The Fist of Ecstasy

The Autumnal Legends Series : VII

To-date I have got into 3 fights … fist fights that is. Well okay … 2 fights … the first fight I got into I ran away. But the second one interests me today for some special reasons. The third one was more of a wrestling match … couldn't take a swing at all … we grappled for a while and then the cops came. Well okay … I got into one fight to-date.

 

 It was at an outdoor cafe in an upscale part of town. My two buddies and I had got together for the usual Saturday night booze. We … we … were discussing issues … the usual ones … what's the difference between man-god, god and man? … we were doing a lot of that in those days.

 

It got down to serious stuff … like what are you committed to … what do you stand for. I wanted to avoid calling my buddy a liar so I called him a coward instead. He got up and walked off. Five minutes later he came back and tossed the beer in his glass on my face. I swung my fist instinctively but he dodged it … lost his balance and fell on the pavement.

 

He had been grinding away at it and two weeks later on the usual Saturday session … we were over at a friend's place … he suddenly held up his dukes and his manner bordered on aggression. That was when I experienced it … and the point of this narrative … he was taller but thinner … but that didn't matter … something in the nature of a peripheral sense had opened up in me and I dodged 2 of his swings … like David Carradine on ' Kung Fu ' … and then sensing the opportunity swung a hard right that took him off his feet. He lay on the floor unable to rise … but nothing broken.

 

Some years later in Los Angeles a family member of the Consulate staff got mugged in Hollywood. He had two broken ribs, one finger and his jaw was wired. I reflected on what that meant in a society in which the size of the body was a lethal weapon itself. And right there I understood better what the legend of King Arthur had been about.

 

It is possible to grow to like it and then like a drug it becomes difficult to stop. Big is beautiful certainly … especially when it is in a cause. Its like the Irish gentleman in ' Chariots of Fire ' who found that his body was responding to the physical exertion in a marathon race as ecstasy itself. It tells a great deal about the marvelous mystery of the human body.

 

On the same note, I found out three years before I retired that I was a workaholic. We called it hardworking before. I have been rehabilitating myself since. It felt like hell the first two years. No … actually it felt like the apocalypse … and yes there were demons and vampires …  but I'm much better now … I think ...