Girls Gone Ballistic

It was just idle curiosity. A magazine in our break room at work had that article about the teenage girls from Lakeland Florida. Right, the ones who decided to retaliate for some derogatory comments about them on a MySpace page by inviting the page's author to a house where they beat the shit out of her- and filmed it!

Idle and maybe morbid curiosity, like the car wreck we turn away from but can't help viewing. By the time I got to YouTube, it'd been squashed. Morbid curiosity turned back to idle- maybe curiosity of the sort I remember on a neighbor's face as he raked his leaves while watching two dogs fucking on the sidewalk.

Okay, girl fight. I was already there, so why not watch something? Well I watched 'em for awhile, mainly crude grappling little affairs with lots of wrestling. Boring, really. But harmless. And then things turned morbid again.

It was a backyard party, with a volleyball net and drinks out on a table, people laughing and having a good time. One girl drags another by her shirt out the back door into the yard and then wrestles her to the ground. From there she never quite lets her get up, just hands flying- pushing and punching, and of course yelling the whole time(you fuckin' whore, etc..).

Fortunately for the victim, her attacker didn't really know how to throw punches, so there didn't seem to be much real physical damage done. Still it'd shake the hell out of you having someone just go off on you like this, hurling fists and feet and epithets. The face of the victim was like Shelley Duvall's best one in The Shining-just sheer terror. It haunted me about as much.

So this drama goes on for maybe 20 seconds, and two of the guys there look at each other and nod, as if to say, "we're stopping this shit". And they separate the two girls, and she's still trying to hit her, reaching around and swatting. Several other guys step in to block all this, each taking a wide stance for the victim to crawl under. She makes her way under the volleyball net and from there heads back through the house-as you can imagine, at a pretty good clip.

Well it was probably one of the attacker's buddies who filmed all this. Who knows what the motive was for the attack, probably some guy they were both seeing. I don't know who's sicker: them for filming it or me for watching it.

I have been that angry at various folks to the point where I'd imagined doing that kind of damage to them(though hopefully I'd throw better punches). I understand that kind of venom. But to actually act it out(much less film it, for Christ's sake!)just fans the flames. You should be putting them out. That I don't understand.

You see, it's not the hitting that freaks me out. Boxers Arturo Gatti and "Irish" Mickey Ward, for example, had three brutal fights where they beat the living shit out of each other. No animosity, just the intensity of the game. Outside the ring, they're good friends, who hang out and play golf and so forth together. That I can understand. Actually I think that's cool.

What I don't understand, what haunts my ass, is not even the venomous anger--that I've felt myself--but more the cruelty of the situation, and how it's not only condoned but glorified. If I were the person who dragged that poor bitch out and slapped the shit out of her like that, I'd feel ashamed seeing a video of it. I'd be hangin' my stoopid head. But I'd bet dollars to donuts her feeling watching it is more like righteous indignation. Oy vey..

Well the only one in this fucked-up world I can fix is me. With some work of course. I just try not to have hatreds like that, or at least keep them in perspective. Thus I'm happy to say my 'destruction fantasies' toward a couple locals who'd irked me have gotten milder over the years. I still knock the wind out of both of them, but feel remorse afterward, and end up buying their drinks for the rest of the night.