The Good Fight

It had to happen eventually, I suppose. My dear Jefe and I just had our first real fight. In fact, I'm not sure we've quite finished having it--I'll keep you posted. I won't get into the details, but I did want to address the subject of fighting/argument in general.

M came over the other night to record Pinkish Mauve's first album; we entitled it Soul Solicitation. Before we started, though, I had to have some girl talk about the argument with Jefe. "He said I was mean!" I exclaimed, vying for sympathy. "Just because I disagree with him doesn't make me mean."

M's response? "Well...you are mean."

Beg your pardon? What the hell ever happened to the unspoken rule that your girlfriends always have to take your side when you're complaining about your boyfriend? Did that go out the window? Someone let me know when and how that particular duty of a friend got shirked in favor of complete honesty.

Obviously, I was nonplussed by this information. M and I have had two fights, and both were pretty damned unpleasant, I must admit. One resulted from a comment from her that I perceived as homophobic, and one that came from her constant judgment about my life and, ironically, my relationship with Jefe. We got pretty angry with one another both times, but I never felt that I said anything mean; I may have said some things she didn't want to hear, but that's not the same thing.

I probed the issue more and more, trying to find out what I did that made me mean, but she kept answering me in the negative whenever I would try to guess what it is. Did I insult her? No. Did I hit below the belt? No. Did I yell and scream? No. Did I fight dirty, saying anything that was meant merely to hurt her? No. Well, then, what IS it?!

It finally came out that during fights I am intimidating, very frank, and good at using my words to turn the situation in my favor. She said she always felt two steps behind me when we were fighting, like I was somehow controlling the argument like an evil mastermind.

So what was her point? I'm not actually mean, I'm just GOOD at arguing. Shit, I knew that already! I went to Regionals every year I was in debate and I even won first place at the Cascia Hall Classic in 1999. I'm a professionally trained arguer, for fuck's sake. "M, you can't tell me I'm mean during an argument if all you mean is that I'm intimidating and well-spoken." She acquiesced, and I felt better.

But only for a moment. I kept thinking the whole night, and I decided I could tailor my technique to fit the needs of those in my life who are going to be a little less thick-skinned than my debater friends from high school (remember the Akbar post?). I guess I just learned to be aggressive during fights and to monitor the other combatant's responses for even the slightest error or contradiction. This probably does not make me very pleasant to fight with, I'm sure, and unlike debate, you don't get to shake hands pleasantly with your opponent and chat afterwards like you haven't just said his case was ill-conceived, illogical, irrelevant drivel.

So I'm going to try and change the way I fight, in hopes that I'll stop alienating the people I love with my bared-teeth approach. I will say, however, that I think life should be more like a debate round. At the very least, it would be nice for a judge to tell you at the end of the fight who won it. By the time you get to a judge in real life, you'll probably just regret getting into the fight to begin with.

Did I mention that I've decided to apply to law school next year?