A succinct record of fights I have won and lost and the circumstances around them.

06 Mar 11: A record of my fights, won and lost. Scott in first grade:  Lost. Mike Foley’s Friend in third grade:  Won. Billy Gayheart in fourth grade:  Won & Lost. Bill Czajkowski (pictured) in sixth grade:  Never happened. Four Guys Wearing Hoodies in Hackney, age 37: Lost.

Scott in the first grade: It was winter. We were seven years old. Scott was trying to take my sled. I managed to punch him, but it was more like a slow push to the face. He pulled my mittens off and pushed me in the snow. He didn’t get my sled.

Mike Foley’s friend in the 3rd grade: Mike Foley was my next door neighbor and his friend didn’t like me. They were both two years younger than me, and we went to the same school, where the first to third graders shared recess. Mike’s friend challenged me to a fight in the playground. I was small for my age, but I was still in third grade, he was in first. Maybe he wanted to get a reputation and thought he could beat me, but I told him that I was 10 and he was 8 and I wasn’t going to fight him. I walked away, but the other kids in the playground – it seemed like all the other kids in the playground – formed a circle around us and wouldn’t let me leave. It was something out of Lord of the Flies or Children of the Corn, everyone chanting Chicken! Wimp! Woos! Afraid to fight a first grader! and pushing me back into the brutal ring of feral kids sensing blood. I didn’t know what I was going to do, how to get out of it, and there was no time to think. I was on the spot. Mike’s friend moved up to me sideways with his little first grade fists balled up. So I punched him, once, in the stomach. I had no idea what I was doing, but I must have caught him in the solar plexus. The poor kid grabbed his gut, let out a little sigh, and in slow motion bent over, sunk to his knees, and tipped onto his side, where he lay there unmoving, on the ground.  Everyone else, in a sort of shocked silence, drifted away. I felt a little sick, but mostly relief.

Billy Gayheart in 4th grade:For some reason Billy Gayheart hated me. All through grade school. I have no idea why. He wasn’t a bully, he wasn’t a jock, he was just a normal kid, a pretty smart kid, too, nothing sinister whatsoever. He simply hated me. He’d throw the dodge ball extra hard, sneer when he looked in my direction, and say under his breath whenever we passed “I’m gonna kick your ass”. One day he was playing at Jim Riley’s house – Jim lived on the next street over – and they came over to hang out. I could feel Billy’s barely concealed loathing all afternoon, having to play with me because Jim wanted to play with me. At 4:30 or so in the afternoon we were climbing one of the apple trees in our front yard, about 12 feet up, and Billy was on the branch below me. He reached up and grabbed my foot. My shoe came off, and he started taunted me with it, holding it just out of reach. Then he climbed down, waved it at me and laughed.  Then he threw it up into a different tree. And that was it. The injustice I’d felt about the years of his mystifying hatred came to a head: I jumped out of the tree and started clobbering him. I pushed him flat on his back, sat on top of him and swung wildly, like a cartoon with my arms in a blur, only I was really hitting him. Bill was yelling Stop! I was yelling Give me my shoe! and Jim Riley was frozen to the spot in shock. The next thing I knew my mother was in the front yard pulling me off of him, shouting at me to calm down. And that’s when I lost the fight. I took a gulp of air, and woke up to what had happened. The violence of my actions, the severity of my emotions and the shock that anger could take over to such an extent frightened the hell out of me. I lost it, and ran indoors, bawling my head off. Billy ended up winning the fight.

Bill Czajkowski in 6th grade: Bill Czajkowski was one of the tough kids at school. He lived two and a half blocks away from me, and we used the same bus stop. His dad was a cop. Bill walked the tough kid walk, and hung out with the tough kid group, the group that looked down on smaller kids like me, refusing them space on bus seats, generally making life difficult. But he was one of the more benign tough kids – I never saw him hurt anyone physically, and sometimes you could talk to him normally if no one else was around. As a scrawny kid, I’d been getting picked on and off pretty regularly for years: nothing tragic, just low frequency schoolyard kid bullying. I was considered a wimp, which in fairness, I pretty much was. One day, however, I’d had enough. I don’t know what got into me, but when someone on the bus to school said I was too much of a chicken to ever fight anyone I said Ok, I’ll fight Bill Czajkowski. After school. At the bus stop. In front of everyone. Bill wasn’t one of the kids taunting me at the time, he wasn’t sitting anywhere near me, but he wasn’t massively overgrown like Brian Bushnell or obviously crazy like Jerry Dolan, so I picked him. Bill said he’d fight me, sure, and the news spread up and down the bus. I didn’t expect to win the fight, but I felt better just saying I’d go through with it. It would be worth getting flattened: maybe I’d get some respect from the other kids. I worked on my strategy through the day. When the bus pulled away, I was going to try and hit him as hard as I could, square in the face. After that I was thoroughly prepared to get creamed. On the way home the bus was charged. Electric. I got off at my stop, put down my backpack and my trombone case and waited. Lots of other kids got off the bus, kids who don’t normally get off at our stop, but wanted to see the fight. The doors closed. The bus pulled away. And Bill Czajkowski wasn’t there. He’d stayed on the bus. My heart was pounding: I was safe for the day. The next morning, the other kids asked him what happened and Bill said he’d just forgotten. Sure, he’d fight me that day instead, and I said Ok, I’ll fight him, too. On the bus home, again the air was sharp with anticipation. I got off at our stop. There were even more kids than the day before. The doors closed. And Bill stayed on the bus. It was pretty clear then that there was never going to be a fight. I was relieved. People hung around the stop longer than usual, readjusting the relative levels of kid status in the neighborhood. I’m sure I didn’t approach anywhere near cool, but I improved a little and Bill dropped a little. At first my thoughts were like everyone else’s: Bill Czajkowski was afraid to fight me. But later that night, upstairs in my room, I realised there was no way he could have been afraid of me. He was one and a half times bigger than me, obviously stronger, and obviously he would have taken me. Instead, Bill Czajkowski was a decent guy. He had to say he’d fight me in order to save face, but he didn’t really want to fight me. My challenge to him came out of nowhere. He’d not bothered me that day, he’d never really bothered me, actually. He was just another kid, trying hard to get through kid life unscathed, holding on to whatever self-respect he could.

Four guys in hoodies, age 37:In 2002 I was mugged in East London by a group of youths in hoods who tried to grab the phone out of my hand. It was 6 pm, October, dark outside, and I had an accordion in a kitbag on my back. If four youths in hoods had stood in front of me and threatened me for it, I would have given my phone to them straight away. Instead they tried to grab it from me, and I instinctively fought. There were four of them. I lost the fight. I managed to land a couple punches on the one nearest me, the one who’d grabbed the phone, and he dropped it. This temporarily stopped the others – surprised that I’d fight back. But when I turned away to pick up my phone on the ground, one of them hit me on the side of the face and I went down. My eye socket was broken, and my cheek ended up with 5 stitches. And they got my phone.