Friendship, betrayal, and the end of a feud: Kickin' ass on Easy Street. (1109 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.39 on 29 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Chronic (View user info) at 2005-06-28 22:17:22 EDT
I'll refer to him as "Haz" because that's what we called him. I've known him since I was 8 and I'm sure I'll never reach a point where I won't know him. He was part of the gang from the very start. Bike rides, beach days, basketball games, and double dates. We did the shit kids do and then 7 years into unflinching friendship, the unthinkable happened. Haz did something when we were 15 that I never thought possible. He took the road of disloyalty and chose to betray me and forsake our friendship forever. I won't get into the whole story, but it wasn't kissing an ex-girlfriend or some childish bullshit. It was serious and unforgivable and he was belligerent about it. Sides were chosen amidst the drama of internal crew chaos. 98% chose my side and it's a damn good thing because it was a serious problem with no middle ground. You were with me or you were with him, and therefore, against me.
A showdown promptly ensued. There were a lot of words, a few pushes, a bit of wrestling, a handful of decent shots and an audience of dozens who would speak of that moment for years to come. There was no clear-cut winner though and that was probably for the best. We got dragged apart and agreed to never speak to each other again or else it would have to be settled for real. I mentioned in an earlier post that along with an excessive street fighting history, I had a few years of experience in the ring. It was a great way to keep in shape and I loved to fight. Haz was part of the same Gym and trained with me all the time. We knew each others' fighting tendencies in and out, from back alley brawls as allies to sparring sessions as foes. In all honesty, he was the better ring fighter and I have no problem admitting it. He had a steady mind for such things as organized boxing. He was built to block shots with gloves and throw boxing combos with his hands up. I was born to slip wild hooks with a well-timed body shift and throw elbows in the dark.
I'm glad no one let us hurt each other in that first showdown in his backyard. I'm glad it was a draw and I always thought it would be the final showdown because deep down, neither one of us wanted it to come to such a thing. We continued on with our lives, following much the same paths, just in different directions. I left the Gym forever. I didn't want to fight him. He was still my crazy Haz and he still partied hard and fucked fine ass girls and slung wild ass drugs. He was the shit in his world. I was the shit in mine. We avoided each other like the plague, though. I kept tabs on him and I'm sure he did the same with me. We had been too close as kids to totally ignore each others' existence and he was too big of a player to not track his actions. All the while though, his betrayal weighed heavily on my mind for those years of avoidance. I don't know how it weighed on his, but there was no easy way to forget all the years we spent hanging out, even though I'm sure he wanted to sometimes.
Last summer, I found myself at a party on Easy Street. Easy Street is the setting for a lot of my memories, whether I acknowledge the setting or not. Me and Haz crossed paths for the umpteenth time and gruffly ignored each other in a way we had become incredibly accustomed to. Later in the evening, something happened that hadn't happened yet. He made a comment about me within earshot, and he knew it. The comment, even though it wasn't to me, it was about me in such a way that it really WAS to me. He meant it to be to me and he knew that I would understand that he meant it to be to me. It was the first time we had made any form of contact since the final showdown. I turned to face him and spoke with a quiet and ordinary tone.
"I'll see you outside then?"
A tiny smile crept across his face.
I walked away and got maybe a half dozen steps before turning around and watching him cover his tracks. He put his drink down on an end table and told his friend to "not fucking move or think about saying anything to anyone." Seconds later, he followed me out the front door. There was no audience this time. No drama. It wasn't wild. We weren't angry. It was me and him and someone was getting hurt tonight because that's the way it was. The deal of peace was made. The deal was over. It was time to settle things up once and for all.
I took my ring off. He took his watch off. We took our cellphones out of our pockets along with our wallets and our keys and piled them together on the hood of his car without saying so much as a word to each other.
