On Fighting

I’ve never been the type of person who’s resorted to fighting. Sibling scuffles, spats with cousins, sure. But I’ve never been in what I would consider an actual fight. A definition of a fight means a one-on-one, bare-knuckled, black-eyed, bruised, bloodied throw down. I’ve seen these types of fights: in parks, in bars, in apartments, in parking lots. I’m not talking about movies. The movies present choreographed fights that try to look like actual fights. They don’t come close. When then those scenes end, you may feel excited or scared, but you don’t leave your seat to get the smell out of your lungs. You stay for the movie. In real life, it’s different, and I’ve never been in an actual fight.

From our childhood until we were teenagers, my brother Oscar and I fought all the time. To the best of my memory, we never really punched each other in the face when we were adolescents. But when I was in 10th grade and he was in 9th, I do remember one fight; he hit me, busted my lip open good. It was a hard, straight jab, followed by a second one, both landing on the same spot. Pop-pop. You could hear the thud of his knuckle against my mouth. Our cousin Charlie (or maybe it was Javier) witnessed that exchange with glee through the screen door. It came as a shock to me that my younger brother could do that. I thought I was physically superior to him in most ways, but that day changed things.

Honestly, there were too many brother fights to separate them all. Too many of those memories come back to me with pangs of guilt and the trauma of personally witnessing what violence produces: crying, contusions, blood, anger, indifference, confusion, and regret. Is that what actual fighting is supposed to produce? Shouldn’t there be some justice behind fighting?

I also fought a lot with my cousins: Charlie, Raul, Junior, Tacuero, maybe Fernie. I don’t know about that last one, not for sure (but I can visualize Fernie wincing from being punched between the shoulder blades). Raul and Pete were older than me so it was always daunting to fight them. And it was always bad to fight Charlie, their younger brother, because if I “won,” Raul would come looking for me. That’s how most of those fights occurred. If you beat up a younger brother, the older brother took up the cause. I was the oldest boy in my family so I probably fought a lot with my cousins to defend my brothers. I don’t know how true that is, but it has a ring of truth. Fighting was a way to keep order and peace even though we knew nothing about truth or the rightness of anything. It was simple: whoever won the fight was right.

Pete, by the way, was the oldest of all of us, and he was just a bully. He did as he pleased with impunity. I only fought him a few times. I do remember connecting with a glancing blow at his jaw once. That may have been the last time I dared to openly fight him. Fighting with relatives, on my mother’s side, was rough on everyone.

I fought once with Guero, one of our neighbors, but for some reason, I don’t really remember much about it. A few of us cousins were hanging out behind my grandfather’s house. A prank and laughter; some shoving and pushing; a body blow; a fall or a trip over a mesquite root jutting from the ground; a nose bleed. It’s too hazy a memory to say more than that. It embodies what most fights were among family — random and reasonless.

I tried to fight Noe Robles in Kindergarten. He was mean to me. After he took my only nickel, he threw it and when I went to look for it, he pushed me in the mud. He did it openly, in front of the teacher, and he got in trouble. I was never scared of him but I never understood why he did it. We barely knew each other then.

In second or third grade, I got into a shoving match with a kid we called Gabi. He had a round, meaty face and a reputation as a tough kid and as a bully, and I didn’t want to back down. Later that same year, Javi Hernandez made Gabi cry in front of everyone and that released some tension among the kids.

In third grade, we used to run on the playground as a mob of random boys, and another mob of boys would form and then we’d rush each other and fight. Bodies slammed and fists flew, and there was kicking and screaming – that was more like a fun memory though. I didn’t think it was bad or that it was fighting. The teachers started watching us after that.

We grew up as migrants, our parents picking fruit and vegetables around the country. I fought some kid in New York, but I was scared out of my mind and only punched him once sheepishly. My fist struck his wide belt. Also while in New York, while our parents toiled, my cousins and I fought in an empty building, and older kids, teenagers, watched from the windows and laughed. I remember balling up my fists and frowning at them all. Back then, I thought they were laughing at me. I was seeing red. I think I understand now that they weren’t laughing to make fun of me. It was a reaction to seeing me, a scrawny, second-grade kid who thought he was tough enough to take on high school kids.

