I had a lovely day on Saturday with a bunch of friends drinking and eating in a rather splendid tapas bar near Borough Market. Unfortunately the whole experience was tarnished by getting embroiled in a situation in which a very drunk guy and his gobby girlfriend were arguing loudly with the staff (because, we think, they had been politely refused more alcohol).
One of my friends stepped in, thinking a calming female influence might help matters, but that didn't go quite as well as she'd hoped, so another friend stepped up to defend her, then I joined in to lend a bit of moral support and before we knew where we were, a massive drunken ox of a guy was shouting “I'll bite your f**king face off!” at us while his chav girlfriend egged him on.
Anyway, fortunately it all ended without any actual violence, but after the dust settled I did wonder what it was about aggressive male posturing that seemed to invite ridiculous threats of cartoon violence that would actually be very difficult to execute regardless of the physical prowess of the aggressor.
I know it sounds a little bit ‘playground’, but what's wrong with the good old-fashioned threat to “kick someone's head in”? That's surely intimidating enough without making an overt commitment to extreme feats of very specific mutilation.
Think about it. Biting someone's face off would take quite a lot of time and would be really very unpleasant, even for the biter. You might bite half of someone's face off then wish you hadn't started but have to finish the job off for fear of (apologies) losing face.
Other threats in the drunken antler-locking phrasebook are the timeworn “I'll hit you so hard you'll have to pull your socks down to shit!” and the equally classic: “I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck!”
Now, regardless of how strong you are, ripping someone's head clean off is going to be quite a challenge. Even if you could get a good grip on the head, you'd need to attach the body to something or at least weigh the other end down otherwise you'd just be pulling someone around by their head, which might be uncomfortable for that person, but is not nearly as visually arresting as a manual decapitation.
I suppose if you were very strong indeed and pulled extremely quickly it's just possible through sheer inertia that you could pull a head off, but even then I think it'd be equally likely that the head would stay on and you end up just flinging the whole body across the road (or room) and then have to go sheepishly traipsing after it for a second attempt.
If we treat the whole thing dispassionately, simply as a physical conundrum that needs to be solved, I guess if you stood on the person's feet, took a firm grip under the jaw and then tugged upwards with the right force you might just be successful in removing their head cleanly, but it's by no means clear to me that the neck is the weak link in the corporeal chain — the body might shear at the knees, which would be embarrassing for everyone involved.
And then there's the whole crapping in the neck thing. It's really quite a skill to be able to excrete on demand, particularly if adrenaline is pumping round your system and there are lots of people watching. Imagine that you have managed to get the head off, think quite understandably that you'd broken the back of the job and then find yourself unable to deliver on the second part of the threat through unexpected performance anxiety.
And what happens if you get involved in some form of fracas on the way back from the toilet, just when, how to put it, the cupboard is bare? Are people really going to hang around for you to eat a full meal and drink a couple of strong coffees before kicking off? I think not. Maybe you'd just have to adapt your threat — “I'll rip your head of and punch you in the neck hole“ might work as a backup.
Anyway, it got me thinking about what authentic pre-fight dialogue would be like. One that accurately reflected how the altercation would actually play out. And I think it would go something like this:
“I think you'd better shut your f**king mouth mate!”
“Oh yeah, and what are you gonna to do about it?”
“I tell you exactly what I'll do. I'll give you slightly clumsy exploratory shove is what I'll do!”
“Yeah? Well I'll shove you back pal. With both hands. Harder than you shoved me but probably not hard enough to actually push you over”
“Oh yeah? You reckon, do you, big man? Well then, I'll take a massive theatrical swing at you which probably won't connect but even it does will likely hurt me more than it hurts you because I actually have no idea how to punch properly.”
“Well then, I'll lunge wildly at you without really knowing what I hope to achieve and if I'm lucky I might accidentally headbutt you in the chin, which will probably be quite painful and make you wonder whether a full-blown scrap is really a good idea.”
“Well, you'd better be careful because I'll wrestle you to the ground and end up straddling you in such as way that it's not clear whether I'm trying to fight with you or mate with you.”
“If you do that my girlfriend will start screaming hysterically at you using a string of frankly shocking expletives that will make me feel slightly embarrassed and question whether she's really the sort of girl I want to be going out with after all.”
“And then we'll both realise at about the same time that the whole thing is starting to look a bit homo-erotic and suddenly, desperately just want to get out of the situation”
“Yeah. Shall we just leave it then?”
“Yeah, reckon so. You had a lucky escape though.”
“You too. I was this close to f**king you up.”
“Dream on, pal. Dream on.”
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