John Wayne Would Have Said It Better

Violence has been on my mind lately. Not because I’m angry, or even a little upset. The wash and swash of my shoreline lately has just been transgressed by it.

Early last week, I was on my own. My nights have not been my own all the time anymore. I don’t mind, but occasionally, I kick everyone out of my life. Some nights I need the magic dark and the sacred desert breeze to myself. Some nights, I need a sackcloth cup of coffee and a fire in the back yard. Some nights, I need to be all on my lonesome. Some nights I need to buy a cheap quart of Busch at Albertson’s with the change I dig out of the lint trap. Shit happens.

So, I walked over to the grocer. I had nothing on my mind, which was kind of nice. The night was beautiful, but hinting at rain. The peace on the air was palpable. The beer purchase went without a hitch. At home, I had some manner of left over bean contraption and a book I needed to read. The makings of a priceless night were coming together. Then I got out in the parking lot.

I want to call them kids, but they were more like early twenties. Maybe late teens. They were generally doing their best to be menacing. Threats bring out of me a rage I cannot explain fully or even pretend understand. It’s like the whole goddamn world has decided to set me on fire and I have the only gasoline and matches in town. I didn’t feel threatened.

They knew they were making the honorable and normal citizenry uncomfortable hanging out next to the door. By their body placement, they forced people to walk around them. The dumbass ringleader sat on the hand rails that led out the door with his knees directly in peoples path. It was the irritating behavor of young boys with no way to challenge themselves. They purposely talked loud and crude when women exited the doors.

I walked out the door and the loudest one stared at me. Really stared. I gave him an upward nod, like he just wanted to say hello. I ignored him as much as I could. I walked around his knee. Then he screamed behind me, “Bitch!”

I heard him get up.

It all seemed like such a waste. It must have been how non-believing Christians take communion. Some sort of elaborate sacrament to a God you don’t believe is there. Violence is a habit. An old habit.

I turned around, exasperated by the whole process. I had apparently hit him with my bag of beer. The world would cave in on us all for sure. He spouted on some stupid shit. I apologized. Not because I was sorry, just because I wanted to go home and read my book. This was a bad move. It made him more faux-angry. At this point the other shithead blinged up sycophants were getting restless. I gave them all a look, to make sure none of them were any sort of real threat. And they weren’t. No one was a real threat. the faux anger and moronic rhetoric was nearing a logical conclusion, so I turned slightly to leave, but for whatever reason, I didn’t turn my back to them. The guy lost it. Or at least pretended to. A torrent of terrible second language Spanish left him. Then English. I kept the eye contact. It takes a serious person to attack someone who will see you coming.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

I’ve been threatened legitimately with death before. It’s sort of fun in a retrospect kind of way. Like bootcamp. Like deployments. Like war. Like hate. Like murder. But this was just a waste of my drinking time. I really wanted to read that book.

I asked him: Do I seem like someone to fuck with?

The line, low and sort of growly, should have had some real punch. When he was quiet for a second too long and I knew I could leave safely, I should have felt like a badass. I should have felt better than him. I should have walked off with my chest out and pride in the cockles of whatever heart I have left. Instead, it was just boring. And tiring.

In the darker corner of the parking lot, where one of my friends as a teenager was gutted with a stolen knife because he talked to a white girl, I felt like sitting in the grass.

So I did. And opened the beer. The clouds were covering the moon and teasing with rain. We both knew they were full of shit. My friend’s name was Eric. He didn’t survive. He died in the parking lot while they kicked in his face with their cowboy boots. While he died, I was learning how to fold T-shirts into an insanely complicated envelope and polishing my boots into chrome. I was working my body and my mind and the soul in which I still believed into a weapon–honor, courage, commitment.

A policeman drove by slow and I looked him in the eyes while I took a pull out of the beer. He slowed, and maybe some part of him thought to get out of the car an fuck with me. In the end, he stayed in the car and sped off somewhere.

Violence is so intolerably boring.