hot action

~ Welcome to hotaction.ca, the online guide to sex with Philip Clark. The sex I've had in the past twenty-four hours is not destined to become a matter of public record; so instead I'm going to tell you the story of how I punched a guy in the face at the NASCAD dance.

Here's the summary. A/V was performing at NASCAD a little while back. I wandered outside onto the deck for some fresh air.

Some guy I don't know leaped out at me. He grabbed my face in both hands, and planted a huge kiss on my neck. I still don't know what sort of art-school prankery was afoot here. In retrospect I think there must have been some sort of running joke going on.

Anyway, my right hand came up quite instinctively, and I smoked him right in the face.

~ Freeze frame. Let's step back in time ten or twelve years.

In some ways, I haven't changed much since those days. I was a little more "punk rock" back then. I was a university student in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I had a girlfriend.

Late one evening I was walking up Queen Street in downtown Freddy. I ran into a couple guys on the street. One of them I'd sort of met, seen him around at parties. His name was Fred. We exchanged a few pleasantries.

Fred said, "Hey man, are the bars still open? Why don't we all go grab a drink. Come on, I'll buy you a drink."

So we walked into the downstairs bar of the Cosmo Club at fifteen minutes before last call.

They asked me what I wanted, and I ordered a straight gin, on the rocks.

"You're drinking straight gin?" said Fred.

I've always been allergic to beer and wine. I think this was a time in my life before I'd really discovered the gin and tonic. Honestly, I didn't realize there was anything unusual about drinking gin on the rocks.

"Make it a double," said Fred's friend (didn't catch his name). "It's on me. I gotta see this."

So they put the drink in front of me, we toasted and I drank it down.

"That's crazy," he said. "Do you want another one? Get him another one. Another double."

"Thanks," I said. I drank it too. I sucked on a few ice cubes, mainly for their anaesthetic properties. A third double gin followed almost immediately.

Fred chugged back his beer. "I could never do that in a million years," he said.

I just laughed and enjoyed myself. Wow, I'm good at something. Drinking straight gin. The bartender gave me a curious look.

"Twenty bucks!" said Fred's friend. He pulled a huge wad of bills out of his pocket. "Twenty bucks says you can't do it again. Look, I'll even buy the drink." He laid a twenty dollar bill on the bar.

The bartender poured. I picked up the glass, took a deep breath and guzzled down the booze. Then I picked up the twenty dollar bill and put it in my pocket.

The bartender said it was about time to close. "One more... Come on, one for the road," said Fred. The guys were laughing and egging me on.

"Another twenty bucks," said Fred's friend. "We'll time you. Ten seconds to put away another double gin. Do it in ten seconds, and I'll give you twenty bucks."

"Bring it on," I said.

The bartender gave her head a little shake, but poured another double gin on the rocks--my fifth. "Ready," said Fred's friend. He looked at his watch. "Ten seconds. Go!"

My nose and mouth felt thick with alcohol fumes. There was a rising feeling in my throat but I pushed it back. As Fred and his friend counted down the time, I poured the alcohol into my mouth.

"Three... two... one. Time's up!" I swallowed the gin and grimaced.

"Oh, I don't know... that was close..." said Fred's friend. I took the twenty out of his hand.

The bar was closed. We headed outside and walked up Queen Street. I had just downed ten ounces of hard liquor in about fifteen minutes. I wasn't really feeling it though.

Fred started to pull me down a side street, down an alley, towards the waterfront. "Do you know... this way..." he said.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"This way," said Fred. He was holding me by the shoulder.

I said, "Fellas, I think I'm gonna head home now."

"I think you want to come with us," said Fred's friend.

"What are you doing? No," I said. I tried to shrug their arms off me.

The two of them had me by the arms. I was struggling now.

These two guys, one of whom I thought I knew, seemed to change before my eyes. I could feel them growing tense, aggressive.

Fred's friend leaned in close, his mouth at my ear, hissing in my ear. They tried to push me back against a building.

Fred and his friend started saying some things to me that I had never heard any man say in my life, and that I hope I never hear again.

When I realized exactly what it was they wanted to do to me, a sick feeling took hold of me. It was like the bottom fell out of my stomach. I thought I was going to puke.

Above the rising panic, a clear voice spoke out inside my brain: I am not going to allow this to happen.

Their anger was rising and so was mine. Fred took a swipe at me while his friend held me. I went a little bit nuts. A scuffle broke out.

I was fighting the two of them and both of them were bigger than me. I broke away and got back out on the main street with two guys grabbing at me.

It was around this time that ten ounces of gin hit me like a fist in the face.

The scene turned kind of ugly. Things got confusing. There were people on the street; people gathering around us. I remember I was grabbing Fred's shirt and shouting that I was gonna mash his face in. Someone pulled me off him.

And then, I realized that these guys could no longer stop me from turning around and walking home. So that's what I did.

Every impulse in my body was screaming at me to run like hell away from there. But I forced myself to keep my pace to a walk. A beer bottle came flying at me and smashed at my feet. I looked back. They taunted me but they weren't following.

I kept walking until I turned the corner at the end of the block. Then my body exploded with gin and adrenalin, and I ran and ran all the way to my apartment.

I was a little shaken up by the episode. But I consoled myself the next day with the fact that I'd gotten drunk for free and I had forty dollars of the son-of-a-bitch's money in my pocket to boot.

To say I was "traumatized" would be putting it much too strongly; after all, I escaped basically unharmed. But you might say I have a "personal space" issue that flares up every now and then.

The one thing that got me out of this situation was my unhesitating violent response. I am not a violent person by nature. But violence saved me from being raped. This fact has left its mark on me.

~ Back to the present; out on the deck at NASCAD. A strange man had his mouth on my neck.

I punched him in the face. It wasn't a "break your nose" kind of punch but I definitely clocked him. I think he was more surprised by it than anything.

He became very very apologetic. I was watching him with adrenalin-charged eyes. He tried to put his hand on my shoulder to apologize but I pulled away and gave him an "If you touch me again..." look.

But I was keeping calm. The only words I said to him were, "That is not proper."

Over the course of the night the guy would apologize every time I saw him. I soon calmed down enough to realize that he wasn't a bad guy at all and hadn't really meant any harm, although he'd definitely been out of line.

He struck me as one of those guys that women will look at and tilt their heads and smile and say, "Awww. He's all about the love." (Not my kind of woman, of course. I'd rather be kicking it with the sexy cynics in the corner.)

So finally I walked up to all-about-the-love-guy and grabbed his face and gave him a big kiss on the neck. It was funny and it served to relax the tension quite a bit.

Towards the end of the evening, I saw love-guy drawing on a giant piece of paper on the floor in the lounge. A sexy blonde woman was on the floor with him. The two of them would crawl around and draw all over the paper; and now and then they would pause for a while to make out.

A few people were sitting around, just watching them. I stood there and thought, "Is this what art school is like? Oh man. Just scribble on the floor on huge pieces of paper and make out with hot blonde chicks. I gotta sign up for some drawing courses or something."

Just then, a cute young thing sidled up beside me and we started talking about crazy art school kids and about what an interesting phenomenon it was that we were watching.

Ten minutes later we were in the stairwell.