Some people don’t know this, but when someone knocks your teeth loose they eventually settle back into your face again. So the key is keeping them in your face. Tuck that Irish chin into that hairy Eastern European sternum.

Also, if you ever think your nose might be broken, ask someone to give it a squeeze for you. If you scream like a maniac, it’s probably broken. Oh and they won’t be impressed at the hospital when you try to waive the anesthetic for the stitches. They will just think you are dumb.

If you hear something grind and break when you land a blow, it’s probably your hand rather than what you struck. If you hold your hand above your head and feel an impossibly wrong sort of pain, you may have an old-fashioned boxer’s fracture.

Drunk people bleed from the face in ways that are seemingly unnatural. But that blood usually scares them into submission or defeat. So go ahead and wear jagged rings on both hands, because here’s the miracle: facial cuts heal wonderfully by design. As my physician, Dr. Thomas Patten, put it, “I could carve up your face with a rusty razor and you wouldn’t even know it a few months later.” Thanks, Doc! He says it is a bad idea to take out your own stitches.

I ask you this: if a man can hem his own pants, could he not carefully remove a coupla facial stitches?

Ribs are tender little bastards. They stay kind of soft in the event of organ trauma or some shit. You know, so you don’t have some sawdusty old thing jutting into your lung every time one of them breaks. They’re bendy. But damn, when you break a couple, forget about coughing, sneezing, shouting, singing, or sleeping well. And sex will become an oral thing for a real hot minute.

More on teeth: they can injure you. Your own. When someone lands a nice hot kiss from the cold fist, those soft tissues just give way to teeth, which can sever nerves and stuff. I have no feeling on the right side of my upper lip. For a couple of years I had an accidental left lip sneer when I talked. But that was just because the right side wasn’t moving in the way to which I had become accustomed. You can’t really tell now. And I felt like Elvis besides.�

It is really hard to get lips looking quite the same after they’ve had a good hard split. I have little white scar lines in the middle of my bottom lip, and kind of a botched number where it meets the skin leading down to my chin. Also I have my chin-skin pulled down and tucked underneath, which worked out well. I can even grow a beard there. Good surgeon. Indian fellow. I remember fading to the sound of his voice saying, “It’s just a little bit; it’s just a little bit.” I was in a bit of shock at ripping through a windshield. You think you know your car until it’s curled up in the fetal position wearing your guts.

So it’s not all fistfights with me. And when it is, it’s mostly because the Romans can’t quite figure out why they hate me, which only makes everyone all the more tense. And things pop off. Especially when one considers my devotion to the Freak ticket.

Most of the time, I just let ‘em have a go and move on. I don’t wanna hurt nobody.