Pulp Fact: A Gory Story of Pride and Ego

"...you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps." - Marcellus Wallace.

It's 1993, in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles, California. A shop-worn boxer named Butch Coolidge is receiving a pep talk from a mob boss who's paid him to take a dive. Despite the aforementioned warning about pride, Coolidge succumbs and having double-crossed the boss and bet on himself, he beats his opponent mercilessly. Later that night he would find out from a taxi driver that his fellow pugilist died of his injuries. He would tell her that he felt nothing.

"I'm American honey, our names don't mean shit"

Pride nearly cost Butch everything. The mob he'd done dirty put a contract out on his life, forcing him to murder a would-be hitman. Subsequent bizarre twists of fate that only Hollywood could conjure saw him kidnapped, beaten and almost raped alongside the very man he'd double-crossed. Butch would escape though, saving the life of his fellow captor along the way to buy some form of reprieve, before riding off into the sunset on a chopper with his girl.

In the real world though, there are no happy endings.

"Listen, right! I dare you, I dare you! I dare you. Put your hand on me. Put your hand on me 'coz it won't end nicely. Put your hand on me!" - The words of  Darren Pencille, seconds before his frenzied stabbing of Lee Pomeroy.

It's a minute past one, January 4th, 2019. Darren Pencille, a 31-year-old of no fixed abode, boards the Guilford to London train at London Road station. He is followed by another man, 51-year-old Lee Pomeroy, and Pomeroy's 14 year old son. The older man blocks his fellow commuter's path and heated words are exchanged. Pencille is aggressive, Pomeroy is arrogant. His son watches on nervously...he's seen his father like this before.

Tensions have risen. Pencille suggests they disembark at the next station, presumably to bring their conflict to some kind of martial resolution. Months later, Pomeroy's son would tell a jury that his father took these words as a challenge, rising to his feet with a clenched fist.   

"Pride only hurts, it never helps"

Assuming that existence is infinite, there are billions of strands of possibility in which pride doesn't fuck with Lee Pomeroy. He simply takes a deep breath, sits back down and apologises to his son for having to see him lose his temper. There are billions more where he doesn't get up in the first place and more still where he just moves out of Pencille's way, with a smile.

Lee Pomeroy

In this reality, around one hour later Lee Pomeroy is pronounced dead by a team of blood-splattered, physically and emotionally exhausted paramedics. It was, perhaps, inevitable. "Normally when someone says something to my dad, he won't let it go..." Pomeroy's son told the jury. "...I have never seen my dad not reply to something like that."

People argue every day. Occasionally they fight, usually they don't. In a bizarre twist of fate, Darren Pencille was not a usual man. He was a piece of shit; a knife-carrying coward of unsound mind. Pomeroy had no way of knowing, but his own behavior would only serve to pour gasoline on an already raging fire. He was heard to demand an apology of his verbal sparring partner and when he instead received a stream of foul-mouthed vitriol, witnesses say he patronisingly insinuated that Pencille had "special needs".

This was the beginning of the end.

"I'm going to kill this man" - One side of a phone call made by Darren Pencille to his partner, as recalled by witness Kayleigh Carter during the former's trial.

For Butch Coolidge this would have resulted in a fist-fight. There would have been music, strings probably, a rising crescendo. Or perhaps he would have fallen; the trope of a hero's sacrifice... a gunshot in the dark, a knife in the back, wisdom imparted, a rasping goodbye.

But in the real world, there are no happy endings.

"I could hear them shouting..." Pomeroy's son would tell a jury six months later. "I don't remember seeing when the fight started. I think I could hear them shouting. I looked behind again. I see them punching each other."

What he'd seen was not a fist fight. Pencille had pocketed his phone and brandished a knife, burying the cold, hard blade deep into the older man's neck with the initial lunging blow. As Pomeroy frantically lashed out in some semblance of defense, Pencille slashed at his chest and thigh. In the ensuing twenty-five second melee he would inflict a total of eighteen wounds on Pomeroy, whose son watched on from the adjoining carriage, frozen in terror.

There was no music. There were no strings.

Darren Pencille

The ego is a funny thing. It builds us up and gives us the strength to accomplish things we otherwise might not. Yet at the same time it can be more fragile than our physical forms. An attack on the ego, even a perceived slight, can sometimes wound us far more intimately than any physical blow. Perhaps, on a personal, social and even global scale, practicing some self defense of the ego will reap greater rewards for our humanity than any self-defense of the body.

Until then, pride will continue fuck with us. If we're lucky only our egos will suffer, if not, it'll be the ones we love.

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