My First Bar Fight

Those of you that know me know that I’m a very happy drunk.  I don’t get angry, sad, violent, any of those things.  (I do get rather loud, but in a cheerful way.)  In fact, I’ve been described by several people as a “giggling school girl” when I’m wasted.  As such, I don’t get in a lot of confrontations when I’m out drinking.

But this is the story of my first (and, so far, only) bar fight.

I was living in San Diego at the time and had been on full-blown bender stage for quite awhile.  All the good drinking I had missed out on while being a dork in college, I was making up for by getting wasted four, five, even six nights a week in my mid-20’s.  As a result, my non-drinking Midwestern parents were becoming quite concerned.  In fairness, there is a pretty good history of alcoholism on both sides of my family, so I suppose their concerns were justified.  So, to put my parents’ minds at ease (and partially my own), I decided to go sober for an entire month.  31 days.

So, long story short, about three weeks into my sobriety, there I was one night, in the club, sipping on a diet coke up on the balcony, while my buddy Tripod was down on the dance floor chasing tail with his usual reckless abandon.  There was a couple having an argument not too far from me.  She was clearly very upset and he was right in her face, just berating her about something I couldn’t hear over the music.  She tried to walk away once and he pulled her back and kept barking at her.  I was just thinking I should probably step in when she tried to walk away from him again, and this time he grabbed her by the arm and literally yanked her back towards him, so hard that she fell on the ground.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m a bad ass or anything, but I did spring into action pretty goddamn fast.  His back was to me as I covered the ten feet or so to him.  Now, I hadn’t really thought this through entirely, and I’d certainly never jumped a dude from behind before (and the girl was on the ground right in front of him), so I didn’t exactly know what to do.  So, for lack of a better idea, I wrapped the guy in a bear hug from behind and started pulling him away from the girl.  He was bigger than me, though not significantly so, and I held tight as I yanked him away from the damsel in distress.

I was struggling with the guy, the concept that I might just get my ass handed to me just starting to form in my head, when the cavalry arrived.  Apparently I wasn’t the only person that had witnessed this little bout of domestic violence, because the next guy that came in literally tackled both of us onto a table, and before I knew it there was another guy in on top of us too.  The two guys started pummeling the bastard, and I did my part by continuing to hold him tight in the bear hug so he couldn’t defend himself.

It couldn’t have lasted ten seconds before security was on all of us, giant sweaty bouncers dragging all four of us away.  I don’t think my feet were even touching the ground.  Fortunately, I was a regular at the bar, so as I was being manhandled down the stairs the lead security guy saw me and, knowing that I’ve never been anything but a giggling school girl in his establishment, stopped me and asked just what the hell had happened.  I explained it all in a very calm and sober manner and they ended up ejecting only the woman-beater.  We three heroes all exchanged high fives, laughing and complimenting ourselves on our chivalry and toughness.  One of them suggested we do a shot to celebrate and I could only frown and say I wasn’t drinking tonight.  The other two looked at me like I was speaking Swahili or something and went off to drink together.

And that’s it, my first bar fight.  I never landed a punch, but I never took one either.  I basically helped a couple strangers pummel a defenseless man.  But the asshole deserved it, so fuck him.  I’m going to call it a win and declare myself undefeated in bar fights.  Anyone wanna take a shot at the champ???

The next day I called my Mom and told her what had transpired.  She suggested maybe I should start drinking again.

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