We got to the middle of Easy Street and could hear music from houses on both sides of the road. We stood there staring at each other for a moment or two before his hands rose rigidly and his legs mechanically moved into the stance I knew so well and had seen so many times before. I cracked my neck from side to side, rocked my shoulders around in their sockets, and kept my hands low and moving, fingers wiggling to facilitate the looseness in my body. I shuffled my weight from one foot to the other while sliding into the mental zone of complete fluidity.
I found the spot and let him know. "Ready when you are."
He answered with a reasonable answer. "No you aren't. I'm a better boxer than you. You already taught me your street shit. Plus, I'm bigger and stronger than you. You don't have a chance anymore."
I smiled and said nothing. He was experienced and trained to be great. I'm experienced and an essentially self-taught natural. This would be interesting.
We began circling to the left and made it almost a full rotation before he took 2 steps forward (which I matched) and met me at the center. He opened with two quick left jabs, clearly just testing the waters. With two swift movements of the head and shoulders, the first jab snapped past my right ear and the second snapped past my left. While the second jab was still in the air, I threw a counter flat right elbow that caught him just above the left eye and staggered him back a step or two.
"Fuck, I forgot how quick you were, Chron."
He threw a four punch combo from angles I had never seen before in him or anyone else. I reacted to the first two but it ended with me taking a shot to the gut and a hit to the cheek. It was a hard body shot, but I had time to tighten up, so thankfully my breath wasn't in jeopardy. The one I took to the face was what it was, but I can take a couple of those.
"Fuck, I forgot how unique you were, Haz."
I stepped in aggressively and threw a left jab and a right hook. The jab got parried outside and he ducked the hook. From his crouched position, he launched up with an uppercut that only sailed past the tip of my nose because I arched back at the waist in the nick of time. A follow-up shot to the cheek sent me reeling back. That could have been it right there if he had caught me solidly with the uppercut. Even though I lost the exchange, I survived to have an opportunity at the war.
His next volley was quickly shut down and the tide suddenly turned my way. A left jab slipped past my right ear as a decoy for the big right hook he was lining up. I saw it coming and pounced. Before it had the chance to extend, I wrapped his right arm with my left, and tried to end it all with a right cross aimed for the teeth.
With only a fraction of a second to spare, his left hand returned from its decoy, pushed my cross off line, and guided it over his right shoulder, attached to his right arm, which remained safely tangled by my left.
The punch missed, but I still had the upper hand. With most of my right arm over his right shoulder and his right arm completely under control, I was in the perfect position to take a headlock. My arm swung around his neck and pulled him down as I jumped. Somewhere in the middle, his chest met with a thunderous shot from my right knee.
Down but not out, I felt his free left hand crush against my right kidney.
I finally let go of his right arm, maintained my grasp on his neck, and threw an overhand left into his own right kidney. Taking advantage of having both arms free, he wrapped them around my torso, got me off the ground, and drove me backwards into the door of his own car. I landed another rock-solid left on the same kidney and he slammed me into the car yet again. A deliberate spin at the waist accompanied by a tightening grasp on his neck sent the left point of his head into the door on the second slam. I let go of the lock and we both stumbled away from each other to collect ourselves.
I was hurting but so was he. Haz was, is, and likely will always be, stronger than me, but if my two punches to his kidney had done even the same as what his one did to mine, than he was fucking feeling it. His left eye was visibly swollen from the combination of the opening elbow and the driver side door with the big fucking dent. I took note, because I planned on tagging that eye again on the first chance I got.
We began circling again, although it was more labored this time. I had hoped my knee from earlier might have even broken a rib, but it didn't look like it from the way he was moving.
Just as he was about to charge, he stopped and reset himself. He was getting his psyche back together if nothing else. He confidently moved back into his boxing stance. Haz still believed he could beat me boxing and then he did. Jab, jab, fake right, jab, haymaker. I got hit unbelievably hard and I'll tell you why. I was so stunned by the jab after the fake that I couldn't even react to the bomb coming my way. I couldn't believe how bad I had been faked out. I used to be able to read his feint right with ease but now he had perfected it. I would have gone down if it wasn't for the car a few steps behind me.
