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"You're going to start a fight, and you're going to lose."
Those had been my exact words to the crowd of sweating, exhausted men in the basement of Lou's last week. In a moment of inspiration (which came mostly from seeing the contented looks on their faces after a tiring series of fistfights), I invented a homework assignment. It was brilliant, really, and it let every man in that basement take a piece of their catharsis out of the bar and back home into their domestic lives.
But beyond that, it symbolized something. The death of an ego, getting one step closer to hitting rock bottom. Getting used to the feeling of losing everything to enlighten yourself. It was just a command I had thrown out in the moment for the men who looked up to me to follow, but the more I thought about the message behind it, the better the idea of losing seemed to me.
I needed to lose a fight this week.
I had spent all night during my shift at the Pressman focused on the customers over the food for once, trying to pick a mark to execute my plan.
After making several passes around the overly large room, I settled on a man in a navy suit that desperately needed to be ironed who had been talking so loudly all night that I could hear him even while I was serving others four tables away. His laughter was loud and grating, and all of his jokes were being made at the expense of either women or "poor people". Best of all, he looked like he could easily wring me out to dry if I could make him mad enough.
Which should be an easy enough feat, seeing he’d put away nearly an entire bottle of wine by himself.
I see that his water glass is empty and realize it's time to make my move. I come over to him carrying my pitcher of ice water and pick up his glass. I move kinda behind him, out of his field of vision to theoretically hide myselt, but I mostly just try to get closer to his ear so he could hear what I was about to do as clearly as possible.
I make a few gross, half-disguised sounds that made me feel like a cat trying to summon a hairball before spitting a glob of phlegm into his water.
Satisfied, I finish refilling it and set it back down on the table.
He looks at me with wide eyes, his face quickly flushing a vividly red color that I've never actually seen on a human being. "What did you just do to my water," he bellows, shouting rather than asking his question.
I suppress my grin in an attempt to look aloof.
"Dunno what you're talking about."
He looks like he might already be at risk of popping a vein. "You spat in my drink!"
I just keep staring at him.
"Where's your manager?" he insists, standing from his chair. Everyone sitting at his table, and a few people who aren't, are now staring.
My poker face is starting to slip. We're almost to the fun part. "You're talking to him." This is a lie. I don't think my manager even showed up today.
My lie works, because he's shaking, hands curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides.
"Enjoying your meal?" I deadpan.
Bingo. He slaps me across the face, his large palm hitting the entire side of my face at once. It makes an enticingly loud sound, one familiar to me. I grin to myself and sock him in the jaw as hard as I can.
Immediately my knuckles hurt from the contact. My hands are littered with bruises that are still healing from Saturday and this isn't helping them out. Well, at least that's more or less what I'm going for here.
My opponent, however, looks unfazed, and drives a fist straight into my sternum.
I'm not as big a fan of the sound this one makes: less of a flesh-on-flesh, more of a solid thud. I stagger back, reeling from the hit. Before I can recover, his hands have found my shoulders, and he roughly shoves me backwards. I'm just able to catch myself before I fully land on a table exclusively covered in tonight's special, Greek lemon soup with extra... well, you can figure it out.
I certainly don't want to be wearing it.
My head is spinning from adrenaline. I throw a roundhouse kick, aiming for the back of his knee. It lands, but ultimately doesn't do anything to knock him off balance. He punches me square in the nose and I can immediately feel warm blood sliding down my face and onto my clean white uniform.
Jack's gonna be pissed about that later.
Moving as quickly as I can, I grab his head and slam it into my skull. I have finally achieved my goal of knocking him off his game; unfortunately I have done the same for myself. I wonder how many times I can keep pulling that move before I give myself a serious concussion.
This question is answered for me as I feel a piercing pain through my skull courtesy of the bright, ornate chandelier shining right in my field of vision. I try to swing for him again but just end up stumbling under my own weight. My right arm suddenly feels heavier than the buckets of fat Jack and I were moving around last week in a vain attempt to reorganize our dilapidated basement.
He barks something at me again but I can't make out what he says. I sound like I'm hearing him from underwater. His fist connects with my face again, this time lining up with the socket of my eye, and I'm powerless to stop him. He lands one more strong punch to the side of my face and I crumple to the floor like an aluminum can being crushed for a crappy party trick. He kicks me once, twice in the chest before someone (I think they're a coworker of mine but I really can't tell) finally steps up to him, halfheartedly trying to block him from hurting me any further.
I struggle to catch my breath, doubled over on myself on the floor. Realizing how pathetic | look, l drag myself to my feet and stumble to the nearest exit. As I walk past, all of the patrons' faces look blurry, and I can't hear anything over the roaring of the blood in my ears.
