Page 11 of The Pacifist
Neptune, who was wearing a tank top that revealed an angry red scar running along his collarbone, pushed out his broad chest and used an accusatory tone of voice, “I was sitting in my favorite bar waiting for Kal to come back from taking a piss when this zombie-looking fathead provoked me into a fight.”
“And how did he do that?”
“I was just minding my own business and then the idiot called out to me, ‘What are you looking at?’.”
“And?”
Neptune lowered his brow and sighed as if I was mentally slow and he was losing patience with me.
"He beat him up of course.” Mason said with excitement before adding to Neptune, “Or at least I hope you did.”
“Of course.”
I closed my eyes for a second, reminding myself that these men didn’t know any better. “You beat up a man for asking you what you were looking at.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just introduce yourself? After all, you said that your name would make others not want to mess with you.”
“Because he annoyed me. If you’d been there, you would understand. It wasn’t so much what he said, but the aggressive way he said it. I needed to teach him a lesson.”
My tone was impassive. “And how did that work out for you?”
Neptune lifted his hand. “That’s fucking obvious, but the worst thing is that I got banned from my favorite bar for a whole month.”
Kal-El placed a sympathetic hand on Neptune’s shoulder. “You didn’t have a choice, man. You can’t let anyone give you shit like that.”
“I know, right?” Neptune nodded. “And I destroyed him, so that was good.”
“No, it wasn’t good. Violence is never good. It’s primitive and barbaric.” This time, I couldn’t keep my dislike for violence out of my tone that became a bit shrill.
My words made Mason and the two guards snort out loud. “You’re just saying that because you wouldn’t be able to defend yourself in a bar fight. If anyone had provoked you…” Neptune chuckled. “Shit, you’d probably piss your pants or something.”
I didn’t like them laughing at me. “No, I wouldn’t wet myself. I would use my words to de-escalate the situation.
“How, by begging him to leave you alone?”
It took all my patience to wait for them to get over their burst of laughter before responding, “It would have been so easy for you to answer him with a de-escalating response instead of letting it get to a fight.”
“Like what?”
“Well, try it with me. Tell me what he told you.”
“Umm… okay,” Neptune stopped smiling and turned serious. “Hey you, what the fuck are you looking at?”
In a calm voice I nodded to his chest. “Your shirt, I like it. Where did you get it?”
“But what if it’s an ugly shirt?” Mason asked.
“Then you can say something like, ‘Did we go to school together? You look familiar.’”
“Alright, I see your point.” Kal-El shifted his balance. “But then let me ask you this. A few months ago, I got in a big fight because a man accused me of looking at his woman. You can’t confuse a woman with a classmate, so what was I supposed to say then?”
“Easy, you just look at her and say. ‘I’m sorry if I was staring but is your name Susan?’ When she says ‘No’ you just tell her she looks a lot like your new dentist or something. It’s not that hard. What matters is that you don’t get into the fight.”
"Huh." Kal-El looked a little impressed. “I actually do have a female dentist, but her name isn’t Susan, it’s Marianne.”
Mason scoffed. “Don’t listen to Jonah. He’s just afraid of pain.”