By the time I pulled myself together and got my vision to work, I realized I was facing away from him up against the side of the car near where the back windshield meets the roof. Footsteps behind me woke me from my daze and the right hand grasping my shoulder to spin me sent me into survival mode. He planned to spin me, hit me, and jack me up against the car. I couldn't allow that if I had any hope of winning. I threw my right arm back and over his, spun my body out of the way, slid my right hand down to his wrist, and went to put my left hand on his shoulder/back. I planned to push him into the car and escape back to the relative safety of the middle of the street. At the last second, I came up with another plan. Instead of putting my hand on his shoulder, I grabbed the back of his hair with my left hand and slammed the corner of his head into the spot where the roof meets the back window. His head thudded against the roof and the swollen spot above his eye tore open.
I let go of his wrist and hair and back pedaled to the middle of the street. He turned and started walking towards me with blood streaming down the left side of his face. My lip was cut pretty bad from the hard shot that had almost knocked me out and I knew I would probably need at least 4 or 5 stitches to put it back together again. The cut over his eye would probably need a dozen though, so I considered myself ahead on points.
I decided to attack with a combo of my own, most of which was blocked. His old boxing skills made him hard to hit during most combos. His forearms have a way of blocking most everything and despite my efforts, I couldn't land another shot on that cut. He threw a well-timed counter right between the 4th and 5th hits and by the time I realized I had caught his right wrist again, guided it wide across my body, pulled him off balance and thrown an unblockable left cross which wound up on his right cheek, he slammed into the ground solidly. I seriously didn't realize I caught his wrist until he was on the ground.
By pulling his wrist across his body while he was throwing a right cross, I completely pulled him off axis and the hard undefensible left drilled him into the ground with authority. Few people would get up from such a shot but this was an exceptional case, not your average drunken brawl. He quickly crawled away and clambered to his feet before I could react. Upon rising, he shot me a glare.
"How did you fucking catch that, Chron?"
"I don't remember."
It was the truth, but he didn't take it too well.
He came in like a goddamn jackhammer, but I could sense the desperation. A few blocks and a few connections and finally I ducked a left hook and had a second to think. From my low position, I wrapped my right arm around his left leg, pushed my left hand into his gut and took him off his feet. I followed him to the ground and finished the thing. 5 hard shots to the face while pinning him down with his head backed up on asphalt and it was finally over. Blood was everywhere at this point.
I rolled off to the left and he half squirmed in the other direction with a groan. When I struggled to my feet, I felt the damage. This fight and especially that last barrage had done a hell of a number on me. The blood was flowing freely from my nose, my lip was cut, my chest was killing me and that kidney shot from earlier made it hard to even stand.
It could've been a whole lot worse, though. I could've gotten knocked out on the uppercut in the third exchange or I could've gotten my ass beat the fuck down against that car. Speaking of which, I made my way over to the car and Haz still hadn't gotten up. He was still writhing on the ground and moaning so I grabbed my stuff off the hood and started walking up the driveway.
I turned back towards my fallen foe and said something with total honesty.
"Haz, call me one day next week. We'll blaze, alright bro?"
"...Unnngh. Alright."
He ended up needing 19 or 20 stitches. I got a deceptive 11 (5 on the inside of my mouth).
"You taught me everything you know."
"Almost everything. Remember: you fight great, but I'm a great fighter." - Rocky 3
---
Chroniclysmically Conceptualized
User Reviews
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-07-24 20:16:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
My freezepops are important to me.
Submitted by Maddog (user info) at 2005-07-23 17:28:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
All this ass-whuppin over who took the last orange freeze-pop? Seems a bit severe.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-07-23 17:01:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Yeah, like I haven't seen that post before <insert overly cutesy little smily poking its tongue out here>.
