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kaigoucontinued from part I
The ‘mental training’ difference between formalized martial arts and street scrapping -- and this isn’t just my observation, but checked against & considered with several friends, who report similar -- is that if you’re in the dojo, your entire purpose behind throwing that punch isn’t just different. It’s also what you expect to get from it. Let’s think about sparring, in those art forms in which you demonstrate kata, and then spar for a brief bit, in order to move to the next belt level. (Yes, some arts only do kata, some focus on sparring only over a certain level, blah blah blah. Basically, think of dojo-style sparring, supervised.) When you punch someone, you get a point, a hit, a note, whatever. You’re not doing it to hurt the other person, and certainly not a personal level -- in fact, if it is personal, I know several senseis/sifus who will avoid pairing two students with personal conflict. The dojo, they’ll tell you, is not the place to make it personal.
Which means when someone punches you, strikes at you, in the dojo, you know the person isn’t seeing you as an opponent in the sense of ‘obstacle’ but is simply performing his/her moves, and you react in kind. At the end, you get up, brush yourself off, and shake hands. La la la, etc. Or maybe not shake hands but at least there’s a veneer of politeness about it -- along with the idea that it’s actually an honor to be the demonstrating uke to a master’s seme. So you got thrown, who cares, you got thrown by a fifth dan! Go you!
Ahem. Anyway, in street scrapping, the point is -- and we’ll go with caps here so no one misses this -- TO HURT THE OTHER PERSON.
It doesn’t matter how, and your why may differ based on circumstances, such as hurting them enough to get them to back off so you can run, or hurting them because they’re dating your ex-girlfriend. Whatever the reason you got there, the point is to make the other person hurt worse than you do, or to just plain hurt the other person so they won’t (or can’t) hurt you.
This is the fundamental reason I couldn’t mesh with the dojo-style of learning: because, when I throw a punch, I cannot not go into “I will hurt you” mode. It’s ingrained so deeply, and on top of that, I was still early twenties and not yet with time/distance and maturity to recognize just what was going on in me. When you spar, you want to throw that punch, let him block it, throw another, block the return punch, etc -- you want it to last as long as possible, give you enough time to get in as many hits while deflecting his.
That seemed kinda pointless to me at the time, though I did try my very best to “get” the mindset, or at least fake it decently. But everything I’d ever learned, seen, heard, been around, experienced said: the entire point of starting a fight is to END IT. If you’re going to throw a punch, you don’t want a return punch (though it’ll probably happen unless you’re really good), so you don’t hold back. You don’t try to extend to get more ‘points’ in, you want that guy to go DOWN. And that means you face down any potential fight with the clear and mindful intent of hurting the person.
Now, mind you, all this may seem like I was in all sorts of fights and scrapes and whatnot. I actually wasn’t. I did a lot of observing of the build-up, was there for a few remarkable blow-ups (but not in the thick of it), and covered more than a decent share of after-parties. Fact is, I actually got into more fights on my college campus than I ever did while in the city, if you add it all up -- and the amount of time at college versus the city-time is about even, at that. One way or another, often at parties, if a fight didn’t break out around me, it broke out just after I left (though fortunately for my reputation, it was only one frequent party-host who had the maturity and savvy to recognize that the common factor was me, and to alert me to this).
ETA: I realized I should probably clarify what I mean by this. What I'm talking about is the fact that where I took offense at someone's words, I didn't -- maybe even couldn't? -- just take it as "that's what people say." One thing I noticed when I returned to college (and that really bugged me) was the amount of disrespect I got from all but one or two Big Guys On Campus, and it was disrespect in that "you're so cute when you're angry" belittling that no sane guy would give, among the city-people I knew. (Not unless the guy really liked the idea of a busted lip, at least.)
My friends would say, "look, he doesn't mean it, it's just a joke." But to me, it wasn't a joke; the guy was being disrespectful, and people are disrespectful when they see you as someone not worth respecting, emphasis on not worth. To my street-scarred psyche, allowing someone -- especially a casual, no-more-than-passing acquaintance -- to disrespect me was tantamount to opening the door to further offense down the road. Just like you hit hardest on the first strike with the intent of finishing it off immediately & not wasting time on a second or third, you can also do the same on a psychological level: I instinctively took the disrespect as the opening of a fight, and retaliated with full-force of will to not just prevent a fight (that is, end the offense) but to make sure it didn't happen again (a word-based version of kicking the guy when he's down).
