Tears of a thug

A couple of weeks ago, as I waited for a Racing Club a game to start, I stood next to two large men. I was bored and they were conspicuous, so I stared. One of them had short, neat hair and a standard build. He would have been completely unremarkable had he not been juxtaposed with his companion, whose incredibly crooked teeth, long ratty hair, and apparently-permanent snarl were truly a foil for normalcy. One of his eyes was higher and significantly larger than the other. He hunched, arms hanging forward and lower back bent. I felt terrible about it, but I couldn’t help thinking of him as a cave man.

On my other side, was a skinny, fragile-looking kid who would have been a perfect Buddy Holly look alike if it weren’t for his Racing-themed getup: a two-foot-tall Uncle Sam-style hat, a pair of very large parachute pans, a multi-colored wind-breaker, and an enormous flag; all streaked with teal, sky blue, and white and littered with the teams nick-names and slogans. This kid, I thought, would be great to talk to. He was obviously a fanatic but also looked dorky enough that I couldn’t imagine him being mean, much less dangerous. I needed an ice breaker, something unthreatening, but hard not to ignore. I waited briefly for inspiration and then, afraid to miss the opportunity, asked spontaneity to produce the rhetorical gem I needed: “Cold, huh?”

I think he looked at me. There was a slight head turn in my direction and a perceptible shift of the eyes. Rather than answering my question, however, Buddy Holly yelled something I didn’t understand to someone I couldn’t see (because he was employing the age-old hincha tactic of looking over the journalist, tourist, or other stranger’s shoulder and pretending to have a sudden need to go somewhere behind them very quickly). He was gone.

When I looked back from the fleeing Buddy Holly, the large men were fighting. The unremarkable guy had gripped a knotty fistful of the cave man’s hair, employing the other fist in a devoted effort to straighten his companion’s teeth. “You’ll regret this!” he was yelling. As much as he looked like someone who regularly slew woolly mammoths, the poor cave man made hardly any effort to defend himself. Blow after blow landed uninhibited and un-returned. The only response he managed was to twist his head back and forth, distributing the unremarkable man’s punches all around his face. The crowd let them go; everyone’s first reaction was to back out of harm’s way. After an eternal ten seconds, other fans finally stepped in. Friends of both men pulled them apart, asking them to calm down by name. As always, the angrier of the two fighters, in this case Mr. Unremarkable, broke free a couple of times, landing three more blows to his Paleolithic victim before his friends restrained him more securely. Four or five of them escorted him to another part of the terrace. The caveman leaned on the guard rail at the top of the bleachers and wept.

He literally cried. Friends came and comforted him and he motioned them away. He buried his face in his forearms, staining his sleeves with sweat, blood, and tears. His face, due to his adept neck-swiveling, was bruised and swollen evenly throughout, growing redder and larger by the minute. He looked completely dejected and I felt genuinely sorry for him. I tried to ask if he was alright but he turned away, burying his face still deeper in his arms. I turned to the man next to me, a strong-looking guy wearing a baseball cap, and asked why the men had been fighting. “Neighborhood banners,” he answered motioning to the flags piled and rolled up behind us. Apparently, the scraggly hincha had made the mistake of hanging his neighborhood’s banner in the spot the unremarkable guy had picked out for his neighborhood banner. Even as he was pulled away, Mr. Unremarkable had continued to shout “you’ll regret this” to the cave man. Apparently, the poor bastard didn’t regret it already, at least not enough. I wondered exactly how much regret was required to avenge such an offence to barrio honor.

After a few minutes, the defeated Neanderthal regained his composure and followed a friend farther down into the bleachers to watch the game. I felt bad for him but I certainly wasn’t surprised by the fight itself. This was not the first fight I had seen at a stadium, nor would it be the last. Nor did the reason, some combination of honor, machismo, and neighborhood pride, surprise me. What did get to me was just how pitiful the loser had been. It was a one-sided fight. But most of the fights I have seen are one-sided unless they get broken up right away. Usually, however, the loser postures at least as much as the winner, after the fight. After all, he is the one in danger of losing face. In this case, the poor cave man had given up altogether. He let his opponent beat on him and then he let himself appear entirely pathetic in defeat. He made no excuses and it was his conqueror, not he, who pledged more violence in the future.

I toyed with the idea that the man was actually disabled. It would explain how little he spoke and perhaps also his disinterest in whether or not he appeared weak. Maybe it was all just too much for his mind to handle. But that seems to easy and too condescending. Perhaps he’s just honest, preferring to look sad as long as he was sad. That would be refreshingly un-macho. In any case, I liked the man much more after seeing him cry. Such a human response, such naked vulnerability filled me with warmth, whether it was pity for a victim or gratitude for a man honest enough to show un-manly emotions at a soccer game. Maybe, just maybe, these people feel, I remember thinking. I’ll try to remember that.