The animal instinct in me

Lately I've been wondering how I would survive in a fight. Not a "Who you callin' a bitch, ho?" sort of fight, but more of a fistfight sort of fight. Or a foot-in-your-face sort of fight. Or an elbow-in-your-crotch sort of fight. Or... well, you get the picture.

The reason is not so much a refound sense of masculinity (see below and insert own joke here) but more a general feeling of unsafety. Sure, I could be over reacting (and that is part of the drama queen job description) but the re-entry of bashing in general, and gay-bashing in particular, in the top 10 of "favourite crimes in Amsterdam in 2005" (right below threatening the mayor and wearing mint green coats), makes me feel a bit... oh I dunno, really scared?

The problem is I've never been in an actual physical fight with somebody. Being really bad at sports and all that crap, I generally was able to stay away from all physical confrontations by shutting up at the right time. However, rethinking that strategy now, it has left me with a serious lack in preperation for the outside world. Sure, I can bitch-slap extremely well (especially a certain hair-losing friend whose name we shall not mention), but how does that help you in the street? I don't think my homeys in the hood (with whom I'm down) would be very impressed with that sort of action. Part of the problem is simply that I'm just not that violent myself. The only time I can remember seriously considering punching someone in the face was last year. It was in an airport outside Milan at the end of my vacation.

I should explain that I never do vacations alone, since 2001 I have been spending my summer breaks traveling with a bunch of American, and one Finn, friends. Sometimes it's a really big group (think 6 or 7 people) sometimes it's just 2 or 3 people, it sort of depends on who has money and who wants to sweat around in Italy in july.

Anyhoo, last year we had a pretty big group and we spent two weeks crossing through the entire country in a crappy mini-van. As anyone who has ever been on a family vacation knows; driving for days in a row in the heat with a crappy airco... well, it sometimes get stressful and a bit tense. Which is why most of us were pretty happy when we finally could fly home. That is, I could fly home, the rest was to fly to Amsterdam wait another day and then fly home.

On that morning I was sitting in the waiting area reading the last pages of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Across from me were my friend Becky and her then-boyfriend (currently-just-really-good-friend-unless-I-missed-an-update-and-they're-back-together-again). The guy was obviously bored to death and, as we had already figured out during the weeks before, dealing with boredom was not his strongest thing, so he started playing with a rubber band.

Which was fine.

And then he started aiming the thing at me like he was about to shoot it.

Which was still fine, because I distinctly remember thinking "Neah, he won't do that".

And then he did.

The band flew across the room in slow-motion. I remember thinking I might want to move my head, but it was already too late. The thing hit me straight against my face. Since I personally am totally incapable of throwing anything in any direction I want, somewhere it was actually quite impressive that he pulled it off. Unfortunately I wasn't really feeling in a cheerleading mood: it was hot, I was sweaty, I was tired, clean clothes had left my suitcase a week earlier, I wanted to go home and, hell, it hurt! So I grabbed the rubber band, walked over to him and seriously considered punching him.

Only problem was that he's not only really heavy (and I mean a his-belly-could-be-a-childrens-attraction-heavy), he's also really strong and I'm pretty sure he would have broken my neck if we would have gotten in a fight. Plus we were at an airport and with the new terrorism laws we would probably have ended up in an Italian prison. Which I don't think would have done much good for my mood either.

So I went for the sad alternative and lectured him... And then ignored him for the rest of the trip (which was two days, so it's not that impressive either). Yeah, that taught him!

Which means I still don't have any fight experience. But watch out: next time someone cuts in front of me in the supermarket or someone bumps into me on the street maybe the animal instinct will take over.

Or maybe I'll just look really angry and hope karma kicks their asses.