A Tough Customer

There are two kinds of people: those who follow through and those who do not.. Does this mean that it is always better to continue projects to completion, never give up, try and try again, etc.? Well, that all depends.


One night an angular, curly-haired man with a lump on his cheekbone strode into the store. He stared at me with overt hostility as he made long quick strides across the floor to the cooler. He stayed close to the far wall, as though avoiding the counter behind which I stood, and he kept his eyes on me. He
could have been anywhere between twenty and forty years old; it was hard to tell. He took two six-packs from the cooler and carried them to the counter, but he stood a bit further from the counter than a normal customer. I might also have been standing back a bit. Contempt emanated from him. I wondered why
he hated me.

He said something about money, but I could not understand what he wanted. I gathered that he expected me to give or lend him some money from my pocket, so that he could pay for the beer. This did not make any sense to me. I refused. There was an argument. "You cock," he said. I would probably not remember
anything of this encounter today, if it were not for my memory of that. It was not uncommon at night for something like this to happen, but this particular man saying that one thing sticks in my memory. It was not just the cold way he said it, but it sounded like something someone would have said a hundred or more
years ago. "You cock." Something about his attitude and manner intrigued me.

I do not remember how we ended up on the sidewalk. We were squared off against one another, posed to fight. I am not sure why I wanted to fight him, but I did. It could be that he was just a harmless drunk who had to be run off, but in my mind it was more than that. What I probably felt, but did not think in the way
of words, was that something about me could not be asserted or even defined without reference to something about him. Whatever this was, it went beyond our physical appearance, beyond any particular situation, time and place in which we happened to meet.

It may seem to you that I was out to prove something. You might say that. But it was as though I knew this guy from somewhere, I wanted him to show me just who he was or who he thought he was, whether he was better than me. I wanted to know, I wanted to be somebody, and I wanted to fight. I do not know how these various things came together in my mind, but I was a young man and I did not think in terms of subtle distinctions.

We were staring into one another's eyes, fists positioned, testing one another, circling and moving in and out on each other in the swirling mist under the street lamp, which defined our arena. This went on for some time.

I could see that if I really got into it with this fellow it would go badly for me. He was almost surely an experienced fighter, taller, stronger, leaner, and his reach was greater than mine. I remember thinking that he was probably quicker than I was, but I do not know how I determined this.

I did not feel any real anger or hatred towards him. He was who he was and I was who I was. I knew that even if I could land a punch, which seemed unlikely, I would have to check its force at the last instant, but he would follow through with all of his considerable strength until his fist was somewhere in the back of
my head. This did not make either of us better or worse than the other. It is only that each was given different natures and abilities. I had to admit that I was scared and outmatched. This was not a guy that I should know too well, or fight directly.

At this point I realized that he too was scared, or at least nervous, and I wondered what he had to be afraid of. I do not think he was as scared as I was, and maybe he had different reasons.

Neither of us ever threw a punch. I do not know what ended it. At some point we dropped our poses. He mumbled something which I either did not hear or have forgotten. Then he walked away into the darkness. I never found out who he was, where he came from, or where he went.