Fighting.

I'm just going to come out and say it: part of being a man... is learning how to take a punch.

Not just learning to fight-- to throw a fist, to not tuck your thumb in like they do in movies-- it's learning how to be hurt... and still fight.

A friend of mine is taking a class about masculinity and found herself confused by MMA-- Mixed Martial Arts. Specifically, children taking the form as a sport.

I wrestled in highschool and let me tell you, I was terrible at it. It took me years, infact until the very first fight I had as an adult, before I realized why I was so terrible....

There just wasn't a lot of bite in that little dog. Also, I was wrestling outside of my weightclass and had shitty stamina but... I just didn't want it. I didn't want to hurt, I didn't want to pin, I didn't want to win. I just wanted to be in the sport my friends were in.

I needed to take a good punch.

I had fought before-- mostly, I'd been bullied. Punched in the chest, pushed, wrestled to the ground-- but it wasn't until I was 23 that I took a punch; a good, solid punch in the face.

I was riding my bike in a busy part of the city I lived in, in a place with many bars at the very douchiest time of the evening... bar time.

Three guys hassled me for my bike. Wanted to "borrow" it. And one decided to throw a punch. It struck my cheek, it gave me brief stars and it... didn't hurt too much at all.

The next day, I went to work with a swollen lip, a black eye and a smile. I didn't win that fight but damn... I fought three men, all taller than me, and in the end... they ran off. And I still had my bike. I got in my licks. And I still had my pride.

People had gathered to watch the fight. When I got up, I got nods and a few compliments. I lost that fight... but I didn't run. I wasn't afraid.

The moment you realize you can get punched in the face is the moment you stop fearing other people. It's the moment you realize that pain is temporary but shame is forever. It's the moment you realize... you don't have to hit the hardest, you just have to be willing to keep on swinging... even against three opponents.

I haven't been in a lot of fights. Once, I had a bad drunken bender where I felt the need to pick a fight with a much bigger opponent... he flattened my face into a parking lot, broke my tooth and left me a scar that has only just faded away, 5 years later.

But I got really good, solid hit on him-- a 6 foot and change, 200 something pound man-- and I took him off his feet and unsettled his jaw. And when I came home, it was to surprise my room mate, smiling blood and laughing at the while.

I just needed to know I could still take a punch.

I never like to fight people smaller than me. A friend once got sucker-punch outside of a bar and my friends went into action-- it was a mass brawl, them against us and the guy in question wasn't a close friend-- but that didn't matter. They touched one of ours and we, as men, are obliged to respond in kind.

I grab a hold of one kid near, a skinny one, slammed him to the ground, realized I could beat the shit out of him and said, fist raised, "stay the fuck down or I will put you down."

He stayed down.

We knew our place. He knew I could hurt him. I knew I could hurt him. And neither of us, in all the confusion, all the mess, had the will to bloody his nose. He was some skinny kid who didn't want to be fighting in the first place. And he was watching his friends get the shit beaten out of them.

I got drunk on one St Patrick's day, went out to a bar and decided it would be intelligent to grab a random girl's ass-- to harass her.

I had a girlfriend at the time, which made the move even stupider. After it was done and I realized how much I needed to grow up, I went to apologize to her-- and her boyfriend punched me in the face.

Stars... and I was on the ground, being wrestled. As they started pulling us apart and I finally got clear enough to get my own hit in, I... stopped.

I had touched this guy's girlfriends ass. Maybe I deserved to get punched in the face.

I didn't even take a shot. I laughed it off. I found my glasses, ducked the cops who were called in, and met my friends in the next bar....

I wasn't afraid to lose to this guy. I wasn't afraid to be beaten. It was a righteous pain I was feeling, with blood on my cheek. I deserved it. And besides... the pain never really is as bad as the fear of the pain.

It's fear that's the problem and it's the fear that is why taking a punch is part of being a man.

Men measure one another. When we walk streets, when we meet new people, some part of our primitive brains measure shoulders and height, watch for muscle and quickness... we all wonder, "if I needed to, could I kick this guy's ass?"

It created pecking orders, hierarchies. It is in every man that stands too close to another, it's in every loud voice that dominates a room-- it is dominance, one of the primary ways by which we judge ourselves and others in the social world.

All based on primal, animal fear. Fear of pain. Fear of danger.

And every punch you take is another reminder that pain... really isn't so bad, after all.

Sometimes, it feels good. Freeing. Righteous.

At some point in American history, we all became very, very afraid. We stopped letting our kids play tag. We stopped letting them skin their knees. We stopped wanting them to get hurt.

My friend wonders about MMA. She finds it brutal. I don't blame her, for one who isn't versed in it it does look brutal-- the special MMA gloves are smaller than boxing gloves, leading to less bruising and more blood. (That said, boxing gloves cause more overall damage, with less bruising and more internal damages, than bare-knuckle street fight). Brazilian Ju Jitsu, which is the basis of most MMA besides dirty boxing and kick boxing, is a subtle martial art which involves fighting for position and a lot of patience.

What everyone wants to see, is people getting punched and kicked. What people get, is... two men rolling around on the ground, doing things neither of us understand. A chess match, five moves in, where no one but the players and diehards know if someone actually moved their rook.

It's bloody and fisty and new and that scares people. But so is boxing. And wrestling? Did you know that people deliberately shove two fingers into the assholes of their opponents when no one is looking? It's not a nice sport, Olympics or no. Football? The NFL is only this year revising rules for kick-off returns--- because they're so generally dangerous. Paralyzingly dangerous.

Contact sports are not safe... and sometimes, unsafe might just be good.

Because if there were anything I could change about my childhood that I had any control of, it would be to get into more fights.

I wish that my 11 year old self would've been punched in the face more. And that he would've... kept on getting his licks.

Because while I accept, and sometimes even like, the man he grew up to be... I sometimes pine for the man he could have been.

The man who wasn't afraid.