I Hit a Girl Today

Did I hit a girl today?

Did I hit her?

Did I hit her hard?

I hit a girl today, I hit a young girl.

It is not often I have ever hit a girl; not often at all; I hit my sister once – I figure I must have though I really can’t remember, I must have pulled her hair at least - at least once, probably, and I know I hit my mother once, my mother too - for sure – she wasn’t a girl then, she was a woman, a BIG woman with a BIG WOODEN spoon – well the spoon wasn’t that big, ’n she used the spoon to stir the sauce, the tomato sauce and to hit me; I was only eleven;

But my hitting people didn’t start there, my hitting people started about a year before; at least that is the first time I can remember hitting anyone, in anger, in a fight; hitting to really hurt.

I don’t know why – I didn’t want to fight him – but it seemed every day after school he’d be at me, it seemed he didn’t want to fight either, it seemed, he just seeming to want to bully me.  Well after a few days – a few weeks of this – I had had enough – or maybe my father had had enough because I think my father noticed I was crying, I was upset at night, always after school, so my father decided it was time to teach me how to fight – how to use my hands, my little hands shaped, turned into little fists now…

Well I don’t know, didn’t remember how much my father taught me that night, or how much of what happened next was all about what was inside of me, germinating and swelling and growing, maybe for years, or maybe it was just my father’s short course on fighting, but after school the next day Randy came up to me against the chain link fence outside the school yard and he took a shot at me and that - that was that -and I lit into him like nobody’s business; I lit into him - !

I had him pinned against the chain link pounding his face then I had him down on the ground and my little fists were pounding him, pounding into his face and I wasn’t stopping – until he was dead I guess – or I ran out of steam, which wasn’t likely or certainly wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.

I was FULL of steam.

I was beating the hell out of him – I kinda ‘lost it’ I guess, and my friends, our friends really, were pulling me off him, it was a good thing probably because he was all bloody, bleeding and shit - I think he had pissed his pants too because they were all wet at the crotch, so freaked he was; and he was gasping and crying; what a pussy.

And that was that with Randy; he didn’t dare come and try to do any bullying to me no more – he was lucky he got away with his life, and he knew it too; God I am still so pissed at him.

It didn’t stop there though; a few weeks later another one of my classmates decided he wanted to have a go at me – and I do not know why.  For the life of me, where this shit comes from, this motivation…so after school each afternoon, he starts, starts the bullying…well this time I don’t have to wait a few weeks or a few months to change the course of these events; on the 3^rd afternoon – that was it – we had barely stepped out of the school building than I was on him and I just snapped – I didn’t have any specific plans – other than I guess to beat the hell out of him until he stopped breathing , and then maybe after that rip his heart out and poke his eyes out and then I figured he wouldn’t be bothering me no more, and I was pounding his head into the asphalt grabbing his hair and punching his face and pounding his head into the asphalt and, and – ‘Fuck him!’ and he was my friend; and then my friends, our friends really, pulled me off.  Good thing really – good for Dominick and good for me too for I don’t know what the adults or the teachers would have done to me if I’d have killed him, for surely that is where I was going - with that – if I had any plans at all, which I can’t recall I did.

I got no more bullying from Dominick after that, nor any other attempts from my other school mates either, after that; and that is the last time I ever got into a fight; that I can remember.  I mean since then a few people, a few guys have taken a shot at me, even one of my fraternity brothers once if you can believe it, he was drunk, I guess, and jealous, his wife wanting to show me her new plastic tits – but what was I to do?  Deny her?   But I steered clear of those fights; the guys were always bigger than me and way stronger usually, it seemed, after that.

Shortly after those two fights in grammar school is when I hit my mother.

Now she hitting me with, or trying to hit me with that spoon, that wooden spoon.

Really…she ain’t noticed?

I am big now…

Well not as big as she…

Yet…

Big enough so when I grab that wooden spoon she smacking me with – or trying to for now I am grabbing that spoon from her

I have the wooden spoon in my hand now and now I am hitting her;

I am hitting my mother!

And boy did her brown eyes get big and round so surprised she was and that was that, I only hit her a couple of times so she got the idea and that was the last time she hit me, with that spoon or anything; I guess I was on my way, on my own now, sort of.

