"Cathartic" by A. Craig Newman © 2012
Writer's Notes:
This story came to me when I was having major problems finding a job. I was depressed, but tried really hard to stay motivated. One day, I let the depression win and started dreaming up fantasies about what could happen to me that would make me feel better. "Beat the crap out of someone" registered pretty high on the list. I took that idea and ran with it and here is the result. -ACN
This story came to me when I was having major problems finding a job. I was depressed, but tried really hard to stay motivated. One day, I let the depression win and started dreaming up fantasies about what could happen to me that would make me feel better. "Beat the crap out of someone" registered pretty high on the list. I took that idea and ran with it and here is the result. -ACN
"What makes a man?" My wife asked me this question one day and it haunted me for months.
She pulled that beauty out during one of our usual "discussions" involving the sexes. These were only discussions in the academic sense. In truth, the daughter of a feminist and the son of an overtime-loving mechanic were not going to chitchat about gender roles as they would about favorite colors. On the surface, these were tension-free talks; deep down, they were battles of will.
Her usual argument amounted to "Anything a man can do, a woman can do because we're equal," while I tended to favor "We can be equal and still have different roles." I grew up watching very traditional roles, so I felt this stance was quite progressive. Unfortunately, I was outgunned when it came to my wife's debating skill. She had a tendency to win the typical "discussion".
One such talk was sparked by the news that some close friends were in the middle of a nasty divorce and could not agree on custody arrangements for their son.
"Well, the boy needs to be able to see his father," I pontificated. "How else is he going to learn to be a man?"
"She'll teach him of course." Her tone expressed her shock that I had not considered this possibility on my own.
"A woman can't teach a boy to be a proper man. It takes a man to make a man." I had been around that idea all my life. It was the reason my dad spent hours making sure I didn't "throw like a girl"; why I was sent out to "help" him with car repairs where I was obviously getting in the way; the secret motive underlying so many fishing and hunting trips. These were one man's attempts at molding his son into another man. The concept was simple and the logic was perfect. Its truth had to be self-evident.
"Oh really? What makes a man?" she fired back. So much for self-evident.
Her question didn't even make sense to me at first. I stared in befuddled silence.
She smelled blood and went in for the kill. "What makes a man? What does a male human have to go through to suddenly become a man? Or is there some magical, mystical quality that can only be bestowed upon the boy-child by his male role model, which, by the way, many boys are not lucky enough to have?"
Just like that, the discussion was over for me. She went on for quite some time with more sarcasm and run-on sentences, but I was out of the fight. Outgunned again.
"What makes a man?" It was the perfect retort. Asking that question was like asking someone to define honor or character. Most people believe they can observe the presence or lack of these qualities in a person, yet, they would be hard-pressed to define what they noticed, or how it got there. That was where I found myself, hard-pressed and out of luck.
Not too long after that conversation, I was laid off. One month, I was the top computer-programming instructor at my school; the next, the school drops its computer-programming curriculum. Just like that, my job vanished from under me and I was left wondering what happened. What happened to "Take Pride in Your Work" and "Stay True to Your School"? What happened to the value of those late nights and early mornings I spent with grades and lesson plans instead of with my family? What would happen to my family, now that the main "breadwinner" was out of work? Wasn't that what I was supposed to be? Wasn't that the real reason I worked so damn hard? How the hell was I supposed to provide without a job?
My dad taught me that "finding an eight-hour-a-day job can be an eight-hour-a-day job." So, when my job search started, I turned into a whirlwind of activity. I pounded the pavement, visiting schools and looking for new job leads. There were résumé mass-mailings and responses were sent to somewhat promising want ads. Showing up in a suit and tie and prepared for an instant interview, I cold-called companies, hoping to impress them with my hustle and professionalism. I busted my tail to get something going.
In the end, I got nothing but a busted tail. There were no interviews, no callbacks, no emails, and no responses. No matter what I tried to alert the job market to my existence, I became a non-entity. The phone refused to ring. The savings dwindled. The early days of optimism and confidence turned into weeks of rejection and despair. For each hour I spent trying to drum up something worthwhile, another found me at home, with nothing but my thoughts and questions to keep me company.
What's a man who can't provide for his family?
What's a man who can't provide for himself?
Work made the man. So, without work, what was I?
Sometimes, I would catch myself staring the mirror with these manhood-testing questions bouncing around in my head. I’d stare at my prodigious gut and receding hairline and wonder if these made me more or less of a man. The answer was always “less.”
