A few weeks ago I experienced a moment of clarity at an Agon I arranged and officiated for fighters I train. This moment came courtesy of Jack Donovan’s 3rd Start the World podcast, which I had listened to just before attending the event. In this podcast Jack interviewed a leader in the power-lifting community, who is reportedly a scholar of his meathead kind. This mental midget was unable to convey a three sentence stream of consciousness without reverting to the f-word. I did stick with the podcast long enough to hear him assert that being a large strong man makes you a presence in the room, and makes you someone to contend with. He also bragged about intimidating school children who might otherwise be tempted to bully his children.

My friend Dominick, who is also a big Jack Donovan fan, had stuck with the entire podcast and later commented, “Okay, feminism is a ridiculous ethos, but how far into the meathead zone do we have to go? This has been my problem with belonging to groups—having to deal with immensely strong domineering meatheads—the psychotic guidos up here in New York, who are pretty much extinct now. I’d rather be alone. How would you deal with this guy if he flexed at you, tried to make you step off, flexed at your child, put his deserving hands on your girl?”

“A man who needs to talk of his size and strength lacks the character for combat. His eyes are already gone. You take the eyes of the big man first. I’ve made a life of undermining, allying with, and psychologically and physically dismantling this type of alpha male. They are universally weak on an internal level and know it. That is why they project. They are needed as leaders by their followers, who are weak both physically and psychologically, or at least weaker by comparison.”

Our most potent combatants throughout the ages have separated themselves from the larger society.

The best example is Liver-Eating Johnson, who was a loner among the Mountain Men, who were taboo loners themselves. He killed hundreds of enemies singlehandedly. He derived power form alienation and the lonely way.

Alexander was not even an alpha, he was a super loner who acknowledged no human peer and used alphas as his pawns to manipulate those who were infinitely beneath him. Achilles, Alexander’s hero—though a chief—was a lone turbulent soul.

To succeed as a Taboo Man you must either be gifted like these remarkable men, or somewhat manipulative. You must cultivate the art of negotiation, which largely hinges on assessing the needs, wants, strengths and weaknesses of a potential adversary and then triangulating these characteristics with your own characteristics to gain mutual advantage. If he is too emotionally compromised, or just too stupid, to go along than you destroy his mind or walk away.

At our four-man agon on April 19th 2014, Erique was the 'strong man', with an unbreakable grip and a powerful stroke, nothing to sneeze at in a stick-fight. The much lighter and weaker Charles and Craig beat the crap out of him. In training Erique does much better. But in competition before a crowd, the stronger man in a fight feels the social pressure that always plagues the alpha male; that crowd driven need to dominate, which turns him into the equivalent of a foot soldier slogging through an enemy minefield with snipers zeroing in on him. Ego disables the combatant, and the crowd driven alpha role inflates the ego.

In terms of the things treasured by the Taboo Man: peace of mind, tranquility, a low profile defensible social position, and the powerful sense of husbanding his energy within his own body and mind, the alpha male is a person to be pitied. The alpha suffers from constant dissipating social forces and has a hard time maintaining one-to-one focus. Thus the alpha male, sought by others as a shelter for his strength, has been latched on to by psychological parasites, and must be immensely strong to survive the experience.

If you are a Taboo Man, you will find that the alphas in your life suffer from what Erique suffered in this agon, a nagging social expectation that cripples them in certain practical matters. Guys like this, could use an ally like you. The alpha—it will be found on close examination—who is truly successful, often has a taboo ally.

Cory, our big man, suffered the same expectation dilemma in the face of the crowd as Erique. He was less thoroughly brutalized because his great size has imbued him with a sense of vulnerability that Erique was more ignorant of.

Big-strong men, like the power-lifting blogger, in terms of combat sports, street combat, and workplace altercations tend to suffer the same compromising social expectation matrix as the strong man without the balancing sense of vulnerability of the big man.

Here is a good example. I was at a family cookout speaking with Dante, a stud of a fighter, a rib-wrecking jaw-breaking welterweight who is the lead fighter for an outlaw biker gang. My sister’s fiancé is a big man who thinks big gets it done. His son is a gigantic young man. Lucky enough not to have been singled out by small vicious men like Dante and I, they walked into the barbecue flexing and posing, as my sister introduced Dante as a fighter I used to train.

My dear sister was dating and in love with a stupid redneck. But I love her, and this was family ground, my oldest son’s back deck, so nothing ugly or mean spirited, like Dante breaking a leg in the yard, was going to happen. My future brother-in-law said to Dante, pointing proudly to his son, “But could you take him, as big as he is? Imagine getting hit by him?”

Dante looked at me and broke into a grin as he made the universally recognized symbol among fighters indicating a big muscle-bound target headed to the floor. Crossing his arms in front of him like the plush purple children’s TV T-Rex ‘Barney’ in a panic he started twitching his little T-Rex arms and making Curley Joe noises from the Three-Stooges, indicating the likely reaction of this giant baby to actual bone-breaking blood-spurting combat, “Moo-moo-boo-voo-voo!”

With that we broke into rib-splitting laughter. The two big rednecks seemed confused and then frightened; having stepped out of the cozy redneck meathead weight-lifting world where size intimidates and fights don’t happen, into our nasty little reality where size makes you a big target and intimidation never leads to a fight because it is interrupted by a brutal attack. In time they found out the truth when they came to watch us fight. They now regard me with an almost supernatural dread and avoid Dante as if his excess testosterone might splash on their skin and cause them to dissolve.

My sister once introduced me to a real alpha male, a big, strong, athletic wrecking machine who had fought dozens of boxing matches and street fights and hundreds of wrestling matches; a dude that can bench 500 and skip rope. She, being a woman of kind heart, remembered from our youth me brawling with the wrestler/alpha male in our neighborhood over a point of honor concerning her. Seeing in Dan a much larger version of that person, she said, “I bet you two would not have gotten along if you grew up together.”

Dan, who was capable of lining up and knocking out a dozen evil twerps like me nodded, “Not at all. My brothers and I would have loved to have a loner buddy like James. When you’re the one everyone looks to, it’s nice to have an ally that looks to no one.”

The point Dan was making is that a group dominated by an alpha male is made more survivable, more potent, when it has in its orbit a few lone associates, Taboo Men who are only bound by a one-to-one sense of honor, not some abstract notion of allegiance.