Hard Rain

Sometimes the phenomenon is caused by fear. Fear not so much of the requirements, but rather the consequences of life as a hard target. Seriously protecting yourself calls for the a

Other times there’s a form of denial at work. Circuitous routes, extensive security checks, an ongoing internal dialogue consisting of If I were trying to get to me, how would I do it? all require a deep acceptance of the notion that there are people out there who have both the motive and the means to cut short your time on Earth. This notion is i

Think about it. Ever look in a closet or under the bed, when you’re alone in the house, to ensure that an intruder isn’t hiding there? Now, if you really believed that the Man in the Black Ski Mask was lurking in those places, would you behave the same way? Of course not. But it’s more comfortable to believe the danger only in the abstract, and to act on it only half-heartedly. That’s denial.

Finally, and most obviously, there is laziness. Who has the time or energy to inspect the family car for improvised explosive devices before every drive? Who can afford a two-hour, roundabout route to get to a place that could have been reached directly in ten minutes? Who wants to pass up a restaurant or bar just because the only seats available face the wall, not the entrance?

Rhetorical questions, but I know how Crazy Jake would have answered. The living, he would have said. And the ones who intend to go on that way.

Which leads to an easy rationalization, one that I’m sure is common to people who have taken lives the way I have. If he’d really wanted to live, the rationalization goes, I wouldn’t have been able to get to him. He wouldn’t have permitted himself that weakness, the one that did him in.

The yakuza’s weakness was his addiction to weights. Who knows what fueled it-a history of childhood bullying that made him want to appear visibly strong afterward, an attempt to overcome a feeling of inadequacy born of being naturally slighter of build than Caucasians, some suppressed homoeroticism like the one that drove Mishima. Maybe some of the same impulses that had led him to become a gangster to begin with.

His obsession had nothing to do with health, of course. In fact, the guy was an obvious steroid abuser. His neck was so thick it looked as though he could slide a tie up over his head without having to loosen the knot, and he sported acne so severe that the club’s stark incandescent lighting, designed to show off to maximum effect the rips and cuts its members had developed in their bodies, cast small shadows over the pocked landscape of his face. His testicles were probably the size of raisins, his blood pressure likely rampaging through an overworked heart.

I’d also seen him explode into the kind of abrupt, unprovoked violence that is another symptom of steroid abuse. One night, someone I hadn’t seen before, no doubt one of the club’s civilian members who liked the location and thought that rubbing elbows with reputed gangsters made them tougher by osmosis, started removing some of the numerous iron plates that were weighing down the bar the yakuza had been using to bench-press. The yakuza had walked away from the station, probably to take a break, and the new guy must have mistakenly assumed this meant he was through. The guy was pretty sizable himself, his colorful Spandex sleeveless top showing off a weightlifter’s chest and arms.

Someone probably should have warned him. But the club’s membership consisted primarily of chinpira-low-level young yakuza and wa

Someone nudged the yakuza and pointed. The yakuza, who had been squatting, reared up and bellowed, “Orya!” loud enough to vibrate the plate glass in the front of the rectangular room. What the fuck!

Everyone looked up, as startled as if there had been an explosion-even the new guy who had been so clueless just an instant earlier. Still bellowing expletives, the yakuza strode directly to the bench-press station, doing a good job of using his voice, either by instinct or design, to disorient his victim.

Everything about the yakuza-his words, his tone, his movement and posture-screamed Attack! But the man was too frozen, either by fear or denial, to move off the line of assault. And although he was holding a ten-kilo iron plate with edges considerably harder than the yakuza’s cranium, the man did nothing but drop his mouth open, perhaps in surprise, perhaps in inchoate and certainly futile apology.

The yakuza blasted into him like a rhino, his shoulder driving into the man’s stomach. I saw the man try to brace for the impact, but again he failed to move off the line of attack and his attempt was largely useless. The yakuza drove him backward into the wall, then unleashed a flurry of crude punches to his head and neck. The man, in shock now and ru

Huffing and swearing, the yakuza bent and caught the prostrate man’s right ankle between an enormous biceps and forearm. For a moment, I thought he was going to apply a jujitsu leglock and try to break something. Instead, he straightened and proceeded to drag the man’s prone form to the club’s entrance and out into the street.

He returned a moment later, alone, and, after taking a moment to catch his breath, resumed his rightful place on the bench without looking at anyone else in the room. Everyone returned to what they were doing: his affiliates, because they didn’t care; the civilians, because they were u

A part of my mind that’s always ru

Unless he was a borderline sociopath, which was statistically unlikely, I knew the yakuza would now be feeling slightly uneasy about what people must have made of his outburst. I took the opportunity to stroll over to the bench-press station and ask him if he needed a spot.