Or, why you must always be ready to fight but never be eager to
Tova7 has a son, called Hunter. She recently wrote an article called 'Man enough?' regarding an incident in which her boy punched another kid (quite rightly and properly) in the eye. (Link). I read the article, and commented that I thought Hunter had done the right thing, and that the outcome for both boys could only be good. The little swine who had provoked Hunter had learned a valuable lesson in not screwing with other people's limits, and Hunter had learned that the proper and judicious use of violence can have positive and beneficial effects.
Over the days that have passed since I read the article and wrote the comment memories of my own childhood have resurfaced, memories I won't be able to lay to rest again until I have, in some way, brought them out into the open and examined in the light of day.
There was a time, in my childhood, when thoughts of suicide would occur to me on a daily, sometimes an hourly, basis. There was a time when the only positive outcome to my life that I could imagine involved my death. There was a time, in my childhood, when death was the only good thing I could think of.
As some on JU may be aware, I was born with a deformity that involves my left hand and arm. The arm is six inches shorter than my right arm. The 'hand' consists of the wrist, and a kind of splayed, flattened stump to which vestigial 'fingers' are attached. It has always reminded me of a pig's trotter, and its existence has played the single greatest role in forming my outlook on life.
When I was eight, my family moved to London, in pursuit of my father's career. My father was a strange man: intelligent, articulate, utterly vain. The only legacy I have from him is his sense of humour, and a fondness for reading. At night, he would say good-night by appearing at my bedroom door, pulling it almost closed, and then pushing his head and neck forward, around the door, so that only his head and neck protruded. For a few seconds he would talk about the most normal things, what I had done that day, whether I had said my prayers on going to bed, and then, very slowly, his hand would appear above his head, his fingers would gyrate and dance, and then seize hold of his hair and drag his head backwards while he mimed an expression of terror.
And then his head would reappear, he'd grin, and say good-night. As I said, a strange man. Another child might have been terrified. I laughed hysterically. To me, it seemed the funniest thing in the world.
We moved to London, where my father had gained employment as a prison guard, firstly at Brixton Prison (a notorious penal facility) and later at Wandsworth Prison, an institution famous for the toughness of its regime. You had to be a hardass, to work there. In the meanwhile I had begun attending Richard Atkins Primary School (in the English educational regime a primary school is the next step after kindergarten).
No child at Richard Atkins had ever seen another child afflicted by a disability - and this was long before the days when bullying was recognised as a problem to be addressed by the school staff. Bullying was something children had to survive as best they could. I was an immediate 'hit', and a source of unending fascination and entertainment. I remember, as clearly as if I was there, the crowd of eighteen or twenty children that surrounded me as soon as I made my first appearance in the school yard (the 'playground', as English kids refer to it).
They all wanted to know what had happened to my hand. We were all children, and children are severly limited in their capacity to imagine the pain of others. They demanded to know if the 'butcher' had cut my hand off. That was their main thought: that a butcher had chopped my hand off. And they immediately and unhesitatingly coined a term for my condition: I was the 'three fingered freak', and it was by that title that I was known throughout my tenure at Richard Atkins, a tenure that lasted four years. During those four years I was, at various times, stoned with half-bricks on my way home. I was regularly set upon by ten or twelve or fifteeen children and beaten to a pulp. I was never, except by teachers, referred to by my name; being, simply, the freak. And I was always alone.
In consequence, I developed a sense of patience. Since I was alone I could never tackle my persecutors en masse: but I could and did wait patiently untill I could catch one of them alone - at which point I beat the living shit out of him or her. I developed a sense of my own existence as a friendless individual who was entirely dependant upon his own stratagems for his survival. A sense so strong that it has taken me decades to overcome it to the point where I can support and be part of a marriage, to a point where I can believe in and trust the unfailing support of another human being.
And deep down, even today, you are all my enemies, because you are not like I am, and that difference means that, eventually, you will turn on me.
Trust me - I'm ready for you.
One of the most poignant memories resurrected by Tova7's article has to do with the attitude of the Principal of his school. There came a point where I became involved in a melee with my persecutors. They thought they had me trapped. Instead I waded into them and laid about me with such good effect that they ran crying to the playground's supervisor, who immediately hauled me off to face the wrath of the Head Teacher (the English equivalent of a principal). Richard Atkins Head Teacher was at that time a woman. A woman who had not the least difficulty in telling me that all my woes at school were occassioned by my own bad attitude and were, in effect, my own fault. Any faith in authority that I then had died on the spot, and to that incident I now trace my abiding antipathy toward, and distrust of, all forms of authority whatsoever. Authority serves its own convenience, nothing more.
Like all of us, I have had many problems in my life. And not the least of these problems has been my relationship to myself. That relationship has been complicated by many issues: my sexuality paramount among them. It was not until after the death of my first marriage that I began to take that issue seriously and made a determined effort to be what I actually am, which is a pervert, by the standards of most. I am a Sadist. In many instances (though by no means all) I am attracted to my own sex before I am attracted to the opposite sex. I find the shedding of blood and the infliction of pain to be the acme of sexual arousal, and over recent years I have become expert in extracting the maximum degree of pain, both psychologcal and physical, for the minimum degree of effort, to my own immense satrisfaction.
And I am absolutely certain that this state of affairs is directly related to my utter and complete sense of powerlessness and friendlessness as a child. Had I not been the child I was I would not be the man that I am. And I am not a 'good' man. If I could I would kill each and every one of the adults that those children became. I would kill their children before their eyes, in order to repay them for the misery I suffered, for the hate I learned to feel for myself, with which I still battle to this day.
Children are not innocents. They are amoral, because they have not learned what morality is. They are, without exception, inhumanly cruel, because they do not understand what cruelty is, because they cannot separate themselves from confomity to the passions of the mob and act as thinking individuals presented with a moral choice. Children are naturally diabolical in their cruelty because they have not learned to see themselves in the plight of another.
I know this because, when I could, I exercised the same diabolical cruelty towards those even further down the pecking order than I was. I am not innocent, either. I too was a bully. I came close to killing another child, when I was eleven or so, and all that stopped me was a well developed sense of my own survival.
I claim no moral superiority to those who persecuted me, because I persecuted others.
So, Tova7, do everything you can to encourage Hunter's innate sense of justice and reciprocity. Never discourage him from defending himself in the face of the egregious importunities of others. But always, always, always, encourage in him the sense that we are all human, all fallible, all weak, all liable to fuck up and do terrible things. Because in that way you will preserve him from experiencing the killing rage to which I am heir.
If I thought I could carry out my desire to kill the adults whom those children became, I would.
I would.