Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 1:19am

but Fridays are more for chillin' with friends.

So tonight I was doing just that in the bar I work in with a good friend of mine (waddup Tanner!) when some a-hole decided to try to pick a fight with me.
I'm new at this job, and really didn't need to be getting into any fights.
Fortunately I've been working in bars for a long time and I've dealt with more drunks looking for fights in the space of a few years than most people will ever encounter in a lifetime. I've also had the distinction of being a drunk that liked to pick fights as well, so I'm pretty good at getting inside the average drunk's head.

Most of the time it's all about ego. All you have to do is show through body language that you will fight if it comes down to it, yet still offer your opponent a way to leave with his ego intact. It's also important that in showing you are prepared to fight that you actually ARE prepared to fight. Any sign of weakness will only fuel the potential attacker's confidence.

Tonight this skinny little drunk guy walking past my table stopped to chat on his way out of the bar. He started off with a pleasant conversation, then turned abusive with no real warning trying to pick a fight.
At that moment I reached out and shook his hand (so that I could gain control of him if need be), and I thanked him for sharing told him his comments were awesome and bid him good night. He made a few more stupid remarks, I squared myself towards him a little more (while still seated) squeezed his hand a little harder and bid him good night again, but I waited for him to start moving away before I actually let go of his hand.

The waitress came by and I asked if she'd been having trouble with that guy, and she said yeah, and when I pointed out that he'd been trying to pick a fight on his way out she got panicky and said he hadn't paid his bill. We both assumed he was running out on his tab.
So I chased out after him with her, and found him outside smoking, where taken by surprise he went suddenly very pale. I confirmed that everything was okay with the waitress and the bill, (Thanks for having my back Tanner!) and I went back inside.
A few minutes later the guy came back inside and apologized to me, saying he understood perfectly why I had chased him out and he would have done the same thing and basically behaving in a much more sociable manner. He went back to his table, I defused and then I left very quickly.

Here's the thing.

I'll fight if I have to, and you won't see me back down from anyone, but I don't like fights much. I had the pleasure of getting beaten to within inches of my life by a gang of 5 guys when I was about 19, and I've never been quite right since. I'm fine at the moment of a confrontation, I'm fine during the escalation, even alright during a fight, but afterwards I'm sick and shaking and wired for days.

It's been worse since the last bar that I managed, where the threat of sudden and devastating violence was omni-present, thanks not only to the nature of the patrons, but to a group of violent and disgruntled ex-employees as well. Every night I had to deal with the threats I relived that night that I almost died.

After a near fight has dissipated and the main adrenaline rush purges from my bloodstream I start thinking about that bar job, and the threats to my family, and the constant wondering about when a bunch of drunken ex-bouncers were finally going to storm my door and make good on their threats.

And I'm taken right back to that moment of laying on the pavement with a bunch of broken bones, begging for my life against the kicks still coming in while slipping in and out of consciousness. It didn't stop until the police arrived that time, and who knows if it would have without them. I remember puking in the ambulance, and puking non-stop for a while at the hospital that night.
And I remember being half conscious on the ground, not even feeling the kicks. I remember hallucinations of dead friends or maybe it was their actual ghosts appearing out of the crowd of spectators and telling me to stay down. It was probably listening to those ghosts and hallucinations that saved me from a worse fate.

Another friend of mine, that many of you know, had the same thing happen to him, but he didn't fare so well. He was a creative genius before his bar fight, and now he's so badly brain damaged that he has difficulty reading and writing and often can't remember his closest friends.

So now here I am, dead tired because I've been up since 6am, but too sick and shaky and keyed up to sleep. Every strange noise in the house is making me jump. When I try to lay down my mind and my heart start racing and I know I'm going to have dreams of getting boot-fucked all night long again.

Adrenaline, you are no friend of mine