I hit a girl today; I hit a young girl

Today

Never often have I have ever never I never ever hit a girl; not often not at all; I hit my sister once – sort of, pretty sure I did…once.

I hit a girl, a young girl today…

I think I did -

And that was the last time I hit a girl or anyone for a long time.

Shortly after that we moved out into the country and I stayed way clear of those new country ‘classmates’, some country chums too; there would be no way I would be mixing it up with them.  You know I was 13, 14 by then, early teenage years and you know how a body, a boy’s body can change and those guys’ bodies were sure changing, I mean my body was too, I guess except they were lining up as front linebackers and middle linebackers and right tackles and - and I was lining up for the tennis team.  I mean there were a lot of big country boys out there in the country; so I steered way clear of any fights from then on – I had nothing left to prove anyway, I guess – I didn’t even want the first fist fights; and I didn’t hit anyone, boy nor girl for quite a number of years after that, although I did have a run in with a doll, Tiny Tears was the doll’s name and she was the most expensive most special doll of my sister’s and I feel, thinking back, some responsibility concerning her destruction; I feel kind of sick about it all still.

Me and my few friends were hanging out in the garage at my house, my parents house I guess I should say, and we were looking for something to do and we were rummaging around in the garage shelves and one of my friends decided to attack my sister’s dolls.  Now I didn’t think that was such a good idea but for some reason I gave the nod, for at the end of the day it is up to me, it was my garage, in my house, and my sister is coming into the garage screaming and crying and she is only a year younger than me but it was too late and Tiny Tears’ hairs were already almost all torn out and her head had already bounced off the cement floor once and now with one blow from my friend Peter with my father’s big hammer in his hand and her pretty plastic head was cracked and that was that and Tiny Tears was not going to be crying no more and I still feeling I having some responsibility for hitting that girl, that special doll, or perhaps in effigy, hitting my sister, or allowing Peter to hit her?

It can get all so confusing sometimes.

Peter ended up to be in love with me for many years, for quite some time I would later find out; he is dead now; perhaps all that conflicting uneasy emotion had something to do with that event; relationships can be very emotional I would later find out.

Many years later on the opposite coast I had opened my beach front apartment to a variety of, well – ‘colorful sorts’ - and we were having a grant ‘ol time then partying so much of the time and I’d be writing all night and surfing, or learning how to surf all day, and we all being a bunch of ‘rousty’ guys and such, we got along fine, and then this girl showed up, well I brought her in actually and I wasn’t even sure she was a girl when I first brought her in but oh boy, she was a girl alright.

You see things go - can go - can get pretty strange sometimes when girls and guys get together and things can be happening between them, between those two, you might not even – don’t even notice – and then so fast, so all of a sudden things can blow up right in front of your face, and you say to yourself: “How did that happen?”

Well, that happened one night, early morning really, we all had ate some T-Bone steaks which she had cooked and she was in the kitchen cleaning up, right next to where I was sitting at the kitchen table writing, typing into my computer actually, and all of a sudden one of my friends had the sharp point of the T-Bone steak bone he had recently finished eating, clean as a hound’s tooth really the T-Bone was, and he had gripped the ‘T’ of the bone in the palm of his hand and had the tip of the end, the sharp leg of the ‘T’ jutting out between his fingers and if that bone had not been being used for what it was being used for I would be thinking ‘what and ingenious weapon’ but no, the sharp tip of that T-Bone was right at my girl’s throat; he had grabbed her by the neck and had her halfway up the kitchen wall in front of – opposite the sink, pressed hard against the wall she was with that boney sharp point of the eaten T-bone steak, the thin sharp edge of the bone pressed hard into her slender throat, I mean one move and there would be more fresh blood in the kitchen, more than we needed;

And there was no way I was going to take him on, besides the fact that at that moment any move would have had to be so delicate and he had 40 lbs on me easy, I mean some of these surfers are big burly sorts, I mean you have to be, or ought to be big, and burly, given the size and silent roiling crashing anger of those waves, a lot of lung capacity helps when you are pressed hard under, held under her waves and all this stuff about ‘mellow’ surfers well yeah, I guess, but I seen a few like this one too and now I am thinking ‘what to do?’ with that raggy sharp pointy steak bone quivering at her throat.

