The Boned Zone is that place where you are physically threatened by an antagonist and the entire society that makes a claim to your body and soul. The deeply disturbing and dichotomous nature of The Boned Zone, is that the more successful you are dealing with your antagonist’s attempt to bone you, the more likely it is that you will get boned by the rest of the assholes on the planet who lay claim to the slice of it you happen to be treading on.

Big Chev is a husky Polish-American machinist who used to work at the store where I now find myself employed. I recall that when I took a part time gig at this location some 21 years ago that there had been a rumor that he had fought a coworker. Even though this guy was bleeding from a head wound Big Chev was not fired. The manager even warned me not to cross him when I was hired. I just became his best little buddy, like an evil version of The Skipper and Gilligan. After all these years, this past Tuesday, when the big man came into buy his breakfast, and checked on the genius twerp that was his favorite sidekick, that guy finally asked him about the fracas.

“Oh that, the tough guy in produce. I’m no world beater, but I don’t go easy. I wouldn’t live where you live, with all the monkeys ‘cause I know the numbers would overwhelm me. You can only wring the necks of so many monkeys and chimps and baboons before you run into a gorilla or two and end up on the shit end of the deal.

“Anyhow, this guy was tall, thin, the longhaired hippie type, just out of prison—talked about fighting a lot and talked up the prison thing. That’s how much of a loser he was—was proud of prison. We’re both in our early twenties. This guy has never held a job for more than a month, and me, this is my job—my life. I get fired and I’m on the street—got bills, car, rent. So I never consider fighting on the job. I’ll invite you to a meeting on the parking lot after hours, but that’s as far as it goes.

“I’m on the dock checking in an order while the Fag receiver is doing God only knows what. And Tough Guy tells me to go tell Fruit Cake to come back on the dock.

I said, “You don’t tell me what to do, pal.”

He says, “You better watch how you talk to me big boy. I’ve been in prison—fought my ass off behind bars.”

I say something like, “More like you tried to fight the monkeys off in prison and they fucked you in the ass from behind bars!”

“At this point I’m just walking off, not even looking at him, and he decided to wing me—a cheap shot.”

Author’s comment: “You mean he actually punched that polish cinderblock that’s sitting on your neckless shoulders?”

“I never said he was bright. Just a little mousey ding he gives me. I barely felt it. But you’re not just going to clip me on the job and get away with it. On the other hand, all I thought about the entire time after he started mouthing off to me was my job, that I didn’t want to do anything to lose my job and end up like some pathetic loser on the street. So, in my mind, I’m not thinking fight. This is not a fight. If this was a fight this joker would be waiting for the ambulance.

“I turned and grabbed him and we got to a kind of wrestling situation and he’s trying to hit me. Now if he hits me again I might get mad, and if I get mad, I might lose my job, and if I lose my job and get real mad, I might have to spend the next ten years ripping apart niցցers in prison, and I’d rather rip apart spare ribs at the bar. So I grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him against the forklift and blood squirted everywhere. This dude was definitely a bleeder. We’ve barely got started and this guy’s already a bloody mess. I’m standing over him holding him with one hand, knowing that I could kill him with my bare hands, and all I could think about was my job. I was here to work, not to fight.

“I even helped this joker up—and then he shakes his head as Fruit Cake is coming back on the dock with his ‘Hey guys, now, now,’ routine, and the blood splashes across Fruit Cake’s eyes!”

[Deep laughter]

“I wouldn’t call it a fight. It was an altercation. But if some niցցer or other kind of monkey ever lays a hand on me I sure hope there is forklift around!”

In most cases, under most employers, both of these guys are fired on the spot. Fortunately since Tough Guy and Big Chev shook hands, agreed that they had not been in a fight, and especially the fact that Tough Guy manned up and declined to go for medical treatment [which would have drawn a Workman’s Compensation Investigation] they were both able to keep their jobs.

In today’s world situations like this are much less common, and the work place law suit has become such an institution, that if such a situation does arise both antagonists are likely to be boned by the greater society.

If you do find yourself responding impulsively to a sucker punch attack here are a few tips to help minimize the chance that the law or an avenger might come after you:

1. Do not punch back, but use asymmetrical counter measures so that the situation continues to look like an attack rather than a fight. Most eye witnesses never see the initial attack, but the second stage, which is your response, which might just look like an attack to someone who just turned their head.

2. Do not finish the guy or go into overkill, but back off when you have him at your mercy.

3. Do not let this be misunderstood as backing out. Stay there and either help him with his injuries, pat him on the back and say no hard feelings, or even extend your hand to help him up and offer to call it a draw, an accident, or whatever seems likely to work with this guy.

4. Making friends with him is a good idea. He is not in a position to make the overture without looking like a bitch, so that is your call.

As it is, verbal escalation to a brawl is exceedingly rare compared to criminal attacks. There is no sense in taking such a situation into overkill and possibly placing yourself as the target of a vengeful antagonist [the common comeback after a fight now is a stabbing by the loser, at a rate of about one per week in Baltimore County.] You also want to do what you can to stay out of the criminal clutches of law enforcement.