Hot Times in Hicktown
IDs, yeah, they're fun, but sometimes they get overshadowed by one event.
A whole night or weekend can be undone by 45 seconds of action.
But, boy, does that action deliver.
It’s early. The start of my shift (9:00 p.m.). Barely a foot in the door and there’s already a situation. Some guys got kicked out of the previous bar and are now inside, but only one of them is showing any real signs of intoxication.
We cut him off. And keep and eye on him.
And I go over to clock in.
It’s now five minutes past the hour and DD (drunk & disorderly) finds an ear of old corn on the floor. Decorative corn, like you’d find at a cornucopia or haunted corn maze.
Don’t mind the corn, it’s just the MacGuffin. It serves no real purpose other than being bitten into and tossed like a grenade halfway across the bar.
It lands and the manager finds it.
“Yeah, he should probably not be in the bar anymore.”
And now I’m looking for a grown man who hurled an ear of corn like he was making a last stand at Hamburger Hill.
It’s only been six minutes.
I finally find DD and sidle up right next to him. Nothing threatening other than being wrapped in winter clothing and an extra foot taller than him.
It should be noted that this winter clothing includes the following: two pairs of socks, long johns, two shirts, one hoodie, reinforced tailored cargo pants, a double-insulated Columbia coat, winter gloves and a winter hat with a colorful pom pom.
I am in the back third of the bar. And I am sweating.
It turns out DD has a few friends. Orange, whose mouth smells of whatever dead animal he ran over on his way to get to the bar, and Howie, a fat bastard with at least 50 pounds on me, an already big dude.
I inform Orange and Howie that DD must either wait outside or leave the bar because he has become too intoxicated to … function.
Orange says he understands but wants to wait for his chord. He meant credit card, but with that much death inside his mouth where his teeth should have been the vowels must get impacted so all he could muster was chord. Either that or he was from Boston. Hard to tell which one is preferable.
Now Howie enters from the right. He’s muttering to DD that he needs to stay calm and settle down, but wont stop sticking his finger at me and his boys in an aggressive manner. He’s clearly the ringleader, but so far not the aggressor.
I insist that DD must wait outside, but the rest can keep drinking as they’ve done nothing wrong.
Another few finger wags and I’m starting to think they all need to make haste and leave the bar as quick as possible.
Until, of course, the guy that's a foot shorter and 75 pounds lighter turns to me and says,
“I’m gonna fuck you up.”
Now, admittedly, this is where I make my mistake. I had poor leverage. I bear hugged DD, who was to my left, and swung him to my right to start heading out the door. Well, Howie didn’t move and took some offense to this, so he started to push DD back into me. It worked, to some degree, but a man weighing near 300 pounds in 900 layers of winter clothing, swinging another man who weighs 225 pounds, creates some momentum. And that momentum came crashing into Howie, sending us a few steps to the right and into one of the six giant wooden posts holding up much of our bar.
Orange gets up and adds to the quarrel and I just about die from his aerosol attack, but I have to react quickly enough to avoid a quick jab to my nose by DD. His punch doesn’t land albeit for a small grazing of my nose, as if a hamster was giving you a gentle kiss goodnight.
Howie, now in more control of his body, starts to pin me against one of the wooden posts. And it’s working.
I’m no longer holding onto DD, he’s being escorted out by a bartender and the manager.
Even though my hands are free, I am unable to fight off Howie because of the way they were positioned, down and to my left side. So I put my heel to the wall and try to gain leverage. One female tennis scream later and there’s distance between us. Almost a little too much distance.
It turns out Face was making a beeline towards Howie and was able to start pulling him off of me while I am pushing him away.
Face doesn’t weigh enough to counter the 650 pounds of human now moving in only one direction.
The sheer force of assembled ground beef and cold gear send Face careening into a ramp railing and partially into the back of a brosef just trying to wrap a jacket around his waist.
A quick pick-me-up gets Face and Howie off the ground and now everyone is outside.
Howie is fuming mad, but not so much at the people who kicked him out. As soon as Orange gets his card back, Howie sends a hay maker into his left jawline. Rag doll physics ensued and both parties bent but didn’t break. Alcohol punches carry less force than down pillows in a slumber party melee.
They appear to make up because they all start walking away together, but before they make it too far away, Howie issues one last statement in Drunkish. A language only God and Missy Elliot can decipher.
Howie worked it. “You made a big mistake!”
Put his thing down. “You’re going to pay for this.”
And then flipped it and reversed it “Yourpht it dernns sor fahh, Haha Fuxs!”
And like that, it’s 9:10 p.m.
Five more until 500.
