They say every man should get beaten up at least once in his life. I agree. I’m not really sure why, though.
They say every man should get beaten up at least once in his life. I agree. I’m not really sure why, though.
1995. Butt-head was huge. He was only eleven—a year younger than me—but his body was composed of that hard, slablike fat typical of adult men who’ve been serious drinkers for decades. His face was a caricature, a cartoon ur-bully; black piggy eyes packed into dense folds of ruddy lard. It was incongruously topped by a thick mop of angelic blonde curls. This spray of golden ringlets, plus his surname—Beavis—earned him the nickname Butt-head.
I don’t remember his real first name.
After school one day I was bouncing a tennis ball against a wall with my friend Colin. A child raised in a broom cupboard would probably turn out like Colin; he looked like a stretched piece of chewing gum. We were trying to catch the ball with our hands behind our back by spinning round just before it reached us. Butt-head stomped past before stopping and plucking the ball from the air mid-bounce. He always clomped around school furiously, officially. There was an air of bureaucratic legitimacy around his violence; his heft and bulk made him adult. Authorized. With a stentorian expression he flung our ball over the fence into the brambles. For a moment I hesitated. It felt like we’d done something wrong and he was punishing us fairly—he was so commanding and stony. There was nothing gleeful or mischievous about him. Then I realized: Butt-head was simply being a cunt, as always. The brambles were off-limits, and you could never find anything lost in there anyway.
“You fat fucker,” I said.
Colin turned white. Butt-head marched up to me, arms swinging in a weirdly military lockstep. His chunky, ham-hock hand smashed into my face just below my eye. It didn’t really hurt as such. It felt more like I’d been hit in the face with a pillow full of opium. The concrete swam. I felt a hot rush of venom as Butt-head pounded me again, this time below the right ear. I dove for his waist and began hammering away at his midsection, to no effect whatsoever. He beefily kneed me in the ribs before giving me a final stiff punch to the bridge of my nose. I sank back onto the ground and Butt-head thumped away. Water soaked through my trousers into my knees. I sucked down air, gulping back hot gobbets of shame.
“He just kicked your arse,” Colin helpfully summarized.
1999. My first summer working, slinging fries at McDonald’s. I was living with my friend Christos—his neighbors were traveling and they’d asked him to house-sit. We were sixteen. We took to roaming the streets of our hometown at night until dawn.
One misty morning about 5AM, a man cycled past us. We were at the tail end of an epic wander, chatting as usual about music, drugs, and girls. I noticed that the man had a magic set tucked under his arm. I was riding a broken bicycle we’d found while Christos was walking. About ten minutes later we saw the man’s magic set propped on top of the railings separating the path from the river.
“Let’s throw it in the river,” Christos said.
I picked the set up. “He might turn us into frogs,” I said. I genuinely wasn’t about to throw it in; I thought that would be wrong. I felt a movement behind me and turned to face the set’s owner. He literally towered over me. I made a kind of comedy gulp and let out a pathetic, defeated laugh. He punched me in the face five or six times before chasing Christos down the street. He literally kicked Christos up the arse before bellowing “Now FUCK OFF!” and pointing down the street.
I woozily mounted the buckled bike and pedaled slowly off. At the end of the street I turned and shouted something about not leaving your stuff out, you twat. Words to that effect. The walk back, which should have taken 20 minutes, took nearly two hours. I was so badly concussed we had to keep stopping to sit down on the pavement. I spent three confused days in bed, struggling to put on tracksuit trousers. I couldn’t seem to get a separate leg into the different leg holes. Christos rang in sick for me.
Every person should take an ass whooping once in their life, to teach them that bad shit can happen to you, and therefore you’re a bit more humble and thoughtful when you go out into the world. It’s one of those things that’s a healthy shock to the sense of invincibility in young people that would otherwise never stop really asshole like behavior continuing well into adulthood.
My goodness you Englishmen can write.
If you kick some bodies ass throw there cell phone away from them or cops will be there soon. Back in the day you got your ass kicked and went home now people call the police because they can and girlfriends think someone is going to die.
sounds to me youre just a cunt that’s never been in a fight, i.e., never fought back. that’s fine for your first couple of dust ups – like in fucking elementary school – but hey, third time’s the charm, pussy. maybe you can get your ass kicked with some dignity next time. for the record, this post was about as interesting as a blank wall.
Sounds like you fight worse than a girl. I should know…..dun dun duuuuuun! because I am one. My moto is to get in there first (or as Bully would say ‘their’) If that fails, you’ll see them again one day, hopefully before they see you, and hopefully drunk.
http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/pepper-spraying-cop/ ?
hey I’m a bully not a wordsmith. Anyway you got a nice ass?
so you got stomped once by a bully (who hasn’t) and some hobo socked you a few times? I demand more
In college, at a party, I was drunk and staring at the righteous tits on a girl who was sitting on a sofa across the room from me. The girl I’d come with was standing next to me, we’d fucked just before going to the party, but the girl on the couch had these incredible tits, straining to pop her cardigan’s two measly buttons, and I was absolutely hypnotized by them.
With no warning, this guy jumped at me and slugged me in the jaw. Fucking hard. For anyone who’s never been socked up, you really do see stars; it’s confusing and weird, but the bright side is that you’re initially too stunned to feel any pain. Next thing I knew, I was prone on my back with this guy standing over me and yelling about how he was going to fuck me up for ogling his girlfriend’s tits.