I had been in these situations before; not that I go looking for them.

What had gone on between these two, silently, that I had not noticed before?  The two of them had been in front of me or right near me all that evening; what had I missed?

And she was held up there against the kitchen wall with that bone piercing her soft straining neck and her round face strangely placid, her chin pulled up and her eyes, her almond eyes focused; focused up on the ceiling; not giving an inch of emotion.

What had she done to bring this on?  For I was sure she had done something.  Not that I am blaming the woman or anything but hey - they do have their ways, let’s face it; or at least I do; I face it.

And he was holding that raggedy sharp pointed bone against her neck and he was shaking; her head was higher than his now and she is usually a good foot shorter than he, usually.  Not now.

So I looked at the scene, the tableaux, I guess you might call it, and I stopped typing and I thought for a moment and considering my options and hers, and his, and I finally said

“Let’s not do this.”

And then he paused for a moment and banged her head and let her drop and then he left and then we were alone and I thought ‘Phew, dodged another one’, and then she stalked over to my table, picked up the big jelly jar of red wine I had filled and been preparing to drink before all this happened and she poured the red wine right out, right onto, right out onto splashing all over onto the keyboard of my computer and I said “Son of a bitch!” and I grabbed her and slammed her onto the floor and I grabbed her by the neck and she bit into me, as if you were taking a bite out of an apple she chomped down on my left bicep, her jaw marks, her teeth marks are still there these many years later, an indelible flesh tattoo of a remembrance from so many early mornings ago, and I had my thumb now deep into that soft spot in the front of her neck, right above her rib cage digging into the front of her neck and I am figuring I pressing long enough and hard enough on that air passage, squeezing into her trachea, she will run out of air and then she will have to release my arm from her jaws without, hopefully, taking a half pound of my meat with her; she had strong jaws; I remember that.

Well it did not work out that way and I was pressing hard, I was mad as hell, thinking ‘fuck her!’  I am sure she ruined my computer and whatever the hell was in it.  ‘Fuck her!’

And yeah that was the next time I hit a girl, or hit anyone really since that afternoon with my mother and the wooden spoon, not counting that episode with Tiny Tears; which I am not sure whether I should count or not, yet for some reason I feel responsible; I hate all this guilt.

Well she didn’t run out of air, I don’t know how the hell not, maybe she can breathe out the top of her head, I don’t know, and I gave her a shot to the head and let her go and she un-chomped her front teeth from my arm and I was about to hit her again so mad I was and then I said ‘Fuck it’ and we went to bed.

I still don’t know what she did, or what went on with those two.  We never talked much anyway; I kind of liked it that way even though I did end up finding out later I may have even loved her.

The next time I hit a girl it was about ten years later and I was a long way from Manhattan Beach (California); I was in Brooklyn, and it was another early morning.

This is the first time I had been in this neighborhood bar in a tough roughneck Italian section of Brooklyn, a lot of Brooklyn is, or used to be, and I had been at this neighborhood bar for a few hours and had somehow sidled up next to this pretty woman at one end of the bar.  I don’t know how this happened but I am usually or used to be usually pretty good at it so it did not surprise me that we found ourselves alone and outside the bar, together, I mean I had been here before, many times before, outside a bar, late at night with a new pretty girl.

We were on our knees, kneeling on a hushed side street kissing and necking and it all seemed rather romantic and it was warm outside and I whispered in her ear that maybe we should go to my place – I mean I like to kiss a girl anywhere – everywhere  – I always like – love even – to kiss a girl but I figured it might be better, more comfortable even if we went in doors – and who knows what might happen then! Oh BOY!

So I whisper in her ear, I am kissing her ear whispering

“Let’s go back to my place…”

And then in an instant, out of nowhere, she yells

“You trying to rape me!  You going to RAPE ME!”

And then she slaps me really hard across my face and I was stunned, so surprised I was – so STUNNED! - and I just reacted automatically, in an instant – and not a thought that I can remember crossing my mind and I hit her – I hit her hard – in an instant – without thinking…automatically – I HIT her – hit her hard.

