Where there's a will, there's a way

T.N.T

My reputation grew out of control after that fight. If you hadn’t seen or met me personally, and you listened to all the rumours and folklore out there, you’d expect me to be at least six feet tall, three feet wide and weighing in at 100kg. Not five-foot nothing, weighing maybe 65kg, give or take, and still a school boy.

This was when things started to take a turn for the worse. I decided that I’d learn how to really fight. First thing was to make a note of the rules. There aren’t any f**king rules, it’s all about winning, not about fair play.

So, on most days, after school and before visiting mom, if I wasn’t wasted, I’d be in the local gym, doing lightweight training, boxing, and Taekwondo, a Korean martial art, literally meaning Tae, ”kick”, kwon “punch”, do, “the art of.” I can even lay claim to sparring with Charlie Weir, a famous South African boxer, ‘the Silver Assassin.’ Was I really in the same league as Charlie Weir, of course I wasn’t, no f**king way, but did I hurt or make him bleed occasionally, f**king oath I did.

But, when it came down to street fighting, things might have been a bit different. No queens rules anymore, you have to get down and dirty. Nothing beats using your thumb for an eye gouge, or a good old-fashioned headbutt. Also, if you use your knees and elbows, it’s gonna hurt someone a whole lot more than your fists would. Don’t p***y foot around, hit him when he’s least expecting it, get the first punch in. Hit the f**ker before he hits you, ‘cause then you’ve got a better chance of winning, and when you do hit him, aim for his nose, throat, or balls. If worse comes to worst, use a weapon.

There’ll be a time when none of the above works, so sometimes, you have to be a little crazy, ‘cause at the end of the day, it’s crazy that prevails. Crazy, doesn’t give a f**k, and crazy’s scary. When the s**t gets really out of control, someone usually forgets to tell Crazy, so Crazy doesn’t know any better. Crazy just keeps going, and this, my friends, is what wins fights. Especially if Crazy’s been snorting coke.

Tinor, my long-standing schoolboy nemesis, and his goon squad, used the same gym as me. I can’t think of any other reason, him being a big oaf, as to why he wasn’t too keen to get it on with me. I reckon, in all likelihood, that if he wanted to, he could have ripped me apart without even blinking. Maybe, just maybe, it was him knowing that one of his cronies did very bad by my little sister and I literally kicked the s**t out of him.

His mate was in the middle of having a s**t when I attacked him, so he never stood a chance, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Talk about getting caught with your pants down. My trusty pickaxe handle, and the devil, did a lot of the talking for me. What can I say, I wasn’t a very nice person, never claimed to be, and he shouldn’t have f**ked with my baby sister.

It was another day at school, and Russell, one of the bigger, older guys, was picking on one of my smaller classmates, just for fun, and I’d had enough of this arsehole.

“Jeez mate, if your wrist wasn’t in plaster, I’d smack you in the mouth, right here, right now.” He looked at me as if I was piece of dog s**t, hardly worthy of scraping off the bottom of his shoes.

“Mate” , this is Russell speaking,“I’d take you out anytime, anywhere, with or without a f**king plaster cast. Just say when?

That’s when I thought that, maybe, I’d overstepped the mark, but there was no backing down. That’s not how it worked, but again, this was school, so same as with Bishop, we couldn’t just get it on there and then. Not unless we both wanted to be expelled.

Custom meant that we arranged to meet each other on neutral ground, somewhere like Dairy beach, on the coming Saturday morning. That’s when we’d see who’s who and what’s what. We had to get approval, of course, or at least permission, from the Dairy beach gang first. Rules being rules and the fight being on their turf.

This was one of those confrontations I’d have preferred to avoid. Russell was very popular and well-connected at school, and it didn’t bode too well for me at all. It was one of those, ‘what the f**k’ moments. In for a penny, in for a pound, but on fight day, I couldn’t help myself, the devil made me do it, so I was armed with a wooden baton.

You know how it goes, I had to be prepared, just in case, but this was met with out-and-out disapproval by the watching crowd, and I had to throw the baton aside. F**k me, what was I gonna do now? But me being a hardened, streetwise little c**t, with no concept of fair play in any way, shape, size, or form, I went straight for his bad wrist. The one that was safely secured in the plaster cast. That must have hurt, ‘cause he squealed like a little girl, but I just ignored him, proceeded to rip the cast off his arm, and used it to hit him in his head. Once, twice, not sure how many more times, and then, to my horror, I realised he was crying. His pride in tatters, his street cred gone, lost forever. I turned away from him in disgust, but if you could see the look on my face, I was grinning like the f**king ‘Cheshire cat,’ from Alice in Wonderland.