Some other dudes at the party hustled him out of there in a hurry and the girl I was with seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being despite my wandering eye. She helped me to the kitchen and held a bag of frozen peas on my face. After a few minutes, the kid whose house it was found me and said that the guy who’d hit me was outside and seemed to feel pretty bad about the whole thing. He wanted to come in and apologize to me. I told the kid, sure, let him in. I was man enough to let water flow under that bridge.
Everyone else cleared out of the kitchen when he came in and it was immediately obvious that he really did feel bad; he looked like he’d been crying. “Dude,” he said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I just snapped. My girlfriend, we’ve been having problems and I guess I’m a little jealous.”
My jaw hurt like crazy but I felt kind of bad for him. “Yeah, man,” I said with some effort, “I get it. Let’s forget about it, okay?”
I went to the fridge and grabbed two bottles of beer and opened them.
“Here, man,” I said.
We cheersed our bottles and took a sip.
“Thanks,” he said. “That means a lot.”
Then I hit him over the head with the bottle and took off running. Fuck him.
@Adolf…you took off running? dude, even if that story is true, leave that last bit out. you sound like a fucking pussy
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have run. Sorry to let you down, Sho.
Fuck that, running was smart. Only idiots stay around after slamming a beer bottle over someones head. It’s less effective than shown in movies. On film they always collapse and are done. In real life, half the time the bottle never shatters it just makes a loud hallow thump noise and hurts your wrist, the other times it does and the guy doesn’t fall and instead gets REALLY angry. If you’re not built to keep laying it on the best move is to take the momentary win and get the fuck out of there. He’ll call you a pussy for the night, and try and spread word of it, unsuccessfully (except his friends but fuck them right?) But people will always remember how you racked a dude over the head with a beer bottle so they shouldn’t fuck with you.
Oh, coolness! In his last story he went to Costa Rica and got intimidated. In this one he gets his ass kicked. What’s next? A girl makes him cry?
This site needs a Stalin-level purge of beta males.
You wasted a beer, Hitler!? You should have drunk the beer and stabbed him in the neck with the broken bottle. Not unreasonable.
touche pooplah. nice ass too.
This was beautifully written and I was enthralled. Truly amazing.
About three years ago, my girlfriend and I were waiting in line at a taqueria after last call. After about 20 minutes (it was a really long line; the nachos and carne asade at this place are killer), we were at the front of the line placing our order. I was medium drunk. There were probably 40 or 50 people in the place eating and talking loudly, most of them most likely at least a little drunk, too. The line had grown long again behind us.
As I was paying the cashier, a really big and unwieldy thug dude barged in, pushing folks out of the way and saying something to the effect of, “Get the fuck out my way, I’m getting a burrito before y’all niggaz!” He pushed his way up to the cashier and elbowed in past me. I told him, “Hey man, we’re all here for burritos. Why not chill out?” He replied with, “Aw, you fucked up now, son! I’m-a fuck you up.”
I did the rapid mental arithmetic of Burrito vs. Ass Kicking and decided he could get his burrito before I got mine. I started to step out of the way, quickly standing in front of my girlfriend, but he was already winding up. I saw him cock his arm out of the corner of my eye, right in the middle of the crowded taqueria, and just moved back another couple of inches. It’s true what people say about things sometimes moving in slow motion during times of intense stress. I swear to god, in that half second of him throwing the punch, I could hear the sizzle of meat on the grill, smell my girlfriend’s conditioner in her hair, and see the droplets of condensation bead up and roll down the plate glass window at the front of the place. He was moving like through molasses.
I moved back just enough and his meaty fist sailed right past my face. The next thing I knew, I was tugging him to the ground by his arm, pulling him off balance and jumping on him. The taqueria went silent. Record scratch silent.
Without thinking, I straddled his chest; he was so big that my knees couldn’t touch the tile floor. I put both hands around his throat and started squeezing, hard. Girls behind me were screaming. The cashier was yelling some bullshit in Spanish. The line cooks were stoked. I remember yelling at him, “Chill out, man. You gotta stop,” as he took weaker and weaker swipes at me. It seemed like I was choking him for 15 minutes, but it was probably closer to 30 seconds. However long it was, after a while he just went to sleep.
The cops shot through the door with their nightsticks out and I jumped up and put my hands in the air. The taqueria’s obese security guard followed them in and said, “That guy’s been in here starting shit all week,” pointing to the thug on the floor. The cops helped him up and cuffed him and let my girlfriend and me walk out with our food.
The awesome part was when, two days later we saw the same dude walking down the street, and he came right at me. He was just a couple of yards ahead of us on the sidewalk and it seemed like it was too late to turn around or cross the street. I told my girlfriend to run if things got weird and I walked in front of her. The guy came within earshot and said, “Heeyyyy…” and I got ready to get my ass kicked. He was seriously huge. Then he said, “You guys like hip hop? Want to buy my mixtape?” We quickly said no and took off. Back at my place, I got a truly sweet beej.
One of the huge differences between men an women is the former’s experience getting hit in the face. You try to explain it to a girl and she can’t even imagine it.
Like sex with cocktail waitresses, fighting is one of those experiences of youth you will someday miss.
You are kidding, right?
@ Pooplah: what are you, a Jewish chola? you might be “down 4 lyfe” but most girls have never been punched.
Haha, I don’t think we have those here.And I’m not a girl, I’m ancient, I’ve only been punched in the face three times that I can think of.
You guys suck, entertain me fuckers!
Learn how to TAKE A PUNCH, and then fight back. Learning how to get your ass beaten teaches you nothing.