We were at the infamous Burger King parking lot and my friend Dana was down on the ground, kicked in the balls, gasping and almost ready to puke. But that wasn’t his biggest problem. The real problem was that Dana hadn’t gotten into a fight with some jock on the football team who would be satisfied with a mild beating and a few tears. The guy he was fighting, Chris, was a high school drop-out and a full-time auto repairman and a part-time drug dealer. And Chris was a brutal thug, widely reputed to be the toughest kid in the whole town, the kind of young man who pulled over to the side of the road on account of a traffic dispute and hoped the other driver was dumb enough to do the same thing. And Chris didn’t want to see Dana cry, he wanted to beat him to into a broken and bloody pulp.

I don’t remember how the dispute started, but it had quickly turned into talking shit back and forth. I do remember my growing sense of alarm when Dana, two years younger and at least forty pounds lighter, didn’t back down to Chris and let it go. I guess Dana was really offended by what Chris was saying about Dana and Dana’s poor and broken family. Chris had escalated the situation to violence by kicking Dana in the groin right off the bat and that is why he was down on the ground by Chris’ Camero gasping and looking sick. Chris was not pounding on Dana yet, he was playing a kind of cat and mouse end game, slapping Dana and knocking his head against the side door of the car and taunting him before getting down to business. I watched this scene and remembered about all the stories of guys Chris had supposedly sent to the hospital, probably exaggerated rumors, but ones I believed.

And I stood there and did nothing, paralyzed by fear for my own well-being and personal safety. And I didn’t even say a word and tears welled in my eyes and I looked away, up at the sky. It was late in the autumn afternoon and the sun had set already. Narrow bands of clouds streaked the sky, dark purple and orange, with vivid red outlines on the edges of the clouds that faced west. And I took this all in, blearily, and then closed my eyes and felt the tears roll down my face, first warm, and then cold on my skin in the early November wind. And I looked down again, expecting something horrific.

But things had changed in that brief moment I had looked away.

Many people, perhaps especially women who can never have had the experience, have an exaggerated idea of what it is like to be kicked in the balls. Folks imagine that it is the most debilitating injury that can be inflicted on a man without a weapon. And sometimes that is true. If a flying boot catches all of a man’s testicles and severely concusses them or, God forbid, ruptures them, then a man will go down for a very long time, completely disabled for a lot longer than any street fight will last. But this is very rare. Usually, if a guy has pants on and is only facing an amateur fighter, not Bruce Lee, he won’t get kicked right in the balls, dead on. More likely he will get kicked in the inner thigh or the blow will be taken by his penis, a more prominent organ which is surprisingly insensitive, squishy and resilient when not in active use.

This is not to say that it doesn’t suck to get kicked in the groin. It does. But the actual effect is only partly physical; there is usually an imaginary terror element to the experience, like getting shot in the arm, but only grazed by the bullet. It hurts like a serious injury, and many people react like they have been gravely injured, but the actual injury is not that severe. A tough guy will get over being grazed in the arm by a bullet and keep his wits about him. Likewise, my friend Dana got over being kicked below the belt. He wasn’t the kind of guy to turtle up and suffer to be bitch-slapped indefinitely because some asshole kicked him in the dick.

And when I looked down at the scene through my teary eyes that day, it was no longer Dana who was in trouble. Somehow he had rallied and it was Chris who was doubled over, almost certainly punched in the nut sack by Dana. I didn’t see it happen, but that must have been the case. And it was Dana getting up, almost fully recovered. And Dana could have walked away then, maybe. But Dana knew he had to share our small crappy town with Chris and every other scumbag in the audience in that parking lot. None of them were going anywhere and their shared future was easy to predict since it was going to be just like the present, more or less. Besides which, Dana was pissed off and wanting to send a message.

Head-butting is illegal in boxing and some people may imagine that it is a cowardly act. It may be dirty and against the rules to head butt in the squared circle, but that is because it is very dangerous and damaging. The move isn’t cowardly because it involves smashing an opponent’s head, with your own head. To effectively head-butt a man, you have to let your own head fly, really let it go, in the direction of an object that is equally as hard, an other man’s head. Dana and Chris weren’t in any kind of boxing ring; they were in the Burger King parking lot, a place that was lawless and unregulated like a deserted island or a prison. And so Dana took a step back from Chris and then forward and snapped his head recklessly and violently into Chris’ face with dire results.

