The shiner shame

Tell me this and tell me the truth: When you see somebody rocking a big black eye, what is the first thing you think?

Call me a cynic, but I bet that it is something along the lines of, ‘Well, he didn’t get that for saying please and thank you’.

I know that’s what I always think anyway, unfair and inaccurate as it might be.

You see, a few months ago I started back at the boxing and recently I allowed myself to be roped into doing a bit of sparring.

“Aye, sure I’ll come down and do a lock of rounds,” I acquiesced, after declining several previous invitations.

Well, it turns out that seven years out of action is a quite a long time, as anybody who has seen my face since last Saturday would agree. Since then, evidence of the ring rust which has rotted away whatever talent I once had has been all too visible in the form of a cartoonishly perfect black eye, which I have had to walk around with all week.

Deadly, I know.

However, while the experience of sporting this shiner has predominantly been characterised by feelings of self-conciousness and a weird sort of unearned reflexive shame, it has also provided me with the opportunity to once again witness how poorly the world treats boys with black eyes.

I decided to debut the shiner at a Luke Kelly tribute gig in the Strule Arts Centre on Saturday night. “I have my ticket bought and I’ll be damned if I allow an innocently acquired injury to stop me from going,” I said defiantly, as we left the house.

On arrival, it became clear to me that people are at their least generous when speculating about the origins of a black eye.

The contempt and judgment was written everywhere; in the pout of the old lady in the queue, in the supercilious stare of the middle-aged man standing beside me at the urinal, and in the shrill tone of the staff member who reminded me that ‘YOU CAN’T BRING YOUR DRINKS INTO THE AUDITORIUM’.

“Jesus Christ, what is that about?,” I asked my friends.

“The eye,” they replied, looking faintly embarrassed to be speaking to me.

I do not know what it is, but there is something about the bluey-purple rings that surround an injured eye that just scream, ‘I BROUGHT THIS ON MYSELF AND YOU SHOULD NOT BE ASSOCIATED WITH ME!’.

On Saturday night, people were acting as though God himself had given me the black eye as punishment for some unspeakable sin; I was like a modern day leper.

But the weirdest thing was that, despite knowing the truth about how the black eye had come to be, I almost began to believe what they believed. I nearly lost sight of my innocence and began to see myself in their reflection.

Anyway, thankfully when I got into work on Monday, people did not hesitate to enquire about what had happened, which gave me the chance to clear the air and explain the events that had brought this most wile-looking facial feature about.

However, while I was glad of this, it has now made me question my policy of never asking anyone what happened their black eye, dare I force them to have to retell the embarrassing, unflattering or possibly incriminating tale.

But, had people adopted this approach with me, then I am sure the space left by the silence would have been filled with all sorts of unsavoury conspiracy theories.

So what should you do when you meet a man with a shiner? Say nothing and reach your own quiet conclusions? Or ask the question and run the risk of making them share a story they would have preferred left alone?

Maybe it is one of those matters where you have to use your wit and exercise some discretion.

Unfortunately, wit is not a quality widely distributed among the species.