I Want to Write About Violence

I want to write about violence.

I want to write about violence but I don’t want to say anything stupid. I don’t want to say violence is bad. I don’t want to say guns are bad. I don’t want to say anything is bad. Because we all know it’s bad.

I want to write about violence because of the school shootings today in Connecticut. I guess that goes without saying.

I’m not really an emotional person. Friends don’t come to me for comfort. I don’t wear my feelings on my sleeve. I don’t cry easily. And so I surprised myself by being near the edge of tears for most of the morning; one or two of those tears might have even jumped the wall of my face. I surprised myself by walking to my son’s school and lurking outside the gates. It was a primitive, almost biological, impulse, and I gave into it. I felt ashamed as I did it. Ashamed of not being in control.

I don't think "people" are violent. Most people are not violent. We all carry the potential of violence inside of us, but most of us never realize that potential, never really want to, though we might fantasize about violence. I know the scientific literature, because I read the literature as part of my work; those studies are in my head right now like background static. The literature says most of us avoid violence at all costs. Most of us must be trained to take life. And people who learn to kill people must first learn to see people as targets, not people. Killing other people is unnatural.

I’m talking about healthy people. I’m talking about people who love, who hurt, who worry about other people. But not all people are healthy and not all people are healthy all the time. Sometimes, I am not healthy.

In my worst moments I have forgotten that other people feel as I do, and I've forgotten that they deserve respect and dignity and understanding. I have had too many of those moments. Those are the moments when I allow the other me, the one I hide, the Mr. Hyde that everyone hides, to reveal himself. Most of the time my violence has taken the form of words. But I have, in my life, hit and shoved people. And afterward, it hasn't seemed real. I have had to struggle to own those unreal moments. And when I do, I am ashamed. Ashamed of not being in control.

Just like all of us, I have been the target of violence. Guns have been pointed at my face. I've seen people beaten and shot, and I have stood by in confusion and animal fear. I am ashamed of those moments as well. Those moments when I was helpless. When I was not in control.

There are people I know who believe in violence as an act of control. Most people believe in some form of controlled violence, believe that violence can be controlled, believe that violence can be used to bend others to our will. They believe we need police, they believe we need well-regulated militias. Some people think we should arm teachers, and then, finally, schools will be safe. That we will be in control. Some people I know believe in revolutionary violence—in rising up against our oppressors, in destroying anyone who stands in the way of the peaceful world we want to live in. They have theories, elaborate theories. They believe their theories of change will control the violence of the change.

It's not my purpose to disagree with the theories. I’m not going to say we don’t need police or militias or bloody revolutions or even armed teachers. I don’t want to say that violence can’t change things for the better or that we should always turn the other cheek. I would certainly fight in defense of my child, though I would do so incompetently, incompletely, ineffectually. If a police officer stood between my child and a person with a gun, I would most certainly want the police officer to kill that person.

And yet I’ve also wished violence on my child. I have, and I think that makes me average. I am not willing to say that those parents who claim to have never wanted to strike a child in anger are liars. But I will say with some confidence that most parents have, at some point, wanted to strike a child. They've known that anger. That drive to bend our children to our will through violence. Most of us have lost control, if only for a moment. And after that, the shame. Many of us know that shame. Of having lost control.

Now we’re at the root of the thing I really want to write about. My child. I want to write about violence and my child. I keep envisioning the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School. I can’t get those pictures out of my head. Again, the loss of control. Again, the shame, my shame. I couldn't do anything to protect those children. If it had been my child, I wouldn't have been able to protect him.

I’m not going to disagree with your theories of violence. You can keep your theories and I’ll keep mine, for the moment.

But I want to write about violence because I want to remind myself of something horrible. Which is that our violence cannot be truly controlled, once we allow ourselves to be violent. And that violence, when we give it permission to exist, lives by its own rules. That violence doesn’t give a fuck about our theories of state and revolution and emotion. That violence, in fact, doesn’t give a fuck about us. Violence wants only to live and it lives by eating us alive. In the face of a monster like that, we are all small. We are all helpless. We are all children.

That's what I wanted to write about violence.

The Way of the Toddler Fist

Seven months after my daughter’s second birthday, she snapped. Not the regular toddler tantrum that had become a regular occurrence in our home. Nor was it the ‘I’m going to run myself into a shelf, yank all of the boxes of cereal to the ground—and then dance on them’ whirlwind. It wasn’t even the ‘I’m going to thrash my arms and legs about on the floor, just like I’m at a Bad Brains show, and then I’m going to wail and force everyone in the grocery store to look at YOU’ type of snapping. Baby-girl elevated her game to the next-level. She snapped in that way that forces you to reexamine your parenting style and ability.

We were at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, in Berkeley when it all went bad. The park is kind of like a prison yard, especially during the Farmer’s Market: little pockets of the homeless in one section, families in another; skaters, folks who believe that Burning Man should never end, and people attempting to get you to sign something all dot the landscape. Tucked away, next to a fountain that has seen more piss than water, is a raggedy little park-ish play area that my daughter adores.

The centerpiece of this spot is a little saddleback climbing structure—the primary reason that my kid chooses this place over others. It was here where my wife and I discovered that our daughter is not afraid of heights, or jumping from them. It was here that she realized that she could climb up and over something—she didn’t have to go back the way she came. Revelatory. And it was here where she had her very first violent encounter.

