Full Moon Fight Night: Solstice Slam
The Fight Glossary
Brawlers: Heavy hitters without style. People who have seen Roadhouse, but only the edited version on TBS.
Hold Me Backers: Talkers who love to react like they can’t go on the court after a prime time dunk or game-tying three-pointer.
Mouths: Pure talk and no action. People who love to rile another person up but will back down and claim harassment when attacked.
Cheap Shooters: A sucker punch is their best move, and then they’re running as fast as they can in the opposite direction.
Apologists: Those who always find the time amidst the chaos to say, “They’re not normally like this.”
Devil May Carers (DMCs): Self-proclaimed psychos with “nothing to lose.” While not necessarily the most dangerous, they are the most unpredictable.
Guilty Bystanders: Those who come to the aid of the wrong person and claim to be in the right. Not EMTs, but rather friends of the person who started a fight and act like everything was within reason.
Big Gamers: A cousin to a Hold Me Backer who says they’ll mess up your shit if given a level playing field.
Men of Action: No talking, just hitting. And landing. Men and women of action don’t wait for the next big verbal blow because they’re busy winding up for a knockout punch. But still not the most dangerous.
People Pushers: People who don’t care to fight but are powerful enough to move whole swaths of people quite quickly over short distances.
Pugilists: The one trained boxer in the bunch who squares up and throws a perfect punch. They take too much time and are often pushed off to the side with smaller people in the way.
Artists: As in Mixed Martial Artists. What happens when a Brawler becomes a Man of Action and knows what he or she is doing. Their punch and kicks land. Swiftly and without mercy. The most dangerous person in a fight.
This Bar Isn’t Big Enough for the 50 of Us
A bouncer is a people pusher. The job, when a fight arises, is to get all parties outside the club, bar or venue, as fast as humanly possible. Pick them up and move them. Drag them, kicking and screaming, if you have to. Friend or foe, man or woman, if they have to go, they have to go.
But what happens when five people, and their friends, all start fighting at the same time?
When I say 50 people, I don’t mean 50 people were fighting. Fifty people were close enough to the action they all became entwined in each fight breakout. Yes, you read that right. Each. Fight.
Fifty people were in the way, either by watching it and not moving, moving and not paying enough attention and getting in the way, holding people back, asking what’s happening while you’re dragging someone out, or wanting to join in the fight.
Five people were the cause of enough hysteria to make 45 others leave the bar in a matter of minutes.
And the motive is still unclear.
Because all talk is just talk until somebody brings about some half-assed bullshit that gets taken the wrong way.
Major Players
Face: Bartender
Authority: The Boss
Sunshine: Interior Security Specialist
Peanut: Fellow Door Guy
Brasco: A Former Door Guy
Specs: Fellow Door Guy
Juice: Barback
Quasar: Regular
Solstice Slam
Thirty seconds can change your life. Thirty seconds is also a helluva lot longer than most fights last.
Life is not like the movies. It’s much, much quicker. It’s the aftermath that you never see, which is a mixture of yelling and adrenaline crashes.
The aftermath is a dozen strangers asking 20 different questions while you’re waiting to catch your breath. It’s tasting copper while bathed in neon light and cocktail mist. And it’s fucking fantastic if you're on the winning side.
It Begins With …
Brasco was coming up to the door telling me that there might be some action inside. I am never called inside unless something significant is about to happen or the major incident already occurred.
I follow Brasco up a step and beyond the jukebox. I can’t seem to find anything happening. Meanwhile, Specs is escorting someone outside.
I get to the bar and look at Face and Authority with a blank stare. Nothing is happening. I guess. Specs saved the day and got the guy out. Well, one of them, at least.
People will find ways to fight about every sort of thing. Touch. Taste. Sound. Smell. Melanin. Height. Weight. Hair. Relationships. Music. Movies.
With so many strangers in a bar, especially on full moon nights, it’s never one thing that sets someone off. It’s someone pouring lighter fluid on a box matches before tossing it all in a fire pit. Everything starts up real fast without a single rhyme or reason. There is no more talking. You just have to do your best impersonation of a fire extinguisher.
Authority gets the first taste. A Mouth met a Brawler, and the two erupted in a mini-melee. And because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, when one brawl breaks out it’s like a public endorsement that anything now goes.
We now have a barroom brawl.
As Sunshine is keeping the first fighter at bay outside, No. 2 is experiencing a wave of humanity rush him and try to get him out the door. One problem, he doesn’t want to go. No. 2 attempts to create distance between him and the Mouth, but a spry reaction from staff gets him in the funnel of people leaving down the exit ramp.
Specs tries to hold me back as I head to the top of the ramp, but it’s no use. As big as Specs is, he isn’t me big, and I’m a People Pusher. There’s a man in a Longhorns hat bracing himself on the ramp, clutching each railing trying to protect two women from being moved. All three had their chance. Specs asked them repeatedly to get them to move to the side and avoid the fight.
Hook ‘Em was having none of it and stood his ground.
So I picked up the whole group of five and moved them.
They were small.
Specs ran around and started to help each person individually out the door as I took each step. Mouth, Girl 1, Hook ‘Em, Girl 2, Fighter No. 2.
Sunshine holds the door, but now it’s Face’s turn. There’s another pop off.