The only incident I recall with any detail (mostly because it was the first time my friend/host pointed it out to me) was when I'd gotten semi-trapped at his house during a party. I was bored, wanted to leave, but B-- didn't think it'd be safe to walk back to campus (the quickest path went over the canal, and there were several rapes there every semester, along the canal's well-cloaked, unlit path). Problem was, two or three guys had noticed my disinterest and decided it was their job to cheer me up. Or something.
I managed to shut one guy down, but the other two took my annoyance as amusing, and one of them made the mistake of getting in my face while -- I kid you not! -- delivering the line of "anyone ever told you that you look cute when you're angry?"
So I threw my drink in his face, and when he started to laugh (after a split second of astonishment that I'd just doused him in nearly a pint of cheap beer), that's when I hauled off and punched him in the gut. Hey, it was the easiest thing to reach, seeing how he was about seven inches taller than me -- I'm not too good at aiming over my head, and the upper gut is a nice target with lovely results when you nail it.
Fortunately the host intervened before I opened my mouth and really let the guy know what I thought of him. B shuffled me into the back room and gave me long-suffering, but patiently amused/frustrated friend-advice about starting fights.
Me: Do what? Since when?
B: Like just now.
Me: He wouldn't back off.
B: You threw your drink in his face!
Me: And he still wouldn't back off.
B: These are college students. They're naive, and not too bright anyway. Can't you cut them some slack?
Me: *grumbles* Fine, but I'm leaving now.
B: No, I don't want you walking home.
Me: I'm not staying here. I'm not putting up with that crap!
B: I still don't want you walking back. I'll drive you!
Me: You don't need to do that.
B: Yes, I do! *grabs the keys*
Me: I'm perfectly fine walking home from here. Thanks for the worry but I can take care of myself!
B: I'm not worried about you, damn it, I'm worried about whomever you might run into!
Which flattered and amazed my semi-tipsy brain enough that I calmed down and let him drive me the five minutes back to campus, and the entire way I was all happy and pleased with myself. Not that I wanted to go out and get into a fight, mind you, but to have someone (especially with boot-camp and wartime experience) treat me as a true threat was quite flattering to my young ego. (Or maybe it's just the contrast with the BGoC, ten minutes before, who'd treated me like I was inconsequential.)
I think that has a lot to do with having the intent trained/taught into me, mostly by the street-times, but also as a holdover/transformation of a sort of killing-intent I learned in competing in a brutal sport. I say brutal, though it’s non-contact, but if you can’t take out your aggression/competition on the other team’s body, then you learn to project your purpose, your dedication to stomping them into the water. Every glance across the water, before a race, was to communicate that you were getting into headspace and you might’ve been easy and laughing a minute ago but now the killer comes out. We, like all our compatriots, were bloodthirsty little bastards at the drop of a hat -- or more precisely, at the wave of a flag. Anyway, that meant when a friend on the street said to me, “the real important part about fighting is when it looks like the fight might happen -- that’s when you have to make the decision: do you get away, or do you stay to get beaten up? You have to choose what you’ll do, before anyone throws a punch.” (Which ignores that you have to kinda see that a fight is about to happen, but I guess that develops as part of instinct.)
What that person was talking about was the same thing in my sport: you must commit to the action. You have to go into a race, knowing intellectually and full well that in six point something minutes, you will be in so much goddamn pain that women have told me they’d rather go through natural childbirth again than face that pain on a regular basis. But you take it between the teeth, you grip it hard, and you smile around the pain, you make it clear with each and every single stroke that although you’re in pain, damn it’s agony beyond all agonies, it is still a good pain because you know you’re putting the other team in more pain.
I have yet to meet anyone in a dojo (who hasn’t been asked to leave, that is!) who expresses the same pleasure-pain-pride mix. They certainly don’t want to get hit -- especially in the arts which emphasis point-counting in sparring -- and they’re not doing it because they’re masochists, either. They’re certainly not doing it (for the most part) for the sheer pleasure of knowing you got kicked but you kicked back three times as hard. It’s just not the point of a formal art.
I do think this is much of the reason that I could deflect a few potential fights in my time (even if on the inside I was thinking, crap, crap, I’m in for it now!! and panicking somewhat), because I do know how to form the clear intent of inflicting pain -- and that does come across. It’s a flip of the mental switch that goes from “la la la autopilot” to sudden “whatever it takes, I’ll do it, and I no longer care about the niceties”. I’m sure much of my flist has read stories where a character’s eyes are described as being kindly or friendly one minute, and then going flat the next -- and the observing characters may shiver, or realize this is truly a dangerous person, or get the sudden sense there’s a target pasted on them. It’s not really hyperbole. People may not always be aware of what causes their reaction, but they do react, and they can tell when that sudden flare of “whatever it takes, I won’t hesitate” gets turned on them. I can’t see myself doing it -- I mean, I never think, now, I shall do this! -- but I’ve had reactions of others pointed out to me enough times that I’ve finally accepted that whether I like it or not, I continue to have the skill of exerting that force. I suppose I probably learned it from my older teammates, and from my role models on the street, all of whom turned it on and off as needed.
