Fuck or Fight

New fiction from David Preizler for Little Blanksgiving

Dear readers, Avery and I give thanks to you today and every day. Our fourth piece for Little Blanksgiving is a midwestern brawl from David Preizler. Save room for dessert tomorrow when we return with an essay from Mike Nagel, the final publication in our series with Blank from Dirt.fyi.

collage by Amanda Killian

FUCK OR FIGHT

by David Preizler

Cody and I began the night at The Galley: pickled gizzards in a jar behind the bar, pitchers of Pabst, a jukebox playing a song about a Great Lakes shipwreck. Signs of formerly illustrious Midwestern breweries glowed from the walls. Grain Belt, Schlitz, Old Style, Miller High Life, and my personal favorite, Old Milwaukee—“Old Mud.” Usually we drank at someone’s house first, played quarters, or did it the old-fashioned way, puncturing a can of Milwaukee’s Best with a pin so one had no choice but to inhale beer. The Galley was on the way to the main strip so that is where we stopped off first.

“To the parched world, this excellent...” Cody never was any good at toasts. Now sophomores, we’d met as freshmen. He gazed at the glass he held aloft as his words trailed off. It was filled with Beam and Coke, his drink of choice in those days. I couldn’t drink it thanks to downing a pint on an empty stomach when I was sixteen. Since then, even the smell of bourbon made me sick. Cody threw back the drink—and I mean really threw it. The liquid leapt out of the glass right down his throat like a magic trick.

“You ready?” He was 5’7” with sandy brown hair. His hands seemed too big for his arms. His fists were as big as flowerpots and his knuckles were gnarled and sometimes after a weekend, scraped raw. Etched around his face were faint scars in the shape of crescent moons and seashells. These had not been inflicted by boxing or street fighting, he told me, but by a vicious dog when he was a kid. He was also a Greco-Roman wrestler but you wouldn’t know that by looking at him, only if you had the misfortune of being on the ground getting choked out by him in a leg lock. The only poster in his bedroom was a painting of a boxing match: Jack Dempsey v. Firpo.

Cody was not a connoisseur of art but he described the print with sensitivity to its nuances and affect. There was Firpo just having thrown a roundhouse, his arm frozen in the follow through. Dempsey, his opponent in a major upset, is upside down, tumbling backwards through the ropes. Everyone loses eventually (including Firpo, after Dempsey recovered), the poster warned. People who had seen Cody fight were terrified of him. I was relieved that he was on my side.

Cody raised the tumbler to his mouth and bit. He cracked a small chunk off with his front teeth. Then, moving the piece of glass to his molars, he chewed, grinding it down. It hurt my stomach to watch. I was certain he’d eventually bleed to death. I gave him the rest of my beer to wash it down.

That summer we got into a lot of fights. Not against each other; against other people. There was nothing else to do. Surrounded by corn and young bodies, and fueled by the beer and drugs that flowed in off Interstate 80, it was inevitable. Either you achieved your primary objective—got laid—or you fought. And anything could set it off. One time, I sparked a brawl by playing ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” on the jukebox in one of the off-campus Iowa hayseed dive bars. The August humidity didn’t help either. I used to change t-shirts three times a day but what was the point? The fresh one would cling, soaked through five minutes after I put it on.

I was nineteen and before meeting Cody, didn’t know shit about fighting.

Cody swallowed the last bits of glass. “Now what? The Airliner?” The Airliner was a bar owned by one of the Chicago Bulls.

“We haven’t been to Vito’s in a while.” I still looked like I was sixteen, but armed with my brother’s old driver’s license I could drink all I wanted in the Iowa City college bars as long as I had cash.

“Vito’s. Yeah.”

