Below the Belt
Ponder this:
Is it ever appropriate
to strike a man in his testicles?

Now, don’t answer too quickly.
I want you to savor the visual
you have in your head
at this precise moment.
There’s that which you men have pictured
and then that spectacle of testicle trauma
you women have oozing through your brains.
They’re not always the same.
You women simply have not envisioned
a sufficient level of violence.

Try again.
Get mean.
Make a face.
Imagine someone who really deserves it.
This is YOUR moment.
Nope. Nope.
Pathetic attempt.
Girlfriend:
You are soooo lacking in motivation.

Have I ever struck a man in the groin?
Why yes. Yes I have.
Here. Take my hand.
I will lead you to the dark side.
It’s just up these stairs.
There behind my eye sockets.
Nice big comfy chairs where you can
sit back, relax and soak in
all that ultra-violence.

Oh, and being as you’re sharing my inner eyes
and they being prone to disturbed cognizance,
please note that my visual acuity is quite crisp.
Everything is HIGH DEFINITION.
Indeed, I have refrained from alcohol
because I knew you were
gonna wanna see this some day.

Shhh… Quiet now.
The show’s about to start.
I’m getting ready to open my eyes.
I’m at this party, see.

Okay. Turns out the girl we were just…
Wait… Again,
note that I’m including you in this
as you are now part of the decision process
and therefore must share in the guilt.

Anyway…
Turns out the girl we were just hitting on
has a live-in boyfriend.
Big guy. He’s upstairs.
There’s children upstairs.
She just went upstairs because he’s upstairs
and there’s children upstairs.
Course you and I don’t know this is an issue just yet.
Up until now, he’s just a quiet bodybuilder
you’ve seen off and on at the gym.

The party’s pumpin’. The music’s blarin’.
From where we are all sitting,
you can see down a long hallway
to observe the two of them have come downstairs
and passed through a screen door
to stand a few feet outside.
All you can hear is the music
but there on her face,
you can see she’s screaming at him.
He says something.
She reaches up and slaps him hard.
He reaches out and shoves her with such force
that she flies off her feet
and lands hard on the concrete sidewalk.
You stand up.
You start moving towards the door
which seems a lot further away
than it did a moment ago.
She’s tough.
She’s quick.
Before you’re halfway down that long hallway,
she’s gotten up,
took off one of her high heel shoes
and brought its spike down on the top of his head.
Impressive you think, and pause for a second.

And then, in slow motion,
you see his fist pull back,
fly forward and there explode into her fragile face.
As you pass through the screen door,
you see her hit the ground again.
The red of her lipstick
has been obliterated by another form of red.

He turns to face you and from his lips comes,
“I’ll kick your motherfucking ass too.”
And for the next thirty seconds he tries to do
just that.
Me?
I try my best to keep you guys
from getting knocked out of your comfy chairs.


Let’s cut to the quick.
She gets up off the ground
in yet another attempt to attack him.
I go to shove her aside
and it’s at this point that he jumps forward
and puts you and I into a forward headlock.
There in our muffled ears we hear him mumble,
“What do ya think of that?!”
Yup. He’s got us pretty tight.
Now bear in mind that from this vantage point
(I with my eyes and you in your comfy chairs)
we can see two things pretty prominently.
There to the left,
and sprawled across the ground,
she with her face a spattered mess of blood.
There to the right and just within reach—
his groin.

At this point I will pause.

I’ve a question I want to put to all you women out there.
There’s a decision to be made here.
Being as you are female
and morally superior when it come to
choosing peace over violence,
all you have to do
is come to a group consensus of “stop,”
and the poem ends right here.

So what’s it gonna be?

Yes?
Fuckin’ A right,
I slammed the inner edge of my hand
full force into his tender nuts!
Felt his testicles part
as my hand passed through
to crunch bone to bone.
Didn’t stop there.
Nosiree.
Grabbed ahold of his junk and squeezed.
Not only that— I twisted.
Felt his squishy gonads
pass through the ringer of my finger joints
to pop out on the other side.
One this way. One that way.

Oh, and he went down.
Me with him being as I was attached
appendage to appendage
in the worse
hands-on gay experience
he would ever have.

And he commences with this gagging noise.
Now normally,
a gagging noise isn’t pretty, but…
this one was.

And I feel hands grabbing at me.
Pulling me away.
There through my eyes…
There through your eyes…
There on the ground,
you see a man curled up in a fetal position.
And you ask yourself:
“Did I make the right decision?”

Well girls… did we?

©06 Jack Hubbell