I am absolutely ridiculous.
(That is going to be the only intelligent sentence in this entire post. I give you fair warning.)
I have never been in a fight. I have never taken a punch, nor thrown one, and I have often wondered what it feels like to take a swing at someone’s face. Well, this being the Summer of Experiences, I decided to find out.
A couple of my most bad-ass, guy friends took me out the other night with one goal in mind: bar fight. (Well, two goals actually, the first goal was to drink beer, which was kind of necessary if we were going to accomplish the second goal: bar fight.) We headed to this dive bar in a poorly lit strip mall, ordered a round, and settled in for the night to see what would happen. An hour or so after arriving, my friend Chip found a perfect target - a complete tool of a guy wearing a cowboy hat, designer fashionably-ripped jeans, pointy toe boots, and overpowering cologne.
Over the next several hours (as I was trying to build up some liquid courage) my two friends laid a pretty good pre-fight foundation. They made fun of the guy about his hat, talked a lot of shit over a couple games of pool, and in general, got the guy pretty ticked off at us. At one point, Cowboy started bitching and Chip said to him, “Quit whining and take your skirt off.”
The target was primed.
The end of the night found all of us out on the bar’s patio. It was late and I figured that it was about time things went down; I had Abe* on my left and Chip on my right and we were ready. I started talking and being rather snotty to Cowboy and he told me I should go back to New York where I came from. I decided to blow this comment way out of proportion and started yelling in his face about not being from New York. Did I look like I was from New York? Did I fucking sound like I was from New York? Shut your filthy mouth about me being from New York, asshole! (Since I am clearly not from the South, New York would normally be a legitimate and inoffensive guess, but hey, I was trying to pick a fight.)
So Cowboy did not appreciate my excessive yelling; he was pissed and told me he was going to pour his beer on my head. I responded by putting a cigarette out on the leg of his fancy jeans. He stood then, got right up in my face (I’m going to guess about 6’2” to my impressive 5’6”), and continued to make threatening noises. At that point, my good friend Chip stepped forward. He gave me this long look followed by a condescending pat on the back to calm me down, and then he took my beer away from me. The Cowboy completely forgotten, I rounded on Chip. How dare he - after all of our planning, after all of my nervousness, after all the how-to-throw-a-decent-punch-and-not-break-your-hand lessons, after I had made a fool of myself in front of a lot of people by yelling nonsense about not being from New York – now that we were a hairsbreadth away from actually throwing down, he was going to take my beer (implying that I had had too much to drink) and give me a soothing pat on the back! I ignored the Cowboy, called Chip an asshole, spun on my heel, and left.
Well, for those of you who know guy code, you probably realize what an idiot I am. For those who don’t know the code, I will explain what took me about an hour and a couple late night angry/confused/apologetic conversations to fully understand:
1. The long look he gave me meant, “You can do this!” not, “Behave yourself.”
2. The pat on my shoulder was not to calm me down, it was meant as encouragement. It said, “We are here and we’ve got your back.”
3. The taking of my beer was not to imply that I had had enough to drink, it was to free up my hand so I could more easily swing.
Damn. After all that, I gave up a golden opportunity to check “get into a fight” off my list of things to do during this Summer of Experiences, and all because of some misinterpreted pre-fight signals. Is there a “Man Code for Dummies” book out there that I can study? It was a hell of an interesting evening nonetheless, I just sometimes I wish I weren’t such a dumb, frightened girl.
101 Things to do (or don't) before you die - #41:
Do go to a shooting range and actually hit the target.
Don't make tuna salad with mayonnaise.
- lada is so hot, she will make you sexist
*a.k.a. Surfer Boy
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9 comments:
You are weird. Don't get stabbed.
Lada! What the hell is wrong with you? Tuna salad made with mayo is HEAVEN! I don't think we can be sisters anymore... Mommie, Daddy, can we put her up for adoption now?
I hope that one thing on the list of SoE isn't "forever dead" or "30 days of Cold Bars"
Do you read these?
Do not doom yourself to repeating the idiotic mistakes of your forebearers. You are the next step in our evolution.....act like it.
Google couldn't tell me anything about "30 Days of Cold Bars," but it sounds like it might include a lot of drinking.
Yeah...I'd stay away from the cold bars. I don't think they let you do a lot of drinking there...although that's typically a good way to find yourself ending up there. The world already has one Dunce Cap Marvel.
What would the Karate Kid do?
Oh I get it, cold bars = prison bars.
That's not nearly as fun as the drinking establishments in Alaska I was picturing.
I am trying to figure out if this last entry is a breach of "The Typewriter Contract".
The question is was the cigarette that was put out on the "Cowboy's Pants" lite by Lada's lips?
Good luck with that Soul thing!
Recommendation: If you want to get into a bar fight, pick a WOMAN. It will take a lot of "priming" to get a guy to actually throw down with a girl.
Jezus, goodbye Second Wave feminism, the things I wind up thinking/saying. Too late to stop now!
I have actually been in a couple of fights. Only with other women, never a guy. It's alarmingly easy to pick a fight with a girl. For example: Last Saturday, standing in front of Harry Caray at Wrigley, some hoochie-mama handing out some promotional something for a bar decided my friend Erica needed a punch in the nose. Apparently, in the midst of 30,000 people congregating on one square city block, Erica bumped into said hoochie-mama when walking past her. The hoochie starting yelling obscenities, threatening Erica, etc. Now, E is not a shy, retring flower-- she is the middle child in a family of bad-ass German-Catholic girls from south St. Louis. But even she was taken aback by how much this hoochie wanted to mix it up. In the middle of a crowded ballpark. In broad daylight. With cops standing right there. Stone sober.
There was no fight that day, but only because we had paid way too much money for tickets to get chucked. And also because we were not yet drunk and brave.
If you do get drunk and brave, just make sure you do indeed have a friend there to get your back (or call the cops) if things get out of hand.
Also, make sure you have health and dental insurance. Nobody likes to have to pay for a busted nose or missing teeth post-brawl.
Happy fighting!
(I can't believe I am actually encouraging this...)
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