There was a line outside but Cody knew the bouncer, a 6’5” white guy who should have been playing football or basketball but somehow ended up as the doorman at a bar. The bouncer sat on a stool in the foyer of the bar, checking IDs and stamping patron’s hands with an ink emblem that was visible only under UV light. We pushed through frat and sorority types toward the front. It looked like an Abercrombie catalog, a mix of Iowa farm kids and the Chicago suburbs. Drakkar Noir and Calvin Klein Escape wafted off them in waves. Nearly all my friends were from Iowa, and none from Illinois. Cody was from Iowa. Cody caught the bouncer’s eye. He waved us through.

“This is the Rhythm of the Night.” It was 1993 and Corona’s dance floor anthem collided with us as we shoved and squeezed through bodies. Nothing like dime drafts to pack a bar. Vito’s was the bar version of a shotgun shack. A bar in front and a bar in back, and a dance floor off to the right, halfway through. There was also a pool table near the front. Word was that Vito’s owners were a couple of Middle Eastern guys from Chicago. I had never seen them but it lent an otherwise ordinary college bar an air of mystery. With so many people you had to push to get anywhere you wanted to go. And with so many people pushed tightly together, anything could happen. Knocking someone’s drink, bumping into some guy’s girlfriend, some guy spilling your drink and you don’t handle it the right way. It would be like what they told us in history class about Archduke Ferdinand. Except instead of an assassin’s bullet it might be a spilled Zima that sparked the World War I of drunken brawls.

Cody laid his hand on the bar, flicking a twenty back and forth between his fingers. “This is how you get the bartender’s attention!” It worked. The bartender mixed a Beam and Coke for Cody, and brought two Coronas for me.

“You’re a great bartender!” I had learned that the way to a bartender’s heart was to pour on the compliments from the beginning. On spring break in Ixtapa I drank free tequila shots all night after telling a bartender with horrendous English that his English was amazing.

“Two for Tuesday,” the bartender said, placing the bottles on the bar.

“To Corona,” I said, proposing a toast.

“Who?”

“Nothing. Hey, there’s Donna.”

“Who?”

Donna was from Des Moines, pre-med, and I had a crush on her ever since I spilled her beaker containing a radioactive isotope in our physics class. None of it got on her so I thought I still had a chance. I took one of the bottles I was holding and smacked the bottom against the mouth of the other creating a volcanic reaction. The only solution was to drink quickly.

“What the hell, dude?” Cody said. This coming from a guy who chewed glass. I drank the rest of the beer and handed him the empty bottle, which he set down on the bar. My eyes watered and the inside of my skull tingled. I had not yet reached an age where it would occur to me that beer could be consumed without guzzling or in anything less than enormous quantities.

“Be right back!” I said. We had to shout to be heard. Shout and put your mouth right up to the other’s ear. I pushed into the crowd. I was swimming through bodies.

Something you need to know about Iowa is that it’s a serious wrestling state. It’s the major high school and college sport. In Minnesota, where I came from, putting on what is essentially a leotard and embracing another guy on the floor was decidedly not masculine. In Iowa I kept those thoughts to myself. If you didn’t know this about the state, it might be disconcerting at a party when, at some point in the night, you saw drunken young men grappling on the floor. It was also why seasoned Iowa bar fighters who could not wrestle avoided letting a fight go to ground. For wrestlers though, getting you to ground was their goal. If you ever saw someone try to box a wrestler, it looked something like someone trying to box an ape. The wrestler would lope around with a hunched back, occasionally swatting at their opponent’s legs, looking for an opening to charge and take them down.

Throughout the bar were pillars with mirrors and a small ledge where you could leave a bottle or glass. I found Donna at one of those, chatting with a couple of her girlfriends. They were all blondes and all were taller than me except for Donna. Her friends seemed to regard me with contempt until Donna smiled and said, “Hi Lewis!” After that they greeted me even if their smiles seemed forced. I took Donna by the elbow and moved her away from them.

“Nice pants!” she said, looking at my mint green hospital scrubs. I had paired them with an ordinary t-shirt. I must have looked doubtful because she reassured me.

