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| zombie_Thomasson |
I've not had a fight since school. Literally, school.
I've always been a pacifist, and suitably large/shouty/scary to end fights. My general technique in fights is to not be in 'em, and get in the way of ones where someone's clearly losing.
So it was a bit freaky walking home with a friend after some nightphotos (note the expensive camera implication) tonight, and we had one of those moments when you're about to pass some various demihumans who you reeeeally don't trust.
It was a narrow bit of road, and to give 'em more berth would have had us in the road, so to suddenly have some random drunken turd slap me as hard as he could in the chest and then loom back from his mate to fling a punch at me was really surprising, but in slo-mo adrenaline vision, it seemed paint-by-numbers-ish-ly predictable.
I auto-said my standard catchphrase of surprise; "Hey! What the fuck, man?" I probably shouldn't have gone with the "man" bit... it annoyed him all the more.
He (let's call him yellow, for 'twas his tee) was swinging, asking if I was starting, either going for my face or my bag, but didn't expect my friend (he with the hardass Derry upbringing; let's call him The Irishman for comedic effect) to get in there first and shunt him backwards five feet. Then yellow got all spidermonkey on The Irishman, and made with some fairly crap and amusing flails while I had to make the choice to back off five steps and put my bag, new camera within, out of the blast radius.
To nip back a bit and dump my bag must only have taken a few seconds, but by then they were both going at The Irishman, who was duly trying give them both almighty and alarming shunts backwards.
These are those moments when the demihippy bohemian parenting and quaker schooling foils me and makes me wonder what to do, so getting betwixt The Irishman and the visibly harder of the two (mr grey) seemed like a plan, and so did shouting and general dissuadance, especially since yellow was a ridiculous flailing thing and no challenge. But then grey hefted a nearby (heavy council) bin to hurl at me, realised he couldn't, and ran at us.
At that point yellow had decided that falling over and bringing The Irishman down with him was the order of the day, whereby he turned into a dirty horizontal fighting, hair-pulling little bitch, so I inserted my leg into the proceedings and dragged him backwards so The Irishman could get up.
That scared the crap out of me.
He was so light; he seemed to weigh almost nothing. I'd dragged him further than I thought, far away enough for The Irishman to get up; grey didn't know if he wanted to keep the fight up; they faced off, and I looked down, ready if needs must to drop my free knee into yellow.
This wiry 20something who thought he was a hardass, Rocky Balboa, in the Matrix or all of the above, who thought he could just start fights with people and scare them, who thought he was, ahem, 'all that' ... he was curled around my leg clinging on, eyes tight closed, knuckles white, legs kicking, looking like those terrified kids on the rollercoaster gripping the safety bar.
It was, all of a sudden, just like the little daughter of an old friend who used to 'steal my leg' and hang on, grinning, weighing so little as I walked round, laughing, with one heavy childbearing leg...
Except this was a whole other adult human being, flesh and bone and muscle and mass, on the end of my leg, having been dragged sideways about ten feet on his ass and head, seeming to weigh nothing. And I found myself laughing. Not even scary laughing; uproarious surprised laughter, which gave pause to the entire scene, suddenly making the whole thing seem ridiculous. I opened my hands, bent at the waist, did what I'm sure in afterthought was Jerry Seinfeld hands, and said, still laughing, "What is this? What the fuck do you call that?"
Grey then knew that it was probably over, so I shook yellow a little 'til he loosened his grip, and did a weird loping kicky thing that flung him off my leg and up the road away from us. I was still surprised by how far I'd flung him, and realised my hands had tensed into immovable talon shapes, fingers clawed. I suddenly discovered that I'd squared my shoulders, had my arms wide, tense, and that I'd raised to my full height.
I'd managed to stop laughing and put a serious face on, because this time I was ready, but it didn't remain serious for very long, as he got up, got what I'm sure he thought was baleful eye contact going on while a wide but shallow pavement graze began to bleed above his eye.
We then delivered this little dialogue, eye contact intense, an easy fist's swing from each other, every line delivered at full volume, full intensity and aggression. He seemed a little confused when I delivered my first line with the exact same intensity as he did. As far as I remember (and it was intense and memorable) this is verbatim:
Y:"Fuck off!" T:"Okay!" Y:"No, fuck off!" T:"We're fucking off!" Y:"Fuck off then!" T:"So let us fuck off!" Y:"You starting?" T:"No, we're fucking off!" Y:"So fuck off!" T:"We want to fuck off! Let us fuck off! If you fucking give it up, for fuck's sake, we will, in fact, fuck off! All you've got to do is let us fuck off, we can all fuck off and fucking give it up, for fuck's sake!" Y:"..." T:"Can we fuck off now?"