Chris’s nose must have been broken, judging by all the blood that was pouring out of it. But Dana still wasn’t done. Every fighter has a punch that they like best, for some it is a jab, for other’s a left hook. Dana especially loved his right cross. Chris had fallen back against his Camaro and was only semi-conscious by that point and Dana had to hold him up with his left while he pounded on supposedly the toughest guy in the town like you only read about. In a sanctioned bout, a fighter only gets to connect one time like Dana was hitting Chris, since that kind of punch will knock a man out and then the fight is over. Out on the streets, when your opponent is helpless, you decide when it is time for mercy.

So Chris wound up with an asymmetrical face that day, the whole left side being badly bruised and swollen. He also got cut over his left eye, a real bleeding injury, and his left ear was possibly slightly torn, where it was attached to his head. It was hard to tell where exactly the blood was coming from. And while watching him beat Chris down I was inspired by an awesome admiration for my friend Dana that no other man has ever inspired in me, before or since.

But finally Dana slowed down and I approached him and half-jokingly said, “Dude, you don’t want to kill the guy.”

And Dana flashed me a look and I regretted what I had said. I knew that Dana would never lay a hand on me, so I wasn’t afraid. Instead, I was ashamed. I was the pitiful bitch who had done nothing to protect Dana when he was down. I had not even tried. And I therefore had no standing to tell him his business. I should have known this anyway, but Dana’s look reminded me of it sure enough. He looked hurt and disappointed and I shut up and looked back at him and I was ready to start crying all over again and compound my original miserable failure at being a man. And then Dana let Chris drop and said, “Yeah, you’re right.” And he walked toward me.

And I was truly at a loss for words, my own shame preventing me from even telling Dana how fucking cool he really was, how awesome I found him. I was shaken and mortified. And then Dana did something I will never forget. He smiled at me, sardonically at first, and then he shrugged his shoulders and turned his head to the side while he looked me in the eye and he laughed. And I understood that Dana really hadn’t expected me to get involved anyway. He knew me and my limits well enough. And I understood that he didn’t mind, because he could fight his own battles. And I understood that he was still my friend and we were cool. And I slowly smiled and finally laughed too.

And from that day forward Dana was know all around town as a hard individual, maybe the hardest of his era. And, having been there, I knew this too. I knew Dana to be a hero and a champion, a gladiator who didn’t have to back down to anyone but the cops. That is what I learned about Dana that day. I suppose I learned something about myself at the same time, something somewhat less edifying and enjoyable to contemplate. And for years afterwards, whenever I thought about that day I would think to myself, “and that is I know I am a pussy and a loser and that nobody will ever respect me.” I could only marvel that Dana was willing to be my friend in spite of the sorry kind of man that everyone knew me to be.

And for so many years after, I always thought of Dana’s friendship and the forgiveness it inspired in him as a kind of random miracle. I just didn’t get it. It hardly made sense that Dana was willing to be my friend and watch my back, when I was so wholly incapable of returning the favor. I have considered that day and that fight so many times and never really been able to explain it to myself. I knew I had done nothing that day to warrant Dana’s magnanimity.

But maybe I was overly focused on that one incident, giving it too much importance because it was so dramatic and uniquely brutal. I guess there was more to Dana and me than just that one day, times we shared talking over our situations which were similar enough in many ways. We talked about stupid shit, family shit, the kind of thing that is painful when you are a kid. Dana and I had always spent a lot of time sharing our experiences and trying to understand why things were the way they were. We were close like that.

I have never been much of a fighter and it is probably too late to change that much. I have always been more of a talker, an intellectual kind of a guy. Maybe Dana appreciated our talks about life, the occasional insight I might have, something he would not have thought of if left to his own devices. And maybe he appreciated my sympathy when he talked about his father and cried on my shoulder, usually when we were drunk. Maybe he wanted me around because I could offer him empathy and admiration.

It is odd how we can get older and wiser and still never be willing to wholly revise childhood judgments that we made when we were young and foolish. I don’t think I will ever change my mind about my role that day in that parking lot. It still makes me kind of sick to think about it. The most I can do is qualify my low opinion of myself that I established as a teenager. If pushed to apologize or explain my behavior and my character, I would say this: If a man like Dana valued me enough to be my friend, then I must have been alright.