It’s the absolute willingness to commit -- whatever the specific action may be -- that does stand as similar between formal training and informal free-for-all. Neither the dojo nor the back alley are a place to waffle about whether you’ll punch, block, duck, or just plain run. But the reason for committing is radically opposite, along with the mindset of how one reacts to a hit. Everytime I’ve been to classes, observed class or practice, or generally hung out with, anyone practicing an MA, the value almost across the board seems to be in perfecting a move. If you couldn’t block, then you practice more until you do; the strike is a lesson you’re not there yet. On the street, the strike is a lesson that you didn’t hit hard enough the first time, and that means you have to come back with double on the next one.
Now, as to the link -- someone said they followed a link from here, so I traced it backwards out of curiosity, and took a look (yes, yes, I know, but curious! can’t help it!) at the responses. Rather than belabor there, which seems rude to me, I figured I’d post comments here & my responses. Then we can all enjoy what an idiot I am, yes?
I can’t say for certain with empirical evidence, but it still seems most likely to me that the dynamics of the fights between street kids/folk are radically different from fights with Uniformed Authority. Face it, ain’t no frickin’ country boy in a pick-up truck -- who’s come to the city to have himself some fun picking fights with the locals -- is gonna haul my ass into jail, plunk me down in front of a judge, and affect my permanent record. I may have a healthy dose of fear for what he’s willing to do with that baseball bat, but there’s no attendant fear of consequences in the sense of a long-term screwed-your-life-over-in-one-move kinda thing.
Plus, the street world may be a big place in some cities, but even the biggest cities are really just pockets of small cities split across the map. I talk to my brother about his time in NYC, or LA -- both places where I expect you’d go anywhere and never see a familiar face... except apparently they didn’t really go outside their own territory. (Which makes sense, to some extent -- travelling means time, and money, to get there and get back, and when you’re usually afoot, your territory is limited.) In any given night or day, most of the people he saw, he knew, so his general experience wasn’t much different from mine, in that just walking across the city I’d see or run into or pass by six or seven people I knew.
Any one of them, at any time, might’ve been on the other side of a line. I saw that line drawn a few times, though thankfully my place in relation to the line was often solely because of who I’d come to the bar with -- but I also had sort of a standing (if unspoken and never really consciously announced) position of diplomatically befriending everyone, regardless... and that I had no issues with being friends with two people who didn’t get along; I simply never hung out with both. Being placed “outside” such lines thanks to having gotten along with both parties was probably the biggest benefit, and while that did drive my tendency to avoid making enemies (and to apologize if I feared I had, a move which startled more than a few people, amusingly), it also meant my peculiar mindset (in the eyes of my comrades, as more than a few told me more than a few times!) probably saved me several serious ass-kickings.
Way to go for learning that Southern neutrality in hospitality! (Yes, I’m not saying I’m not a bastard, just that I am -- more than I like to realize/admit -- a very diplomatic Southern bastard.)
Anyway, MacYoung has a lot of really good things to say about knife-fighting and what it is and what it takes and the mindset. But I also think he’s mostly focused on an audience that’s curious about self-defense with a knife, and may even be interested in getting into a knife-fight (and thus has some serious illusions that need dispelling). I’m not sure it’s a complete contradiction between what he’s saying versus my reportage of experience, in that his advice and experience are to, and from, someone whose life -- in general -- is not on the line, or who has yet to experience that on-the-line moment or year.
MacYoung also mentions a prison-yard rush as an unbeatable move in knife fights (at least against trained formal MA people)... the concept of the “rush” was part of the reason I was told it just wasn’t smart to kick in a fight, not unless you were kicking someone who was down (and in that case, kicking is often the best way to keep them down). If you watch a staged MA fight, you’ll see that as the person winds up for a roundhouse kick, it’s a telegraphed move. The leg comes up, the knee comes up, the body weight shifts. Oh, it definitely can happen quite fast if the person’s good and quick and knows what they’re doing -- but if you watch the other person, there’s a split second of hesitation while they decide their move (or while they position themselves to be properly creamed by Our Hero).
