You Don't Know Me

So Warner was there with his big fists and his busted face. He was just walking past with this wide ‘I own the world’ walk when he sees us and stops. ‘Fucking black queers,’ he goes or something. Now when shit like this happens to me these days, which if I am honest with you ain’t too often, no one, I don’t care who he is, gets away with it. You best be packing if you coming at me with that shit. Back then though, as I said, I only picked the fights I could win and trust me I weren’t ever going to be in no mood to be dancing with Warner. So I look at the ground and just under my breath I goes, ‘Fuck off,’ and carry on talking to Curt.

I didn’t even see it coming. All I know is that in the next second I’m on the deck and my face is beating like it’s been hit by a baseball bat. I get up and my instincts take over. Before I have even had time to think about it I’ve taken a swing at Warner and then suddenly there is a crowd around us. I was like a hundred metres from connecting with my punch. My arm swings past his head and I almost go on the ground again. Warner though, he goes off like a machine. Punches coming at me like pistons. They are all so fast that it feels like I’ve just run into a brick wall. I go down immediately and then he is on me, his knees on my arms and his fists trying to ruin my face. I reckon another second or two and I would have been eating through a straw for life. I can’t see nothing. All I can do is keep turning my head away and try and drown out the punches and the shouting crowd.

Anyway, just as I felt like I might go under, Warner just flies off me, backwards, his hands still moving but hitting nothing but air. It takes me a minute to work out what has happened. It’s Curt. He just pulled him off me like he was picking up an angry cat. Warner struggles free and then when he sees it’s only Curt, he turns on him. ‘C’mon you fat nigger,’ he goes and starts beating away at him. Curt does nothing at first. He just kind of ducks and takes the punches like he has been doing all his life. But then Warner shouts out, ‘Fucking waste man!’ and something just snaps.

Curt’s eyes suddenly come to life like someone just turned on the ignition. He blocks Warner’s punches with one arm and then with the other arm he swings straight at his head. He doesn’t use his fist. He uses his whole arm. And that boy went down. I mean he crashed. You could even hear the crack as his head hit the pavement. The crowd starts going mental. People are shouting out Warner’s name and saying things like, ‘Are you going to let that jungle bunny show you up?’ and all this. Warner staggers back to his feet and somehow, I don’t know where he gets the strength from, he takes another go at Curt. Curt don’t even think this time round. He catches Warner’s fist with one hand then twists it round until the boy is screaming out. Then he puts the other hand on the back of his elbow. Then just like that he snaps it.

A few weeks after that Curt left the school. Like I said, I think his mum for some reason had to move and he went. But for years after that I used to think back to that day. What made him do it? We weren’t mates then. I didn’t even really talk to him that much. If anything I felt sorry for him because he was weak. So why did he do it? I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have stepped up for him. In fact I know I wouldn’t have. I never did before. But I think I know now what it was. He could take all the shit, the coon, the nigger and whatever. He could even take the beatings and the humiliations. But what he couldn’t take was being called that. ‘Waste.’

To him, this went back to everything. It went back to his mum who was selling herself for a pipe. It went back to all the men that came and used her and left. It went back to his mum waking up with the shakes in her own sick and him having to clean her up and put her into bed. It went back to her telling him every fucking day that he was alive that she wished she had had him aborted. That he was a waste man. It went straight to his insides. I doubt even he knows why he reacted like that but I tell you something, if you called him ‘waste’ today he wouldn’t stop at your arm.

I will say one thing though. That fucker deserved getting his arm broken. He had that shit coming to him and in my book it’s not ‘you get what you pay for’, but ‘you pay for what you do’. Every time.

Anyway when then this QC talks about ‘You’re waste man’ as if it means you are about to be wasted, I have to laugh. It might be all just words to him but down on the ground this shit matters. It ain’t just words, man.