For three months, I learned about depression the hard way. Getting out of bed and attacking the day grew more and more difficult until there were mornings that I did not even bother. I tried my best not to pull away from everyone and retreat within myself, but I was only marginally successful. As empathetic in my crisis as she could be fierce in debate, my wife allowed my mood swings and moments of isolation. She assuaged what fears she could (after all, her salary and my unemployment insurance did make the ends meet, if only barely) and allowed me to vent about the rest, rubbing my back and neck and offering variations on "I know, baby. It's going to be ok." Believing in the transience of the situation, she accepted that so many emotions clouded my heart that I often felt nothing at all. At the time, I was unable to share her faith that things were going to get better.
Then, there was a ray of light. Our suburban townhome was burglarized. It turned out to be just what I needed.
The day it happened, I had slept until noon. When I sleep, I'm "dead to the world," as my wife puts it. Therefore, the fact that the break-in occurred without waking me was not surprising. When I did finally wake up, I made my way downstairs for my usual "morning" cup of coffee. My sleep-addled mind processed the clinks and clangs coming from the dining room to mean that my wife had stayed home from her secretary job that day and was very roughly cleaning our silver. I shuffled through the living room and stopped at the hallway leading to the dining area. That was when I saw the burglar at the other end of the hall.
Actually, I smelled him first; this guy had a stink on him that was practically tactile. There was something else, something chemical, there too. I was not sure what, but lighting a match around him was probably a bad idea. His clothes were dirty and worn; he was unshaven and his hair was wild. Then - finally - I saw it. The gun in his hand was the last thing I noticed, though he had been waving it at me the whole time. He was talking too, but, I was slow to understand him. At that moment, all I knew was that I was staring past the barrel of a gun into a pair of the craziest eyes I had ever seen.
Realizing I'd have to bypass the usual coffee ritual, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and shook my head. As the last fog lifted, I realized I was angry, madder than I can ever remember being. Having spent a long time emotionally numb, I found rage of this degree as unfamiliar as it was exhilarating.
"Where's the money?" he yelled.
Behind him, the screen door to the backyard was open and the display cabinet against the far wall was missing its valuables. Wedding gifts of pure silver flatware and candlesticks lay scattered about, some on the mahogany dining set and some on the hardwood floor. If this guy was only here for a quick score, then he was not thinking straight. He could have been in and out in seconds, carrying hundreds of dollars in goods.
Words failed me. They seemed too weak. I wanted to roar with enough power to blast this invader out the door and across the yard. Knuckles cracked audibly as I squeezed my fists tight. My hands ached from the pressure, but I remained silent.
"Where's the fuckin' money?" he demanded again. Shaking, fidgeting, and flinching at invisible threats, he was the epitome of "strung out."
"Who are you?" My voice was surprisingly calm compared to what I felt.
"Where's. The Fucking. Money."
I hissed my response at him. "'Please.'"
Even through his nervous-crazy motions and spasms, puzzlement surfaced. "Wha-?"
"'Where's the fucking money, please?' People say 'Please' in my house - especially when they talk to me." My heart slammed in my chest. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.
"Fine!" He was frustrated. And crazy. And tweaked. And nervous. And armed. I was doing something stupid, and I knew it even then. Still, I needed to do it. I needed to push myself. I needed to do something stupidly "macho." Luckily, I had a cooperative partner. "Where's the fucking money, please?" he recites back to me.
"It's in my back pocket." What back pocket? I was still in my lounge pants from last night.
"Give it to me."
"'Give it to me, please.'"
"Shi- give it to me, please!"
"I…I can't. I'm too afraid to move," I lied. He was too far away from me and I was trying to think of something to bring him down the hall towards me.
He obliged my unspoken wish. Cautiously, he moved closer to me, gun drawn, shaking terribly. Any shot he fired had as much chance of going over my head or between my legs as it had of going right through me. Before my better senses could reinstate themselves, I moved towards him. I had his gun hand pushed wide away from my body before he fired twice. Both shots flew behind me. From a distance, I thought that maybe we were the same height and weight, but up close, I realized I had a couple inches on him and outweighed him by twenty pounds or so. Keeping one hand on the gun, I clamped my free hand down on his neck and started to strangle the life out of him. Hearing him gargle and choke as I squeezed his throat made me smile.
