Getting Punched in the Face Because Boys Will Be Monsters, I Mean, Boys

“Have you ever been punched in the face?” my friend asked me over shots of Clase Azul tequila at the infamous The Office on the Beach in Cabo San Lucas.

“Are you kidding me?” I retorted back. “Of course I have been punched in the face. Have you not met me?” Being punched in the face is an occupational hazard of running your mouth. Your mouth is what gets punched because it is the body part associated with a lack of filter.”

I spared her the details of the times I had been beaten up, mostly because she didn’t ask any follow-up questions and wanted to tell me about the times she had been punched.

Most of the fights I was in I’ve already forgotten, and not because of blacking out or concussions. I have forgotten those because they were not memorable. You fight a lot when you are in an all-boys school. It’s just what you do.

I still remember the one fight I believe is responsible for my snoring and the incessant elbowing my wife gives me in the middle of the night.

I was walking down the street with two friends when I ran into a schoolmate who was two grades higher than me. We used to joke a lot in school, and I thought it would be okay to call him a ‘marica’ in public. This was not my proudest moment, but as an early teen in the late ’90s in Colombia, we weren’t as informed as to how not okay it was to call someone names.

Herbert was walking back from the store with his older brother and carrying a bag of groceries. When I called him a sissy, he stopped and asked his brother to hold his bag. He walked towards me and, with his two hands, grabbed the back of my head and pushed it towards his rocketing knee. I was able to block the knee, but when I looked up, my nose chewed the knuckle sandwich he had prepared for me.

You might think, “Wow, a sandwich. How considerate?” That’s just a poetic license I have given myself to say I was punched right in the fucking nose. I also thought it was a low shot because my nose was very hard to miss, and a punch to the eye would’ve been less aesthetic for a few weeks, but at least it would not have been as messy as breaking my nose was.

The blood didn’t wait to start gushing out.

Luckily, Herbert decided to stop his beating there and keep walking. I would not have been able to defend myself, as I couldn’t see anything with all the blood.

My two friends stood there, paralyzed by what went down. They helped me the five blocks back home while I held my head high. I didn’t know you needed to hold your head down to stop the bleeding.

Doña Ali was standing next to the porter at the entrance of my building. She saw the blood and asked me what had happened.

“I got into a fight.”

“Did you win?”

I was confused. Did she not see all the blood in my shirt? Maybe by itself, the blood could’ve been confused with the mess of an exploding bottle of ketchup. But my head was positioned to imitate a birder with a midlife crisis, and that should’ve given it away.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“That’s too bad,” was her uninterested response.

That was my first encounter with my neighbor Doña Ali — a widow who lived in the apartment next to ours. The other apartment on our floor was permanently empty since the bank foreclosed on it.

At some point, my family befriended her, which gave me access to her late husband’s library. She let me borrow anything I wanted, and she only had one rule, “Only one book at a time.”

My grandpa used to take me to the bookstore to buy books, but only once a month. So, access to this library was perfect, especially when I was on break from school. I needed more books then, and Doña Ali’s library solved that.

When I was a teenager, I loved reading. I didn’t write much. Maybe nothing at all. I just read. I still remember Jorge Luis Borges quote “Que otros se jacten de las páginas que han escrito; a mí me enorgullecen las que he leído”. (Let others brag over the pages they’ve written. I’m proud of the ones I’ve read.) The words of the Argentinian author resonated with me. He had more quotes about how much more he liked reading than writing.

I found myself telling people how I wished for a job that would pay me to read. I didn’t look for such a job, and, instead, when the time came, I folded to our local economy’s demands that required everybody to turn into engineers. I didn’t know editors get paid to read. But that was probably better in the long run anyway because everyone hates editors — especially writers.

I ran into my tormentor again during my sixth semester in engineering school. It had been probably six years since he broke my nose, and now we were in the same Differential Equations class.

Once, he approached me after class and asked me to tutor him. There was no mention of the time when he broke my nose. I dropped my books and punched him square in his nose this time.

I’m kidding.

I didn’t.

Neither did I want to. My all-boys schoolyard shenanigans were out of my system by the time I made it to college. After that punch, I never called anyone a mean name, and I have never been punched in the nose. Coincidence? Maybe.

But if I ever do get punched again, I know that I will hold my head down to stop the bleeding.

Instead of exacting revenge, I invited him to join the study group I led, and he and all of my friends got along. We spent many all-nighters together. He passed the class largely thanks to me. A course that he had already failed once. That’s how I repay people who break my nose; I advance their academic ambitions. So far, only one person. But it was still a brave act of civility. I wouldn’t be surprised if I won the Nobel Prize.

I forgave him because what are you going to do? Boys will be boys.

People hate this saying; they criticize it as a semantic artifact that provides sanctuary for boys to be sexist chauvinists. I think the expression is just a euphemism because people want to, but can’t, say, “Boy are fucking horrible monsters!” And we are. We are one fucking mess!

And forgiving Herbert was just the way we boys acted back then.

Violence amongst boys happens. It happened with some of my other guy friends. It happened with Juan Felipe, too. I remember putting Pipe in a headlock until he passed out. I don’t feel too bad for Pipe because he punched me several times in other fights we had.

He also was insane. I loved him so much, but, man, was he insane.

Once, we climbed to the bodega roof attached to our building. I thought we were just climbing a roof where we were not supposed to be until I saw Pipe pull out his wiener and start peeing on all the unsuspecting customers underneath. “La agüita amarilla,” or “the little yellow water,” came out of Pipe, ran down the canopy, and showered the bodega’s patrons.

People would’ve probably thought it was just a little rain if it wasn’t because he couldn’t control his violent and maniacal fits of laughter.

Don’t feel bad for the customers either because I knocked him out. Remember? A different time, but still. I exacted revenge in their names.

Pipe and I had a litany of misadventures that, in my mind, solidified that boys will be monsters, I mean boys. Or how many girls do you know that hunt for frogs to crucify with hanging nails so they resemble the paintings in church? Or how many girls would think it is a good idea to get into a rock-throwing fight with the kids from the nearby homeless encampment? Or how many girls would pull down their pants and start peeing on people?

Hopefully, with time, we will stop being boys and become men — even if it’s just to not be punched in the face.