WARNING: The views and opinions expressed by Adam are not necessarily the views and opinions of his writers or Crush Comics as a whole.  Adam is...well, Adam...  Sorry about that.  Anyway, ENJOY!

You probably think I'm going to continue the story back at home. Well, I hate to disappoint you. I figure I've been dragging this out for long enough, so I'm going to just cut to the chase. The following year was mostly uneventful. I got into a big fight with a grown man. That was about it. Sure, this man was trusted and the fight never should have happened, but I wasn't his son and he put his hands on me. I couldn't allow that. I didn't allow that. I grabbed something heavy and beat the shit out of that guy.

Let me tell you something, you never let anyone put their hands on you. It's your body and they have no business hitting you. They can use their words. And if at some point they decide they can't, they'd better be ready to fight you. When a person grows up enough, there's no justification for someone striking them unless that person disrespected them in their own shit. Unfortunately for him, that house didn't belong to him. He learned from the concussion I gave him. He never touched me again.

Mom? Well, she became more reserved. Yeah, don't hit me. I’m not a punching bag.

I took a few more trips back to the structure in the woods that year and through my 16th year stumbling around the blue marble. I was a wrathful creature and the structure continued to expand. I presumed the architect responded to events that took my place in my life. It did feel as if I was being watched most of the time; like something I couldn’t see was always peering over my shoulder every moment of my life since this shit all began. Some people say that was god. Eh, I didn’t think so and still don’t. This felt a lot more human than any god. It was dark too. If it was a god, it wasn’t the one they were thinking about.

My most extreme emotions were like a tangled web. The structure began to resemble that as I got lost in it every time I entered. It had become a mess of corridors with dead ends and loopbacks. Stairs sprouted and only added to the confusion. It became more and more difficult to navigate through the dark, dank halls to the bloodred, beating core. The structure was gargantuan and had grown as high as three levels - all the same height. It now stood about ninety feet tall. It was a marvel.

I couldn’t help obsessing over it while Mom and I rode to the orthodontist’s office.

Me: I don't understand how no one else has seen that thing yet. It has to stand at least 10 feet higher than the trees that surround it by now.

Mom: What are you talking about? What thing, baby?

I was lost in thought and didn’t say anything in response. Truthfully, I barely even heard her when she spoke to me. Her voice was basically background noise to me at the time. You know how you hear something but it doesn’t quite register until later? Not because it wasn’t clear but because your mind is so occupied by other things that it simply didn’t have the resources available to process anything else? That’s what happened on the bus with my mother that day.

Mom: Adam? What thing?

Me: [scrambling] Just thinking out loud, Mom. It's nothing.

I had to scramble for an answer. I lied to her of course. I mean, who could blame me? Though she had stopped hitting me for some time, the old blows stuck with me. She had become a lot more passive. Hell, one could argue that she had grown a lot nicer. She didn't really take me places because we were still poor, but she did cook more. She wasn't as cold and calculating as before. Don’t get me wrong, she still had a seemingly sadistic streak in her, but things had largely changed in her. It was like a weight had been lifted. I guess I did what she couldn’t bring herself to do when I kicked her boyfriend’s ass. Believe me, she could have fucked him up all on her own, but emotions get in the way, you understand? Love can be both a strength and a weakness.

Not to get side tracked, but I have to say that people often fall into heuristics, stereotypes, and social conditioning. To be brutally honest, a great many people even socially condition themselves to believe certain things. The romantics have left their mark on every society around the world and the chivalrous tend to think things that are statistically false. That’s the heuristic part. See, most people think that a woman can’t beat a man of any size. That’s totally not true. Did you know that the men of the ancient world would sack towns full of unsuspecting people, gang up on every citizen the passed, then gang rape both women and men as they robbed them of everything? No, it wasn’t one man wrecking a household and taking a woman’s power, it was SEVERAL men at a time doing it. Why would they do such a thing if a woman doesn’t stand a chance? It’s because that perspective is absolutely not true. Turns out actual science has revealed that sexual dimorphism in our species not only was never great, but is even less than we initially thought.  Go figure. *Kanye shrug*

