Hash It Out!

My first bar fight.

I’ve been down in the dumps lately.  I’m currently in the middle of trying to repair a friendship I care deeply about, and I’m not good at interpersonal relationships.  My IQ, 160.  My social interaction quotient, whatever number is equivalent to that of a retarded sociopath.  It is important to note this because it has put me in a rowdy, carefree mood, especially today, and today was hot dog day.

Every Monday is hot dog day with my buddy Tommy.  We always go to Carney’s, a famous hot dog place inside one of those train cars located on Ventura Blvd.  Today though, we went some place different.  My friend Jamie invited me to come visit her at work.  She works at Joe’s Great American Bar in Burbank.  They have hot dogs.  So Tommy and I traipse our asses over there and Jamie takes care of us.  Tommy had a dog, but I chose chili.

Anyway, the jukebox was playing Styx LIVE (pretty cool), we were talking as friends do, joking around with Jamie and drinkin’ our diet cokes.  Food comes, we eat, we talk, we start makin’ fun of shit around the bar.  That’s what comics do.  Jamie tells us there’s a swing band playing live starting at 9 o’clock.  We decide we’ll be outta there before then.

Along about 8ish something, the band starts setting up and they start playing swing tunes off their laptop through the sound system, so some of these people in the bar start swinging (not the good kind, but dancing).  There’s one woman in a red top and blue jeans moving really fast.  Kinda impressive.  Her jeans, though, were those type that are high waisted as if she bought them in the 1920s.  So they made her ass look a little flat, I’m sure just an optical illusion.  I was noticing her butt, and I was not going to say anything, because saying something about a woman’s ass I notice to a friend, is almost like saying, “Hey, look at that empty glass just sitting on that table over there.”  It’s pretty mundane, and doesn’t really need to be said unless there’s something to add out of the ordinary.  But as I was noticing her weird pants, I hear my friend Tommy say, “She’s kinda got a nice ass, if you’re willing to settle for it.”  I spit diet coke a good foot and a half.  The area we were sitting in was carpeted and it was more of a mist, so all good.  I could not stop laughing.  You have to know Tommy to appreciate this more, but he doesn’t over use profanity or make lascivious remarks all that often, so when he does, they’re much more powerful than say, when I do it.  But the “willing to settle for it” just struck me.  I was laughing so hard.  This put me in an even more energized and odd mood.

We started joking more about the people dancing and how the girls all tie their shirts off in the back with a knot and then spend their whole time dancing pulling their shirts down when they ride up their backs.  What the hell?  One chick kinda looked like a dude.  That was funny.  I said to Tommy, “I think I’m gonna need vagina verification.”  He laughed.  Vagina Verification.  Sounds like a government program.

Anyway we joked some more and switched from diet cokes to beer.  The subject of bar fights came up.  We couldn’t understand how these bar fights ever get started.  I’d never been in one.  Tommy had never.  I said my philosophy was that whenever you get a few dozen or more men in a bar who are drunk, someone’s gonna say something, and the dude in a bad marriage is gonna say ‘fuck it’ and break a bottle over someone’s head.  I did the reverse grip on my long neck as to motion how you would grab the bottle if you were going to brandish it as a weapon (you know, kinda like I do when I masturbate sometimes) and I lifted it about an inch and a half off the table and realized if I didn’t put it back down, some of that beer wasn’t going into my mouth where it all needed to go.

Jamie came back to talk to us and wondered what we were up to.  I told her we were discussing bar fights.  She informed us there aren’t that many there.  THAT MANY?  Tommy and I were in hysterics now.

So it gets to be 9 o’clock, and this “band” is taking their goddamn sweet time getting to it.   We started joking that perhaps it was their first gig (ever).  Maybe they just all met each other in the street and decided since they had instruments to come inside and give it a shot.  We were being silly.  Silly boys.  Silly boys with beer.

Finally at almost 9:15 they start playing their set.  Not real good.  The first song was just instrumental, so I waited to hear this “singer”.  The second song actually made me kinda angry.  I thought it was a good thing I didn’t pay a cover or anything.  At the end of the song I said (much louder than I realized, apparently much, MUCH louder), “Welcome to rehearsal night everybody.”  I don’t think the band members heard me, but a guy at the next table did.  He stiffens up and says to me, “That’s not cool man.”  I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t know what happened internally here, but I was in a rambunctious state, full of a little beer, and having a good time, all to mask the pain of my depression, when I grabbed my bottle with that upside down weapon grip.  Before I could explain that this was perhaps a joke or that I wasn’t really gonna do anything, this guy grabs an empty on his table and actually fucking breaks it on his table like in the old westerns.  I stand up.  Again, shouldn’t have stood up.  He lunges at me as I somehow turn and get my (all important) face outta harms way.  He slices my shoulder (through 2 shirts) wide open.  The cut was so bad, it was one of those that DOESN’T hurt.  So deep and clean that there’s simply no pain, just blood.  Before anything else could happen, I heard more chair scooting and glass knocking that I’d heard in my life and literally every guy in the bar tackles this dude.  Well, except Tommy.  And the band never left the stage.

Tommy was on my opposite side so he couldn’t see the blood.

“You’re lucky he missed.”

I turned and showed him.

“JESUS CHRIST!”  Again, you have to appreciate that exclamation because Tommy is a Christian who never takes the lord’s name in vane.

Jamie comes running over to me with super glue.  I asked, “What are you gonna do with that?”

“Trust me, I have experience.”  She proceeded to pinch close my gash and fucking super glue it shut.  OMG!  You’re kidding right?  No way.  WTF?  I couldn’t believe this.  I never actually spoke; I was stunned.  She sealed ‘er on up and proclaimed, “I just saved you a couple hours, a couple hundred dollars, and you won’t need stitches.”

I think she’s a witch.  Or some sorta enchantress or sorceress.  She’s definitely full of bewitchery, and perhaps skullduggery, and confoolery.  Or other types of ‘ery.

She quickly escorted us from the building and then she made me laugh.  She actually said, “I’m glad you came by.  I’ll see you soon.”  We kissed each other on the cheek in mid laugh (god she has soft cheeks) and Tommy and I got the hell outta there.

So….  Monday.  Hot dog day.  I know right?

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