Ain't That a Punch in the Face

It started out as such a fun night. Stacy and I parked behind Tear-EZ around 7:00 and had one drink in the bar. Then we walked up Main Street to the Civic Theater. It’s probably not even half a mile, but any distance feels like an accomplishment with Stacy. Her stamina for physical activity is seriously low after a year and a half of chemo, steroids, radiation and wasting away on the couch. Some days, though, she seems quite energetic.

This was one of those days. The walk was pleasant though slow, and we arrived just in time to miss the crowds but still get good seats. We were seeing Susan Westenhoefer, a lesbian comedienne that Stacy had seen before. They had the audience seated on the stage, making the already interesting venue seem intimate and cozy. Though we arrived mere minutes before the general-admission show started, an usher took us right up to a pair of seats in the center of the second row.

So many times, it seems, when I’m with Stacy we get rock-star treatment: great parking, good seats, cheap drinks.

The show was fun and long with a singer/songwriter playing guitar as an opening act. Afterward, we strolled back up Main Street to Tear-EZ, which was our plan from the beginning.

As midnight neared, the bar got crowded like it usually does. It’s always a good mix of over-30 men and some women with all sizes, shapes and colors represented. The weekly drag show got underway, and I noticed a short-ish black guy in an enormous knit hat with his taller girlfriend. She was noticeable for the bright pink weave in her hair. They sat atop one another on a barstool next to the tiny stage, which was directly across from us.

Stacy and I and our friend, Dave—a short-of-stature 70-year-old with glasses—occupied three stools along the bar. Eventually, Dave got up to go the restroom. Almost immediately, the short black guy and his pink-haired girlfriend came across the narrow bar and sat on Dave’s barstool.

Stacy said, “Hey you can’t sit there; our friend is coming back. I mean, you can sit there for a minute, but you gotta move when he comes back.”

I saw him nod at Stacy; Stacy says she remembers him saying some version of “okay.”

From this point forward, there are significant gaps in my memory, as well as Stacy’s and Dave’s. We’ve pieced together most of it, and I hear there is video from a bartender’s phone that the police now have. I hope to see it one day and fill in those gaps.

Here’s our collective idea of what happened:

Dave came back from the restroom and said to Shorty (over the din of whatever disco song the drag queen was lip-syncing), “Excuse me, sir, but that’s my seat.”

Dave says Shorty replied with, “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Dave’s answer? “I’m talking to you.”

The next thing I saw was Shorty landing a thunderous right and then a left on the two sides of Dave’s head. I saw his shiny black forearms pump up and down as his body pivoted slightly.

Stacy and I were both almost immediately yelling for the guy to stop. Stacy says I moved past her toward Shorty to intervene.

I must have. My next memory is of standing close to the stage with my glasses in my left hand, tears streaming uncontrollably down my face. All I could see was Stacy on the stage on top of Shorty.

I do not recall getting hit. However, an angry purple V shape blossomed very quickly under my right eye, attesting to it.

None of us knows how Shorty exited the bar, but the cops showed up lickety-split. In my mind only a second or two passed between seeing Stacy on top of Shorty and finding a short, slightly Hispanic-looking police officer in front of me. He asked my social security number and address then snapped a photo of my face with his cell phone.

At the moment, I didn’t really understand why. My mind had great difficulty processing what had just happened. It’s like the morning last summer when I came down to the garage to find my Jeep door slightly ajar and the glove box and console open. I truly could not understand what I was seeing for several minutes. I kept thinking, why did I leave my door open and everything so messy? Eventually I realized someone had tried to burgle it.

The same process moved slowly through my mind last Saturday night at the bar. The cop asked me something like what happened, and I remember shouting, “He fucking hit four people!”

The cop asked me if I would come to the station to press charges. I said—or more accurately yelled; I had had several drinks before all of this—a resounding yes. The cop repeated the yes under his breath while almost imperceptibly pumping his fist the way one does after a strike in bowling.

I’m pretty sure I cried more after that. I think I asked Stacy over and over again if she was okay. I have no idea how long the whole incident took.

Stacy asked the cop if he would give us all a ride to the police station to press charges. Stacy really doesn’t like to walk; the station is only about four blocks from the bar. But the cop said okay.

The three of us went out the front door of the bar to find the street awash in red and blue flashing lights. The girlfriend with the pink hair stood against the storefront next to Tear-EZ with some other girls. As we started into the street to get into the squad car, we overheard Pink Hair asking the cops whether “he gonna be able to come home tonight.”

I know I shouted back, but I’m uncertain about exactly what. It was something along the lines of “No he isn’t, not if I have anything to do with it.”

The short, slightly Hispanic cop immediately admonished us to get into the car and that he didn’t want to hear another peep out of us. I believe he actually used the word ‘peep.’

The back seat of the squad car was incredibly uncomfortable. It was hard plastic with a raised place in the middle where an armrest would be in another car. Stacy sat atop that hard rise with me on her left and Dave on her right. She had to keep her head bent against the low ceiling.

We read and signed paperwork to charge Shorty with assault. We also signed restraining orders in case he got released and tried to come after any of us. That was probably the scariest moment for me: realizing that this violent man might try to find us and hurt us again. The woman behind the counter said it was just a precaution and that we probably weren’t in any danger.

As we walked the few blocks back to the bar, we shouted and vented our adrenaline into the nearly deserted streets.

We received a lot of free drinks and pats on the back and sympathetic looks for the rest of the night. Monday morning, we all showed up in court for Shorty’s arraignment.

I didn’t recognize him. And he was even shorter than I had remembered. Judge Micheal placed him on $20,000/10% bond. He said he was unemployed.

I really don’t know how to feel about all of this. I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I’m kind of proud that I was able to take a hard punch to the face and not pass out or drop to the floor. On the other hand, I am shocked and saddened to have been involved with such senseless violence.

What set him off? What convinces a young man—the judge said he was 28—to just haul off and start punching strangers? I suppose we could have been intimidating, but I really don’t see how. A five-foot-nothing 70-year-old man and two small-framed dykes does not seem like a group that could easily stimulate the fight-or-flight response of this guy.

He’s got a record of assaults and robbery, which is why his bond was so high. I spent a day or two after the incident trying to imagine what his circumstance was and why he was so short-fused. Maybe he was an abused child, raised in poverty where violence was his only role model. Maybe he was on drugs. Maybe he had been to prison and wanted to go back. I’ve heard about people becoming institutionalized and being unable to adapt to life on the outside.

I even imagined a scenario where he was terribly homophobic but his girlfriend really wanted to go to the gay bar. Maybe she fetishized gay people or just liked the music selections. Maybe she was testing him, knew he was homophobic and wanted to push his buttons for her own reasons. Then she gets him into Tear-Ez, and he’s already on edge. He doesn’t want to be there, tells himself that if any homos touch him he’ll beat them to a pulp. Then Dave comes back from the restroom and wants his bar stool back. Snap!

The truth is that I need to stop imagining his situation. The truth is that violence is never the correct reaction to a social situation. The truth is that it is not okay to go into a public place and wreak violence on peaceful people and expect to get away with it.

The truth is that I am proud of myself for standing up and stepping in when my friend was being hurt. That is always the kind of person I want to be, the kind that risks getting hurt in order to help someone else.

My shiner will fade, as will Stacy’s and Dave’s. But Shorty’s going to be cooling his heels in jail for a long time.