This Guy at Work

 He was big but not fat, just overwhelming. Tall and solid looking, he kind of leaned over me when he talked and when he spoke it was more like shouting despite being less than twelve inches away. His name was Brock. 

My first impression when he started shouting in my direction was that he wasn't very bright. His voice was like a caricature of a stupid person, and his West Virginian accent didn't help matters. But when I really listened, he never said anything dumb. In fact, he was quite articulate, which made his story all the more disturbing.

The other day when the machines were down we started talking, which is more like him monologuing than a real conversation, but he was interesting so I always listened.

"I played football in high school," he told me as we leaned against the unmoving conveyor belt. "The coach kept telling me I should be quarterback instead of front linemen. I said no, but he said, 'I really want you to be QB you've got one hell of an arm.' I would have been a great quarterback, but I didn't want to be throwing balls around, I wanted to be knocking people down." He paused to gauge my reaction. I nodded. Everyone has their thing. "I was on the boxing team in high school too. These cocky little sons of bitches would come in there and tell the coach they wanted to fight his best fighter and he'd point at me and say, 'That's my best fighter but you don't want to fight him.' And they'd say, 'Yes, I do. He's your best I want to fight your best.' And he'd say, 'You don't want to fight him. Most boxers fight to win, that motherfucker fights to hurt people.'"

"Is that true?" I asked. "You like hurting people?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "Cracking ribs. Nothing quite beats the feeling." He shoved his fist into a low uppercut in a rib breaking fantasy. "I'm the reason the boys and girls club doesn't have a boxing program anymore. But I've always liked hurting people. When I was eight years old I decided I wanted to be a Delta."

"A what?" Despite him shouting loud enough to blow my hair back, sometimes it was still hard to hear in the soap factory.

"A Delta, a special forces Marine. When I was eight years old I knew I wanted to kill people for a living. My friend's dad was a Marine and he started teaching me. I paid attention to everything he said. By the time I was twelve I knew how to snap someone's neck."

I assumed he never used this skill because if he had, he wouldn’t be telling me about it. I also didn’t get the impression that he wanted me to fear him. What seemed important to him was that I see him as big and strong, as though his only worth was his strength. 

"So when I was in high school I was on the boxing team, and I was also in the boxing program at The Boys and Girls Club. Me and my buddy were the heavyweights there, we were the stars of the program. We were the best fighters they ever had. One day this little guy comes into the program. He had the fight of a gorilla and the body of a spider monkey. He was so scrawny, and his dream was to fight in the heavyweights with us. So we took him under our wing. He worked out with us and we fed him calf starter which is what you feed baby cows to bulk them up. And eventually he bulked up enough and trained enough, he was able to fight me in the heavyweights. So I fought him. By the time he went down in the third round he never got up again. When I hit him, I cracked his skull and then every time I hit him after that it was like a windshield just cracking more and more. The doctor never should have cleared him to get back in the ring with me. At his funeral his parents told me they didn't blame me, they blamed the doctor who kept clearing him. He lost his license because of that."

Wait what? "You killed him?" I asked, flabbergasted.

"Yeah... I loved that little mother fucker.” He looked sideways at me. I regretted sounding so appalled, I was just surprised. He wandered away and I let him go despite the abrupt end to our conversation. 

Eventually we wandered back together. ”Does that bother you?" I asked him. 

"Yeah, but not as much as it would someone else. The doctor never should have cleared him. But he died living his dream of fighting in the heavyweights. After that the Boys and Girls Club got rid of their boxing program."

"So why didn't you become a Delta?" I asked.

"I had some stuff on my juvenile record that didn't clear so I had to wait, and by the time it cleared I had a couple felonies to my name. They can overlook misdemeanors, but they can't overlook felonies. So I never became a Marine."

"What about boxing? Why don't you become a boxer?" I asked.

"I've done meth for years and that messes with your body. I'm too small now. I've lost too much muscle, and I could bulk up again, but I'm thirty years old. You can't start boxing at thirty. It's too old. So I'm going to school to be a video game designer.”

We lost touch but I’ve thought about this interaction a lot. I assumed he hadn’t told many people this story because of the emotional energy behind it and the possible judgment and shame. I even wondered if I was the only one. But whether I was the only one or not, my reaction to his story was important. My reaction might even give him permission to process. But I was surprised by the story and my reaction might not have been ideal and if it wasn’t ideal it may have been hurtful. So I’ve always wondered if I was hurtful. That story can’t bear the slightest hurt. I wonder and I wish when I think of Brock. 

Maybe if I had been polyamorous when I knew him, I would have been more open to developing a deeper relationship with him. (Polyamory doesn’t mean making everyone a partner and fucking them. It just means keeping yourself open to relationship possibilities instead of cutting them off before they become anything.) Maybe we would have stayed in touch. Maybe I could have made sure I didn't hurt him with his vulnerable story.