Friday, April 15, 2011

There's About to Be a Girlfight

Ahoy friends!

It was eighty-two degrees last weekend here in the southeast! SUMMER IS COMING! I'm so excited, I could cry. Heat means tank tops and cold beers and sparklers and short skirts and--the holiday that inspired this blog--Pride weekend!!!!!!!!!!

Let's just take a minute to bask in the excitement of what I am sure will be the epic summer of 2011.

martianwho
Whew.

Now on to this week's story...


There's About to Be a Girlfight

You may not believe this, but when I was growing up, I got into a lot of fights. A LOT. I know I seem like a pretty amazing and chillaxed little lady now, but it took me a while to get here.

The last fight I ever got into took place in college between me and a girl who went by the nickname of Caca. Yeah, I can't make this shit up.

Pun intended.

Would you like me to tell you about it?

Of course you would! Why else would you be on my blog?!

startswithabang
Check this out:

My senior year of college, my four best friends and I lived on the fourth floor of a historic dormitory with no elevator. This being the case, each floor of the building was cut in half by the building's large echoing stairwell. I can't tell you how many nights I found my way to my dormitory after a party and crawled up the stairs on all fours while I cried about the unfairness of buildings without elevators. But those are stories for another time...

Thanks to the stairwell from hell, my friends and I were able to secure the west half of the fourth floor for only ourselves and our guests. We ran around at all hours of night and day in various stages of undress and rarely closed our bedroom doors. All of this transparency was somewhat jarring to our friends visiting from other dorms: everyone on our hall knew in seconds if a guest was in our space and we treated our guests' privacy the way we treated our own--we gave them none.

mkmcd
One of my friends, Toga, regularly tutored her teammates on the basketball team in an effort to keep their GPAs high enough to allow the girls to play. Being a division three school, we had to require our athletes keep their GPAs at or above a minimum--it's not like any of them were going to go pro and make a living off of their insane athletic skills. On the night this fateful event took place, Caca was working her way through a project with Toga.

Now, I should probably tell you that I've never liked Caca. I had met her when she first arrived on campus earlier in the year. Caca was from my hometown and, because of her involvement on the basketball team, I knew she would be one of the few other girls of color to interact heavily in my social circle. I needed her to be classy.
After Ellen
What I got was a girl wearing skintight American-flag red sweat pants (three sizes too small) who told me that she was assembling her entourage to come to all of her games as she was the best basketball player in the region (a vast exaggeration). It took me about 5 minutes to glean this information from the text messaging language she'd found some way to convert into a spoken language brimming with "witchu," "grlchunow," and curse words.

Needless to say, I was not excited about Toga tutoring Caca on our hall. But, due to my love for Toga and the rest of the basketball team, I decided to avoid Caca during her tutoring session. I stayed in my room and did my yoga. Then I wrapped myself in a towel and headed for the communal showers, figuring that by the time I finished bathing, Caca would be gone.

My timing was nearly perfect. Caca was just exiting Toga's room as I left the showers. When Caca saw me in my towel, she paused before smiling and said, "I'm gonna fight witchu."

I laughed. "Okay, whatever."

"Naw gurl," she said more forcefully. "I'm bout to fight witchu." I looked her over and saw the weight in her stance. She wasn't joking.

"Alright," I acquiesced. "Let me put on some clothes."

"No."

"Underwear."

"No," she shouted and pushed me backwards into a fire extinguisher bolted to the wall. Let me tell you something: THAT FUCKING HURT.

I wrapped one hand around my chest to hold my towel in place and aimed a right hook at Caca's face: no one touches me without paying for it. The hit connected and Caca shouted, "Oh fuck you!"
domo

She aimed for my face and I ducked. She went for my throat and pushed me against the fire extinguisher again, choking me. I clawed around--losing my towel in the process. I finally grabbed Caca's braids and yanked her head backwards. By then she was screaming and cursing.  I was so angry that I slammed her head into the wall twice.

The whole thing lasted about 30 seconds.

I stepped back from Caca, picked up my towel and wrapped it around myself. Lost in all of the adrenaline and emotions pumping through my body, I started to laugh. The hall was filled with my friends, who had apparently witnessed the whole fight. They all looked at Caca and I nervously. Caca saw their faces and began laughing with me. My hall mates continued to look uncomfortable, but laughed lightly, trying to figure out what was so funny.

The look on their faces made me feel sick to my stomach. "I'm going to go put on clothes." I said to no one in particular. I went into my room, slammed my door and began to cry. I called my friend Mae, who lived in another dorm and explained the whole thing between sobs and sniffles.

"Fuck." She said, "Sweetheart, that's terrifying."

"I know," I wailed, "Who does she think she is? A first-year challenging a senior to a physical fight!? While I was in my toweeeeeeel!?"

"Well yes, but I think you're missing the point: you two could have killed each other. She could have broken your back and you could have split her head open. You're pretty fucking lucky that nobody got hurt."
lesuicideblonde
Mae made a valid point and one I hadn't been bright enough to consider on my own.

It kind of scared me.

After that, I resolved not to fight crazy bitches anymore. And so far, so good.

fin

Today's Point: The hippies up the street with the peace signs in their front yard may have a legitimate point.
indybay

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