I have never thought of myself as a violent or aggressive person. So it was a shock to discover, several years ago, that I am capable of behaving like a yob. The occasion of this discovery was a night out in London with university friends, which ended with some of us going back to my parents' (unoccupied) house with a bottle of vodka. Several hours later I suggested, with the ebullience of severe drunkenness, that a girl I quite liked step out with me for an early morning stroll.
Dawn was breaking, and the streets were miraculously empty. We wandered around for a while, and soon came to a restaurant where, the summer before starting university, I'd worked as a waiter. This combination of circumstances—the bright early morning sunshine, the deserted streets, the presence of a woman to show off to—must have triggered something within me, for I decided that a spot of vandalism was in order. "I hated this place. They were bastards to work for," I declared. "I'm going to smash it up."
When my companion showed no sign of objecting, I set about laying into the restaurant's pair of glass-fronted menu display cases. These were located a few metres in front of its entrance, on a sort of raised patio, and were mounted on gleaming metallic stands. (It was quite a smart restaurant.) Demolishing them was no easy task; several running kicks were required. Nonetheless, within a few minutes, the metallic stands had been uprooted, and the display cases lay on the ground, their glass smashed. My companion celebrated with a high-spirited giggle. Our morning's work completed, we made our way back home.
What do I make of this episode now, roughly a decade later? As vandalism goes, it was fairly petty stuff: at most I caused a few hundred pounds' worth of damage. But what I did was criminal and, if not totally mindless (I had a motive of sorts), then certainly stupid. If I had been caught, I might well have been prosecuted. My parents and tutors would not have been impressed. In my defence, all I can point to is the fact that I was, at the time, on anti-depressants. These made me feel happy, but also unleashed something manic inside me. When combined with alcohol, the effect was especially pronounced. My assault on the restaurant was only the worst of a string of regrettable incidents during this period. I was getting into a lot arguments, behaving irresponsibly, and generally was not quite in control of myself.
But the fact that I was on anti-depressants does not, of course, absolve me of all blame. While the pills may have brought certain personality traits to the surface, they were not responsible for those traits existing. The anger that induced me to smash up the restaurant was already inside me, and it is this anger which, looking back, intrigues me most. Where did it come from? What was it about? At the time, I was clear why I hated the restaurant. It was because it had been a miserable place to work. And indeed it was: the hours were long, the pay was low, the bosses were not always particularly pleasant. I had some cause to feel aggrieved.
But if I had been completely honest with myself, I would have admitted that none of this really had anything to do with my desire to smash the place up. The real source of my animus lay elsewhere, in the humiliation I associated with the experience of being a waiter. For the fact is, I wasn't any good at it. Before I started, I had expected to find it easy. I was, after all, interested in food, and considered myself more than qualified for the job. But it wasn't the doddle I expected it to be. I got things muddled up, was too slow taking orders, wasn't confident enough dealing with customers. My hand wasn't sufficiently steady: on one occasion, I deposited a tray full of champagne glasses into the lap of a woman wearing a thin cotton dress. And because I wasn't any good, I was unpopular with the other waiters. Most of them tolerated me, but a few were open in their disdain. Once, one of the senior waiters unexpectedly moved to the upper floor, where I was working. "Did you come up here because you wanted to work with me?" I feebly quipped, hoping to ingratiate myself. He looked at me, and shook his head pityingly. "No, that's not why," he said. "You are one of the worst waiters I have ever worked with."
Although I didn't know it at the time, when I carried out my assault on the restaurant that morning, I was getting my own back on this waiter, and on all the other slights and humiliations I'd endured the previous summer. My act of vandalism was a form of revenge. Somehow, by destroying those menu cases, I was making up for my inadequacy, buoying myself with my ability to cause damage and (so I hoped) to impress a girl. This, I suspect, is the case with most violence: its purpose is compensatory; it allows those who commit it to make up for some humiliation or slight, either real or imagined, in their past. But that is also the problem with violence: it invariably hits the wrong target. Those menu stands weren't responsible for my failure to be a successful waiter, and shouldn't have been made to suffer for it.
