The following is my book and details my experiences learning Martial Arts:
Glass Face
Be a light unto yourself in a world that is utterly becoming dark.
Jiddu Krishnamurthi
Prologue – The Nightmare
My daddy, would smell like shit and urine.
His intoxicated mass sprawled in the kitchen, or on streets, or police cell floors when they found him.
When teetering on the precipice of sober-drunk, he’d crash through bedroom doors
I’d shiver with silent fright, upon hearing his heavy boots trudging, as unsure off-balanced feet met flower carpeted floor.
His violence erupting, as his eyes flared crimson lazer beams.
My mummy would be sent reeling, and there’d be dulcet sobs, which were the wake following her muffled screams.
I’d run and hide in wardrobes, behind furniture and when he found me I’d hide inside my mind, or the safe fantasy veils within my dreams.
-I write this now and question whether it really was as bad as my mind would have it seem?-
My early imprints are of broken glass and shattered hopes. My childhood was an environ where damp crept across the wailing walls.
And although this is an outright lie, my nightmares fixate upon waves of sorrow, drenching corridors and halls.
Alcohol was his destroyer. I never learnt what he was running away from. Those causes that made him drink himself numb, a wayfarer to oblivion.
The intervening drunken moments when he walked away, left me running fingers over burning bruised skin.
Welts were my companions, and warm purple stains.
Marks I hid under cardigan sleeves so that I could focus on carrying just the weight of shame behind the veil of wool.
My daddy was a good man, somewhere deep inside.
But the flowing blood of nobility and hope, became staunched, withered, that cold Monday morning when he died.
Broken Glass
Broken, jagged glass was pushed into his face by the attacker.
There was a feint crunch as the bottle ground against cheek and orbital bone. The sound resonated across Leicester Square, London. Onlookers stood, ensnared and frozen. Psychologists might refer to this as an example of the ‘Bystander Effect;’ which results in an overriding inability to consciously process reality, and therefore act.
It felt to me as if things had slowed down. Classically symptomatic of the time distortion suffered by anyone who suffers an adrenal surge.
The bystander effect teaches us that the more people who are around when a person needs assistance, the lower the likelihood anyone will help. And there were a lot of people present.
I couldn’t move. I was transfixed in a fugue.
The only part of me which still seemed to operate outside of the confines of surreality were my eyes. They scanned the periphery, searching for validation that this wasn’t just a moment of mild lucidity within a dream like state. The luminescence of the night scene shone brightly. Neon hues of red and blue reflected onto the pavement where a light sheen of rain had created natures’ mirror.
Suddenly, the world became a vague, mottled shadow of shapes and sounds which had once been familiar to me. As I stared blankly into this inverted mirror world it became decrepit, an abhorrent version of the society I knew and loved.
Ultra-violence was being dispensed for all to viddy. Are people really this malevolent?
Are we human beings so depraved that we would draw blood over the trifles of everyday living?
Is it worth changing the course of a persons life in an instant of depraved aggression?
The victim had crumpled to the ground, his back sliding against the metal shutters of a shop window. His arms writhed. He was still alive. There were murmurs from the crowds. Sounds of devastated gasps from girls in mini-skirts and their accompanying neotenous, quasi-alpha male boyfriends.
We had just exited Limelights nightclub in the early hours of that frigid October morning. A fight which had begun inside the club with the thumping background of hip hop had spilled out onto the streets. And it soon grew apparent that the victims respite from the attack was to be short-lived, the broken bottle to his face a prelude to what was to follow.
He gradually rose to a staggered-standing position. Blood flowed down his white jacket creating a slick layer of red reflective goo. It seeped, puddling onto the pavement at his feet. The wound was a crimson spider web of hot cavities and swelling that distorted the entirety of his face.
He was a mess.
Jagged glass. One piece had fragmented in such a way that it sat upright, like a tombstone, resting atop the slab of paving concrete. The edges glinted neon lights from shops and the reflection of car lights as they dazzled past. Refracted pieces of lighting, fragmented into a skewed reflection onto the floor. Like the duality of light meeting dark, or the opposing forces that make up the symmetrical energies of yin yang, female and male, Jekyll and Hyde.
The attack had been swift, executed with merciless precision by one medium built, dark complexioned man. But as the victim formed words, bellowing and grunting with accompanying flailing arms, his message started to take form, cursing the aggressor; “come on then you f*cking c*nt!”
It had taken only one man with an improvised edged weapon to cause this amount of damage. A group of five youths stepped forwards, evidently friends of the attacker. With swiftness they initiated a joint onslaught on the bloodied man.
It was a cacophonous outpouring of rage.
Fists flew into his head and neck. Kicks sporadically peppering him as he slumped back onto the floor.
And as quickly as the swarming had begun, it was over.
The group ran away.
The husks of my chilled fingers searched eagerly for the warmth of my jacket. Gently easing into pockets, greased with the sweat of my hands which had suddenly become clammy. Those same hands became cupped within my pockets, longing to feel comfort within the vast abyss of polyester lining. Elbows pressed against torso, muffled by the cushioning inside the duck-down jacket. The delicate pressing of my arms against my body comforted me in what felt to be, the muted bluntness of life resulting in my frozen soul.
The Police
I watched as the victim tried to stand up yet again. Even after the barrage of punches. Even after the kicks and even after the bottle attack. He was pitiful. An embittered and broken soldier who knew not when to give up the fight. It was at the moment he collapsed onto the pavement, that a starch white shirted police officer meandered over to him. He stooped over the victim, yet failed to volunteer a hand of reassurance. Standing at a sensible distance from which to leave his crisp black trousers free of blood stains, the officer, a young white male around the same age as the black victim, opted to speak into his headpiece. It is my hope, so many years after this event, that the the officer called for an ambulance and the young man was rescued.
The back doors to the police van which had been positioned about fifteen yards away from the attack opened and three surly looking officers shuffled out. The van had been there for the entire duration of the attack. It had been parked before people started filtering out of the nightclub. Is is my firm belief that the police had looked on the whole time choosing to be complacent. Perhaps the idea that an attack on a black youth, carried out by other black youths did not merit their immediate attention.
Inside the Club
That night in 1993, I came close to being that victim. Only an hour earlier I had been dancing in the club. My friends were lost somewhere on the dance floor or more likely, trying to chat up birds at the bar. Like so many nights out, I found myself locked into the rhythm of rap music, sweating on the dance floor. There always tended to be a bustling crowd. London attracted some of the best DJ’s and even weekday nights meant the venues were full of punters.
HIS DARK SIDE 