Folly is bound up in the heart of a child…

-Proverbs 22:15

Across time and every culture, adult humans have known that young men cannot be left idle.

The ancients knew this. They recognized the danger of concepts like adolescence and emerging adulthood. Better to send boys off somewhere than to be left alone and unattended. Send them to war or on a crusade. Let them farm or enter an early teenage marriage. Send them overseas or send them to the quote “New” World.

Whatever you gotta do to keep these kids busy. Make stuff up even! Go look for a Fountain of Youth or El Dorado. Go look for gold.

But the board of directors at this small Christian college chose to ignore centuries of accumulated wisdom. With a level of optimism and delusion only chosen people are capable of, they handled their young men differently.

They packed them into a dorm, imposed a 10pm curfew, locked the door and left these kids to their own devices. With no world to explore or task with which to busy themselves, is it any wonder that the pent-up energy turned inward?

***

The atmosphere on campus was a pleasant mixture of Stepford Wives and North Korean stereotypes. Censorship of thought, word, and deed was imposed on all items considered inappropriate.

They edited racy films like the far left progressive trojan horse Finding Nemo. (the word ‘fart’ was dubbed over, deemed uncomely)

In fact, no rated R films were allowed at the College, save Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (which was required viewing so that students could understand the spiritual consequences of their masturbation).

Unlike the hedonistic environment of many colleges, there was a strict zero tolerance policy for drinking. Students signed a written statement agreeing not to drink any alcoholic beverage for the duration of their time enrolled. It was like student loans for alcohol – one did not drink those four years and later paid it back with interest in their 20s and 30s.

But precisely because “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy” (a quote from Benjamin Franklin, who according to the board was a heathen and a pervert), the College found it necessary to impose their influence to keep the entire county dry. They bought up all the liquor licenses and refused to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages inside the county lines.

Ironically, this dry county in the rural South was also the crystal meth capital of America. Perhaps it was a coincidence or perhaps it was by necessity, for who could be bothered to drive one county over for a case of Bud Light, when there’s a perfectly good bottle of paint thinner and some Benadryl just sitting in the cabinet?

All in all, there were so many rules and prohibitions. No dancing, no gambling, no smoking, no swearing. You couldn’t even say the F word (fart).

***

In this festering dish of boredom and lack of responsibility, opportunities for release were greedily jumped upon.

A defensive lineman for the football team – nicknamed ‘Camel’ for his two large humps – sat with his friends in the cafeteria. Being a tank of a man, and very much feeling himself at that moment, he remarked it was entirely possible for him to fight two guys at once and whoop both of them. A silence settled over the group.

“How much are you willing to bet on that Camel?”

“I’d say twenty-five,” Camel replied.

And just like that it was agreed upon. The fight would happen Friday night, the two opponents to be chosen by a third party. The location would be the study lounge of the men’s dormitory, which no one used anyhow. It was good, the boys needed a little diversion, a chance to blow off some steam.

Finally, something was happening.

***

The dorm had the feral stench of old pizza boxes and spooge. The janitorial staff that had to clean that place did not earn anywhere near enough money, and many of them will one day be given sainthood.

On Friday afternoon the boys went into the third-floor study lounge and cleared out all the couches and tables. The room was a 20 by 20 concrete shell. They set up a boombox in the corner. As the moment drew near a Rage Against the Machine album was put on.

The song “Killing in the Name Of” blared out into the dorm hallways and called the young men to gather. They’d been eagerly anticipating the showdown between Camel and two rather buff dudes – one, an enforcer on the Lacrosse squad, the other a male cheerleader with untreated anger management issues.

The fight did not disappoint. Camel came out swinging with his bear-like paws and it seemed as if it’d be over very quickly.

The event did last for several thrill filled moments, however. In the end, a gassed Camel was overtaken by the nimbler and cardiovascularly more fit pair. There was blood, there was a headbutt and choking. The atmosphere was electric – the adrenaline and energy of the crowded little study hall was transformed into the floor of the Coliseum itself.

***

In fact, the evening went so well they decided to schedule another fight for the week following. There was a buzz about the dorm with such a fantastic weekly event happening just down the hall. They mostly decided not to talk about their new underground fight club, but such a wonderful secret was hard to hold in.

The word leaked to a person or two – trusted friends who also enjoyed recreational combat.

The second week matchup was even more anticipated than the first. An Irish exchange student with a difficult childhood and a second year Marketing Major with a black belt and serial killer vibes were set to headline this trans-Atlantic Battle Royale.

It should have been a red flag when the Irishman looked perplexed when asked about boxing gloves.

“I've never used dem befahre…” he muttered to the ref.

It was over in 10 seconds, the black belt knocked out cold and likely requiring some dental work. His blood was splattered across the wall like the 40 lashes scene in The Passion.

***

The second weekend matchup ended very quickly, but the violence was even more delectable than the weekend before.

As the third weekend rolled around, one could see the progression of the boy’s event planning. The Friday Evening Men’s Club, as they were calling themselves, now featured a full undercard of matchups before the main event. The welterweights, featherweights, and bantam weights were given the opportunity to display their martial prowess.