I never fought anyone in junior high or high school, but I got close a few times. Right up in faces and standing my ground and ready to fight if I had to. I had a friend, Rodney, who my mom didn’t like because she thought he was picking on me all the time, but I didn’t see it that way. It was funny that he looked slow and lumbering, but without warning, his hand would shoot out and grab me. He was strong and he’d wrestle me to the ground. But I was laughing the whole time because I couldn’t believe that as fast as I was, this guy always caught me off guard. But Rodney never punched me once and he always helped me up. This mattered. Here was someone who could take advantage of a situation, a place I’d been before, and I could trust that he wasn’t trying to hurt me.

It was in these junior high years when everyone started getting bigger and taller, but I stayed small. I saw kids who, like me, joined the football team, and they would grit their teeth and lift weights, and they put all their energy into hitting people as hard as they could. I don’t know why but I didn’t want to lift weights. I liked being wiry and fast and lithe. Instead of getting stronger, I decided to argue with people who had all become much bigger than me.

That’s what happened in my freshman year in high school. I was probably mouthing off to some guys in wood shop, and they were jocks, football players, seniors. Two of them decided to push me around until it culminated one day into an unavoidable scene: one of them picked me up from behind. He just hoisted me up as if I weighed nothing, and when I saw his buddy coming at me, I kicked out as hard as I could. It was luck, but I kicked him in the crotch and he crumpled. I was dropped, forgotten, so I took off, but they left me alone after that. I don’t think this was a fight, but it scares me to think that they probably would have pummeled me and no one was going to stop them.

After graduating high school, I never got in a full blown fight when I joined the Army, but I got into a few shoving matches and right up in people’s faces. I didn’t like backing down and I knew why. Another time in high school, my cousins and I were playing football at a playground with a group of guys from some other neighborhood. This one guy was physically intimidating and he was landing full blown hits. He was trying to hurt people. I was afraid. I was a receiver and when I caught the ball, I thought I could outrun him, but he was way too fast. I dropped to my knees because I didn’t want him to tackle me the way he’d been tackling other people. He got on top of me from behind and humped me. I got so angry that I left the playground cussing and crying. So when I was in the Army, I never wanted to back down from anyone ever even though I was the smallest guy in the company. I’d rather fight than have someone do that to me again.

Also in the Army, I met a wrestler from Ohio, a state-level champion. We went to the gym, and I didn’t know a damn thing about wresting. But we were the same size and I was just as quick as him, just as strong. He overwhelmed me with knowledge and experience. And he thought it’d be funny not to let go once he’d pinned me. He kept twisting me and pinning my face harder into the mat, so I went into some kind of frenzy and I was spinning and twisting and kicking out to break his hold, but I couldn’t shake him. When he finally let go, I was exhausted and pissed. I walked out and never took him up on an offer to wrestle again. We were friends, but he wasn’t offering to teach anything. It was kind of bully-like behavior.

And later in the Army, still stationed in Germany, I could have gotten into a fight, but I didn’t. One really stupid guy named Henri pissed me off about something, so we got into an argument. He kept grabbing my forearm and he had a iron grip, but I kept managing to break it, and he’d grab my arm again and I’d twist free. At some point, I pushed him with a body check, and it became obvious that Henri had weak legs. I had gotten into bike riding while in Germany and I was probably in the best shape I’d ever been in — probably peaking as a male in my early 20s. Henri was in his mid-30s, and head and shoulders taller than me, but when I shoved him, it worked. He went stumbling backwards trying not to fall. Things settled down after that.

Maybe, I may have gotten in at least one fight in the Army because I woke up one weekend, and I had a massive bruise on my side that looked like the tread of a shoe. I have no recollection of what happened. A friend said he thought he saw me get kicked outside a bar.

After the Army, before I enrolled in college, I joined a karate class and fought a few times but sparring is not the same thing as fighting. Is it? It’s a type of controlled environment for fighting, and everyone is wearing protective gear. I was still cycling a lot, and I had a really snappy kick, too quick for opponents at my level of experience. I remember this one guy kept his hands high, so I kicked him in the ribs a few times, and when he dropped his guard, I kicked him in the face. The sensei only allowed me to fight the higher ranked belts after that. They knew how to defend themselves against my kicks, and they all beat me up. It was not fun.

Even though I continue to tell myself that I’ve gone through life never having been in an actual fight, the evidence laid out here shows I’ve been in fights of some kind. Now that I’m older and in pain or have limited motion due to past injuries, I hope to never get in an actual fight. Since I’m being honest, though, I probably wouldn’t back down if it happened.

And, I guess part of what I’m saying is types of fights determine the goodness of a person. Good people don’t look for fights. Good people defend themselves against fights.