Writing as Jeremy VI
Of the five fights I've taken part in, I only really started one of them. Incidentally, the one I started is also the only one I can definately claim to have won outright (this isn't that story, though). I'm not a big fan of fighting, mind. Violence has its place I suppose, but it's not a place I particularly like to visit much.
Shortly after I graduated from University I was living in a cheap flat on the outskirts of a small town in central Scotland. It was a rough area, and I knew this because peoples' faces invariably twisted into the same expression when I told them where I lived. If there was a Collin's Facial Expression - English dictionary it would translate roughly as 'I heard a man got stabbed with a screwdriver where you live'. It's true as well. A man did get stabbed with a screwdriver where I lived, about two minutes from my front door. Frighteningly, he didn't even lose the fight - he retaliated by putting his attacker head first through a phonebox window. I didn't see this first hand, but it made the local newspaper (though not the front page, I remember).
Living in this area, I got the closest I've ever come to being in anything resembling a knife-fight. If you were coming to my flat from the town centre you would have to cross some train tracks, and you could either take the long (and well lit) way, around the river and over a bridge, adding fifteen minutes to your journey, or you could take the short (and dark) way, cutting across the motorway and through an underpass. Any normal person confonted with the road leading to this underpass would turn back to the motorway, and/or soil themselves immediately. There were no streetlights anywhere nearby, the edges of the road were patterned with bushes which could easily hide around twenty bloodthirsty young revolutionaries, and while there were some busier roads a short distance away they were all out of sight behind trees or somewhere above you as the road dipped steeply downwards to pass under the traintracks. As I said, anyone with any sense would opt for the fifteen extra minutes of walking over this quick shortcut. I, however, grew up in a small village where nobody was ever seriously beaten, mugged, stabbed, shot or maimed in any way. The only possible murder might have occurred some 120 years previously, when a young woman may or may not have been pushed down a mountain. My childhood was one of safety, for the most part, and walking home alone in the dark with nothing to fear beyond walking past the creepy derelict church. For this reason I was not what could be called 'streetwise', and approaching this dark road and darker underpass at 4am on a Saturday morning didn't inspire any great trepidation in me.
I actually made it through the underpass itself alright, but as I came out the other side I was met by a skinny young man, maybe about my age. He stood at the side of the road, hands in his pockets, watching me approach and, as I did, a monument to naivity, he moved into the centre of the road. He was now about ten feet away, between me and where I wanted to go, and my heart started beating uncomfortably heavily. To his credit, he got straight to the point.
'I've got a knife,' he said. And he did, it turned out. He drew a penknife, blade already unfolded, from his pocket.
It wasn't the first time I'd seen a knife in a violent context. I gutted fish for a living when I was much younger, and I'd seen Rambo. But this, needless to say, was the first time someone had pointed one at me. I was quite surprised. I'd say shocked, but I don't think that sunk in until much later. Having a knife turned on you for the first time is a distinctly alien feeling, and elicits the same confused reaction as someone shouting 'surprise, you're live on national television'.
'You're joking, right?' I said, without really thinking. The man shifted his posture slightly and held the knife closer towards me. He looked at me, then at the knife, then quickly back to me, and then jabbed it subtley in my direction, reminding me of an irritable man who's television had stopped responding to the remote control.
'I'll fuckin' knife you, mate, just give me your wallet or something,' he muttered as he took a few steps towards me. I suddenly became very aware that I wasn't carrying my wallet - I hadn't been out down the town, rather watching DVDs at a friend's flat. I carried out a quick mental inventory. I had my watch, which I liked I didn't particularly want to give up. I had a pair of sunglasses which I myself had stolen from the lost and found box at work. I had the keys to my flat, and a tesco clubcard key fob. I suppose he could have that, since I would get the points if he ever used it. I also had a fiver, but I couldn't help but feel he would be a disappointed with that. I thought rapidly, and I can't even begin to account for what happened next.
'I haven't got a wallet, mate,' I said. 'I can't believe this. I got mugged by two little shits about two minutes ago. They took my wallet, my phone, everything. They just left me a fiver.' I took the fiver from my pocket and let it droop pitifully between my fingers.
'What guys? Where?' He took his eyes off me and looked back through the underpass.
'Two wee boys, about fourteen or fifteen, turned a knife on me and took my wallet. There was £200 rent in it as well, and my debit card, and... shit, my fucking pin number. I knew that was a stupid idea. Fuck knows what I'm going to do now, I'll have to call the bank, and my landlord...'
I kept talking, but he was already putting the pieces together in his mind. His knife wasn't even pointed at me anymore, but had swung steadily like the arm of a compass towards the underpass.
'You know, they're probably still there,' I said, nudging him on.
'Thanks, mate,' he said, and ran off into the darkness. I watched him go for a second or two, wondering if it had actually happened or if I had fallen asleep at my friend's flat in the middle of Snatch and all this had just been a silly little dream. Then I suddenly remembered that I'd been bullshitting the knife-wielder, and that it wouldn't take long for him to realise this. I bolted up the quiet road up to a busier road where I crossed in a panic, narrowly avoiding being hit by a car. I sprinted down the street, past abandoned burnt-out cars, past Ross the Junkie sleeping in a doorway and past the grimy children's daycare building surrounded by barbed wire (called, I'm sure with the best intentions, 'Rainbow House'. My friends and I never got around to adding our own subtitle below - 'Homosexual Detention Centre'). I didn't stop running until I got to my own bedroom door, where I perched on the edge of the bed and didn't move, speak or, I'm fairly certain, breathe until the next morning, when I burst into hysterical tears at the shock of my flatmate's door slamming shut.