Too Tough to Die
There was a time when "being hard" was a matter of immediate survival for hardcore's urban pioneers. For the rest of us, there are other ways to show your strength.
I.
I was eleven years old the first time I ever had to fight someone. My older brother had essentially set me up: He asked a neighborhood kid to step to me at our local park with the intent of provoking me in some way. Then, according to the plan, when the two of us were in close proximity and the moment was hot, my brother’s job was to surreptitiously push me into that kid—in a way that would read as if I were the aggressor. Pressured to respond, the neighborhood kid was forced to throw the first punch, and just like that, my brother manufactured “a fight.”
So I threw some punches and I took a few. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes before my brother—also artificially—broke it up. He had seen everything he needed to see, but more importantly, the neighborhood saw what he felt