Girl Fistfights Boy, Page 2

for his breastbone protecting him. The part of the chest that makes your kidneys squirt adrenaline and makes the animal inside click on.

  “I could kick your little punk ass,” she seethed. “And there isn’t a thing you could do about it.” She poked again. “If we were in prison, you’d be my bitch.”

  “Okay!” Benny yelled. “I’ll fight you!”

  “What did you just say?” she asked, tilting her head and looming over him with her perfect, sturdy, athletic physique.

  “I said, I’ll fight you, you batty little cunt, Jesus!”

  “What did you just call me?” she asked.

  “I called you a batty little cunt. I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Oh no,” she said, swiping off her earrings and her stilettos. “Oh no. No!” He hadn’t called her a bitch, hadn’t just implied she was a lesser life form. He had called her a batty little cunt. Batty: meaning she fumbled around in the dark. Little: meaning not as important as boys, not as important as her two younger brothers. And, worst of all: Cunt: meaning the essence of her femininity was unclean. She was not unclean—unorganized, moody—manic even at times but not unclean, never unclean. She had gotten up from her breakup depression on the couch to wash every dish and spoon clean, wipe the counters clean and fling everything back into the sink. She had her ex tested twice and had only slept with three guys and she had known them since junior high. She was not unclean. “I will fight you now.”

  “Fine,” Benny said. “Let’s just—let’s just go on outside then if that’s the way you feel.”

  “Lead the way, big man,” she said with an ushering motion toward the exit door beyond the restrooms and the staircase.

  “Fine,” Benny said. His heart launched into his throat. He didn’t have a clue what to do next. He’d never fought anyone before and now he was popping his fight cherry with a girl. Popping his fight cherry? Jesus, he was thinking crazy thoughts.

  She watched him sheepishly walk out the exit door. He looked back several times with a face flush with confusion and surprise to find her still close behind and this gave her a little jolt of satisfaction. Then they were in the small parking lot with an ally out back and he, of course, didn’t have a plan for what to do next. Typical. She led him up a retainment wall of railroad ties, over a hill and near a flat mound of hard packed dirt and a nearby elm tree and picnic table. It was far enough away so that she could leave him there with no strings attached if she had to. His nervous face was visible from the full moon and a few sojourning white rays from a distant streetlight. She looked up to the full moon appearing briefly between overladen, black thunderheads. Yes, she on her period but that wasn’t what this was about. And, even if it was, her period was a part of life—worthy of being accounted for by unchivalrous douchebags who can’t yield the right of way to poised, confident black belts that need to pee and that need to be treated with patience and difference. The mound was dirty, circled with timothy grass and clover but free of glass shards. She grimaced.

  He was circling her now, trying to size her up as if he knew what he was doing. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s so filthy up here,” she said. “It’ll have to do.”

  Benny faked a chuckle. “You want to fight me. But you want to stay clean while you do it? Oh, you’re so precious.”

  She glowered at him.

  He glanced back and mentally marked the word that had set her off: precious. That was it, precious. Women did hate being called that, nowadays.

  “Get a clue, dork,” she said, dropping into her forward stance. “You’re flaunting your vital organs at me like they had bulls-eyes painted on them.” She pulled out of her stance and touched her forehead. “Look. I don’t want to be responsible for killing you, okay?”

  “Okay,” Benny said, tightly. “I understand that.” He really wished he could go back in time and control his temper, but he knew that he was trapped because if he backed out now, he’d never let himself forget it. And, in a way, it felt like this was what his whole life had been leading to. Not a physical fight with a man, but a physical fight with a woman. In a world without real wars, maybe this was the new right-of-passage.

  “Turn edgewise,” she said. “Pick a foot to lead with so your vitals don’t show. Like this.” This was so fucking typical of her life right now: teaching a guy she wanted to beat the crap out of how to fight her.

  Benny attempted to mirror her posture.

  “Good enough,” she muttered. “Now bend your knees and balance your weight over your center. Try to bounce a little: like this,”—she bounced—“keep off your heels or you’ll conduct a load path down into the ground. Okay?” She didn’t want to kill the kid.