“No, I really like them! You’re pre-med now?”

“No! I just do some work at the hospital!” I put my mouth right up to her ear because of the music. It was true that I did occasional work at the hospital. Every now and then I got paid to do medical experiments. To be the medical experiment. In the last one, I got one hundred dollars to drink five shots of vodka while hooked up to an EKG and electrodes. The scientists took readings while I did things like immerse my hand in a tub full of ice and hold it as long as I could.

“What are you drinking?” I asked her. We were still shouting like idiots.

“Sex on the Beach,” Her cheek brushed against mine as she spoke into my ear.

I took a shot. “So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines,” I said it into her ear at a normal volume so that relative to the ambient noise it was a whisper. Her eyes widened and I knew that she heard me. Then they narrowed.

“Kerouac?” she said.

“Whoever said it knew what they were talking about!” A strobe light pulsed to the rhythm of the music. It was like lightning going off in the bar. Donna was there and then not there. I leaned toward her and it felt like we were in a silent movie, flickering images staggering toward each other. My lips were against hers. I set my bottle of Corona down on the ledge of the pillar and rested my hands behind her there. Donna put her tongue in my mouth and I tasted the sweet flavors of her drink…Peach Schnapps, Cranberry Juice, Vodka. Sex on the Beach, naturally the most popular drink in Iowa City. We kissed like that for a while, with the strobe popping. Even in the packed bar, with bodies brushing past us, we were alone.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I knew it wasn’t Donna’s. I didn’t want to look to see whose it was but I did. Cody’s face flashed on and off in the strobe. It was twisted and flushed. Cody drew me away from her toward the front of the bar. And then Donna was lost in the crowd.

“What Cody, what?” As soon as I saw his eyes I knew it wasn’t good. When he snapped something came over him. It was like David Banner on that old “Incredible Hulk” TV Show. Cody’s eyes would swirl, charged by some chemical coursing through his brain. At that point, it was too late. There was no stopping him. I followed Cody’s gaze to the dance floor. And there it was. The source of Cody’s anguish. His ex-girlfriend Suzanne, dancing with some other guy. Her blonde hair was slicked back and she wore a black cocktail dress. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a Robert Palmer music video. She was pretty from afar but up close seemed to have features characteristic of fetal alcohol syndrome, eyes spaced wider than usual and a dumbstruck look like she didn’t understand anything you were telling her or she just didn’t care. Her dance moves were catlike and strange but somehow captivating. The guy she was dancing with was definitely from a Chicago suburb. He wore a Ralph Lauren button-down and Girbaud jeans with Timberlands. The boots shined in the disco dance floor lights and I could tell he had recently sprayed them with waterproofing.

“Who the fuck is this guy? Do you know him?” Cody hadn’t taken his eyes off him.

“I don’t know, who cares, forget him, Cody! He’s probably just some asshole from Naperville!” I yelled, hoping to forestall what was coming. I wanted to see some guy from Naperville get his ass kicked as much as the next guy, but not like this, and not by Cody. They weren’t evenly matched and it seemed undeserved.

Cody took hold of my shoulder.

“It’ll just be me and you, Lewis. Back to back. A lot of guys and a lot of blood.” Cody moved toward the dance floor. His strut was so fluid it seemed like he was on wheels. There was nothing to do but follow. Dancing couples parted to make way for him as he coasted onto the dance floor. Cody danced a bit as he made his way toward Suzanne and the guy from Naperville. As we got closer I saw that the guy with Cody’s ex was good-looking even if it was in a bland Chicago frat guy way. He had light brown hair, blue eyes, and unblemished skin. I felt nauseous knowing that in a few seconds, his face would never be the same. Cody’s face was an inch away from it. Their chests were butting up against each other. Cody’s teeth were bared and if you didn’t know better, you’d think he was smiling.

“What’s the deal, Scarface?” The guy said. I let loose a huge sigh. Not a good choice of words.