We don't all bite, you know.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-07-19 21:57:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Stin, I hate to be that guy, but:
http://www.ubersite.com/m/56292
I'm thinking about making an AIM name just for all you Uberers, though. I'll be sure to let you know.
And I love that someone thinks of us as lions.
Submitted by Blinkish (user info) at 2005-07-19 21:03:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great flow, definately wasn't too long!
I got a visual of lions fighting half way through and it just seemed to make the story all the more interesting to me.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-07-19 20:55:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Do you use AIM or MSN?
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-07-19 20:36:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Nah. I probably could have won one of those extra spots with a write in, but I didn't.
Expect 4 or 5 posts in probably less than a week, though. They'll likely all be about my last 10 days in Italy.
And thanks.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-07-08 13:30:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Someone has to pay attention. You're far, far too underrated.
Are you playing in UMIII? Because I hope by god if you are that I don't come up against you.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-07-02 00:17:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
You're probably right, Champ
And Stin, thanks for qualifying the +1 in terms of ME and not in terms of all Uber. To be able to rate me personally in terms of past work makes me think you might actually be paying attention. Thanks.
Submitted by BillsSBChamps (user info) at 2005-07-01 22:34:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Most people on this site have probably never been in a fight like that therefor they don't understand.
I like it a lot, it had the right amount of details and I hope someday you post what the dispute was over.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-07-01 22:06:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Not my thing, but well written although not your best.
It's a +1 based on your form, rather than against the majority of Uber.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-30 21:52:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I don't think this was too long, but I know that a lot of what I write is too long. This seems to be about as long as you can go and still keep a reasonable amount of readers.
If Uber was more receptive to things in the 5-10 page range, I would probably have 2 months worth of posts at my disposal.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-06-30 19:17:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
get to the part when you had teh ghey secks
Submitted by NumLock (user info) at 2005-06-30 17:11:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good read
Submitted by paxlaurien (user info) at 2005-06-30 15:39:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this a lot. It really got my attention.
I don't know why people might think that it was too long. It seemed to be exactly as long as it needed to be.
Lots of things on here aren't long enough and feel rushed. Like the authors subconciously realize that slash-and-burn self editing is required in order to get it read.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-30 14:58:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
It's as close to the truth as I could make it.
Me and Haz grew up together.
Then there was an issue.
Then we avoided eachother.
Then we had a dramaless fight one night in the middle of Easy Street.
It went the way I said it went.
I won.
It isn't like the fight was impossible. Nobody was flipping off walls. We took some runs at eachother, landed some shots, and got some stitches.
I'm not sure what's so unbelievable.
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-06-30 08:10:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-29 14:01:16 (#)
Ranking: 0
Too long, therefore unappreciated.
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I don't think it is too long, it is too unbeleavable to be anywhere near the truth, and it does not have, I don't know, enough flow to be a good story. I liked how descriptive it was, but it seems too scientific and to get lost in the details instead of drawing you into the details. I see potential in this, but it dragged, not because of the length it just didn't flow right for me.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-29 21:28:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
You have no idea how often I don't post things that are really good because they fall in the 4-10 page range. This was about 5 I think. Too long for Uber.
Submitted by spidy (user info) at 2005-06-29 15:30:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
People have A.D.D. galore on this site... this is too long for most to appreciate.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-29 15:07:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Why thank you.
Submitted by yermom (user info) at 2005-06-29 14:41:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Always a good read.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-29 14:01:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Too long, therefore unappreciated.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-06-29 10:18:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-06-29 09:36:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Hey farva what is that restaurant you love with all the shit on the wall and those mozzarella sticks?
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-29 01:59:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Only 54 hits?
What the shit.
Bah.
Submitted by YELLOW-MAN (user info) at 2005-06-29 01:01:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sprinkles (user info) at 2005-06-29 00:54:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hurray for writing skills! You deserve +2
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2005-06-29 00:42:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Yes.
Submitted by alfakyle (user info) at 2005-06-29 00:29:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
ended with Rocky 3?