This would be the hesitation that can kill in a knife fight, as MacYoung observes, and it’s the hesitation that I’m saying you learn -- real fast -- will do you no good on the street. Do you a world of hurt, really, because the difference between someone who’s been in a fight (or even more broadly, has been hit and I mean that very purposefully, that if you have been punched, and survived, you know it won’t kill you) and someone who hasn’t is that someone with no fighting experience -- especially on the personal level like the majority of fringe-based fights -- is going to instinctively hesitate when faced with a potential blow. The newbie may throw him/herself into the fight head-first, but it’s still a whole lotta self-protective instinct to overcome (and that moment of overcoming is just another kind of hesitation) to get past the “if I do this, I’m gonna get decked”.
So someone raises their foot up to kick, and if you’re past the point of hesitation, and you have no real fear that you’re going to die from the kick if you can retaliate fast enough, then you’re able to take that massive opening provided in the split seconds between the shift in body weight to the person actually sending their foot into your gut. You don’t dodge, or step back -- you rush the person. Full-on, just go for it. Maybe you can’t get there fast enough before the foot comes up, but those sorts of kicks are based on a quick estimation of the distance between you and the kicker... and when you move without hesitation, suddenly the target -- you -- aren’t where you were before, the kick is off. It may even miss you, or the kicker’s knee may get you in the hip instead, but the basic move is simple: you move into the blow, to create a chance to retaliate.
Most people wouldn’t see much logic in taking a punch as the cost of being able to get a better one right back. It sure goes against human instinct, too. Like covering our heads when it looks like something will fall, or flinching when a hand comes up in our direction... getting over the gut instinct of fleeing rather than accepting the pain and moving through it? It’s a lot harder than it seems, though simple once you’ve finally grokked it.
all the parts ▪ dear [not just urban fantasy] author part I ▪ dear [not just urban fantasy] author part II ▪ dear [not just urban fantasy] author part III ▪ permanent record, pt I: edginess, and street fighting ▪ permanent record, pt II: guns, knives, and making it hurt
The ‘mental training’ difference between formalized martial arts and street scrapping -- and this isn’t just my observation, but checked against & considered with several friends, who report similar -- is that if you’re in the dojo, your entire purpose behind throwing that punch isn’t just different. It’s also what you expect to get from it. Let’s think about sparring, in those art forms in which you demonstrate kata, and then spar for a brief bit, in order to move to the next belt level. (Yes, some arts only do kata, some focus on sparring only over a certain level, blah blah blah. Basically, think of dojo-style sparring, supervised.) When you punch someone, you get a point, a hit, a note, whatever. You’re not doing it to hurt the other person, and certainly not a personal level -- in fact, if it is personal, I know several senseis/sifus who will avoid pairing two students with personal conflict. The dojo, they’ll tell you, is not the place to make it personal.
Which means when someone punches you, strikes at you, in the dojo, you know the person isn’t seeing you as an opponent in the sense of ‘obstacle’ but is simply performing his/her moves, and you react in kind. At the end, you get up, brush yourself off, and shake hands. La la la, etc. Or maybe not shake hands but at least there’s a veneer of politeness about it -- along with the idea that it’s actually an honor to be the demonstrating uke to a master’s seme. So you got thrown, who cares, you got thrown by a fifth dan! Go you!
Ahem. Anyway, in street scrapping, the point is -- and we’ll go with caps here so no one misses this -- TO HURT THE OTHER PERSON.
It doesn’t matter how, and your why may differ based on circumstances, such as hurting them enough to get them to back off so you can run, or hurting them because they’re dating your ex-girlfriend. Whatever the reason you got there, the point is to make the other person hurt worse than you do, or to just plain hurt the other person so they won’t (or can’t) hurt you.
This is the fundamental reason I couldn’t mesh with the dojo-style of learning: because, when I throw a punch, I cannot not go into “I will hurt you” mode. It’s ingrained so deeply, and on top of that, I was still early twenties and not yet with time/distance and maturity to recognize just what was going on in me. When you spar, you want to throw that punch, let him block it, throw another, block the return punch, etc -- you want it to last as long as possible, give you enough time to get in as many hits while deflecting his.
That seemed kinda pointless to me at the time, though I did try my very best to “get” the mindset, or at least fake it decently. But everything I’d ever learned, seen, heard, been around, experienced said: the entire point of starting a fight is to END IT. If you’re going to throw a punch, you don’t want a return punch (though it’ll probably happen unless you’re really good), so you don’t hold back. You don’t try to extend to get more ‘points’ in, you want that guy to go DOWN. And that means you face down any potential fight with the clear and mindful intent of hurting the person.
