Trouble

Apropos of nothing, I was thinking about bar fights the other day.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've managed to mostly avoid bar fights (or fights in general) during my many dissolute years of bar-going. Honestly, that shit is stupid and I fail to understand why someone looking at your girl would provoke a violent outrage, but I guess some assholes just want to get into fights and need an excuse.

I can only think of a handful of times when I've even been close to getting in a fight, like:

- A couple of weeks after I made the catastrophically bad decision to move to Santa Cruz, one of the Worst Places on Earth, I was playing pool in this dive called the 1007 Club. I hadn't noticed that more people had come in and someone had written his name on the chalkboard to play next game. I started to put quarters in and the guy totally got in my face and was screaming about how he was next and I was like "Fine, whatever, you're next." Looking back now, I realize that he was probably tweaked out of his fucking gourd on meth, like 90% of everyone between the ages of 19 and 29 in that Godforsaken shithole.

- One weekend afternoon I was hanging out at the Columbus Cafe with my ex-wife and drinking and playing the jukebox and shit and this little angry Scotsman started hitting on her right in front of me. He offered to buy her a drink and I said "It's cool, I've got her drinks" and he FUCKING FLIPPED OUT and told me to come outside to settle this and I was like "No, I think I'll pass" and then the bartender kicked him out. The bartender told us the guy works on a ship and comes in whenever they dock in SF and gets into fights.

(Knowing what I know now, I should have let him buy her the drink, then jumped up and pointed and said "A-HA!!! NOW SHE'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM!!!" and run out.)

Other times I've been on the periphery of big fights that have started and spilled out into the street. Whatever, that shit is boring.

UPDATE: Humorously, between the time when I first wrote this and now, when I'm about to post it, I have learned that Famous Teen Mom Bristol Palin almost got herself into a bar fight recently:

Bristol Palin was riding the mechanical bull at a Hollywood bar in front of a throng of paparazzi and reality TV cameras, when a rude drunk yelled, "Your mother's a whore!" Bristol marched up to the man, jutted out her new chin, and got into a heated confrontation:

Man: She [your mother] is evil.
Bristol: You want her dead?
Man: You know what, if there is a hell, and I don't think there is one, she will be there.
Bristol: OK, why is that?
Man: She's evil. She's evil.
Bristol: Is it because you're a homosexual?
Man: Pretty much!
Bristol: And that's why you hate her?
Man: And why do you say I'm a homosexual?
Bristol: Because I can tell you are.

On the way out she gets into a fight with another pair of angry drunks, including one who yells, "White trash Wasilla!" and "You fucking bitch!" as Bristol and friends storm out of the bar.

"Is it because you're a homosexual"? Who the fuck talks like that? Although, I gotta say, it's probably a drag when you're out for your usual night on the town being followed by a camera crew and wearing an ugly sweatshirt that says "Empowered" on the front with a Lightning Bolt Cross and some stranger says "Your mother's evil." I guess that would suck.

(This all happened at Saddle Ranch, right? That place blows.)