You can’t avoid a punch you don’t see. You can’t block a punch if you can’t move.
I didn’t feel the first one. Nor the second. Nor did I feel the punch that knocked me out and onto the street. Never felt the ensuing kicks.
The next I remember is being pulled down the street, dragging my high-ankle sprained right appendage while trying desperately to hop as fast as I could on my good leg. Blood had been poured on me, down my shirt, on my jeans, with splashes on my shoes.
My face was numb. I think I was yelling. My eyes were wet and blurred, but I wasn’t crying. My shoulders were stiff, but that was from football a few days prior. I seemed to just be really drunk. Had I wrestled? Had I fallen?
Once in my sisters’s car, I saw what happened. My face, usually fairly white and somewhat flat, was swollen in a way I’d never seen. My eyes were almost shut and my nose was smashed flat. My face was smeared with blood. My blood.
My mouth was untouched. The stark contrast of normal lips so close to my badly swollen jaw, nose and eyes was jarring. It pissed me off when I figured it out.
They had beaten the shit out of me.
