TRAPPED

I was trapped. "Sure," I said, almost breathlessly. The girls abruptly broke up their tight circle and dispersed to the eight-points of an invisible "ring" in the sand with Tim and I as its center. They clapped and cheered like pom-pom girls.


And it all suddenly took on the atmosphere of ritual. The boister of a second before hardened into cold order. The girls, too young to have unlearned their instincts, realize they are witnessing the ancient act, old and essential as life, of one male of the pack displaying the inferiority of another. Saner heads do not prevail. In a crowd of 8 or 10 adults, one would have stepped forward and put a stop to two males about to fight with their fists. But not one teen-age girl would. Not one in 200. Because they understand the animalistic power of this scene, which has been acted out for their sake for millions of years. They watched, detached but closely attentive, like the herd of does watching two bucks lock horns.

"What rules?" I asked feebly.

For an answer Tim quick-steps toward me, unbends his elbow, and sinks a solid fist plump into my stomach. "There's no rules in a belly-beating," he laughs.


I hear my mouth utter a guttural "OOUFF!" I feel the shock and pain of being violated, then something swells rapidly inside me like a balloon, an ache that crowds out everything.


He whomps me with another belly-slammer. No breath is left to lose, so the voice that comes out of me makes an empty sound like "ullll." The next thing I know my eyes are trying to focus on my fingers, which are splayed on the dark sand. I'm down on my knees, head hanging, mouth limp and wet, sucking air. My belly is a heavy, cold knot. Tim stands over me and begins to taunt me.

No one did anything. The girls watching may despise the bully who punched me, and she may be warmly sympathetic to my suffering, but make no mistake, she will never be able to see me again without envisioning the sight of me twitching and helpless and vulnerable, clutching my punched belly. And it will make her distant toward me.


It's worse than a punch in the face: then at least you can will yourself not to cry. A fist to the gut rips out your ability to curb your reaction. At least it did to me. I did the slow, rhythmic, violent dance of the belly-whomped. A stasis between the in-sucking force, which folded me in on myself, and the out-thrusting spasms of a diaphragm trying to breathe -- the brain screams a command to the stunned diaphragm: "expand!" and the whole body resonates with it.


I felt the futile kicking of my feet (as though the basic fear-instinct of "Run!" had somehow been the only part of my brain unaffected by the pain of the punch). It turned me into a fool: puffy, suffering, jerky, softbodied anybody's bully-meat. No one who ever saw me that way could forget it.