Another Mouth gets in the face of an Apologist and a Hold Me Backer. Face takes one party while I try to talk the HBM down. Well, it turns out the HBM had grand thoughts of becoming an artist.
With Face escorting a couple stunters, Peanut and I are trying to talk down a regular who happens to be the chief apologist. There’s just one problem. HBM, with veins popping out of his neck and arms, is breaking free.
Fighter No. 3 sheds both friends and lunges after Peanut by the jukebox. It’s a move that catches everyone off guard. Things go from 30 to 100 in the blink of an eye. Yes, we were ready for a fight, but people tend to stay in their lane. It turns out he was just biding his time. Fighter No. 3 was the primary aggressor. A wiry white dude was looking to start some shit with a bunch of guyss minding their own business. Were they talking? Sure, but were they acting up? No.
No. 3 came to the bar looking for a fight. And he got one.
After lunging at Peanut by the jukebox, he wraps his hand around Peanut’s shirt and pulls hard, twisting until he throws his target off balance. A theme I was too soon to notice.
With Peanut bracing himself between the music and floor I wrap my arms around No. 3 in a big bear hug and start pulling. I get him loose of the other door guy and upright.
This is the easy part, I think to myself, always putting the cart before the horse.
No. 3 then throws me for a loop. With both of us upright and at the top of the ramp, he grapevines his right leg around mine. Imagine someone smaller than you using their leg as an anchor on your leg but not in the cute way Ewoks hung on for dear life against the AT-STs. More like a boa wrapping around a tree trunk.
It’s unsettling, to say the least.
It’s also an effective maneuver at tethering someone to one spot. No. 3 and I are no locked in one place as I am unable to move my right leg.
The 30 people behind us didn’t seem to care.
As we start careening toward the floor, I experience time slowing. War movies get this right. When the shit is hitting the fan, senses are heightened.
I fall. Hard.
No. 3 hits harder, Authority’s hand on his neck and chest, pushing him to the ground next to me. I regain control of time and space and instinctively grab No. 3’s left leg while Authority and Peanut grab the right. We backward somersault No. 3 down the ramp and he makes it four feet until the Artist Formerly Known as HBM takes a Cheap Shot from Fighter No. 4.
As No. 4 is laying a quick beat down on No. 3, Authority is now dealing with Fighter No. 5, Juice.
Yes, one of our bar backs started fighting our manager, which caught the eye of Quasar, a regular.
We caught the video on the security cam footage, and just as Authority swings No. 3’s leg he disappears from the frame as is if he was taken by the Babadook into the night, never to be seen or heard from again.
Juice wasn’t in on all the action, but what he saw was me on the ground and someone choking another person. Well, that guy needs to go. Juice leaped without really looking, however, and put Authority in a choke hold. Quasar sees this and jumps on Juice’s back. It takes all three too much time to realize they need not fight one another and by the time everything is sorted 50 people have left the bar, and No. 3 is out in the street reeling from a concussion through every fault of his own.
Fighters Nos. 1 and 4 have all left the bar and surrounding areas. No. 5 is apologetic. No. 3 is being tended to by a few Guilty Bystanders, all who will eventually start a ludicrous chain of events that leads to an arrest.
Outside
With all warring parties now outdoors I can finally catch my breath. It’s tepid as the copper taste fills my mouth. Adrenaline spit from an impending crash. Shallow breathing, spit. Shallow breathing, spit. The cold air breaks free into my lungs and a few puffs later I’m ready to deal with whatever is happening.
A handful of GBs aid No. 3 and call the police for a medical emergency. He leaves before the cops arrive but not before the GBs attempt to go back inside. Two new players also show up, a mom and dad of a kid celebrating his 21st birthday. Mom wants to use the bathroom. I told the whole group not to help the fighter and risk not being allowed re-entry. Mom was upset at me and the bar for over serving the drunk man.
He wasn’t drunk.
We didn’t over serve him.
He wanted a fight.
He got one.
He was dealing with the aftermath.
A friend of No. 3 strolls back up the door, and I deny him. He was, after all, one of the people who failed in his duties to hold No. 3 back. Clad in a camo hoodie, he and the brother of birthday boy are now hurling epithets and daggers at me like I’m solely responsible for the last few minutes of fight night.
Mom gives me a stern talking to, but I let her in any way because Dad is a fresh cucumber and apologizes for his oldest son’s mouth. Everything is over, right?
The cops show up.
Fighter No. 2 returns for a brief cameo to spark Quasar and his over-excited friend who must have had pogo sticks in his shoes because he was hopping mad despite not being involved in any fight up to that point.
I let Quasar cool down before letting him and the cops in to check on the place. No medical need. No more fights, so they thought.
Up walks a Devil May Carer. Three cops are all about to get back into the cars when a DMC sparks up his “Psychosis.” His word, not mine.
Peanut, a fan of First Amendment videos on YouTube, is in awe of seeing one in real life. As is Face. Fascinated, we all watch as this DMC, an outsider, rages on the three officers. If one turns their face, he jumps around to yell at them some more.
“You can’t do shit! I know my 1A. I know you can’t fuckin’ touch me you pig piece of shit!”
And for all his negative talk against me, Mouthy Son does us all a favor and talks trash to DMC, causing him to, and I’m not making this up, gently push MS on the shoulder. Assault. Battery. Here come the handcuffs.
And now the night is complete.
