaying it in my head and trying to picture myself just
walking away, just turning away from him and leaving the party.
Despite many people telling me things like, ‘‘He had it coming,’’ I knew
this wasn’t true. Not really. I knew that as much as I didn’t deserve to be
hit and smacked, to be humiliated like that, he also didn’t deserve to be
slammed against a wall. The whole thing was so stupid. It was as if the two
of us had been sucked into a clichéd pop-culture narrative of masculinity
and violence, and neither of us knew how to get out. So we played our
roles until the lines were exhausted, the audience confused, and every
thing collapsed, until it was no longer a game or a movie and became too
real. Sometimes I wonder if this is what happened to Bernie Goetz. I read
his words and I think he sounds like a character, a fiction, a Frankenstein
monster of man-thoughts and stolen words, as if he’s a child reciting lines
he learned but never understood.
Here is what I know now: There is no redemption through violence, no
true empowerment. Only a weakening of the soul. The movies lie perfectly.
Even the facts hide the truth much of the time. The stories are
delicious fictions. There was no hug between me and the guy at the party,
no burying of the hatchet, no breaking of bread or some other clichéd
ending. There was only a smudge on the siding, a mark from his head, and
the bruise on his throat. There was only my deep and abiding guilt and the
fear that there is—perhaps in each of us—a part that is susceptible not just
to violence but, perhaps more dangerously, to the self-aggrandizing narratives
of violence as protection, salvation, and redemption.
I wonder if I still cling to the stories of my carpenter friend and Ferdinand
as well as to the stories and words of Bernie Goetz because they offer
two extremes, two possible responses to the threat of physical violence,
because they cause me to question: Am I like Ferdinand, the gentle bull
who refuses to fight, preferring instead to sit just quietly and smell the
flowers, or am I the sort of man who can be provoked into a confrontation?
Yes. Yes I am.
note
1. All italicized passages are quotes attributed to Bernie Goetz, taken from the following
three sources: ‘‘Your memory isn’t . . .’’ to ‘‘Speed is very important . . . ‘‘ from Myra
Friedman, ‘‘My Neighbor Bernie Goetz,’’ New York, February 18, 1985; ‘‘My intention was
to murder . . . ‘‘ from ‘‘ ‘You Have to Think in a Cold-blooded Way’ ’’ [transcript of Bernhard
H. Goetz police interview], New York Times, April 30, 1987; and ‘‘If I had more bullets, I
would have . . .’’ to I was gonna, I was gonna gouge . . .’’ from ‘‘Margot Hornblower,
‘‘Intended to Gouge Eye of Teen, Goetz Tape Says; ‘My Problem Was I Ran Out of Bullets,’ ’’
Washington Post, May 14, 1987.