I, Bully

Not that you'd be able to tell these days, but not all bullies are created equally.

Getting what you deserve: a primer. (Photo by Camille Paradise)

The kid was scooting around the doctor’s waiting room. But the word “scooting” makes it sound harmless and we were not entirely sure it was. The kid, in modern parlance, was flipping the fuck out. Bouncing from chair to chair, screaming, in total four-year-old fettle, his entire existence at that moment was a fuck you to whatever passed for proper waiting room behavior.

I was also four and looked back and forth between my mother and this lunatic. At the lunatic, then at my mother. My mother and I were mind-melded and were so around the same thing: stopping this kid. Somehow. Some way.

Then, like G-d was actually there to answer a prayer, it happened: at the terminus of a running slide the kid fell to one side and hit his head on the office table, collapsing in a swelter of sobs. I laughed. Out loud. OUT LOUD. And when my mother tried, wanly, to correct me, I could see the merriment in her eyes as well.

The rhythm of the room as it was had been unbalanced and suddenly balance had returned. It was cause for celebration.

Then again: a few months earlier my father had taken me to a puppet show in St. Albans Park in Queens. I remember being in pain. Something had bitten me. Or…some kids in the bleachers were laughing and then quiet when my father swung around and stared at them. Then again: pain, my pain, and laughter.

The kids had pea shooters and were using them and my head for target practice. Then it all gets blurry. My father stands, rising to face them, they scramble, and in their scramble to flee, one of them falls off the back of the bleachers. There are screams, an ambulance eventually shows up.

“See what happens?” My father grumbled. “Serves them right.”

And it had and it did. Once again, balance, imbalance, rebalance. The universe, as I had come to understand it, was a continual effort to maintain itself in the face of the ego drive to upset the order for any variety of reasons but mostly just to…leave a mark.

But could it be that some of us were agents of universal balance? Karma levelers?

“You need to know how to fight!” Debbie was my cousin. She was tall, taller than me, and a few years older. She was obsessed with fighting and her obsession, along with a grandfather who was a boxing fanatic and spoke of the sport with nothing short of impassioned love, caused me to become likewise obsessed.

“What’s the difference between you and a scumbag?” This was not part of a joke. My girlfriend at the time was asking me…

Except Debbie was good, so her teaching largely looked to the outside world like beating, with me getting the worst of it. We’d chase each other up and down the stairs, strike, kick, takedowns, punches, until someone would scream to “cut out all that rough housing”. I loved Debbie and Debbie loved me. I never had an older sister but this was very much that.

I say this because a few weeks ago, in a comment on another post on martial arts, this was left…

“You were a bully.”

Just that. I’d have laughed it off but it came from a friend who had known me since I was 10. And in a flash and in full consideration of our history in total, I knew precisely why he’d say that and more importantly, I knew he was speaking his truth.

I had already gone through this though. After my book came out, Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, I did an entire book tour of the U.S. and Europe before I realized I was full of shit. The valorous tales wherein I come to the defense of the defenseless and downtrodden were, while true, only half the story.

“I just really want to sleep in a real bed tonight.” Whipping Boy’s bass player was a simple cat from Montana. Being cooped up in a pick-up truck on a benighted tour of the U.S., with 20-hour drives behind us and in front of us, nothing to eat but peanut butter and government cheese, and sleeping with your knees drawn up to your chest? Hardcore? Yeah. Fun? Only if you’re really into hardcore.

Which is to say, on one level I understood his desire for a bed. On another level?

“I just really want to sleep in a real bed tonight,” I mimicked him, lisping through what he had just said. In his family he was a younger brother and I had met his older brother. His older brother was an asshole. And I had become that older brother asshole. Though in my mind I was just a universal agent of balance: a bed would be nice if we had one but we didn’t so let’s embrace the now.

But it didn’t come across like that. It never came across like that.

“You were a bully.”

I had memories of chasing the commenter around the street but more significantly for me I had memories, tinted by the passage of time, that left me feeling nothing but love for this guy. Sure, I had been hard on him, hectoring him about some comic book minutiae, saying he was stupid if he got it wrong, laughing at him if he tried to get it right but…and then a realization, that it was only me that cared about the BUT.

So the point of all of this is that when people speak of the Age of the Bully and they point to the methods and methodology of a Trump or an Elon Musk, I nod along in agreement. Right up until I catch the looks that say, “what the fuck are YOU nodding for?”

And they’re sort of right. To this age, I feel a certain kinship. I know because people are always oddly worried about offending me, when playing rough is what I consider playing. Case in point: the bass player’s older brother, the aforementioned asshole, told me this joke while we cooled out in real beds at their family house in Montana.

“Do you know why ‘blacks’ are such good basketball players?”

“No,” I said knowing from the outset that this wasn’t a joke and there was no punchline outside of what he imagined would be my hurt feelings.

[W]hen people speak of the Age of the Bully and they point to the methods and methodology of a Trump or an Elon Musk, I nod along in agreement. Right up until I catch the looks that say, “what the fuck are YOU nodding for?”

“Because they’ve been dodging hangers for nine months!”

“OHHHHHH…I GET IT! Because their mothers were trying to ABORT them!!” I fake laughed so LOUD and so LONG with no glee or joy in my laugh or my eyes that he understood. Finally. Then silence and a dead stare turned his way: “That pass for humor in these parts?”

He answered but I ignored him for the remainder of our short stay. I had learned how to fight, and with that learning came a certain imperviousness to the on-ramp to crossed swords: hurt feelings.

It was why punk rock called out to me. It’s why martial arts did as well. Once you conquer your “feelings”, it seemed to me, you could conquer the world. More importantly, you’d want to.

So, the real difference between Trump, Musk and me though, outside of the millions and billions of dollars they have laced up between them, is that if you’re a bear for balance, you also are discerning about when to choose the hard road and when not to. If you’re not discerning your targets become victims and you become an asshole. I mean at least, I imagined, I knew the difference.

“What’s the difference between you and a scumbag?” This was not part of a joke. My girlfriend at the time was asking me, not in an effort to hurt my feelings but out of a real interest in knowing if there was a difference and, if so, if I knew what it was.

“The difference between me and a scumbag,” I offered, without missing a beat, “is that I am willing to acknowledge my possible scumbaggery whereas a true scumbag NEVER does.”

She nodded her head, and I nodded along with her. But when I look over at the dual engines of this age’s angels of bully, Trump and Musk, I know that they don’t know why I’m looking at them and nodding. At all.

The thing is though, why would we really expect them to?

So, these days I’m trying to ease up on the accelerator a bit and am getting progressively more comfortable with people making the dumbass choice versus hectoring them into making the less dumbass one. Or judging them for making the really assbackward one, no matter how jackass it makes them seem.

After all, stupid, I’m no bully.