What Would Tyler Durden Do?

So, here's the thing: I like to punch boys. Consensually, of course--I have never struck anyone in anger, but occasionally I'll say to a guy friend, "Wanna fight?" and then we step outside. Bareknuckle boxing, if you will. Always below the neck--my friend Chris wanted the face to be inbounds, but I said, “There’s a pretty boy I’m trying to mack it to.” And he understands that kind of thing.

The first part of my pugilistic impulse is: I like violence. I mean…in order to fight I have to be in the right mood. A very specific mood. The first time, you see, I was bored. Restless. There was a party going on at my house and I’d snuck off to someone else’s, suddenly feeling itchy somehow, like something was rattling around inside me. As is often my problem, I wanted to feel wild, like an artist, a Hemmingway type, a lion. By this point I was done with binge drinking and was taking a serious break from random sex. A physical fight suddenly seemed the way to feel less…trivial. More primal. Less bourgeois. It's exhilarating, really.

There is the therapeutic part, where I can get out all my anger and frustration, both at myself and others. It's definitely cathartic.

And then, of course, there's the part where I identify with male roles, and want to believe I can roll with the boys. But I don't want to win. The reason I fight boys and not girls (aside perhaps from girls not seeing getting pummeled as a good time) is that with boys I don't have to hold back. I don't have to worry about hurting them and I don't worry about them hurting me. That's the point.

I want to know how much I can take. I want to know I'm tough.

I tend to play the Strong Woman role, and sometimes I feel guilty because I'm worried it's all just a front. So yeah, getting "beat up" (but not really) by a guy proves that I can handle getting beat up. Basically: There's no fear he let me win if I don't win.

However, I do walk around acting as though I could take just about anyone. The really good fights (which are 3 out of the 5) had carefully chosen partners, and two of them in particular were the kind of guy who in general looks like he'd win a in a fight.* But this weekend I somehow, drunkenly, ended up in a faux-wrestling match with a guy who does not come off as particularly butch. I not only lost, I ended up on my knees, hitting his arm and croaking "Safeword! Safeword!" because I did not think he actually wanted his headlock to make me pass out, especially as the party was otherwise quite civilized.

[Okay, I'm going to get sexually explicit and reveal some stuff here, so if you think that kind of thing should be embarrassing then please don't read. Really, I'm only embarrassed to reveal things about myself when I think that other people think I should be. People tend not to like casual TMI. So be gentle.]

This reminded me of an occasion on which a guy had me, well, tied up. I'll spare you the details and skip ahead: afterwards, I said something about how I could've gotten free if I'd wanted to. My gentleman friend, almost offended, argued that had he actually wanted to restrain me against my will, he would've been able to. This gave me pause. Powerlessness is, of course, the fantasy...Dan Savage says we fetishize what we fear. But I suppose that integral to that, for me, is the idea that being forced couldn't happen to me for real. And the unsuccessful wrassling with my friend this weekend (he was gay, so don't mistake it for foreplay) bummed me out slightly because part of me wants to know that I could fend a guy off if I had to. Of course, there's a difference between hitting an attacker and running and actually sticking around for a fight. But I still sometimes think about the fact that most of my guy friends could easily beat me to death, could easily kill me with their bare hands.

So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head off and buy a gym membership. Maybe some kickboxing classes will cheer me up.




*As much as theatre folk can look that way.
**Probably accurate.