Act Like You've Been There Before
A fight story, and some thoughts on the Minneapolis ICE shooting
Some time in the mid-2000s, back when I was in the military, a friend of mine wanted me and my roommate to go out with him to some dive bar karaoke night. I’m not a bar guy, not really a large crowds of any kind guy, for that matter, but he’d been pestering us about it for weeks, so finally we agreed, and headed down to a place called Scolari’s Office, in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego. We were only going along so he’d stop asking, and figured we could bow out after our buddy got his turn on the mic. So we get there, and not only is it a full-on sausage fest, but everyone there is in some version of the black boots, black punk band t-shirt, spike studded belt uniform popular among people who never outgrew their Hot Topic phase. My roommate and I had only gone grudgingly, so our clothes were hardly more than pajamas - basketball shorts and flip flops, basically - and we stuck out like a sore thumb. No problem, it wasn’t like we were there to make new friends, so we located a spot near the bar where we could hunker down and get through the night. A fourth guy had come along as well. Our friend who’d invited us had brought him along, and my roommate and I were just meeting him for the first time. This guy was a Marine, he stood 5’6”, maybe 5’7”, muscled like a bodybuilder, shaved head, tribal armband, and he carried himself exactly the way those details make him sound.
So anyway, before we even get to the bar, this Marine won’t stop talking about how he hoped someone at the bar would get froggy so he could kick some ass, how he just couldn’t wait to fight someone, and anyone who wants to step to him is gonna be sorry, blah blah blah, you know the type. He’s still talking like that once we get to the bar. Well, I’m not drinking because I’m the designated driver, and my roommate isn’t drinking because he had recently discovered a blood clot behind his eye, and the medication they gave him made his blood so thin that alcohol was out of the question. Well, just our luck, our buddy doesn’t get his turn on the mic in the first hour. Or the second hour. And eventually it’s after 1 am and we’re wondering if we’ve been sucking back plain soda water at a shitty bar all night for nothing. Our karaoke friend and his Marine buddy were getting hammered, though, and from our stationary vantage point we watched the two of them ping pong around the crowd, mingling, buying drinks for people, all that malarkey you people get up to at the disco.
