The craziness

Come on in and enjoy the fire.  Don't mind the tears, or the tears.  The drops from my eyes are just the rents in my mind, soul, and body releasing themselves.  But just be warned.  None of what you are about to read is pleasant.  (Author's note, the reading is better if you turn on the video as you read)



Y'ever lay a real beating on someone?  I mean the kind where you can feel flesh and bone change shape beneath your hands, feet, teeth, and other instruments of destruction?  There is an atavistic pleasure that comes from violence.  There is something gut wrenching honest about in-your-face, straight up, physical destruction.  I've been on the end of both, giving and receiving.  And lately they've been on my mind. 

I ever tell you folks about one of my favorite fights?  Woulda been grade eight, many moons ago.  I had this one real prick giving me the gears, thought he was tough cuz he took some martial art.  Don't get me wrong folks, I'm a big fan of the various fighting forms, but let's just say I follow the 'James Brown Top Fight Academy.'  I don't know Karate, but I know ca-razy.

Anyways, I was leaving school late for some reason, had a couple people waiting, including a couple girls who I had crushes on, but wouldn't give me the time of day.  They liked my buddy Lee.  Shit, if I was gay or a straight chick I woulda wanted Lee too.  Dude's probably still gorgeous.  Anyways.  They're down at the street, and I'm coming out of the school, and there's this slope down to the sidewalk, and around the door is one of those industrial pipe fence things they put in school yards to let you really feel like cattle.

That's when prick boy, who I didn't see in the corner around from the door, starts in.  Callin' me fat, and stupid, and a variety of other things that he knew would hurt me.  And I decided to walk away.  That's what I've always been taught, ignore the words, just keep walking, be the bigger man.  But that's when I catch sight of the girls.  They're both laughing.  And that was it.

Now let me be honest here folks, when I'm just toolin' about I'm pretty clumsy.  I trip over shit I can see, I constantly have cuts all over my hands from work, in general I'm kinda klutzy.  But it's more carelessness than ability.  The flip side to that is, when I need to, I'm the fastest, most graceful, powerful pagan beast you've ever seen.  I'm capable of superhuman feats that would make your eyes pop, jaws drop, and bowels void.

So I spin, and drop my bag, and launch myself back up the hill.  Prick boy is laughing at first, because he thinks that the cattle guard will keep him safe, until I do a one handed vault over it like a freakin' gymnast, and launch myself at him.  He goes from laughing to all wide eyes and raised hands in fearful supplication.

One leg hooks behind his feet, and I shove, launching him back and down, before following him to the ground with a knee jack-knifed down to catch him in a sensitive place.  Oh, right, I don't play by the rules when I fight.  I just go for maximum damage.  The knee catches his hip and I slide to the side, my hands grabbing his upper arms as my head comes forward, and I smash my forehead into his nose.

After that it gets a bit blurry.  Both because I had the red mist going, and there were tears in my eyes.  In case it wasn't also apparent, I cry at the drop of a hat when I let down the walls.  What I do remember is me screaming 'Still wanna be funny?!' at the top of my lungs as I laid my hands into every soft part I could find.  I know he rolled onto his side away from me at one point so I started laying knees into him.  And it was a one sided beating folks.  He never even tried to fight back.  He never had a chance to.  I've been told when I get full of fury I'm one of the scariest looking motherfuckers around.  That fear freezes people.

So this probably didn't go on too long because the other kid walked away.  Wobbly, but he was at school the next day.  Two big black eyes, limping, didn't do gym.  Anyways, my screaming, which was at the top of my lungs, and probably can drown out air craft, brought the teachers, three of them, who hauled me off prick boy.  I'm sure I was still scary.  They didn't try to detain me, they just screamed at me to go home and they'd deal with it tomorrow.  I stared at the three of them between me and my victim, and stalked back down the little slope.  One of the girls who was laughing, was holding my bag, and as I approached asked, 'Holy shit, how did you do that?  You were ... I mean, how did you jump that fence, it's four feet high from this side.'  (Aside, said girl spent that spring dry humping me in the little island in the stream in A.E. Wilson Park, so I guess I made an impression.)  I just grabbed the bag and said, 'I just did.'  And started stalking off.  I didn't care if they followed.  Because mainly I was pissed.

I was pissed because they denied me my victim.  I wanted him to feel pain so bad he'd never ever talk any shit again.  I was pissed because I lost control.  I'm dangerous when I lose control.  I know that.  Out of control Coyote causes world ending floods of pain and grief.  I was pissed because I hurt someone.  I knew I hurt him.  He didn't get up and scramble away when the teachers hauled me off him.  I hoped and dreaded that an ambulance might come for him.  I honestly cannot stomach real violence after the rage passes.  Consider it some psychotic break in my brain, but I can dish it out but afterwards I am torn apart with sorrow for my actions.  I was pissed because the girls were laughing.  Who cares if they noticed me now, they were laughing before.  Geez-us why did I let their laughter get to me?

The next day at school we both got hauled into the principals office.  Me and my victim.  My rage was gone so he was safe.  But my friends had mentioned how he had been harassing me for weeks so we both got off with warnings.  And prick boy decided it was much better to be Coyote's friend.  We were joking about the principals name by the time we left the office.

That one's my favorite because there was no lasting bodily injuries.  Well I'm sure the guy snores now, his nose was pretty damn pancaked.  But I like it because I still remember most of it.  Others, I don't.  I don't know why I had a lot of blood on the cuffs of my jeans as me and a friend ran away from a bar late one New Years Eve.  I don't remember why I've woken up after a hard nights partying to find my shirt has blood and tears all over it and my muscles are aching.  I've heard stories, but I wasn't there.  You might blame it on the booze, but I know it's the red mist, the rage.  Disappearing inside myself to enact violence that I normally never would. 

Now there is a certain insanity to admitting this but I've often said that unless we're willing to own all out mistakes we'll never get any further down our individual paths.  And I'm sure some of you will read this and go 'I knew it, the guy is a psycho.'  Oh well.  Not much to do but to admit it.  Sure.  I'm a little bit outside normal.  But there is a point.

The point is this, despite those mistakes, they have not repeated themselves for a long time.  The rage has come but has been held in check.  And right now, despite the uneven mental stability right now due to some chemical imbalances from giving up an addiction, I'm still keeping it under control.  Mostly that means me hiding out in my home but it has had a few moments where it could have gone and didn't.

Yah me?