When I manage to drag myself back to the Paper Street house, Jack takes one look at me- bloodied and bruised on our front porch- and practically drags me inside and upstairs to the bathroom.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror while Jack's filling the bathtub. My button down has blood stains all along the collar, and my face is sporting various hues of deep reds, blues, and purples. My hair is sticking up from a mix of sweat and hair products. I snap out of it and wince, my muscles protesting when I maneuver my shirt off my shoulders. I push through it nonetheless, stepping over the edge unsteadily and submerging my body in the tub.
I close my eyes, and everything goes blissfully quiet. The ever-present ache in my body is satisfying, taking my mind off of things and allowing me to just feel. I don't even know how long I sit there before I feel an insistent tap on my shoulder.
When I twist to look behind me, Jack is sitting on the floor slotted up against the side of the bathtub.
Hesitantly, I let my head fall back towards him against the side of the tub, his hand slipping underneath my head like a cushion.
Letting my eyes close again, I hear the pump of a near-empty bottle of soap that we keep next to the bathtub as Jack wordlessly begins to wash my hair.
He works the shampoo into my scalp and I sigh. It's completely innocent, but damn, the touch feels absolutely incredible. I think I faintly hear him let out an amused chuckle behind me, but I can't really pay attention to anything other than his fingers against my head. I feel like my head is filled up with the same bubbles that he's currently working into my hair.
When he finally takes his hands off me and leaves the room (presumably to go find a towel), I break. My chest heaves with silent, shuddering sobs. It felt like a dam breaking. I haven't cried like this since I was sitting in my kitchen, lye burning into the back of my hand in the shape of my own lips. Jack should consider himself lucky; he had someone to talk him through that experience. I still remember my split second decision to dump the chemicals on myself. The seemingly all-consuming burn that had reduced me to sitting in fetal position on the floor until I could crawl over and grab something to neutralize it. That was what hitting rock bottom felt like, and at the time, it was the most freeing thing in the world.
I had gotten used to the harshness of it all. I could only be satisfied when my body was alight with pain, and I could only allow myself to be touched if it was with the purpose of slamming me into the concrete. Jack could give me that if he wanted to, but for some reason, his touch is achingly gentle.
He's treating me like I'm something special.
How do I explain that the only form of touch that doesn't make me feel like dying a slow painful death is the feeling of a fight? And after spending my whole life explaining and revising the rules for myself, how do I explain that this feeling is not only okay but possibly the greatest thing I've had the chance of experiencing? His fingertips pressing small circles into my scalp. His hands working through my hair, rinsing the soap out. God, even just the flat of his palm holding my head. After a lifetime of only attacks and abuse, I don't know how to handle his gentle kindness.
When Jack comes back he freezes in the doorway. I'm still crying, my body trembling with the force of it. I don't think he knows how to feel about seeing me like this. I feel like I've been torn open and exposed, like there's a gaping hole in the middle of my chest. This isn't something I do. It isn't a part of me that I offer up to anyone. But even in the panic of somebody seeing me like this, I can't bring myself to calm down or pull myself together, because somewhere inside I know he wouldn't judge me for it.
He moves toward me cautiously and sits on the edge of the tub, his thumb coming up to my cheek with shaking hands to wipe away a stray tear. It makes me cry harder. "Fuck, you don't have to stay in here, I'm fine-"
"You don't have to explain, man. It's alright," he says, cutting me off. He gestures to me stiffly with the towel in his arms.
I laugh in disbelief— he isn't making fun of me. In fact, he hasn't made a single biting comment since I showed up half-dead back at the house. Instead, he's standing in my bathroom awkwardly, arms wide open, and I don't know what I did to deserve that kind of treatment.
I climb clumsily out of the tub, wiping at my face to scrub away the signs of my breakdown. He tosses the towel loosely around me and pats me on the shoulder once to steady me. As I get to work drying myself off, I distantly feel like my world's been knocked off balance. I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay to let myself have this. It wasn't forbidden to let him take care of me, even if the idea of being open like this made me feel like I was being set on fire, flames licking up my sides.
I'd achieved exactly what I wanted tonight— and so much more. Even in my current state, head spinning and knuckles split, I knew that this wouldn't change anything between us. And even though that should fill me with relief, all I feel is dread. Every instinct of mine says I should bury this night deep in my memories and force things to go back to the way they've always been. But for some reason every time I close my eyes, I feel Jack's deft fingers carding through my hair and I know it's something I could get addicted to.