Until he kicked me in the balls. Hard. I dropped to my knees, but was careful to hold on to Pele's gun hand. He reared back, trying to pull away from me, and lost his grip on the weapon. It went clattering across the floor and into the living room. There was panic in his eyes as he turned to move for the open backdoor. The burning soreness in my crotch ignited something in me. I struggled back to my feet and moved after him. By the time he reached the door, I had a handful of his shirt.
I jerked the idiot back into the house and punched him in the kidneys. He collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. I grabbed his collar with both hands and slammed his head and back into the floor. The silver on the floor around us bounced with the impact.
Whatever influences that boy was under made him fight like hell. I faced a flurry of kicks and punches as he flailed trying to break free. I wanted - needed - him to fight me. I didn't want him to let up because I wasn't about to. All his fighting gave me the pretense to beat him senseless.
I punched him for every time he had demanded my money. I kicked him for every piece of silver on the floor. Breaking into my house earned him a broken nose. My bruised balls earned him a bruised pair. I beat him for the very fact that I was there to beat him and not at work somewhere. He earned broken ribs for the broken promises made to me. I put my hands around his throat and choked him. Tears poured down my face as I roared at the top of my lungs. I tried to destroy what he was with my voice as much as I was trying to kill his body with my hands.
Hatred, anger, sadness, and frustration poured out of me and I heard myself screaming. I wasn't just howling; I was asking question after question. "What the fuck do you think you are? Did you think you could just come into a man's life and take it? Didn't you know this is a man's house? Didn't you know I'm a man, motherfucker? Didn't you know…"
As the tears fell, I could feel the clouds within me dissipate. The ray of light shone through bright and showed me the answer to my heart's true question.
"…I'm a man."
Working didn't give me that title any more than continuing this beating would have. It's just what I was. If there is a mysterious process, I already went through it; if there is any magical quality, I had it.
"I'm a man," I said again, more for my benefit than for his. I pulled my hands free and let him breathe. He coughed, spitting blood and teeth all over the hardwood next to his head. When I stood up, he curled up, shook, and cried.
Two cops, called by neighbors who heard the gunshots, came through the screen door, guns drawn, while someone pounded on the front. They quickly surmised that the man standing with the bruised hands just beat the shit out of the bloody sap laying on the ground, curled fetal. They aimed their guns at me and shouted a chorus of "Police!", "Freeze!", "Hands behind your head!", and "Get on the ground!" These guns were steady; these eyes, focused. My stupidly-macho mood had passed and I decided against demanding a "please" from them.
After handcuffing me and taking a sweep of the house, somebody finally asked me who I was. I smiled and spoke slowly, savoring the words.
"I'm the man of the house."
She pulled that beauty out during one of our usual "discussions" involving the sexes. These were only discussions in the academic sense. In truth, the daughter of a feminist and the son of an overtime-loving mechanic were not going to chitchat about gender roles as they would about favorite colors. On the surface, these were tension-free talks; deep down, they were battles of will.
Her usual argument amounted to "Anything a man can do, a woman can do because we're equal," while I tended to favor "We can be equal and still have different roles." I grew up watching very traditional roles, so I felt this stance was quite progressive. Unfortunately, I was outgunned when it came to my wife's debating skill. She had a tendency to win the typical "discussion".
One such talk was sparked by the news that some close friends were in the middle of a nasty divorce and could not agree on custody arrangements for their son.
"Well, the boy needs to be able to see his father," I pontificated. "How else is he going to learn to be a man?"
"She'll teach him of course." Her tone expressed her shock that I had not considered this possibility on my own.
"A woman can't teach a boy to be a proper man. It takes a man to make a man." I had been around that idea all my life. It was the reason my dad spent hours making sure I didn't "throw like a girl"; why I was sent out to "help" him with car repairs where I was obviously getting in the way; the secret motive underlying so many fishing and hunting trips. These were one man's attempts at molding his son into another man. The concept was simple and the logic was perfect. Its truth had to be self-evident.
"Oh really? What makes a man?" she fired back. So much for self-evident.
Her question didn't even make sense to me at first. I stared in befuddled silence.
She smelled blood and went in for the kill. "What makes a man? What does a male human have to go through to suddenly become a man? Or is there some magical, mystical quality that can only be bestowed upon the boy-child by his male role model, which, by the way, many boys are not lucky enough to have?"
Just like that, the discussion was over for me. She went on for quite some time with more sarcasm and run-on sentences, but I was out of the fight. Outgunned again.