This seemed to scare and confuse him in equal parts, and he didn't come after me when I started to move back toward my bag, which The Irishman was now covering, since grey had given up trying to fight him. I eyed him carefully on the way past, telling him, less aggresively, that "We're fucking off, all right?"
He, on the other hand, was a wierdo, and though I'd not laid a hand on him, he took advantage of my diplodicus reactions to draw right back to punch me squarely in the nose. But, by what The Irishman tells me, I didn't move, not even slightly, though he'd clearly hit me really hard. All I did was stop, and stare.
I'd like to add that The Irisman has known hardcore fights, Derry riots and the like. He's met fights; he'd already proved it. But he says the way I didn't move at all after taking most of grey's might to the face was rare, impressive and probably very scary.
He was probably right; I said a sarcastic "aw, thanks!" and grey thought about it for a second, then withdrew to dissuade yellow from getting back into the fray while a couple of horrified studenty passersby looked about shocked, and decided that distracting these two nutballs was a fine plan, so while they did that, we rounded a corner, and got out of there totally intact, nothing stolen, nothing broken.
So. There's my night. My nose it is a little wide for tonight, and the initial snotbloodbogey was most impressive, but otherwise, everything's all right, and I'm reassured I'm still scary when I need to be. They won't be pulling that shit again. And that was really, really funny somehow.
...oh, and I guess that means I'm blogging again too. There's yer viscera, IC. Night night.
Edited Sat 13 Oct 07, 3:01 AM by zombie_Thomasson
| 13 Oct 07, 9:08 AM empathic_metamorph UK(DN), 5 yrs  |
oh dear. So nice to see you back in blog land no matter how unfortunate the circumstances. You are the second person this week that has recounted a similiar public attack. I too was set upon in a town centre and was shocked to my core. That first smack received unexpectedly from an idiot justs makes you think "WTF just happened here?". And the general public call us perverted. Get out the Arnica and thank your lucky stars that bruises were all you received. Sounds like you taught them some lessons anyway. Sending healing thoughts, tsina
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| 13 Oct 07, 11:39 AM MsHijinx UK, 8 yrs |
I was expecting a tale of prolonged Viagra exposure when I saw the tagline!lol Hope you are ok xx From lashes to ashes And from lust to dust In your sweetest torment I'm lost And no heaven can help us Ready, willing and able To lose it all For a kiss so fatal And so warm - HIM | ||
| 13 Oct 07, 12:40 PM zombie_Thomasson UK(E), 7 yrs |
Yeah, way ahead of you on that one. I sported a white'n'red arnica'n'blood rasperry ripple nose for a fair while after I got home. Now it doesn't hurt, my glasses fit, and all I've got is a sinus day and a wee nose scratch. Result!... I guess. It was soooo surprising that I didn't really know how to get in there and help after I'd got my bag out of the danger zone, but overall shoutyness and plucking-people-off-the-fight seemed to do okay. So, yay, still a pacifist hardass. Yay again for dichotomy.
I'm suddenly reminded of this, hearing that... http://www.metacafe.com/watch/571293/the_gush/ (NSFW) Edited 13 Oct 07, 12:49 PM by zombie_Thomasson | ||
| 13 Oct 07, 1:24 PM MsHijinx UK, 8 yrs |
I just watched that.OMG I never knew that could happen! From lashes to ashes And from lust to dust In your sweetest torment I'm lost And no heaven can help us Ready, willing and able To lose it all For a kiss so fatal And so warm - HIM | ||
| 13 Oct 07, 3:20 PM Lalita UK(BS), 5 yrs |
Good on ya for being so brave and also for turning the whole experience into a peice of art on your blog. After countless nasty fights in London I've learned to just corss the road whenever I see a drunken crowd, but I still wish it didn't have to be like that! Anybody can be fabulous. You got a hump on your back? Put some glitter on it and have a party. | ||
| 13 Oct 07, 3:46 PM taloollah UK(YO), 6 yrs |
Dude I've always said that York is a dodgy place to live now!!! Trust me, after alarmingly regular abuse from total strangers whilst walking down the street in York, I find that Leeds is actually more likely to be safer!!!!! I'm glad you're intact and opened some unique Thommasson brand can o' woopass on the demihuman chavlike shit for brains! Stay safe matey! t xxxxxxxx "I'm not Bi.....but I'm not straight.....I'm just a bit wonky really!" |
