“Down-the-block” tough

by David Benjamin

 

“Don’t let him bluff you, Mr. Louie! Be firm. Stop him!”

—Sherman

 

MADISON, Wis.—“Fight like hell!” quoth the demagogue, twenty feet above his congregation, wreathed in cashmere, framed among flags, shielded by bulletproof glass, flanked by bodyguards. 

“Charge!” he roared, dispatching his masses as he slid into his limousine and rode the other way.

As I observe the performative pugilism of our ex-president, I can’t help thinking about the fights—physical battles, with fists and kicking, eye-gouging and hematomas—I never had. The closest I ever got to a real-life brawl was at, of all things, a dance in my high-school cafeteria. A kid named Deanie, backed by a delegation of his fellow greasers, confronted me and announced that he and I were going to fight.

Well, there I had him.

Instead of just rushing me, knocking me on my ass and beating me up, Deanie had entered my briar patch by striking up a conversation. His premise for the proposed fight was a rumor that I’d been overheard calling Deanie a “wop.” My first response was a sort of theatrical expression of surprise about his ethnicity: “Deanie! I didn’t know you were Italian!” This got Deanie off-balance. Indeed, he was forced to wonder: If I didn’t know he was Italian, why would I call him a “wop”? I think I also mentioned that I strongly disapprove of pejoratives based on racial, national or religious origins. 

In the end, the dialog petered out and Deanie drifted away, perhaps in quest of a foe less chatty. The main offshoot was that, much later, in one of my novels, I wrote a largely fictional episode based on my non-fight with Deanie at the dance. Occasionally, however, I wonder how our rumble might have turned out. Deanie had chosen to challenge me, after all, not because I’d actually offended him. He picked me because I looked easy to beat. Also, he was showing off, acting tough for his guys. I had no idea whether Deanie had actually fought many actual fights, whether he was good at it, whether he had won or lost. But I wasn’t afraid because a) he was talking about fighting, not fighting and b) if matters came down to physical combat, I was probably tougher than I looked. 

No that I knew. In those days, in that place, I had no reputation for toughness or belligerence, nor did I care about exhibiting those qualities. I didn’t need to, because—in my rare opportunities for literal fisticuffs—I exercised an intuition that was demonstrated by my contretemps with Deanie. People prone to violence don’t discuss it. They don’t negotiate. They simply attack. 

To this day, I don’t know if Deanie really intended to fight me, or just scare me. I suspect that, having accomplished neither, he was relieved. 

Chris Hayes, the MSNBC commentator, grew up in a milieu, the Bronx, far more dangerous than my neighborhoods in Wisconsin. Chances are that Hayes had to be pretty tough to survive the mean streets of the Bronx, but it hardly shows. He looks eerily like Sherman, the noddle-armed cartoon nerd who travels the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody. Whether Hayes’ policy growing up was to fight or to flee, he developed a connoisseur’s eye for the nuances of fortitude, bluff, courage and cowardice. Nowadays, Hayes refers to the bluster of truculent politicians, like Donald Trump, as “down-the-block tough.” The farther you stand from your potential opponent, the mightier you can sound. 

Consider Trump, for example, perched atop a podium, urging zealots in his audience to “beat the hell out of” an anti-Trump protester. He vows, “I’ll pay your legal fees,” an assurance to file among his countless lies. A gasbag on stage, shouting at fans to commit an assault on his behalf, is a textbook example—if there were a how-to manual for chickens—of “down-the-block tough.”

Am I the only skeptic who wonders if America’s manliest man ever engaged in an actual fight, hand to hand, mano a mano, with anyone else—much less won the fight? I’m reminded of the young Ernest Hemingway, during his Paris sojourn, when he carried a chip on his shoulder as big as his ego. He was studying boxing and constantly spoiling for a bout among the non-pugilistic literary types— Gertrude Stein?—with whom he circulated. Nobody, of course, volunteered to fight Hemingway. And he was loath to venture into the meaner quarters of the city, where the Marquess of Queensberry Rules had never been heard of and a boozy fistfight could turn suddenly into a cold-sober knife in the guts.  

Hemingway eventually badgered a Canadian writer, Morley Callaghan, into the ring, whereupon Callaghan—cautiously, reluctantly, as gently as he could manage—parried Hemingway’s onslaught and knocked him on his tuchis. That fight exists largely in legend because Hemingway didn’t write about it and Callaghan recorded it sparingly. 

Hemingway might well have been bluffing all along. He might have been content to be down-the-block tough, But when a worthy opponent picked up his gauntlet, Hemingway had the integrity to risk an actual exchange of blows. I struggle to picture Trump accepting a fight so fair.

Thankfully, I have almost nothing in common with the Former Guy. But I confess a few affinities when it comes to combat. Trump and I were both draft-eligible during the war in Vietnam. I refused to fight because I would not kill and I spent two years in “alternative service” at a Boston hospital. Trump also dodged, with five deferments and the heartbreak of bone spurs, the latter attested by an impecunious podiatrist in Queens.

Unlike me, however, who could usually talk my way out of a fight I didn’t want, Trump has always had the wherewithal to buy his way out of the fights he incites. Rich kids can frighten, threaten and bully without having to lift a (short) finger. They can afford to enlist proxies—like the followers, flunkies and fools of January 6—to get their hands dirty and noses bloody.

The media has been politely incurious about Donald Trump’s formative years, especially those important Kew-Forest School days. Based on his renowned emulation of father Fred, we can guess that young Donald was as bellicose and arrogant then as he is now. If he picked any actual physical fights, he did so pickily, singling out runts, dweebs and lepers. More likely, he was—as he is today—all talk. He learned early in life that the best tool for hurting others while avoiding even the slightest pain himself is not the bare fist but the acid tongue. 

A black eye or split lip goes away soon. But a lingering, haunting wound, or a humiliation that lasts a lifetime, is best inflicted by insults uttered and falsehoods written. 

Donald Trump has come to embody the creed that discouraging words spoken and repeated, shouted, chanted and broadcast are the weapon that renders him invincible and his myriad enemies “sad.” His manhood, his self-esteem, his very identity is inextricable from his power—his need—to make other people hurt. The older he gets, the weaker, more forgetful, incoherent and insecure, the stronger becomes his addiction to bullying, belittling and inflicting pain. 

From classmates, I’ve learned that Deanie stopped picking fights a long time ago. He grew up, went to work, got married, had a family, gained some weight, lost some hair. I doubt that he can remember the days when he measured his manhood by his ability to hurt someone else. 

He grew up.