Now, mind you, all this may seem like I was in all sorts of fights and scrapes and whatnot. I actually wasn’t. I did a lot of observing of the build-up, was there for a few remarkable blow-ups (but not in the thick of it), and covered more than a decent share of after-parties. Fact is, I actually got into more fights on my college campus than I ever did while in the city, if you add it all up -- and the amount of time at college versus the city-time is about even, at that. One way or another, often at parties, if a fight didn’t break out around me, it broke out just after I left (though fortunately for my reputation, it was only one frequent party-host who had the maturity and savvy to recognize that the common factor was me, and to alert me to this).
ETA: I realized I should probably clarify what I mean by this. What I'm talking about is the fact that where I took offense at someone's words, I didn't -- maybe even couldn't? -- just take it as "that's what people say." One thing I noticed when I returned to college (and that really bugged me) was the amount of disrespect I got from all but one or two Big Guys On Campus, and it was disrespect in that "you're so cute when you're angry" belittling that no sane guy would give, among the city-people I knew. (Not unless the guy really liked the idea of a busted lip, at least.)
My friends would say, "look, he doesn't mean it, it's just a joke." But to me, it wasn't a joke; the guy was being disrespectful, and people are disrespectful when they see you as someone not worth respecting, emphasis on not worth. To my street-scarred psyche, allowing someone -- especially a casual, no-more-than-passing acquaintance -- to disrespect me was tantamount to opening the door to further offense down the road. Just like you hit hardest on the first strike with the intent of finishing it off immediately & not wasting time on a second or third, you can also do the same on a psychological level: I instinctively took the disrespect as the opening of a fight, and retaliated with full-force of will to not just prevent a fight (that is, end the offense) but to make sure it didn't happen again (a word-based version of kicking the guy when he's down).
The only incident I recall with any detail (mostly because it was the first time my friend/host pointed it out to me) was when I'd gotten semi-trapped at his house during a party. I was bored, wanted to leave, but B-- didn't think it'd be safe to walk back to campus (the quickest path went over the canal, and there were several rapes there every semester, along the canal's well-cloaked, unlit path). Problem was, two or three guys had noticed my disinterest and decided it was their job to cheer me up. Or something.
I managed to shut one guy down, but the other two took my annoyance as amusing, and one of them made the mistake of getting in my face while -- I kid you not! -- delivering the line of "anyone ever told you that you look cute when you're angry?"
So I threw my drink in his face, and when he started to laugh (after a split second of astonishment that I'd just doused him in nearly a pint of cheap beer), that's when I hauled off and punched him in the gut. Hey, it was the easiest thing to reach, seeing how he was about seven inches taller than me -- I'm not too good at aiming over my head, and the upper gut is a nice target with lovely results when you nail it.
Fortunately the host intervened before I opened my mouth and really let the guy know what I thought of him. B shuffled me into the back room and gave me long-suffering, but patiently amused/frustrated friend-advice about starting fights.
Me: Do what? Since when?
B: Like just now.
Me: He wouldn't back off.
B: You threw your drink in his face!
Me: And he still wouldn't back off.
B: These are college students. They're naive, and not too bright anyway. Can't you cut them some slack?
Me: *grumbles* Fine, but I'm leaving now.
B: No, I don't want you walking home.
Me: I'm not staying here. I'm not putting up with that crap!
B: I still don't want you walking back. I'll drive you!
Me: You don't need to do that.
B: Yes, I do! *grabs the keys*
Me: I'm perfectly fine walking home from here. Thanks for the worry but I can take care of myself!
B: I'm not worried about you, damn it, I'm worried about whomever you might run into!
Which flattered and amazed my semi-tipsy brain enough that I calmed down and let him drive me the five minutes back to campus, and the entire way I was all happy and pleased with myself. Not that I wanted to go out and get into a fight, mind you, but to have someone (especially with boot-camp and wartime experience) treat me as a true threat was quite flattering to my young ego. (Or maybe it's just the contrast with the BGoC, ten minutes before, who'd treated me like I was inconsequential.)
I think that has a lot to do with having the intent trained/taught into me, mostly by the street-times, but also as a holdover/transformation of a sort of killing-intent I learned in competing in a brutal sport. I say brutal, though it’s non-contact, but if you can’t take out your aggression/competition on the other team’s body, then you learn to project your purpose, your dedication to stomping them into the water. Every glance across the water, before a race, was to communicate that you were getting into headspace and you might’ve been easy and laughing a minute ago but now the killer comes out. We, like all our compatriots, were bloodthirsty little bastards at the drop of a hat -- or more precisely, at the wave of a flag. Anyway, that meant when a friend on the street said to me, “the real important part about fighting is when it looks like the fight might happen -- that’s when you have to make the decision: do you get away, or do you stay to get beaten up? You have to choose what you’ll do, before anyone throws a punch.” (Which ignores that you have to kinda see that a fight is about to happen, but I guess that develops as part of instinct.)