It was a busy day, and the line to climb was longer than usual. I was completely impressed that the baby-monster was as patient as she was. I praised her repeatedly. In return, she gave me her smile—the one that she now uses to try and manipulate, but was fully genuine back in the day. Makes me fall in love every time she unleashes those perfect teeth and high cheekbones. In the middle of our little love-fest, it was her turn. Abruptly she mountain-goated up the wall in about two steps. Just as she was about to summit, some five or six-year-old boy grabs her hood, and yanks her backwards off the wall. When she slammed into the ground, I heard her breath forcefully escape—but she wasn’t moving. Not once, have I ever felt so fucking helpless. I froze: trauma-induced ossification. ‘She hit her head. She hit her head,’ was all I should think. Would she have a head injury? As a survivor of one, I knew how dangerous they were. Oh, God. What did I just let happen? (I always blame myself when my kid gets hurt).

She stood up, unsteady, but standing on her own. This made me feel like the ultimate in crap fathers because I had no part in helping her get to her feet. She looked around, and she seemed okay—I felt the lower part of my body begin to defrost and I slowly made my way over to her. Before I could ask how she was, she jumped on the boy. She must have been twenty-four, twenty-five pounds at the time, but she marshaled all of it to knock this kid to the ground. She then started punching him in the face. Not little kid punches, but very well executed pistons: Left, right. Left, right. Raining down hurt on this boy. And she wouldn’t stop.

Watching my little wisp of a daughter handle herself against this big kid made me proud. When I find out that we were having a daughter, I made it my life’s mission to ensure that she would never be a victim of violence—at the time, not acknowledging that participating in a violent act, is being a victim to violence—but I knew too many women who have had their bodies and spirits violated, and this would not happen to my baby-girl. So to see her, without fear, standing up to and retaliating against a bully, made me feel as if I was setting her on the right track.

But something just felt wrong. I am no stranger to violence, nor am I opposed to it as vehemently as some of my more politically progressive friends are. I grew up violently, and have achieved a relative level of comfort with the act and all of the attendant spiritual mess that comes with it. I’ve been shot, stabbed; have a permanent scar in the back of my head from fighting racist skinheads—but this is my story, not my daughter’s. She (hopefully) will never have to live through one percent of the evil that I did.

I rushed to her, lifted her off the boy, and held her. I was surprised at just how strong she was. Then she said one of the clearest sentences of her life. Eyes wild, body continuing to thrash, at the top of her lungs: I want my justice! What the hell? What kind of concept of justice have we been teaching her? Not even bothering to check and see if the boy was okay, I broke wide and ran over to my wife who was dozing in the grass. She lazily looked up at me, saw that I was shell-shocked; looked at our daughter, saw that she was going crazy, screaming about wanting her justice. The look she launched my way was purely: what the hell just happened? I cannot even take a rest without you two getting into some kind of trouble.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the little boy, and whom I assumed were his parents, coming over to us. They were too close for us to make an escape that did not look obvious, so I braced myself for the eventual conversation. My default setting was “crisis, with a side of aggressive response” and this has me on edge, ready for confrontation. Always. Needless to say, it is a tiring way to live. I have been on a personal project to purge violence from my life—physical, emotional, verbal, all of it. Violence has no place for me, as a partner, or as a parent. This isn’t to say that I won’t protect my family, or myself but it is nowhere near the top 10 responses to confrontation—it used to be my first three choices.

I figured the best course of action was to meet them halfway, adopt a neutral stance, and let them speak first. See, I told you I’ve been working on it. What happened shook me. They were nice. They were more than nice; they were apologetic. They gave me the history of their son’s behavior and how his comeuppance was long overdue. That it was delivered by a tiny little thing made it all the more poetic. While we laughed and made small talk, I couldn’t stop thinking that our laughter and easy conversation was an endorsement of violent behavior. I mentioned this, and it kind of killed the mood. They awkwardly disengaged themselves, and my wife and I were left with how to redefine and appropriately teach what justice was. Like that would be easy.

We had to figure out a uniform way to discuss a concept that we didn’t even agree on. For so long, I confused justice with retaliation and revenge. But in my new social and psychic evolutionary state, I had absolutely no clue what to tell my daughter as my concept of justice was in flux. My wife comes from a profoundly religious background, but she was moving towards a more holistic spirituality, so her ideas around what is just were also changing. Why in the hell did we have to explain heavy-duty concepts so early in the game? As neither my wife, nor myself have parents, we’ve already had to explain death to our daughter after she asked about her grandmother and grandfather—her mother told her about heaven, and I told her about dirt and worms—can we get a break?

Despite all of this; all of this trying to be a socially and politically responsible parent; trying to get the more negative and destructive aspects of my upbringing to scab over and sink beneath the surface, lessening their influence on my present—there was still a sliver of pride at watching my daughter handle herself in that way. She was assured, confident, and fearless, traits that girls are very rarely allowed to cultivate, without great cost. Me and her mother’s ongoing project is to somehow extract the violence as a first resort, without affecting her confidence, fearlessness, and self-assuredness. We’ve been working diligently on this, but we may have pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction.

About a month after the park incident, we went to a birthday party. She was having a ball, until it was piñata time. We played zombies and dragons at home, so she’s used to all types of crazy stuff. But this particular piñata had an advocate that day, in the form of my daughter. The kids all took turns whacking this multi-colored fish. Whap! The last hit exploded the fish, and snacks and money spilled from the fish’s guts. My little baby-girl burst into tears. For about ten minutes she was inconsolable. When she finally calmed down, we asked her what was wrong. Through the remnants of her tears, she said: “Is the fishy okay? Kids shouldn’t hit the fish with sticks. Now all of his insides are on the ground.”

My wife and I had two completely different reactions: My wife was so proud that our daughter could show that type of compassion, even for something inanimate. I reacted to it as if her piscine concern was a form of weakness. I felt that all her blubbering was a sign of weakness, a loss of her fighting spirit. Needless to say, this is something else I’m working on. More later.