The darkness was barely mitigated by the soft yellow spread of street lamps. I remember David, the curly blond, pale-skinned birthday boy, crouching over the struggling body of a short haired blond, probably only nineteen. David’s fired fist after fist between the cracks of the boy’s flailing arms. We were all in a patch of grass about a quarter football field in size, smack dab in the center of Dockside—an apartment complex in Greenville, North Carolina. A couple dozen or so guys in their early twenties were speckled around this domestic battlefield. Bj, a tall, slender black man with dreads down to his elbows and fists like stones was squared up with a stocky Hispanic man; Bj’s nose was broken and his opponent’s dark, buzzed hair was caked with blood. There were four of them, one on the ground under David, one going toe to toe with Bj, one dodging aggressors like a running back, and another out of sight. It was these four unfortunate men against over twenty drunken college kids and party-goers.
I grabbed David’s shoulders, trying to pull him up, all the while yelling at the grounded kid. Why’d you hit me! I shouted over and over again. Before I could force David up, I felt four taps beneath my right ribs. I was confused. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a red shirt with some yellow text screen-printed onto it, maybe some sort of logo. I don’t remember. Pouring out of the shirt there were arms, and at the end of one of those arms was the blade of a small hunting knife no more than four inches long. The fourth man had come back for his friends, fully armed. There was no pain in that moment, just confusion. Did he punch me? What did I do? I didn’t hit anyone…. I didn’t hit anyone.
The four taps told me to put my hand to my side and walk towards the street—towards that soft yellow light. My mind refused to think; it was on a mission: get away. I kept walking until Anthony, a dark haired Italian friend I’d known since high school ran up to me, asking me if I saw what was happening.
“I think I just got stabbed” I said.
“What?” he laughed.
I looked down at my side, lifted my hand, now dripping with scarlet blood, “yup, I just got stabbed.”
When he realized I wasn’t joking, he threw his arm around my back and grabbed my hand. We’d just started walking towards David’s apartment when we were intercepted by a young woman with long brunette hair, and a dress that barely covered her rear. Before we could say anything she told informed us in a worried but bubbly voice that she was a certified-nurse-aid. She ushered us into a closer apartment, one not wrecked by a night of partying. Almost immediately after entering, I found myself topless with her hands meticulously cleaning my wounds and examining the damage.
A few hours earlier
I arrived at the party after attending a get together at a co-worker’s apartment. We’d played charades and had a couple glasses of wine that night. Once I got to David’s I felt overdressed, Dockers on my feet, white button up with a thin checked pattern covering my torso, and grey slacks from waist to shoes. When I got out of my cow-worker's SUV, I saw David and his girlfriend Gracie playing beer pong under the apartment in the driveway. Dockside apartments are on stilts, so their driveways go entirely beneath them, like beach houses. Half the party was under the apartment, half inside of it.
(Dockside during ECU's infamous Holloween weekends)
Gracie’s younger brother was selling coke as at the party, and you could tell who was yacked up and who wasn’t by the speed at which they talked and the rapidity with which they drank. Nick, a slender, flamboyant, and always well groomed friend of David and mine was taking swigs of tequila between every other fast-firing sentence he shouted at the people around him. David himself was yelling out all of his words, greetings and “thank you”s whenever someone would tell him “happy birthday.” David’s facial muscles never sat comfortably when he was rolling, tonight was no exception. The molly he’d taken earlier had him jawing, smiling, bouncing around and constantly rubbing the roof of his mouth with the middle of his tongue.
The driveway was for the beer drinkers, the keg-lovers, the pong players, the dancers and the general party-goers. The first floor of the apartment was for the smokers a liquor drinkers; it felt like every time I walked up there was a blunt being rolled or smoked. David’s roommates decided to keep the glassware—bongs, bowls, chillums and steam rollers—in their rooms. Probably a good choice since drunk people and expensive glass don’t always mix well. A counter divided the back of the living room from the kitchen. Tonight the counter was covered with a layer of sticky alcohol, liquor bottles, plastic cups (both dirty and clean) and a bag of Munchos chips.
Then there was the VIP section, the top floor. This was where Judah, the younger brother that was way too young to be living in Greenville with his sister, was running his business. I remember walking up there to say hello, seeing the small square mirror passed around with small lines being added and sniffed away from it intermittently. Judah’s dealer was there too, all the way from Charlotte. He was selling his own goods for thirty a gram, a “severely low price” according to the patrons of the VIP section.
Anthony and I made a run to the College Store across from East Carolina University to pick up a second keg halfway through the night. I hadn’t drank at the birthday party so after dubbing me ‘most fit to drive’ they sent me off in someone’s old ’98 mustang. It was only minutes after I got back that I heard yelling upstairs, four men came running out of the front door, shouting incoherently. Nick, the tequila master, turned to look and as soon as he did he was clocked in the face by a short-haired blond kid with a long red shirt and a black-and-white fitted cap. When I stepped in and tried to ask the kid what was going on, he decided to hit me too. His fist landed right under my nose, smashing my beard against my mandible. I remember thinking it was such an odd place to get hit.
Bj came outside next, screaming “they broke my fuckin’ nose!” over and over. That was all it took. The entire party started pushing towards these four assailants. David jumped into action, along with me, Bj’s girlfriend and a couple other patrons I can’t quite remember. We tried to hold everyone back, yelling at the four kids to leave. We knew they were bad news, but I think we all figured twenty drunken college kids against four possible high schoolers wasn’t right regardless of their crime. But they wouldn’t run. They just kept watching the crowd while slowly backing up. It went on this way for about a quarter mile, us holding our friends and fellow party-goers back, while the four slowly backed away. We had no idea they just robbed Judah.
Both sides continuously screamed profanities the entire time. I kept asking the short haired blond why he hit me, and he kept telling me to shut up, or that he didn’t know, or that he thought I was attacking him, he was scared. After one of the other four said they’re just trying to get away, the blond kid calmed down, “look man, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Just tell your boys to back off or shits about to get real.” There was no hope of that. Bj waved his knife in the air, yelling how he was going to “kill that fucker.” His girlfriend and some others got the knife out of his hand. Then time seemed to slow down.
A man broke through the crowd, waving a plastic pink lawn chair above his head; he swung it back and forth at one of the four backing up, missing each time, but successfully starting the fight. Bj found his way to the stocky, tan man. David decided he was done peace keeping and turned around, tackling the blond to the ground, and began firing off fist after fist.