vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.
I have outgrown that, and I believe my sons have too. We talk of a man we know who one morning shaved the beard he had worn for years and went downstairs for breakfast with the family and no one noticed; and of a woman I know, who for over twenty years was the only cigarette smoker in her family, and her husband and several children wanted her to stop, and teased her, begged her, scolded her; finally she did stop, and neither her husband nor her children were aware of this, and at dinner after her first week without a cigarette she finally told them. And my sons and I are able now to laugh, to say: No wonder those bullies beat us up; they should have. We know now that if we had fought the first bully who harassed us, we would have saved ourselves years of torment.
Because of all this, and I hope a sense of justice as well, I become enraged whenever I see the strong bullying the weak. And when the weak one is a female, my rage is deeper. Because with girls and women, it is all a matter of size. Few women, no matter how courageous, can defeat a man in physical combat, if both she and he are normally made. So what was â or still is â in the hearts of those snakes who watched while Adam beat Eve, Nick pushed and struck and choked young Jan?
I understand them less than I understand Nick, and I understand very little about him, or about the young woman who was with him that night, his girlfriend who not only continued to be his girlfriend after his assault on Jan, but was in the courtroom in December, waiting to take the stand and commit perjury. But I can recognize Nickâs rage, and his girlfriendâs loyalty. The unrecognizable emotion, for me, is whatever stirred and churned inside the ones who watched. It was not fear that held them; they were Nickâs friends.
Because these punks abound, I have in the trunk of the car an axe handle. Two autumns earlier, in 1982, also at the Midway Pizza and Sub, some of these snakes beat up students from the college where I used to work. The students were foreigners, and I believe there were three of them. The beating was on a Saturday night, and I heard about it the next afternoon, and Sunday night I lay awake until eight oâclock in the morning. The anger and pain that turned my bed into a cage, and changed the silence of night into the imagined sounds of fists and feet striking flesh and bone, had nothing to do with townies and students. I had no such loyalties; I often told students that my children were townies, and so was I. Nor was I disturbed because the students were foreign; if they had been Samoans â I suppose there are small ones but I have never seen one â or Japanese sumo wrestlers, or if they had been well-built young men from any nation; or, lacking the physiques, if they had possessed that certain earned or sometimes feigned aura that deters bullies, they would have simply gone into the place and bought their food and returned to the campus. These Middle Eastern students on that warm Saturday night were small; the bullies assaulted in a pack and beat them at will, beat them until none of the students could rise from the sidewalk.
I did not spend all of that long Sunday night imagining the beating. The Midway is on the main street of Haverhill, and is between the bar where a poet and I used to go for nightcaps, and the street where we lived. So during much of that night I thought of Mike and myself driving home after our beers and seeing the punks again, with victims or a victim. What would we do, since we had no choice but to get out of the car and force a gang to cease and desist?
Because of horrors inflicted on too many women I love, I carry a licensed handgun when I go with a woman to Boston. Lately, because one is liable now in America to turn a street corner and walk into lethal violence whose target is of either gender, and of any age â a small child, an old
I have outgrown that, and I believe my sons have too. We talk of a man we know who one morning shaved the beard he had worn for years and went downstairs for breakfast with the family and no one noticed; and of a woman I know, who for over twenty years was the only cigarette smoker in her family, and her husband and several children wanted her to stop, and teased her, begged her, scolded her; finally she did stop, and neither her husband nor her children were aware of this, and at dinner after her first week without a cigarette she finally told them. And my sons and I are able now to laugh, to say: No wonder those bullies beat us up; they should have. We know now that if we had fought the first bully who harassed us, we would have saved ourselves years of torment.
Because of all this, and I hope a sense of justice as well, I become enraged whenever I see the strong bullying the weak. And when the weak one is a female, my rage is deeper. Because with girls and women, it is all a matter of size. Few women, no matter how courageous, can defeat a man in physical combat, if both she and he are normally made. So what was â or still is â in the hearts of those snakes who watched while Adam beat Eve, Nick pushed and struck and choked young Jan?
I understand them less than I understand Nick, and I understand very little about him, or about the young woman who was with him that night, his girlfriend who not only continued to be his girlfriend after his assault on Jan, but was in the courtroom in December, waiting to take the stand and commit perjury. But I can recognize Nickâs rage, and his girlfriendâs loyalty. The unrecognizable emotion, for me, is whatever stirred and churned inside the ones who watched. It was not fear that held them; they were Nickâs friends.
Because these punks abound, I have in the trunk of the car an axe handle. Two autumns earlier, in 1982, also at the Midway Pizza and Sub, some of these snakes beat up students from the college where I used to work. The students were foreigners, and I believe there were three of them. The beating was on a Saturday night, and I heard about it the next afternoon, and Sunday night I lay awake until eight oâclock in the morning. The anger and pain that turned my bed into a cage, and changed the silence of night into the imagined sounds of fists and feet striking flesh and bone, had nothing to do with townies and students. I had no such loyalties; I often told students that my children were townies, and so was I. Nor was I disturbed because the students were foreign; if they had been Samoans â I suppose there are small ones but I have never seen one â or Japanese sumo wrestlers, or if they had been well-built young men from any nation; or, lacking the physiques, if they had possessed that certain earned or sometimes feigned aura that deters bullies, they would have simply gone into the place and bought their food and returned to the campus. These Middle Eastern students on that warm Saturday night were small; the bullies assaulted in a pack and beat them at will, beat them until none of the students could rise from the sidewalk.
I did not spend all of that long Sunday night imagining the beating. The Midway is on the main street of Haverhill, and is between the bar where a poet and I used to go for nightcaps, and the street where we lived. So during much of that night I thought of Mike and myself driving home after our beers and seeing the punks again, with victims or a victim. What would we do, since we had no choice but to get out of the car and force a gang to cease and desist?
Because of horrors inflicted on too many women I love, I carry a licensed handgun when I go with a woman to Boston. Lately, because one is liable now in America to turn a street corner and walk into lethal violence whose target is of either gender, and of any age â a small child, an old
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