Something New

An aside:

I work part-time in a small liquor store while going to school. It's part of a restaurant-bar combo, pays alright, gets me free food and most importantly, on slow nights, gives me a place to do a lot of homework. The job is not without the occasional peril, however, and tonight was a night that had some peril.

The largest part of the night passed without incident. Today was a Monday. Mondays are slow. I studied for a test, updated a formula sheet for a quiz, and then I watched a couple of movies with my coworker to pass the time. This is not a particularly demanding occupation, perfect for a student. Unfortunately, at about twenty-past-two on the Tuesday morning side of the shift, things got a little belligerent. Two men came in to make a purchase, but they were already well pickled. Not only were they drunk, but, if I'm honest, they were coked out of their fucking minds.

The altercation concerned one of the two men and it began with him pushing my friend and coworker. He apologized profusely. This sort of thing comes our way from time to time and the usual way we deal with it is to simply brush off some behaviour, let them make their purchase and get them the hell out of our store. But after the pushing and the apologizing, he repeatedly threw his keys down on the floor, threw a package of cigarettes at me, crashed into the rack with the bags of potato chips and alternated between threatening us and telling us how much he respected us for doing our jobs.

I told him to get out.

He did not take this well.

He postured and threatened and I pulled out Uncle Smashy, the two-foot long steel tool under the counter. Think blunt machete and you'll be on the right track. Bashing the counter top for effect, I reiterated that he should get out. He came up to the counter and reached for me, I pushed him back by the neck. He came back again and I slapped him twice on the right cheek with the flat side of Uncle Smashy. In immediate retrospect, that was probably a poor choice, but it did help us skip over the rest of the process and get him to come at me, which was when the bouncers, who had been sitting at the bar enjoying a drink on a night off, rushed in, grabbed him and, eventually, got him outside. This was compounded by the fact that they knew the guy and were trying to avoid beating him into a pulp, and by the fact that one of the bouncers... lacks tact and may have made the situation much worse. Several times.

Coke boy came back about ten minutes later to apologize, but then the bouncer-sans-tact came back in and things got slightly violent again, and the cocaine cowboy had to be ejected again. At this point we made the decision to lock the door and shut down for the night, as it was almost closing time anyway. Instead of riding off into the sunset, Chief Hell-Of-A-Drug decided to bang on our windows for a while. I called the police and they sent a car around, but I don't know if anything came of it.

Afterwards, I sat with the bouncers and had a drink with them. I needed it.

Here's the thing: I really wanted to hurt that man. He was belligerent, mean, rude and outright stupid. He pushed my friend and threatened us. I'm something of a martial artist. I say this not to brag, but instead to put in context what I mean when I say that I have demonstrated in the past the ability to not only hold my own in an altercation, but to be downright dangerous. I really wanted to hurt him, but at the same time, I really didn't want to fight him. He was about my size, clearly in good physical condition and COKED OUT OF HIS SKULL. I would have had to either choke him out or seriously injure him to put him down, and there's a great deal of danger in a fight when rapid incapacitation is necessary, but not in the sense that you might be thinking. The problem lies in the fact that the line between incapacitation and killing can be awfully fine, and this is made far more complicated by severe inebriation and drug induced states.

I feel guilty about how much I wanted to smash him, thankful it didn't actually come to that, but a little disappointed at the same time. I'm very grateful that the bouncers happened to be at the bar tonight, because without them there things would have gotten messy. Man, what if Cocaine Katie had pulled a knife, or if he was a skilled fighter?




Ugh. Now I'm all post-adrenal.