There are tons of women who choose men they can’t beat. That's called a preferential mismatch.  That’s a choice for the sake of an ideal that’s ridiculous. In a purely natural world, no one adult would be responsible for the well-being of another adult unless they took it upon themselves to be. Let’s look at the bonobo, the closest living species to human beings. No, they’re not chimpanzees regardless of how they look. The chimpanzee isn’t our closest relative species, it’s the bonobo, just in case you didn’t know. Anyway, chimpanzees are patriarchal, while bonobos are matriarchal. Bonobos are also smaller, tend to have longer hair that lays differently, have a stronger sense of community, sexual dimorphism is great in chimpanzees and not great in bonobos, etcetera.

In a congress of bonobos, the mother rules. Though usually very peaceful, sometimes she must do so with an iron fist. A human witnessed an ape from a congress of bonobos fall from a tree and die. He wanted to help and tried to, but the apes arrived too quickly for him to save the unfortunate male’s life. The victim happened to be the youngest son of the matriarch. His brothers sought her out and she came running. The family grouped around the deceased to bid farewell while the human tried to find an opening to help. The brothers instantly attacked. When the mother noticed, she jumped in front and pushed the man back. The poor guy was terrified. Then she snatched and threw her two remaining, larger sons to the side so she could mourn her youngest. Her older children instantly settled down and waited for her to allow them to approach.

Bonobos know something that we dumb humans are apparently too dense to understand. Winning a fight is not about how much you can lift, it’s not even about how much damage you can dish out. Winning a fight is about will power, skill, speed, and how much damage you can take. Durability. We’re a species of glass canons that we take pride in. But most fistfights are resolved in 2 minutes or less. However, a REAL fight doesn’t work that way. When fighting for your life, that endurance and durability matter a LOT. All that muscle you nitwits like is good for explosive strength, but that doesn’t mean a thing when that monster is tired after throwing just a few haymakers that didn’t land. Then they’re just sitting ducks in a sea of punches and kicks. Don’t get hit much, don’t get grabbed at all, hit the knees. That musclehead is going down. And guess what. Those punches from that smaller adult still do damage and still hurt. A lot.

Building muscle doesn’t make you immune to a concussion. All that mass doesn’t make your skull any harder or stronger, it doesn’t make it harder to crack that niche and break your jaw, it doesn’t lodge your teeth any more firmly in your gums, it doesn’t turn your nose to steel, and it doesn’t make you bleed any less. Hell, all that muscle doesn’t even automatically mean you’re stronger or faster than your opponent. Size isn’t everything, and neither is brute strength. Take it from somebody who’s had to defend himself from bigger motherfuckers all his life. Then go learn something about physics and the mechanics of the human body.

Emotions though? Emotions can make the strong feel weak. They can hold a person back when they really need to give all they’ve got. Emotions don’t just make a person reluctant, they cause biochemical responses that can sap a person’s ability to do what’s necessary. Not only that, the amygdala can make a normally courageous and strong man or woman freeze in a violent situation. They can have the advantage and just be struck by intense fear at the worst time. You can’t win when that happens. You just get hit until your attacker stops, for whatever reason. In conclusion, I firmly believe my mom was afraid he’d leave her if she kicked his ass, and that dark fear of loneliness and worthlessness is crippling. I know that firsthand as well. People want to feel wanted.

Okay, so just that quickly, you’re all caught up. I’m 17 at this point in the story and shit really gets wild going forward. I’m cusping on adulthood, I’m a minority male, and the world doesn’t give a single fuck about my problems. I’m on my own. But you’ll get to read about the kind of shenanigans and tomfoolery I get into when the next issue is released because I’m all out of space in this one.

Adam out!