David Maney

Spoilers.

So I got in a fight tonight.

I got in a fight with a guy named Hayden. I didn’t ask how he spells his name before we started throwing punches. And now I’m sitting here at my computer with ice on my forearms while I type. None of the punches that hit my body hurt but the ones that I blocked do.

Before I begin I should go back.

I played sports when I was younger: hockey and baseball. By country SA local standards I was quite good. We won grand finals and I won league best and fairest.

Up until the age of twelve I was a sore loser. I remember crying after a game of two-on-two basketball at lunch-time; trying to talk a good game between sobs while the other kids teased me. I remember the coolness of the water as I tried wash and disguise the tears. I still remember the names of the opposing duo. Joe Pinneri. Clark Morandin.

I’m the youngest of three siblings. My brother is three years older than me. Before going into The Club I’d talked to people about fighting my brother. I always matched his 80% with a 100% effort. I remember the day I finally beat him: Summer. Henley Beach, Adelaide. We set up this rather banal game of water rugby. You throw a bottle of water into the waves and the person who retrieves it has to bring it back to shore. The other person has to stop them. Tackle. Kick. Pull. The weightlessness of the water meant we could throw each other around without fear of injury. It was a test of strength, endurance, will. There was no score. Just a look in his eyes when he was on his haunches and I knew he’d given 100% and lost. I think I’d also just watched Gattaca for the first time. This is a movie I still quote, especially when I’m out on a morning run and it starts to rain:

How are you doing this Vincent? How have you done any of this?
…
You wanna know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.

Hayden and I were the last fight of the night. The rules were simple:
No head.
No groin.
When someone says ‘stop’ you stop.
When someone forfeits the fight is over.

Later on other participants would say that the New Heroes were urging us on, but I had already decided I would throw at least one punch. In all the previous fights, whether it was man-on-man, woman-on-woman, or woman-on-man, it was a wrestle until exhaustion.

Hayden looked a little pale, a little pudgy, baby fat really, although he was older than that. I was wearing my Boston Red Sox #getbeard t-shirt. I had eaten a Date and Banana bar in the car on the way to the Meat Market.

I asked if we could talk during the fight. Yes. As we danced around each other I asked Hayden:

Do you have any brothers?
Yes. Older. You?
Older as well.
How much older?
Three years.
Me too. I always used to give a 100% in fights.
He used to wop me. He was taller, a bit like you.
I said you could talk not have a conversation.

So we clenched our bare fists and went from there. What really happened? There were moments.

The New Heroes had talked about seeing the change in someone while they were fighting. The opening of the show was a re-telling of Fight Club (the movie). The book, along with Frederic Biegbeder’s 99 Francs had been my two chosen texts for my English Major Study in high school. I could quote the rules before the New Heroes said them: the first rule of fight club is do not talk about fight club… etc

It’s strange to fight someone and not be able to hit them in the head. My brother and I often devised games where this was how you scored points. So we tried to hit each other. Hayden had a much better punch than me. He threw himself into a lunge before hitting me. When we wrestled and I was fighting to keep both feet on the ground and not be thrown I became aware of the people around us watching. When we went back to boxing I looked at his torso with an occasional glance at his eyes. Why am I avoiding eye contact, I thought.

My brother n’ I had a moved called ‘working the chin’, but no head action.

We both dropped our arms by our side. I’m not sure who led the exchange but we preceded to let the other take a free punch or three. One of mine struck him on the upper abdomen which made an impressive sound and drew an pooh from the crowd.

Now we’ve established we can’t hurt each other…

We were comfortable. Hayden was a southpaw but changed to a regular stance. I punched him on the upper arm a couple of times then on the third punch came in real slowly and he moved away. We backed away. He quickly feigned to come at me. I half-reacted.

What was happening? Where was the physical rage? I was barely warm.

Hayden came with a flurry of Mortal Combat combination punches, mashing the controller buttons. I was standing in the corner and trying to grab his fists. Why? We backed away and looked at each other. Was it time to stop? We mumbled something and after a few punches got into a wrestle. I managed to get him on the ground laying on his side, my right hand pull his left arm across his chest while my left hand pinned his right wrist to the mat and my full weight was on his ribs.

You’re heavy.

He couldn’t get up unless I got off him.

Stop?
Stop.

If it was a points decision I would have given it to Hayden. He threw and landed more punches. But I pinned him. So I won, right?

The New Heroes had said in a previous fight that there were no winners. But if I hadn’t ‘won’ how long would the fight have gone on? I didn’t have the physical rage. I didn’t even attempt to reach back and find it. But I still wanted to win. If he’d hit me in the head it might have been different. My Dad always told me the skill in boxing is to be able to take a blow to the head and not get angry. If you get angry you lose.

In the next exercise we were asked to pick a word that we lived by. They showed us the most popular choices. Passion. Happiness. Money. Me. Love. Were there any others? Hands up. Me.

Contradiction.
Why… what do you mean?
Well, something I did a year ago I might not do tomorrow.
Was their contradiction in your day?
Today?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was contradiction in his fight.

The next section was a monologue about have tos and a photo slide presentation of all the great works the members of The Club had gone out and… but my thoughts were elsewhere. Physical rage. Intellectual rage. Emotional rage. Can you partition rage? What is rage, really? Why was I hoping a fight with a stranger would rekindle the rage? Why did I want it to?

One of the New Heroes shared his word which he lived by: frogs. He told the ending of the filming Magnolia when the frogs fall from the sky. He quoted quiz kid Stanley:

This happens. This is something that happens.

Beautiful and redeeming for Stanley, but in the movie another frog falls from the sky, through a skylight and stops Jimmy Gator, quiz show host, philanderer, possible pedophile and terminally ill man, from shooting himself in the head. Does that frog redeem Jimmy Gator?

The ice packs on my forearms are warm.

Tomorrow… today, I have a dance audition followed by lunch with my Dad. After that is Mattias’ percussion show, Fluvial, then two performances in the evening as The Rat in a dream opera.

I am Jack’s… contradictions?

This writing was written on Friday [fight] night, after the fight and before bed.

The Club 3.0 is part of Next Wave festival 2014. May 1-11.

This post does not recommend or advocate violence.