Let me tell you a story. This happened three or four years ago at a local bar named Saints over in St. Matthews. This is what I witnessed.
The bar was hopping pretty good. A couple of friends and I were drinking beer having a good rowdy night on the town. I wandered off to use the restroom, as you don’t really buy beer but rent it. On my way back I noticed a bit of a commotion by the entrance of the bar. I wandered over, and got to be witness to a verbal confrontation.
Three or four guys were drunk. But they weren’t just drunk. Their faces were flushed and sweaty; they swayed slightly when they moved, but slurred noticeably when they talked, and in their eyes was that mix of both vacancy of intoxication and in one especially the intenseness of aggression.
They were whiskey drunk. Very rarely does anything good come of whiskey drunk, and the scene I was about to witness was no exception.
One of their clique had been kicked out of the establishment for vomiting. They were trying to get back in. The bouncer of course was not going to let them. He stood by the door, a man in his mid-twenties, athletic and in medium build, hair cut short, arms crossed, repeatedly telling the group, and one of them in particular, that they needed to leave, and that if necessary the bar would call a cab for them.
This one guy would have none of it. He was shorter than the bouncer, and wore wire-rim glasses with thin lenses. (Yes, I remember this night that well, for this episode was so memorable.) Also in his mid-twenties, he had the look of a former jock now in bloated neglect. Decked out in trendy preppy clothes, these dudes were aspiring alpha-males, out on the prowl. The vocal one’s build was still thick like a football player’s, but his muscle was now covered by the premature sagging and puffiness of one turned sedentary yet indulgent --the athletic high school jerk that had yet to mature -- maybe one of those who never do.
After cajoling and asking and then demanding over and over to be let in, this tool was still being rebuffed by the bouncer of about his own age, who was now bearing, with a patience that I do not possess, the insults that were beginning to fly. The
true verbal assault soon began.
“You know what?” He slurred, pointing his finger at the bouncer.
“You enjoy this. You get to be the boss. You’re nothing. You hear that… you’re nothing.” He stepped up to within about a yard or two from the bouncer. (Let me here state that the rest of this conversation, while of course not transcription accurate, very closely mirrors the content and attitude of what I heard that night.)
He was yelling now, face flushed crimson, shoulders and chin cocked forward, hate in his blurred eyes. The abuse got worse. The belittlement became more personal. More elitist. It crossed the line by such a mark that the manner of the crowd changed.
“You go to school? You going to be something? Fuck you, you’re not. You ain’t shit! I’m something! You’re fucking nothing!” (He actually said that.)
“You keep us out you fucking pussy? This is the highlight of your life right here. All you are is some stupid fucking bouncer. Fuck you!" This completely one-sided verbal assault stretched on for a much too long period of time.
Bemusement at a drunk making an ass of himself morphed to tense anxiousness, and quiet hostility. The bouncer was now silent. Rigid. Jaw clenched. He was twitching. Perceptible in the crowd was the unsaid but understood acknowledgement that by all rights and means, this guy deserved a beating. A severe, knocked-on-the-ground-and-repeatedly-kicked-in-the-ribs-and-teeth-until-he-cried-like-a-little-bitch bloody beatdown. I think most would have gotten a nice visceral thrill from it.
But the bouncer couldn’t do this. His employer would be sued. He would lose his job. He could have charges pressed against him. He would have to pay lawyer’s fees. This repugnant aggressor could play the rules to be the victim. This pissant would win. And this pissant knew it. He knew the rules. He knew he could do or say any horrible disrespectful thing to this bouncer, and the bouncer had to stand there and take it.
Most bullies are bullies who pick on those weaker than them. But this bully was that rare breed: actually weak, yet antagonizing the strong, knowing that circumstances forbade retaliation without severe repercussions for the bullied victim.
This guy’s buddies got the hint and dragged the guy off towards a waiting cab, and as being pulled off, the drunk yelled something back at the bouncer. This last insolence was apparently the final straw. The bouncer leaned down, took off a large protective brace I had not noticed off his knee, and stiff-leggedly limped towards the cab. Luckily, some others got in his way and kept him from doing what most in the crowd would have relished to have seen done.
Walking back, the look on his face – his frustration had him fighting back tears. These were not tears of hurt feelings, but tears of anger, which if you have seen, you know the intensity involved needed to draw them.
*****
Okay, why do I tell this story?
I, like most of you, know
of the actions of the Code Pink protestors at the Marine Corps recruitment center in Berkeley. These protestors aim not to merely make their objections known.
They aim to insult, to taunt, to hurt, and to bully into silence.
They chain themselves to the door, and hurl invective and gross slander and cover themselves in blood and call soldiers killers.
These Code Pink protestors are the same as that drunk, bloated, insolent bully that I have just described. They are weak and pathetic. They insult and taunt and antagonize an entity much stronger than them, but one they know will not fight back. Cannot fight back. Would face severe repercussions if they did, because of how the rules happen to be laid out.
And yet they have the nerve to consider themselves superior to their target. It is admittedly infuriating.
But in a way, that’s all right. When those drunken wretches finally left, in their little group they believed they had truly stuck it good to that bouncer. They were oblivious that the watching crowd had formed its own, much different conclusion on who had held the high ground.
