Both of these folks, both readers, both voices, both people with far more experience with violence than most, but far less experience than I, took me to task for not being a bar-fighting or street-fighting champion, but “play-fighting” as a boxer and stick fighter and skulking cowardly about as a street survivor. And, they are correct on both counts: for, as an adult, I have never engaged in casual mutual combat and have never sucker punched anyone in a bar fight. I have avoided all such violence, because, my last two “street-fights” at age 15, one on a Monday and one on the following Tuesday, after school, against a much larger 16-year-old and a larger and much stronger 18-year-old, turned out to be negative experiences for all three of us, with none of us walking away winners. Rather, two of us were injured and all three of us embarrassed—we all lost social status and two of us blood and broken bones. Also, the 18-year-old, as he quit against my smaller, battered savage self, made the point that if we took this thing as far as I was willing to take it, he could end up doing time, because he knew that I was tireless, tough and fighting to the death, which is the only way I can fight, because I am an inferior physical specimen of manhood in all aspects.

Mike and I were both injured and humiliated.

Mike and John were both terrorized, having the unsettling experience of a little savage trying to kill them as he snarled with every breath.

I was totally ostracized by my few friends and a very attractive girl who was disgusted by my actions. I learned then the truth of what Reds Foley, my boxing coach at the YMCA had said, when he refused to train me in bareknuckle methods, about street-fighting, that it was a fool’s game with no winners. For the rest of my life I have never had a mutual combat and was once taken to court by my attacker, who I defended against, who claimed we had had a mutual combat, giving as evidence the fact that I fought him to a draw, indicating in his mind, that I should not have been able to turn the tables on his sneak attack and that the fact that I had he latched onto as “proof” in court that his failed sneak attack was a “fight” or as the judge said, a “mutual combat.” Had I used the term fight rather than attack with the public defender, I may have been hit with the assault and battery charge rather than having the case dismissed.

I have, on two occasions which I can recall, agreed to “fight” coworkers in what would have been standup, bare-knuckle fights, 7 of which I fought as a teen, 4 being wins and 3 being draws, the fights with Mike and Tom being two of those draws, with the other against a heavyweight wrestler named Desmond. By agreeing to fight these two workplace bullies, a black heavyweight boxer who would have squashed me and a heavyweight redneck who I would have cut down like a tree, the fact that I agreed to do it as a formal meet-up battle, not an escalation from words to fists, made both of them chicken out.

On another two occasions I diverted one challenge to fight a monster bar-brawler who would have crushed me, by using humor and making friends, and flat-out declared that Stick, a middleweight boxer who was twice the fighter I was, the winner—just admitted I wouldn’t have a prayer. With the latter two, both men knew me on reputation as having used a knife to defend myself against coworkers who had put hands on me. So the subtext was, “You are the better man. Touch me and die.”

If the reader is interested in my history of violent encounters up until 2016 checkout 40,000 Years from Home, which has the litany of my many beatings, torments, tortures, stupid teen fights and averted criminal attacks and police bad intentions.

I have never, as a man, fought in a street fight or bar brawl and never will, for these activities are 100% voluntary and I do not volunteer for zero-some danger. There is no possible positive outcome from a street-fight or bar brawl but many possible negative ones, including injury, death and incarceration.

Since we as a society lack an actual understanding of the spectrum of violence, clouded by misleading terms and conflated definitions, I will follow this article with The Spectrum of Violence and the interrelationship of the various forms of violence between humans who are members of the same society, and these forms are:

-Play fighting

-Informal Fighting

-Formal Fighting

-Casual Attacks

-Serious Attacks

-Predatory Attacks

-Extra-Predatory Attacks

Note: Non-social violence is divided into:

-Ritual Warfare

-Symmetrical Warfare

-Asymmetrical Warfare

-Annihilation Conflict

-Extermination

These forms of violence will be covered under Posturing to Hunting Humans.