LIVE LIKE A MAN — Chapter 2: I Had Something to Prove. Damned If I Know What.

I used to think I was one tough son of a bitch.

Matter of fact, if you'd asked me when I was twenty-five, I'd have probably told you I was the toughest fella in whatever room we happened to be standing in.

And if you disagreed, well, there was a pretty good chance we'd have ourselves a problem.

I wasn't always looking for a fight. But I sure as hell wasn't trying very hard to avoid one, either.

Somebody could look at me wrong, say something I didn't like, or laugh at something I didn't think was particularly funny, and I'd be ready to go. Didn't take much.

Hell, I could turn a perfectly good Saturday night into a trip to the emergency room before most people had finished their first beer.

And the funny thing was, I always thought the other guy started it.

Every damn time.

Took me a few years to notice there was one particular asshole who kept showing up at all these disagreements.

Me.

I probably had a mouth on me from the time I learned to talk, but I didn't always feel like I had something to prove.

That came later.

I grew up with a father who wasn't particularly interested in being a father and a mother who had enough problems of her own. My grandma Arlene ended up raising me, and I've already told you some of that story in This Is Me.

No sense making you pay twice to hear about the same miserable childhood.

But I'll tell you this much. When you grow up feeling like you're not particularly important to the people who are supposed to care about you, you find ways to get yourself noticed.

Some kids get good grades. Some become good at sports. Some do whatever they're told, hoping somebody will pat them on the back.

I developed a big mouth and a bad attitude.

And somewhere along the way, I decided nobody was ever going to push me around.

Which was a pretty stupid thing to decide, considering how many people there are in the world who enjoy pushing somebody around.

I was practically inviting them to come find me.

And plenty of them did.

I lost a fight in high school once.

Got my ass handed to me, and I ain't going to pretend otherwise.

Busted my lip, hurt my pride, and sent me home feeling about two inches tall.

The lip healed up.

My pride didn't.

I could've handled getting punched. Hell, that was part of fighting. What I couldn't stand was knowing other people had seen me lose.

You know how high school is. Somebody gets into a fight, and by lunchtime the next day half the school has heard about it. By the time the story makes its way around, somebody's usually added a few punches, a broken jaw, and an ambulance that never showed up.

I didn't want to hear any of it.

Didn't want anybody bringing it up.

And I damn sure didn't want somebody thinking they could do the same thing to me.

So I made myself a promise.

That was the last fight I was ever going to lose.

And it was.

Now, before you start thinking that sounds impressive, let me tell you what a stupid promise that turned out to be.

Because from then on, every time I got into a fight, I didn't just want to win.

I wanted to make damn sure the other guy never forgot who he'd been fighting.

I didn't care whether I got hurt. Didn't care whether I broke something. Didn't care what happened afterward.

All I cared about was not being the one who went down.

And if the other fella did go down, that didn't always mean I was finished.

I remember one fight in particular.

I was in my twenties, sitting in this little hole-in-the-wall bar. Wasn't anything fancy. Just one of those places where the beer was cold, the floor probably needed mopping, and half the fellas looked like they'd been sitting on the same stools since 1978.

It was summertime, hot as hell, and they had the front door propped open trying to get some air moving through the place.

I got into it with some guy.

Don't even ask me what started it, because I couldn't tell you now if my life depended on it. Probably something stupid. Most of my fights were.

Anyway, one thing led to another, and we ended up outside on the sidewalk.

I got the better of him pretty quick.

He went down.

And I went down right on top of him.

Now, here's where things got ugly.

I didn't stop when he went down. I didn't stop when he quit putting up much of a fight, either.

I just kept hitting him.

His lip was busted. His nose looked like it was probably broken. There was blood all over his face, and I kept going.

I wanted to see more of it.

That's an ugly thing to admit, ain't it?

But it's the truth.

I wasn't looking at him like he was another man anymore. He was just somebody who might make me look weak, and I was going to make damn sure that didn't happen.