What that person was talking about was the same thing in my sport: you must commit to the action. You have to go into a race, knowing intellectually and full well that in six point something minutes, you will be in so much goddamn pain that women have told me they’d rather go through natural childbirth again than face that pain on a regular basis. But you take it between the teeth, you grip it hard, and you smile around the pain, you make it clear with each and every single stroke that although you’re in pain, damn it’s agony beyond all agonies, it is still a good pain because you know you’re putting the other team in more pain.
I have yet to meet anyone in a dojo (who hasn’t been asked to leave, that is!) who expresses the same pleasure-pain-pride mix. They certainly don’t want to get hit -- especially in the arts which emphasis point-counting in sparring -- and they’re not doing it because they’re masochists, either. They’re certainly not doing it (for the most part) for the sheer pleasure of knowing you got kicked but you kicked back three times as hard. It’s just not the point of a formal art.
I do think this is much of the reason that I could deflect a few potential fights in my time (even if on the inside I was thinking, crap, crap, I’m in for it now!! and panicking somewhat), because I do know how to form the clear intent of inflicting pain -- and that does come across. It’s a flip of the mental switch that goes from “la la la autopilot” to sudden “whatever it takes, I’ll do it, and I no longer care about the niceties”. I’m sure much of my flist has read stories where a character’s eyes are described as being kindly or friendly one minute, and then going flat the next -- and the observing characters may shiver, or realize this is truly a dangerous person, or get the sudden sense there’s a target pasted on them. It’s not really hyperbole. People may not always be aware of what causes their reaction, but they do react, and they can tell when that sudden flare of “whatever it takes, I won’t hesitate” gets turned on them. I can’t see myself doing it -- I mean, I never think, now, I shall do this! -- but I’ve had reactions of others pointed out to me enough times that I’ve finally accepted that whether I like it or not, I continue to have the skill of exerting that force. I suppose I probably learned it from my older teammates, and from my role models on the street, all of whom turned it on and off as needed.
It’s the absolute willingness to commit -- whatever the specific action may be -- that does stand as similar between formal training and informal free-for-all. Neither the dojo nor the back alley are a place to waffle about whether you’ll punch, block, duck, or just plain run. But the reason for committing is radically opposite, along with the mindset of how one reacts to a hit. Everytime I’ve been to classes, observed class or practice, or generally hung out with, anyone practicing an MA, the value almost across the board seems to be in perfecting a move. If you couldn’t block, then you practice more until you do; the strike is a lesson you’re not there yet. On the street, the strike is a lesson that you didn’t hit hard enough the first time, and that means you have to come back with double on the next one.
Now, as to the link -- someone said they followed a link from here, so I traced it backwards out of curiosity, and took a look (yes, yes, I know, but curious! can’t help it!) at the responses. Rather than belabor there, which seems rude to me, I figured I’d post comments here & my responses. Then we can all enjoy what an idiot I am, yes?
- Bartenders make a lot more than they let on.
Yes, and... maybe.
I’m not sure I’d agree bartenders are making “a lot” (though more than anyone else in the club) when the bar has four bands, four nights in a row, that are popular among the couriers. Ever been to a show where there’s been a huge number of couriers? The bartop is covered with spare change. That’s all they’ve got. I asked a few bartender friends about it, and they said, “when certain bands play, you know you won’t get as good a tip overall, but at least the couriers always do tip, even if it’s not a lot.” When the college bands played, ironically (or not so), the take was always lower -- something about kids who go to universities that require wealthy parents... being the worst tippers of all. The fringe crowds/kids were somewhere between, tipping small amounts like the couriers and sporadically, but the more a person moved into ‘regular’ status at a bar, the more they were likely to start tipping regularly, I was told.
Best crowd of all were the former punks/skaters/whatever, now in their twenties with semi-decent jobs and some kind of security: having been there, and having probably stiffed a few bartenders in their time simply due to necessity or kidly-ignorance, they often made up for it with a decent plunk into the bar’s bottle. On the other hand, living in the city -- even at the time -- would cost you about $800 a month for a two-bedroom place if you shared it with at least two other people. The city wasn’t cheap, and a bartender may make enough that most lived with only one or two other people (compared to four to six doormen per place), but that was still hardly a significant income compared to the mainstream.
