Certainty

I’ve only ever smoked one cigarette in my life, which is one more than a lot of people but not exactly significant from a quantity perspective. I was drunk, in South America at a hot dog stand. I ate hot dogs down there a lot for some reason. From start to finish the cigarette took me about 30 seconds to smoke, during which I was projecting some type of furious energy toward a perceived enemy. I don’t remember lighting the cigarette and since I have never smoked I doubt that I did, and most likely I had taken this other guy’s cigarette from him. Angrily I smoked, breathing hard and deep and staring directly in his eyes. It must have looked insane. I don’t remember why I was mad with this guy, and it wouldn’t make sense today even if I did. Somehow, the altercation was resolved peacefully. His name was Sebastian, I think.

Later, I was cut off. In practical terms this could only be accomplished by denying me a bottle opener. After a lengthy struggle in the back seat of someone’s car while in transit to another hot dog stand (maybe), I drank another beer that I didn’t even want which I held with blood covered hands that I had somehow configured into a biological bottle opener. I probably puked an ocean that night.

Another time, also drunk, I wandered the campus of the college I had just flunked out of during the weird hours when one clings to a day that should have ended rather than face the next one. It was fall. I know because I was eating from a box of Franken Berries, which are only available around Halloween. Lord knows how or why I had a box of dry cereal, but I was eating it with a furious joy and animalistic vigor. Another group of young men shouted over to me, something homophobic I think, because that would’ve gotten me going back then. “Franken Berries are gay” or whatever. What came next I have no first person account of, only what I read in the police report or heard from my friends in witness. Without question it was me that escalated the verbal confrontation into a physical one. I fought with some quantity of them, more than two but I think less than five. I was swiftly subdued.

My first memory has me in handcuffs sitting on a nearby curb, docile and confused. A cop was interviewing some witnesses. My blood was on his shirt, which he showed me later in the ER. He had tackled me, and based on how he wrote this up later he was real proud about having managed to wrangle me into those cuffs. According to my buddy Abe, when the cops showed up and everyone scattered to the wind, I was unable even to stand. I got to ride in an ambulance instead of cop car, and so I went to the hospital instead of the jail. Technically I wasn’t arrested. That was pity, no doubt. I did not avoid consequences for my actions, however. I observed our strange legal system up close, I paid fines, attended courses on alcohol use, did community service and explained this juvenile behavior in some detail to several licensing agencies after I became a professional engineer.

People use drinking as an excuse or explanation for behavior like this, but I don’t. One time the Nuggets had matched up with the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. A friend of mine got tickets, which in those days was a big deal. The caveat was that we had to stand the entire time in some sectioned off platform area—we didn’t have seats. I’m 6’-0” tall, and my friend is much taller. View blockingly tall, for a couple of idiots at the bar behind us. Sober as the day is long, I made violence with these two morons after someone said something or did something or whatever. Our struggle ended on the floor. I remember knocking one of them hard into a poor guy in a wheelchair and breaking his glasses. An arena was formed by normal people, at some radius deemed safe from our flails. One of the guys was a body-builder type and at one point he had me in a headlock. I can recall his beet red, bulging bicep locked into my throat. I escaped him only moments before losing consciousness, somehow. Security was on the scene somewhat quickly and we had to call it a draw, I suppose. I didn’t get to see how the game ended, but the Nuggets lost that series for sure.

I have more stories like this. Stories from my youth, no doubt, but not exactly stories of a different man altogether. Although these are all embarrassing tales, I’m not all that embarrassed about them. They don’t define me adequately as anyone that knows me well could attest. They do seem to define something though. Some flavor of anger which feels important. Only possible when you are absolutely certain you are correct. When you have your view of the situation, and no room for anything else.

Is that masculinity, do you suppose? Perhaps it is. That’d be convenient, for sure. You could evolve beyond it. You could be biologically immune to it. But, do you think that particular flavor of anger is unique to a young man or is it only the way it manifested in the case of this singular young man? Can that flavor of anger exist in the heart of any person, of any age?

Of course it can.

There are some things about which we must be certain. The Earth is round. Gravity is a function of mass and distance. Wu Tang is forever.

There are plenty of things about which we cannot be certain. How a government should work. How to balance socialism and capitalism. What lies within the heart of another.

Confusing the two is easy, and we all do it. When you know—really know—how far you can travel outside yourself when carried by certainty, that is a terrifying thing to consider.