The couches were moved back into the study hall and sold as VIP seating for fight superfans.

The College rules clearly stated a zero-tolerance policy for gambling. Students were not even supposed to play Monopoly because it had paper money. Hotels on Boardwalk were seen as the slippery slope to scratch offs and betting on the ponies.

But in oppressive regimes, shadow economies have a way of developing naturally. There were bets on the fights, financial speculation on how tough people in the dorm thought their friends were. There were prop bets, parlays, an impromptu variety show served as the opening ceremony. Veteran referees from the intramural flag football league were called in to score the fights and a blue comedian hosted the festivities. A raffle was held, barbecue was served, and the particularly naughty boys sipped unknown liquors from coffee mugs.

It was a carnival atmosphere, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since pledge week. At the end of the night, the boys sat in a circle smoking their Backwoods Cigars surreptitiously purchased from an out-of-town gas station. There was laughter and excitement all around. The boys had found their release valve and many chose to express themselves through dancing and F-bombs.

***

All violent horrors are started by artists but perfected by engineers.

The fourth weekend was the best one yet. Advanced planning and schedules were drawn up for what needed be done and when. Gantt charts showed the timeline of tasks needing completion to bring the event off smoothly. Responsibilities were assigned to residents of the dorm and they were carried out with a laser focused execution rarely seen in the boy’s academics. The passion for the event was still very much there, but organizational structure began to reinforce and amplify the original concept.

That Friday Night Men’s Club had a lineup of savage, bloody, and drawn out exchanges. The crowd in the study hall madly howled with each big blow. Their virginal uneasiness with brawling had given way to a seasoned appetite for gore and violence. The smoke-filled study hall was a den of depravity and vice.

On the final match of the evening two students from north Florida, both rather experienced in MMA had been slugging it out for almost 8 rounds. The stench of body odor had reached previously unthinkable levels in the dorm.

Many of the boys, hot, tired and buzzed, were getting bored and hoping this fight would be over soon.

Suddenly, one of the student fighters had his opponent in an arm bar. The opponent was trying to tap out. Some kid in the crowd jokingly shouted a line from The Passion:

“Crucify him!”

A roar of laughter.

But with cold approval the student in the ring solemnly nodded and snapped down on his opponent’s arm.

When the bone loudly shattered and a shriek filled the dorm, most of the crowd went absolutely wild, but a few looked away and decided not to come back anymore…

***

After that weekend Men’s Club was the talk of the whole campus, but the deans never got a whiff of it. Even if their knowledge of scripture was poor, most students learned enough from church to know not to speak openly about such sordid matters.

The student with the broken arm kept his mouth shut and was revered by the underground community. But the outcome of that fourth weekend match had caused a break in the Men’s Club. Most now felt it had gone too far, it had gotten away from them. Camel and his crew had a bad taste in their mouths and no longer came.

But the loyalists and fanatics pressed on. They felt it was better than ever and couldn’t wait for Friday night.

The Club took on a dark energy and on that fifth weekend things got weird. People from town started showing up, hardened men who barely said a word and had custom made mouthguards. They came in camo pants and black undershirts, they had shaved heads and missing teeth. One person brought a sock filled with nickels.

On that fifth Friday night, other students could hear the maniacal laughter and vulgar taunts coming from the study lounge. They closed their dorm room doors and turned up the volume on their televisions to drown out the screams. No longer good clean fun, the matches had become torturous and ugly.

The small contingent of Christian college students that stayed for that fifth weekend and brawled with the men from town, never talked about what happened that night in the study lounge. Their faces were cut and swollen. They looked sullen and depressed for days afterwards. Bruised and downcast, many skipped the next week’s classes and slept in bed all day.

And so, there was no particular event that ended the Friday Night Men’s Club. It was never broken up by the campus police or ratted out by a conscience-wracked undergrad.

As it started spontaneously, so did it end. It just kind of burned itself out and the boys moved on to other things.

***

Not too long afterwards many of the young men left or graduated and were no longer allowed to be left idle.

Some were sent to actual battlefields in Fallujah, Helmand and Erbil. Others went on crusade to the unconverted masses of Cambodia, Indonesia, the People’s Republic of China, Philadelphia, Montreal, Cuzco.

Some jumped into a teenage marriage, eighteen and nineteen-year-olds marrying girlfriends whom they barely knew.

Whatever had to be done, these kids were kept busy. They looked for the fountain of youth in the nightclubs of Los Angeles and Taipei. Some chased gold and the middle-class mirage.

Turns out the College had a wisdom of its own. Let them be idle, let them be innocent. Better to shield them from the darkness for a little bit longer. Before it ruins them, go ahead and pack these boys into a dorm and lock the door.

The College knew that, soon enough, these boys would discover the first and greatest rule of life – to follow your heart. Its deceptive tendencies would take them where they wanted until they discovered they did not want it.

No need to send them away too early.

The First Rule