Also consider the economics of this particular environment (but keep in mind that my numbers are more than a few years out of date, so I can only compare the income/cost-of-living for those years, and I’ve no idea whether the proportion remains the same now)... anyway, many of the bartenders I knew were, well, they were damn good bartenders, but their suitability was limited. I know bartenders at places like Ruby Tuesday’s can make a damn good lot if they score a run of businessfolks travelling, but when was the last time you saw a bartender working Ruby Tuesday who had four facial piercings, full sleeve tattoos on both arms, and while having a fine-looking body, still looked like a scary biker chick? Businesspeople, in case you forgot, are more often than not scared of scary biker chick types, and their related ilk -- the goth type, the punk type, etc and let’s not even get into the “person with shaved head in blue jeans” type. - A lot of [my] knife/gun/fight details are wrong (with very handy link -- go read! Lies about Knife Fighting, by Marc MacYoung (who apepars to be a police officer as well, so that shifts his take on things, too).
I dunno, but looking at that definitely-bookmark-it page, I’m not sure where I got it wrong, though I do admit freely that my posts have been more anecdotal than a full-on summary of years of experience... and I’m just not a naturally succinct person, or maybe I could’ve distilled into these excellent passages:Not to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the reason someone uses a weapon on another human being is to stack the deck in their favor. People don’t use weapons to fight, they use weapons to win. The absolute last thing any attacker wants to do is to fight you with equal weapons. If he was looking for a fight he wouldn’t have attacked you with a weapon in the first place. And if he knows you have a knife, he is going to attack you with a bigger and better weapon to keep you from winning.
And this bit, which in a few paragraphs sums up pretty much everything I rambled on about above, man, how do people do that? I’d be here all day editing and never post, to manage summations like this:Kali, Escrima, Arnis, FMA [Filipino Martial Arts], all of them have the aura and mystery of being weapons based arts. Deadly, savage arts of the Filipino warriors. Lurid stories about guerrilla actions against Japanese invaders, duels and death matches that the founder of the style was involved in abound. Quite honestly what these maestros survived is incredible and is more than worthy of kudos. These older gentlemen survived a totally different culture, socio-economic environment, time and, in some cases, a World War and foreign invasion of their homeland. That having been said however, just because the founder of the system or lineage was a walking piece of bad-assed real-estate doesn’t make you one.
I mentioned MacYoung is a cop, and that this changes his take on things (especially the ever-aware realities of the law’s perspective on knives and knife-fighting) -- but it also means that when he’s fighting, and the fights he’s talking about, have a very different power dynamic than what I experienced. At no time did I ever stand up to, let alone brandish a weapon at (!!), a police officer. The most I ever did was run like hell along with my friends. Are you crazy? Take on a cop? Are you kidding? Sure, I heard of drug dealers doing it, or a few kids stuffed to the gills with loveboat, but anyone sane, even mildly sober, and retaining a speck of common sense saw a uniform and bolted.
They weren’t knife fighters, those people were survivors. It’s what comes from living a hellishly hard life. While they had physical skill that helped them, what kept them alive, what allowed them to strike fast enough, hard enough and brutally enough wasn’t their art -- it was the commitment not to die. It was that grim savagery to do whatever is necessary and to do it faster and harder than the other person that kept them alive. In the lexicon, they had “heart.”
Their art just allowed them to do that faster.
Knowing an art doesn’t give you that kind of commitment, that kind of ruthlessness, that kind of grim endurance or that willingness to descend into savagery to stay alive. Just knowing the art doesn’t make you a knife fighter. You have to have “heart” as well -- that willingness to wade through hell and come out the other side.
I can’t say for certain with empirical evidence, but it still seems most likely to me that the dynamics of the fights between street kids/folk are radically different from fights with Uniformed Authority. Face it, ain’t no frickin’ country boy in a pick-up truck -- who’s come to the city to have himself some fun picking fights with the locals -- is gonna haul my ass into jail, plunk me down in front of a judge, and affect my permanent record. I may have a healthy dose of fear for what he’s willing to do with that baseball bat, but there’s no attendant fear of consequences in the sense of a long-term screwed-your-life-over-in-one-move kinda thing.
Plus, the street world may be a big place in some cities, but even the biggest cities are really just pockets of small cities split across the map. I talk to my brother about his time in NYC, or LA -- both places where I expect you’d go anywhere and never see a familiar face... except apparently they didn’t really go outside their own territory. (Which makes sense, to some extent -- travelling means time, and money, to get there and get back, and when you’re usually afoot, your territory is limited.) In any given night or day, most of the people he saw, he knew, so his general experience wasn’t much different from mine, in that just walking across the city I’d see or run into or pass by six or seven people I knew.