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said. He could feel his heart in his hands and fingers and his throat constricted, rough-walled, like sandpaper. “Let’s just get this over with. Okay? Precious.”

  “What the—?” The hairs on the back of her neck stood. She dropped down tighter into her stance as her stomach turned. Maybe she would kill this kid. Maybe something this stupid didn’t deserve to be in the gene pool one second longer. Precious? Who did he think he was? She measured up striking distances and circled him. She wasn’t precious. She wasn’t fucking precious. Or was she? She was strong. She was strong and precious. She flinched forward and sent him back.

  His thin hands shook near his chest.

  But strong and precious were mutually exclusive. Gold wasn’t as strong as steel. Diamond was hard, but not durable. Shit! Maybe this kid was smarter than he looked. He was getting into her head.

  “Today, precious,” he taunted and studied her face. If there was one thing that being a boy had taught him, it was how to name-call.

  “Hiiiigh,” her front kick snapped into his gut, sending him reeling backwards, rolling over his head onto his stomach and coughing. He rolled onto his side, bracing and wincing against further blows as he struggled to stand but she had taken a step back.

  “Jesus Christ!” she said, exasperatingly. “Look what you’re making me do! I’m not this way.” A vulpine grin surfaced.

  “Nice shot, precious,” he said.

  Her eyes widened.

  He charged her low to the ground, scuttling.

  She measured distances but he jigged right, then left, then right. His shoulder collided with her waist and he wrapped her up, sending her tall frame crashing to the ground as she scrambled with her long, fighting legs to knee him in the groan, a predictable, defensible move as he pinned her arms down. Then he slapped her hard and full across the face with that satisfying, full-handed smacking sound and that limp lashing of the head on a yielding neck. He wanted to grab her hair and slam her head down hard against the packed dirt and in the moment he took to hesitate over this idea she crept a thin hand up his chest and pressed down hard just above his clavicle into his windpipe. Then she scouted back and snapped a squared-up kick straight into his face.

  Her rounded, bare heel flew at him and transformed into nerve surgings and a snapping of the noise, a blinding of outrushing tears, a sloshing of the brain, a dizziness and humiliation of the strike before falling flat onto his back.

  “You wanted it!” she screamed. “Who’s got control now?” she asked an imagined, shadowy father somewhat behind the reeling boy struggling on the ground.

  Benny crawled away on his hands and knees but Alice was already up. She kicked him in the stomach and as all the wind came out of him and he gasped for air, gasping for mercy and for his life, trying to form words of unspeakable supplication, wondering if his internal organs had been irreparably damaged as another strike rung his thin ribs, wondering if she would take pity on him and spare him. His mind spilled empty—useless. Nothing was as urgent as the razor sharp pain, leaving him only a pathetic, obsolete plan he’d forged before she’d struck him: crawl slowly forward, crawl on all fours and stand. He tried repeatedly to complete it. And, no, it does not make sense that an able-bodied man should not adapt—change!—change his plan, take c
ourage, strike back, stand—“stand and fight!” we scream from soft couches and from cushioned seats: “Stand! Block! Strike back!” Up above, her beautiful, silken-wet, bronze, long legs and curvy figure destroyed him and he felt somehow more of a whiskery rat—still male—but being destroyed by a monster-woman, Olympic in scale and glory, destroyed by a female member of old, venerable Gods. A female member of the gods that consorted with male Gods up beyond the mist of Olympus and like Prometheus, punished for stealing fire, he was being punished for theft. The understanding struck out in bits and pieces and retreated and struck him in his pain-forged delirium as the first of the raindrops beat his back and her mighty shins and feet struck his thorax. He was being punished for stealing dignity, something not meant for him, something not meant for lazy, couch and mouse potato boys, the Baby Boomer and Gen X ensconced, the over privileged demi-males.

  “Who’s got control?” she screamed and kicked again and Benny literally could not steal half a breath. As he looked up and blood rushed to his head, tears welled and shined and spilled in her eyes. He choked out a half breath and rolled onto his back, relieved that she was moving away from him and that perhaps she would grant him life as his mother had first granted it, thinking he should have done more with the life given him, been a man, a man strong of body and