"What makes a man?" It was the perfect retort. Asking that question was like asking someone to define honor or character. Most people believe they can observe the presence or lack of these qualities in a person, yet, they would be hard-pressed to define what they noticed, or how it got there. That was where I found myself, hard-pressed and out of luck.
Not too long after that conversation, I was laid off. One month, I was the top computer-programming instructor at my school; the next, the school drops its computer-programming curriculum. Just like that, my job vanished from under me and I was left wondering what happened. What happened to "Take Pride in Your Work" and "Stay True to Your School"? What happened to the value of those late nights and early mornings I spent with grades and lesson plans instead of with my family? What would happen to my family, now that the main "breadwinner" was out of work? Wasn't that what I was supposed to be? Wasn't that the real reason I worked so damn hard? How the hell was I supposed to provide without a job?
My dad taught me that "finding an eight-hour-a-day job can be an eight-hour-a-day job." So, when my job search started, I turned into a whirlwind of activity. I pounded the pavement, visiting schools and looking for new job leads. There were résumé mass-mailings and responses were sent to somewhat promising want ads. Showing up in a suit and tie and prepared for an instant interview, I cold-called companies, hoping to impress them with my hustle and professionalism. I busted my tail to get something going.
In the end, I got nothing but a busted tail. There were no interviews, no callbacks, no emails, and no responses. No matter what I tried to alert the job market to my existence, I became a non-entity. The phone refused to ring. The savings dwindled. The early days of optimism and confidence turned into weeks of rejection and despair. For each hour I spent trying to drum up something worthwhile, another found me at home, with nothing but my thoughts and questions to keep me company.
What's a man who can't provide for his family?
What's a man who can't provide for himself?
Work made the man. So, without work, what was I?
Sometimes, I would catch myself staring the mirror with these manhood-testing questions bouncing around in my head. I’d stare at my prodigious gut and receding hairline and wonder if these made me more or less of a man. The answer was always “less.”
For three months, I learned about depression the hard way. Getting out of bed and attacking the day grew more and more difficult until there were mornings that I did not even bother. I tried my best not to pull away from everyone and retreat within myself, but I was only marginally successful. As empathetic in my crisis as she could be fierce in debate, my wife allowed my mood swings and moments of isolation. She assuaged what fears she could (after all, her salary and my unemployment insurance did make the ends meet, if only barely) and allowed me to vent about the rest, rubbing my back and neck and offering variations on "I know, baby. It's going to be ok." Believing in the transience of the situation, she accepted that so many emotions clouded my heart that I often felt nothing at all. At the time, I was unable to share her faith that things were going to get better.
Then, there was a ray of light. Our suburban townhome was burglarized. It turned out to be just what I needed.
The day it happened, I had slept until noon. When I sleep, I'm "dead to the world," as my wife puts it. Therefore, the fact that the break-in occurred without waking me was not surprising. When I did finally wake up, I made my way downstairs for my usual "morning" cup of coffee. My sleep-addled mind processed the clinks and clangs coming from the dining room to mean that my wife had stayed home from her secretary job that day and was very roughly cleaning our silver. I shuffled through the living room and stopped at the hallway leading to the dining area. That was when I saw the burglar at the other end of the hall.
Actually, I smelled him first; this guy had a stink on him that was practically tactile. There was something else, something chemical, there too. I was not sure what, but lighting a match around him was probably a bad idea. His clothes were dirty and worn; he was unshaven and his hair was wild. Then - finally - I saw it. The gun in his hand was the last thing I noticed, though he had been waving it at me the whole time. He was talking too, but, I was slow to understand him. At that moment, all I knew was that I was staring past the barrel of a gun into a pair of the craziest eyes I had ever seen.
Realizing I'd have to bypass the usual coffee ritual, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and shook my head. As the last fog lifted, I realized I was angry, madder than I can ever remember being. Having spent a long time emotionally numb, I found rage of this degree as unfamiliar as it was exhilarating.
"Where's the money?" he yelled.
Behind him, the screen door to the backyard was open and the display cabinet against the far wall was missing its valuables. Wedding gifts of pure silver flatware and candlesticks lay scattered about, some on the mahogany dining set and some on the hardwood floor. If this guy was only here for a quick score, then he was not thinking straight. He could have been in and out in seconds, carrying hundreds of dollars in goods.
Words failed me. They seemed too weak. I wanted to roar with enough power to blast this invader out the door and across the yard. Knuckles cracked audibly as I squeezed my fists tight. My hands ached from the pressure, but I remained silent.
