Pause for thought. I realize now, putting pen to paper about what happened not too long ago, that I’m trying to reconstruct the episode with a wry sense of Galgenhumor—a denial of fear in the sickening face of violence—but truth impels me to report that I was scared shitless. He was as large as I, and six years older. In only one respect was he more mature, and that was physically, but unhappily in this confrontation nothing else counted. I tried to bolster my waning courage (or banish my cowardice) by dwelling on the prize at stake. I had to be heroic in her eyes or suffer everlasting pain, eternal damnation by caving in before this ersatz actor, this cowboy manqué, this scuzzbucket weaving his fists before me, leaking brio from every pore.

He had a hard grin on his face, the Plexiglas fixity of a TV hero about to kick calamitous ass. He shriveled me; yet I had mangled that blustering son of a bitch so brutally, so meticulously, so often in the bloody butcher shop of my dreams that I was for a crippled instant exhilarated by the event—at last it had arrived.

But only for an instant. He rocks, feints, and deals. I move backward and to one side, slipping his awkward lunge. He stalks me, coming on with all the tortured grace of a one-hinged gate. Derek is not a bruiser, but then again neither am I; you couldn’t get me in a ring with thirty-two-ounce gloves and football pads. Two things I know: I can’t elude him forever, and the tumult can only end disastrously if I remain the passive target of his punches. Then I remember that a really good shot to the liver (or was it the kidneys?) can maim a man for life. But then I figure, no, if I’ve got to fight, at least I’ll try to bust this bastard’s beautiful nose, whack out a few of his perfect teeth.

As fights go, it was not a cowtown brawl on TV; it was, by comparison, deplorably tame and gracelessly choreographed. Nevertheless, having no choice, I went after him like a dog for a bone. He popped me a few times, insignificantly, and I looped a right that bungled past his ear, following it with a left that missed again. Oh shit, I thought, if my fists refuse to cooperate with my intentions, he’ll kill me. But with an intensity of purpose that merited a more uplifting cause, I continued to target his impeccable nose. My third shot glanced off his chin, my knuckles barely grazing it. Closer; I was getting the range, the hang of it, but no cigar. Try again.