The Little Black Book of Violence

Dedication

This book is dedicated to those who understand that their life focus should be on something greater than themselves. Those with such understanding rarely find resolution in fighting.

Prologue

“When I felt the knife blade grate across my teeth, I knew I was in trouble, and then my lower lip fell open like overcooked chicken dropping from the bone.”

At eighteen, I found myself outside an all-ages pool hall in Redmond, Washington. If Redmond sounds familiar to you, it should; it is the home of Microsoft corporate headquarters, the home of programmers, computer geeks, and ninety-eight pound nerds. I was standing in the heart of suburbia bleeding badly from my face. The three men who jumped me outside the pool hall started hitting me hard, driving me onto the ground that was more dirt than gravel. I tried to fight but they had got the first strike in, a slash with a knife that was designed to shock, disfigure, and terrify me. It worked.

What brought me some thirty miles from my home to fight in the parking lot of a pool hall? My buddy’s name was on the line. He was losing face so I decided that I needed to defend him. It was a matter of friendship, of honor. So, in my senior year of high school, five close friends and I cut the deal for a fight—five on five at the appointed pool hall—and just to add drama, we were going to do it at midnight.

I got there early to hang out with my buddies and amp ourselves up for the confrontation. It was maybe a quarter to midnight when I stepped outside for a smoke. One of the three guys hanging around near the door gave me a hard look and then spat out, “Wadda you looking at?” “Nothing,” I replied and turned to go back inside. I heard one of them move and looked back to see what was going on when I was met by a knife slash across my face, striking my teeth and making my mouth an “X” instead of the nice, straight line my momma gave me. When I felt that blade grate across my teeth, I knew I was in trouble, and then my lower lip fell open like overcooked chicken dropping from the bone.

This wasn’t the glorious battle I’d imagined. It was pain and blood and terror. What would the victor get from this fight? Absolutely nothing! No turf, no money, nothing, save perhaps a little pride. And the loser? I wound up with eighty stitches and a missing tooth. It cost me a day in the hospital, a big medical bill, and this scar you are looking at right now.

“Andy” Seattle, WA

Foreword Sergeant Rory Miller

Kris and Lawrence are nice guys.

They’re tough guys, and they have the skill to put a hurtin’ on you. They’ve both spilled blood and smelled it. But they’re nice and intelligent and a little naive—because they think they can convince you that violence is something you want to avoid just using facts.

There are tons of facts in here. Facts and stories, and really good advice. Whatever you paid in money for the book, someone else paid in blood for the lessons. All that advice came at a price. All of Lawrence’s statistics were originally written in some poor bastard’s blood on some sidewalk.

Lawrence and Kris think that they can get this through your head with facts and words. I don’t think you’re that smart.

When they write how hard it will be looking in the mirror every morning knowing that you have killed someone, they know this is true—because every non-sociopath they have talked to tells them how hard it is. Just words. In your adolescent fantasy (and even in your fifties, many of your fantasies are purely adolescent) being a ‘killer’ seems pretty cool.

Let me lay it out as these two fine men tried to lay it out in this Little Black Book; there are tons of things that are cool to think about that suck to do. Some suck so badly that the memory becomes a pain separate from the thing you are remembering.

You will read about heroes in here. Your little eyes will get all shiny and you will think, “I could do that!” And it’s a good feeling because in your little Hollywood-influenced world, the hero gets the acclaim of people and the love of a beautiful stranger. In the world of this book, the same hero gets months of physical therapy, torturous surgeries and “it” (the arm, the knee, the hand, the eye, the back) never, ever works the same way again. Never.

Or maybe it goes another way. Maybe the relatives of the guy who attacked you, though they have been afraid of him for years, come out of the woodwork and get a small army of attorneys and start remembering how he was “a good boy, very caring” or he “was turning his life around.” That small army of attorneys will have a mission—to take money from you to give to the family of the person you injured or to the person himself. If a home invasion robber can sue, and win for “loss of earnings,” there’s very little hope that good intentions will protect you. What seems worse, to me, is that you wind up giving your earnings, your money, and your assets to someone you don’t even like, possibly someone with a long history of crime, certainly to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

That’s the good option because the boys in blue may show up. You may find some special stainless steel bling ratcheted over your wrists and get a nice ride to the big building with the laminated Lexan windows and sometimes real bars for doors. When you hear and feel that cold electronic lock slam shut behind you, you will know that your life has changed forever. Then you might meet me or someone very like me. If you decided to sip twice at the well of violence, it will be my job to stop you, and I will stop you cold. It will hurt quite a lot.

When you hear and feel that cold electronic lock slam shut behind you, you will know that your life has changed forever. Then you might meet me or someone very like me. If you decided to sip twice at the well of violence, it will be my job to stop you, and I will stop you cold. It will hurt quite a lot.

Lawrence and Kris tell good stories about fights and killings that don’t happen. A strategist takes the lesson and they hope, in their naive and sincere way, that the reader (that’s you) wants to be a strategist. I know better. You’ll skim those stories and get to the bloody ones, imagining what a knife can do in vivid Technicolor, just like at the movies. But the movies never get the screams quite right and sometimes the real memories that stay with you are the smells: rotten sh*t and fresh blood and decomposition and the soapy, meaty smell of fresh brains.

Kris and Lawrence are so careful to go over the complexity of the subject. Violence isn’t just violence. It happens in a social context, a legal context, and a medical context, and they all play off of each other. They put it in your face that you may lose your home, your career, your family, your sight… to save a wallet with fourteen dollars or so that some strangers won’t think bad thoughts about you. Is it enough for them to put it in your face? Will you read it?

I don’t think you’re that smart. I don’t think you can see past your own ego. I think that you will risk your own life and piss away good information to protect your daydreams.

Maybe not. Prove me wrong. Read the book; read it carefully. Follow the advice, avoid the risks, and become a strategist. Prove to me that you are smarter than I think you are.

I won’t hold my breath.

Sgt. Rory Miller