Suzanne shrieked and grabbed at Cody as soon as she saw him but it was useless. She bounced off him like a spring. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud wrote of the struggle between Eros and Thanatos, love and death. I learned this in Psych 101. The drive for both could be equally powerful and attractive. Cody delivered his punches with a snapping movement. He tilted back and then popped forward with a jerk. There were three punches for sure, all to the Naperville guy’s face. One punch lifted him into the air. Another sent him reeling backwards. One more cracked his head against the dance floor mirror, leaving a spider web indentation at the point of impact, along with a splotch of blood. One eyeball was covered in blood. The white part was all red, okay? And so were his teeth, and a few were missing. I knew that because Suzanne was crawling on the dance floor looking for one of them. His nose was mashed. The whole thing lasted no more than thirty seconds.

“We need to go.” I pushed Cody off of the dance floor. Bouncers were zeroing in on us from two directions. Cody was still in some kind of fugue state, like a crazed dog. I pushed him toward the back exit. The steel fire door banged against a brick wall as we flung it open.

The alley behind the bar was quiet. We ran until we got to the sidewalk and street. Then it was better to walk and not call attention to ourselves. Everything was calm and ordinary. People were strolling down the sidewalk paying us no mind.

“People pick on me because I’m Irish. And because of my size,” Cody said. I just nodded. I wasn’t sure what to say. Once I had seen Cody pummel some guy for dropping a crumpled napkin at a sub shop. Cody said it was thrown at him. No one I knew picked on him. Ever.

“Always get the first punch, Lewis.” His arm was draped over my shoulder. He was drunker than I thought. “Some guy asks you if you want to step outside, don’t go outside, hit him right then and there. The one who punches first wins the fight.” Cody explained that the disorientation inflicted by the first blow, the shock, the watering eyes, the pain, it was all so stunning that an opponent almost never recovered.

“I understand,” I said, but all I could think was that one day he’d end up in jail or jumped by a group or someone with a knife.

Cody was quiet and we walked like that for a while. The next time I spoke I changed the subject.

“Cody, I’m going back.”

“Back? Back where?”

“Vito’s. Maybe Donna’s still there.”

“And the bouncers? They’re still there too.”

“They won’t recognize me. Anyway, it’s worth the risk. Always get the first punch, right?” I called out before turning around and jogging back toward Vito’s.

Some years later, Cody had moved to California, and then I heard that he was beaten to death outside of a bar in Oceanside. Maybe he hit first, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Cody must’ve known that day would come. Like Dempsey memorialized in his poster, he had finally met his match. His opponents were a group of off-duty Marines and he was alone. He was found face down in the parking lot, his skull fractured. There was nothing the paramedics could do for him.

Everything turned out differently than we’d planned. I never found Donna again that night at Vito’s and later I’d see her around campus with an older guy she was dating—in his late 20’s and not a student. We’d greet each other while he glared. I’ve heard she’s now a doctor in Minnesota. I went to law school in Chicago.

Would Cody have changed if he’d lived? A few years after he was killed I was traveling in Chile. At a nightclub in a coastal vacation town, La Serena, I nursed a Pisco Sour and watched a local college student dancing by herself. “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” blared on the sound system and the Chilean crowd was really into it. Any guy who tried to talk to her, she’d reject. In the best Spanish I could manage, I asked why she came out at all if she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She liked that and laughed. One of the guys she’d rejected, muscle-bound and wearing a fitted black t-shirt, thought we were making fun of him. Before I understood what was going on, he’d been seized by the bouncers and they were throwing him out. He was bucking to get free but they had him by the neck and biceps and pushed him out the door.

“¿Qué le pasó?” she wanted to know.

I attempted to respond in Spanish but gave up. What could I tell her anyway?

DAVID PREIZLER’s fiction has appeared in The Madison Review, Santa Monica Review, Faultline, and elsewhere. He lives in California.