No impulse control…no impulse control; not a thought.

That is what I thought later, much later and still thinking about that event today: no control, no impulse control; and what does that mean, and what does that mean I am actually capable of, and what does that mean about what I am not capable of…not capable of stopping myself from doing?

There are a whole lot of people in grey cages behind iron bars having just those sorts of reactions; no matter what the penalty for their actions the penalty does not dissuade because the movement is automatic: no impulse control; coming from perhaps the most primitive, most protective portions of our bodies, my body; deep in my body somewhere, hiding.

And apparently right in the right spot I must have hit her.  I must have hit her on the side of her head in her temple, for she went down – slumped right down onto the pavement; she didn’t have to fall far, as I said we were kneeling, how we got to kneeling I can’t remember, and I looked down at her unconscious form and I thought ‘Holy Shit, what have I done?’

With her short red skimpy skirt hiked up and her bare white legs askew, her thighs shinning in the lamp light and one blue shoe scuffed off her pretty foot – what was going to happen to her?  Laying there on the sidewalk; she wasn’t for me; that’s for sure; not that night, that early morning on a lonely splotchy lit block in Brooklyn.

I checked to see she was breathing – she was breathing and she was not bleeding and I said ‘Holy Shit, what have I done?’ and I got out of there.

I left; I didn’t run, I walked off, casual like – what was I going to do?  Stay there and wait ‘till she awoke yelling “Rape!” again; the police would be the least of my problems – what if one of her friends showed up looking for her?  As I said this is a tough Brooklyn Italian neighborhood like Gravesend, where probably I would be ending if one of her friends found me…I’m sure she is a local girl and she has real local friends…I am sure.

I scanned the local papers for days after that – the small local rags too looking for any news of her and that night and are they looking for me, the ‘authorities’, or anyone else.

I didn’t see anything – nothing; no article, no police reports; no nothing.  Thank God.

And that was the last time I hit a girl; well there was this one girl who showed me all these bruises on her in the morning she saying it was from me from the night before but it wasn’t me, it couldn’t have been, though I was the only one in her bed that I could remember;

No, on that Brooklyn block was the last time I hit a girl, until today; had to be.

I mean she was a young little girl and I really didn’t mean to hit her but when it happened and when she cried out, all these thoughts, these thoughts I have just related to you flooded into me and I was aghast at my emotion – my anger – my rush of feelings and a life once led.

From the sidewalk this afternoon I was entering a subway lobby in NYC and in front of me was a family, a mother and three of her small children and the mother was struggling to open this new large metal framed door that really ought to be engineered to be easier to open and I reached over her shoulder and grabbed the edge of the door, in an effort to help, to aid her, and I pulled the door open, and I perhaps pulled the door too quickly and too strongly for one of her little charges, her little daughter(?), the smallest of the three girls, she took the brunt of the edge of the frame of the door as I swung the door open, and the door was opening in a way that the little girl was not expecting and she was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time though if it was only her mother struggling with the door the little girl would have been OK, but it was me pulling the door, from above, way above her line of sight and the door banged into her head hard, into the front of her forehead taking the brunt of the blow with the sharp edge of the metal frame digging into her forehead and she let out a scream and began to wail and rubbing her head and wailing – I think sometimes wailing more in shock and surprise than actual injury and pain – I don’t know and now the whole family and me were inside the subway lobby and they had gathered around the small girl in protection, closing ranks in a circle and they turned and looked up at me mournfully with their large saucer like brown eyes and they looked up at me and they could see I was the cause of their small child’s anguish and what I had done – what had I done…? and I am standing there outside their circle with apology in my posture, in my face and they turned to her and her mother is rubbing her head and they turned up to me again with their small round brown bodies looking up at me dourly and I stayed for a moment longer and said I was sorry though I am not sure they understand English, and I left then, I ran, walked quickly up the stairs and I went out onto the platform wondering if I should just step in front of the next arriving train and end all this anguish – now.

Did I hit a girl?

Did I hit her hard?

Did I leave her – alone?

Alone and bloody?

I’m so sorry –