I’m parked on my usual barstool at the local watering hole, third Hazy IPA in, watching two guys a few stools down chirp back and forth like neutered parrots. One of them’s got a polo shirt tucked into skinny jeans, voice so high-pitched I swear it could peel paint off the tap handles. He’s whining about work—project deadlines, office drama, some manager who didn’t affirm his emotional growth or whatever the hell.
And as I’m sipping, I catch myself staring—his soft little lips flapping nonstop—and suddenly, I’m gone. Deep in it. Thinking about how long it’s been since I wrapped my hands around a man’s neck and squeezed the air right out of him. Not metaphorically. I mean for real.
Not recently, of course.
But there are nights—
Nights like this—where the urge comes back like a reflex.
You’re just sitting there, minding your own, and some guy starts talking too loud about his “journey,” or how he finally opened up to his dog walker about his trauma, and it hits you like a wave. The image. That flash. You, reaching out. Grabbing the soft, useless meat of his neck. Watching his face shift colors like a sunset gone wrong. Not out of rage. Not even out of hate. Just to remind him—and maybe yourself—how damn easy it is to end the noise.
That’s the thing about soft men in safe spaces.
They’ve forgotten the world doesn’t owe them comfort.
And I’ve forgotten what it feels like to shut one up with my own hands.
It’s a fantasy, sure. But it’s a pure one. There’s something sacred about it. The old way. The way when a man crossed a line, another man made him pay for it without a court date or a lawsuit. You just squeezed. Just enough to cut off the air, just enough to watch the color drain out of their self-importance. You leaned into it. Watched their little hands flap against your wrists like dying birds. Watched their mouths gape open, their eyes go soft and stupid. Watched the moment they realized they weren’t immortal, weren’t safe, weren’t shit. Felt your own blood burn with pride because you could. Because you had the strength to take it all away if you wanted to.
It wasn’t sexual. Not like the games some women beg for. This wasn’t play. This was war. This was manhood. This was grabbing the weakness of the world by the throat and reminding it who made the rules. Goddamn, it felt good. Masculine in a way no sermon, no podcast, no “mental health day” will ever touch. You don’t need a journal when you can take a man’s breath away with your bare hands.
It took me back—back to when I was still in the Navy, stationed on the USS Independence, coming home from the Gulf. Before everything went sideways. Before the marriage soured, before the kids, before the house turned into a minefield of moods, meds, and madness. Back when life was still sharp and clean, like a blade fresh off the stone.
She used to write me back then. Every damn day. Letters full of lipstick, photos, panties, promises—like she was reaching across the ocean to remind me what was waiting on land. There was heat between us then. Real heat. Real want. Back then, I fought for something that felt alive. Something that felt like it mattered.
I remember one afternoon in the barracks, sitting on my rack reading one of her letters. I had the picture out too—her smiling, young, mine. Some idiot came up behind me, leaned over, and said, “That’s a nice piece of ass.” Just like that. Just a smirk and a comment, like he didn’t even register it as disrespect. But I did. I moved without thinking. Stood up, pivoted, grabbed him by the neck with one hand, slammed him against the bulkhead so hard the whole fucking wall shook.
I squeezed—hard. Hard enough to watch his face cycle through every shade of a dying day. Red, then purple, then a sickening kind of blue, like something rotting under glass. I didn’t say a word. Not a grunt. Just held him there, silent, steady, watching his eyes bulge like they were trying to escape the truth.
His mouth opened wide, gasping like a fish that already knew the hook was too deep.
He kicked, flailed—nothing.
He was mine.
And he knew it.
I watched the moment it hit him—that quiet surrender.
He gave up before the lights even started to flicker.
That’s when you know the truth:
he wasn’t built for this world,
not the one that used to make men.
It took three of them to pull me off. I was locked in, deep in that dark zone where logic doesn’t live—where intervention becomes necessary. One of the guys, nervous but trying to play it cool, let out a half-laugh and said, “Hey, funny guy… you planning to kill him or what?”
That snapped it just enough.
I looked down—he didn’t look good. Pale, slack-jawed, eyes spinning like he’d just met God and got denied at the door. I eased off, slow, like releasing a coiled spring. The moment I let go, he collapsed in a heap—crumpled straight to the floor like a sack of wet laundry dropped from a rooftop.
Saw him a few days later in the mess hall. Still had the bruises on his neck, like someone had tried to strangle the boy out of him and left only the scared little man underneath. He couldn’t meet my eyes. Good. Maybe he learned something. Probably didn’t.
I recall the day sitting at Deschutes Brewery with my divorce attorney, sipping a Mirror Pond, still tasting the courtroom on my tongue. We had just walked out of another round—my kids’ mother asking for $9,000 a month in child support like it was a tip, no job, no effort, just expectation. The kind of entitlement that makes your blood pressure spike and your bank account shrink.
We were halfway through our second pint when he leaned back, laughed a little, and said, “Your wife is a greedy cunt.”
I looked at him. Not a blink. Just held that look.
He didn’t catch it at first. He kept talking.
And I just sat there—processing.
My body didn’t move. My pulse didn’t jump. I didn’t break the glass or flip the table. I just froze inside that moment, a silence that used to come right before the violence.
Then he stopped.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
I looked him dead in the eye and said,
“Not too long ago, if you had said that about my wife, I’d have choked the life out of you.”
Paused.
“But I’m not feeling that now.”
But I digress—
in my story of wants and twisted desires, of squeezing a man’s throat just tight enough to feel that primal pulse fade under my grip—not out of rage, not even out of justice, but just because it felt good. Satisfying, like lighting a cigarette after sex. That slow, filthy exhale. That goddamn relief.
It wasn’t violence, it was balance. A theory.
A necessary tension to keep the human race in check.
But that was then.
Now?
Now I’m old.
Slower. Softer in the joints but still sharp in the head.
I don’t squeeze throats anymore. I squeeze memories.
And if I grip them just right, I can still taste the smoke of the good old days—
back when the world made more sense and a man could remind another man of his place without filling out a form or checking a hashtag.
All I’ve got now is hindsight and a crooked grin.
But sometimes, that’s enough.