Any one of them, at any time, might’ve been on the other side of a line. I saw that line drawn a few times, though thankfully my place in relation to the line was often solely because of who I’d come to the bar with -- but I also had sort of a standing (if unspoken and never really consciously announced) position of diplomatically befriending everyone, regardless... and that I had no issues with being friends with two people who didn’t get along; I simply never hung out with both. Being placed “outside” such lines thanks to having gotten along with both parties was probably the biggest benefit, and while that did drive my tendency to avoid making enemies (and to apologize if I feared I had, a move which startled more than a few people, amusingly), it also meant my peculiar mindset (in the eyes of my comrades, as more than a few told me more than a few times!) probably saved me several serious ass-kickings.
Way to go for learning that Southern neutrality in hospitality! (Yes, I’m not saying I’m not a bastard, just that I am -- more than I like to realize/admit -- a very diplomatic Southern bastard.)
Anyway, MacYoung has a lot of really good things to say about knife-fighting and what it is and what it takes and the mindset. But I also think he’s mostly focused on an audience that’s curious about self-defense with a knife, and may even be interested in getting into a knife-fight (and thus has some serious illusions that need dispelling). I’m not sure it’s a complete contradiction between what he’s saying versus my reportage of experience, in that his advice and experience are to, and from, someone whose life -- in general -- is not on the line, or who has yet to experience that on-the-line moment or year.
MacYoung also mentions a prison-yard rush as an unbeatable move in knife fights (at least against trained formal MA people)... the concept of the “rush” was part of the reason I was told it just wasn’t smart to kick in a fight, not unless you were kicking someone who was down (and in that case, kicking is often the best way to keep them down). If you watch a staged MA fight, you’ll see that as the person winds up for a roundhouse kick, it’s a telegraphed move. The leg comes up, the knee comes up, the body weight shifts. Oh, it definitely can happen quite fast if the person’s good and quick and knows what they’re doing -- but if you watch the other person, there’s a split second of hesitation while they decide their move (or while they position themselves to be properly creamed by Our Hero).
This would be the hesitation that can kill in a knife fight, as MacYoung observes, and it’s the hesitation that I’m saying you learn -- real fast -- will do you no good on the street. Do you a world of hurt, really, because the difference between someone who’s been in a fight (or even more broadly, has been hit and I mean that very purposefully, that if you have been punched, and survived, you know it won’t kill you) and someone who hasn’t is that someone with no fighting experience -- especially on the personal level like the majority of fringe-based fights -- is going to instinctively hesitate when faced with a potential blow. The newbie may throw him/herself into the fight head-first, but it’s still a whole lotta self-protective instinct to overcome (and that moment of overcoming is just another kind of hesitation) to get past the “if I do this, I’m gonna get decked”.
So someone raises their foot up to kick, and if you’re past the point of hesitation, and you have no real fear that you’re going to die from the kick if you can retaliate fast enough, then you’re able to take that massive opening provided in the split seconds between the shift in body weight to the person actually sending their foot into your gut. You don’t dodge, or step back -- you rush the person. Full-on, just go for it. Maybe you can’t get there fast enough before the foot comes up, but those sorts of kicks are based on a quick estimation of the distance between you and the kicker... and when you move without hesitation, suddenly the target -- you -- aren’t where you were before, the kick is off. It may even miss you, or the kicker’s knee may get you in the hip instead, but the basic move is simple: you move into the blow, to create a chance to retaliate.
Most people wouldn’t see much logic in taking a punch as the cost of being able to get a better one right back. It sure goes against human instinct, too. Like covering our heads when it looks like something will fall, or flinching when a hand comes up in our direction... getting over the gut instinct of fleeing rather than accepting the pain and moving through it? It’s a lot harder than it seems, though simple once you’ve finally grokked it.
all the parts ▪ dear [not just urban fantasy] author part I ▪ dear [not just urban fantasy] author part II ▪ dear [not just urban fantasy] author part III ▪ permanent record, pt I: edginess, and street fighting ▪ permanent record, pt II: guns, knives, and making it hurt
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Date: 15 Jan 2008 07:44 am (UTC)I'd started that fight, too - I was pretty much trapped and needed to get out of the trap. Still, *not* having a knife helped me be smart about it, and get the heck out of Dodge the moment I had the opportunity. One of the lessons I'm very glad I got the very mild way.