A few guys came running out of the bar and pulled me off him.

Took more than one of them, too, because I wasn't ready to quit.

I was still trying to get at him while they were dragging me away.

Eventually, I settled down enough to realize what I'd done.

And I'll tell you something. There ain't much to feel good about when you've got three fellas holding you back and another one lying on the sidewalk bleeding because you couldn't control your temper.

I won that fight.

No question about it.

But I was also the biggest asshole standing outside that bar that night.

And that's saying something, considering the place.

Now, I wish I could tell you that was the night I straightened my ass out.

That I went home, looked in the mirror, and decided I was never going to act like that again.

But that'd be a lie.

I went right on being the same stubborn son of a bitch for a good while afterward.

I got into more fights. Won them, too. And I ain't going to sit here and tell you I felt terrible about every one of them afterward, because I didn't.

Sometimes I felt pretty damn good about it.

Somebody pissed me off, I knocked him on his ass, and as far as I was concerned, that settled the matter.

I could go home, wash up, have something to eat, and sleep like a baby.

That's how I was.

And there were times I knew I'd gone too far. Times I knew I could've walked away, but I didn't want to.

I wanted that other fella to remember me.

Wanted him to think twice before he ever opened his mouth to me again.

And if I'm being truthful, there was something about winning those fights that made me feel good.

Not because I enjoyed getting hurt. I didn't.

I liked knowing I'd gotten the better of somebody who'd tried to get the better of me.

That's not a particularly nice thing to admit.

But I never promised you I was a particularly nice man.

Now, here's something else about me when I was younger.

I loved making people laugh.

Still do.

I could walk into a room full of people I didn't know and start running my mouth. If I could get a few of them laughing, I felt pretty good about myself.

I'd learned that trick when I was a kid.

Make somebody laugh, and they'll pay attention to you.

And if you can get them laughing hard enough, sometimes they'll even forget they weren't particularly interested in talking to you in the first place.

I was pretty good at it.

Still am, if I do say so myself.

But I had one little problem.

I could make fun of myself all day long. I'd tell some ridiculous story, say something stupid on purpose, and have everybody laughing.

But let somebody else make a joke about me?

Oh, hell no.

Apparently, I had a very strict policy about who was allowed to make Joe Durst look like an idiot.

And the list had exactly one name on it.

Mine.

I could stand there and tell everybody about some dumb thing I'd done, and we'd all have ourselves a good laugh.

But if another fella brought up that same dumb thing a week later, I'd be wondering what the hell his problem was.

Looking back, I must've been a real treat to be around.

You never knew whether I was going to make you laugh or get pissed off because you were laughing.

Sometimes I didn't know myself.

My grandma had a pretty good idea what kind of boy she was raising.

Arlene wasn't somebody you could impress by puffing your chest out and acting tough.

She'd raised me. She'd seen me sick, scared, crying, and running around the house without a stitch of clothing on.

Hard to convince a woman you're some kind of dangerous son of a bitch when she's the one who used to wipe your ass.

And she wasn't afraid to tell me when I was acting like an idiot.

Didn't mean I listened.

I was convinced she didn't understand what it was like being a young man and having people disrespect you.

Of course, she probably understood people being disrespectful better than I ever would.

She just didn't feel the need to punch every one of them in the mouth.

I wish I'd listened to her more.

Would've saved me a lot of trouble.

And probably saved a few other fellas some dental work.

Somewhere along the way, I started getting tired of all the fighting.

Not because I suddenly became some kind of saint. I just started realizing there wasn't much to show for it.

You'd get into it with somebody, have yourself a big scene, and then what?

You go home.

Get up the next morning.

Go to work.

And whatever pissed you off in the first place probably doesn't even matter anymore.

Except now you've got a sore hand and maybe somebody looking for you because you knocked his buddy's teeth loose.

I started noticing something else, too.

Some of the men I respected most weren't the ones making the most noise.

They didn't spend their evenings trying to prove how tough they were.

