Getting Beaten to the Punch

Getting Beaten to the Punch

Copyright 2013 by
Bill Rayburn

With my hands out in front of me, palms facing the floor, I approached the big man looming at the bar, moving my arms up and down in the traditional ‘calm down’ gesture. As I got to within a couple of feet, he looked puzzled, his brow furrowed. This wasn’t going as planned.

It was then that I kicked him flush in the vas deferens.

From that moment on, Leonard and I were friends for life.

***************

Leonard MacEwan was a Scotsman. He once told of a story circulating in the pubs of Scotland that a bombastic, aggressive kick to the nuts should be adopted as the official Pub greeting. As he lay writhing on the rough hewn wooden floor of the ancient North London pub, somehow this irony came through quite clearly, muscling through the paralyzing haze of pain and nausea.

My one-kick victory was necessitated by Leonard’s size. He was a high school football star during his formative and teen years in Bellevue, New Jersey. But he was in that large contingent of high school athletes who simply were not quick, strong or smart enough to play on the Division 1 college level. And also like most inhabitants of that group of soon-to-be-weekend-warriors, he abandoned the weight room. From a solid 230lbs he ballooned to almost 350lbs. In his high school days, I would not have needed to resort to such an under-handed tactic like my one-and-done stealth kick. I could have handled him since I was myself 250lbs of muscle in my prime. But Leonard had gone to seed. His weight was simply the result of an excessive life style. Though I had put a few pounds since high school, I remained relatively in shape. Leonard was headed down heart attack highway. Of course, I did not know any of this then.

But that’s for another day. To this day, neither Leonard nor I remember what it was that caused us to want to fight only ten minutes after meeting one another. Some semi-drunken slight or a passed-off-as-casual insult that stung too deep. It doesn’t matter.

When his pals had carted him outside, I left through the back door. The next night, when I walked in, Leonard gestured for me to come over to his corner of the bar. Anticipating a full-frontal revenge attack, I went cautiously. But I went.

He turned from the bar with each meaty paw gripping a frothy pint glass of Guinness. We toasted and drank.

Friendships may have started in odder fashion, but not any of mine.

**************

I hold many truths to be self evident. I have my own truths, with little or no inclination to plow through the abstract existential pursuit of the over-arching, big-ticket, ponderous empirical truths. I have my big ones, the heavies, the true guideposts in my brain. And I have dozens of smaller, more pedantic truths that probably only ring true for me. It’s how I prefer it.

My most important tenets have been culled and cadged from the great minds and their writings, throughout history. Emerson; Freud; Nietzsche, Jung, Mick Jagger. It involved a very simple setting aside of my ego and accepting that if their philosophies were good enough for them, then they were good enough for me.

The truth about Leonard was not difficult to ascertain. He had a heart of gold, an IQ of about 105 and a very large inheritance that has allowed him to slowly kill himself.

As his lifelong (now) friend, I have more often than not stopped short of cajoling him about his excessiveness. Though often tragic to watch, he played no such silly parlor-psychology games. He wanted to drink, so he drank. And ate. And had only recently quit smoking, which I determined to be a Herculean effort from a man with little or no inclination to say ‘no’ to himself. He was unapologetic about his vices and would put up with little in the way of castigation, even from me. Maybe especially from me, since I was knee-deep in hypocrisy being right alongside the bastard. I was nobody to preach.

**************

Recently, we were belly-up to the exact same bar where we had met so gracelessly 20 some years ago. We are both pushing 50. I may be aging a bit more gracefully than Leonard, but he has hinted that I am catching up.

He hoisted his pint, stopped mid-hoist, looked at me for ten seconds, and asked, “Ever think about killin’ yourself, mate?”

I grinned. “Ya mean besides with the drink.”

He nodded solemnly. “Yeah, besides that.”

I put my pint down and looked into the mirror behind the bar. How many times had Leonard and I exchanged looks through that mirror? Rolled our eyes at some outrageous shit that was being discussed?

But now Leonard’s gaze was straight down into his glass of Guinness. He was crawling inside somewhere.

“Not really. I mean maybe the floating thought once in a while, but I keep my life simple enough that it doesn’t propel me to want to end it.”

“Well, I think I wanna die.”

I watched him as for the first time since we met, Leonard began to literally cry into his beer.

I put my hand softly on his enormous slab of a shoulder.

“I know, mate.”

***************

So that was a rather melodramatic how-the-fuck-do-you-do.

I remember we were quiet for about ten minutes, then Leonard finished his beer, slapped me on the back, and left.

It was only 7pm.

I closed the pub down.

*********

Reports of Leonard’s demise, however, were greatly exaggerated. The subject was brought up one more time, about a month after the first conversation.

Interestingly, it was me who brought it up.

“So, have you done any more think about that thing, you know, that we talked about?”

He looked at me.

“Every fucking day, mate.”

*******************

Two days later Leonard died of a massive heart attack.

The Grim Reaper remains one step ahead of us all.