"Where's the fuckin' money?" he demanded again. Shaking, fidgeting, and flinching at invisible threats, he was the epitome of "strung out."
"Who are you?" My voice was surprisingly calm compared to what I felt.
"Where's. The Fucking. Money."
I hissed my response at him. "'Please.'"
Even through his nervous-crazy motions and spasms, puzzlement surfaced. "Wha-?"
"'Where's the fucking money, please?' People say 'Please' in my house - especially when they talk to me." My heart slammed in my chest. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.
"Fine!" He was frustrated. And crazy. And tweaked. And nervous. And armed. I was doing something stupid, and I knew it even then. Still, I needed to do it. I needed to push myself. I needed to do something stupidly "macho." Luckily, I had a cooperative partner. "Where's the fucking money, please?" he recites back to me.
"It's in my back pocket." What back pocket? I was still in my lounge pants from last night.
"Give it to me."
"'Give it to me, please.'"
"Shi- give it to me, please!"
"I…I can't. I'm too afraid to move," I lied. He was too far away from me and I was trying to think of something to bring him down the hall towards me.
He obliged my unspoken wish. Cautiously, he moved closer to me, gun drawn, shaking terribly. Any shot he fired had as much chance of going over my head or between my legs as it had of going right through me. Before my better senses could reinstate themselves, I moved towards him. I had his gun hand pushed wide away from my body before he fired twice. Both shots flew behind me. From a distance, I thought that maybe we were the same height and weight, but up close, I realized I had a couple inches on him and outweighed him by twenty pounds or so. Keeping one hand on the gun, I clamped my free hand down on his neck and started to strangle the life out of him. Hearing him gargle and choke as I squeezed his throat made me smile.
Until he kicked me in the balls. Hard. I dropped to my knees, but was careful to hold on to Pele's gun hand. He reared back, trying to pull away from me, and lost his grip on the weapon. It went clattering across the floor and into the living room. There was panic in his eyes as he turned to move for the open backdoor. The burning soreness in my crotch ignited something in me. I struggled back to my feet and moved after him. By the time he reached the door, I had a handful of his shirt.
I jerked the idiot back into the house and punched him in the kidneys. He collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. I grabbed his collar with both hands and slammed his head and back into the floor. The silver on the floor around us bounced with the impact.
Whatever influences that boy was under made him fight like hell. I faced a flurry of kicks and punches as he flailed trying to break free. I wanted - needed - him to fight me. I didn't want him to let up because I wasn't about to. All his fighting gave me the pretense to beat him senseless.
I punched him for every time he had demanded my money. I kicked him for every piece of silver on the floor. Breaking into my house earned him a broken nose. My bruised balls earned him a bruised pair. I beat him for the very fact that I was there to beat him and not at work somewhere. He earned broken ribs for the broken promises made to me. I put my hands around his throat and choked him. Tears poured down my face as I roared at the top of my lungs. I tried to destroy what he was with my voice as much as I was trying to kill his body with my hands.
Hatred, anger, sadness, and frustration poured out of me and I heard myself screaming. I wasn't just howling; I was asking question after question. "What the fuck do you think you are? Did you think you could just come into a man's life and take it? Didn't you know this is a man's house? Didn't you know I'm a man, motherfucker? Didn't you know…"
As the tears fell, I could feel the clouds within me dissipate. The ray of light shone through bright and showed me the answer to my heart's true question.
"…I'm a man."
Working didn't give me that title any more than continuing this beating would have. It's just what I was. If there is a mysterious process, I already went through it; if there is any magical quality, I had it.
"I'm a man," I said again, more for my benefit than for his. I pulled my hands free and let him breathe. He coughed, spitting blood and teeth all over the hardwood next to his head. When I stood up, he curled up, shook, and cried.
Two cops, called by neighbors who heard the gunshots, came through the screen door, guns drawn, while someone pounded on the front. They quickly surmised that the man standing with the bruised hands just beat the shit out of the bloody sap laying on the ground, curled fetal. They aimed their guns at me and shouted a chorus of "Police!", "Freeze!", "Hands behind your head!", and "Get on the ground!" These guns were steady; these eyes, focused. My stupidly-macho mood had passed and I decided against demanding a "please" from them.
After handcuffing me and taking a sweep of the house, somebody finally asked me who I was. I smiled and spoke slowly, savoring the words.
"I'm the man of the house."