They'd sit there, have a beer, mind their business, and go home.

If somebody said something stupid to them, they'd usually just look at the guy like he was an idiot and turn back around.

And I'd be sitting there thinking, You gonna let him talk to you like that?

Apparently, they were.

And somehow the world kept turning.

Nobody took their truck away. Nobody showed up at their house to collect their man card.

They just went on about their business.

Took me a while to figure out there might be something to that.

Now, don't get me wrong.

I haven't turned into some sweet old fella who smiles politely while everybody walks all over him.

Not even close.

Matter of fact, I'll tell you something I probably shouldn't.

My first thought when somebody really disrespects me is still to knock him on his ass.

There. I said it.

I'm forty-two years old, and after all these years, that's still where my mind goes.

Somebody gets in my face, starts running his mouth, or talks to me like I'm some kind of idiot, and there's a part of me that wants to lay him out right where he's standing.

And sometimes I come damn close.

I can feel it coming on. My jaw gets tight. I quit hearing half of what the other person is saying because I'm too busy thinking about what I'd like to do to him.

And I know exactly what that younger Joe would've done.

He wouldn't have thought twice.

These days, I usually manage to keep my hands to myself.

Usually, I just stand there and let the fella finish running his mouth. Or I walk away before I do something that's going to cost me a hell of a lot more than the argument was worth.

But don't mistake that for me suddenly becoming some peaceful, easygoing son of a bitch.

I'm not.

Sometimes I walk away and spend the next hour wishing I hadn't.

Sometimes I get in my truck and I'm still so pissed off I can barely stand it.

And sometimes I'll be halfway home before I finally quit thinking about turning around.

That's the truth of it.

I don't act on it anymore, but that doesn't mean the thought ain't there.

And I don't know if it'll ever go away.

Maybe it will.

Maybe I'll be eighty years old, sitting in a rocking chair, and some fella will say something smart to me.

And I'll be sitting there thinking about knocking his teeth out while I try to remember where I left my glasses.

Hell, knowing my luck, he'll be the one pushing my wheelchair.

I still don't particularly enjoy being wrong, either.

If you catch me in an argument and you've got a better point than I do, there's a good chance I'm going to stand there trying to figure out another way to prove I'm right.

I might even know I'm wrong by then.

Doesn't mean I'm ready to admit it.

Sometimes I'll go home, think about it for a while, and realize the other fella was right all along.

Then I'll get pissed off all over again because I didn't think of his argument first.

That's just how my mind works.

I'm not recommending it.

I'm just telling you.

And I suppose that's the biggest difference between me now and the fella I was twenty years ago.

Back then, I thought I had to win every damn thing.

Every argument. Every fight. Every disagreement.

Didn't matter whether it was worth winning.

Now, at least I stop and think about what it's going to cost me.

Most of the time.

I look back at that young fella sometimes and wonder what the hell he was trying to accomplish.

He wanted everybody to respect him.

Wanted everybody to know he was tough.

Wanted to make sure nobody ever got the better of him again.

And I suppose he got what he wanted, at least when it came to fighting.

After that day in high school, I never lost another one.

But I'll tell you what else happened.

I wasted a hell of a lot of time being mad about things that didn't matter.

I ruined perfectly good evenings.

I hurt people who probably didn't deserve it.

And I spent years acting like every disagreement was something I had to win.

All because I couldn't stand the thought of somebody making me look small.

Funny thing is, I was doing a pretty good job of that myself.

These days, I don't particularly care whether somebody thinks I'm the toughest fella in the room.

I've got a business to run, a house to take care of, and a teenage son who's already got a mouth enough like mine to keep things interesting.

I've got better things to do than get into fights with strangers.

Besides, I'm getting too damn old to be rolling around on sidewalks.

You know how long it takes me to get up off the floor these days?

Hell, I'd probably have to ask the other guy to give me a hand.

And knowing my luck, he'd say something smart about it.

Then we'd be right back where we started.

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