(Maddy just farted. I shouldn't have let her eat that Caesar salad yesterday. Man, that's fucking gross. Hang on while I berate her. There. Back to the story.)
The other night I was at a bar. It's Alex's neighborhood bar, and it's a very good one. The bartenders are nice, PBR is $3, and it's not the sort of place where you generally find any jerkholes or assfaces. I had already had a lot to drink and was on the fast train to Vomitburg, PA, which is not my favorite destination this or any time of year. I was standing at the bar preparing to place a beverage order when a cockfuck in a dress shirt and Elvis Costello glasses put his hand on my shoulder.
"Where are you from?" he said, fucking pretentious as shit.
"What?"
"Where are you from?"
(Even though I was drunk, I knew where this was going. And I didn't like it one fucking bit. So yes, my voice may taken on an edge of sarcastic condescension at this point.)
"I'm from Ohio," I said.
He chuckled, fucklike. "Figures. Look, when you're here in the City, you don't do shit like that."
"Do what?"
"You just bumped into me. We don't do that around here."
(At this point I am already fucking insensed. He's already done several things that qualify him for douche status in my book: he spoke ill of my home state, he assumed he was smarter than me, and he implied that his long-term residence in a large, expensive city somehow made him more socially erudite than anyone from anywhere else, in this case me. Wrong, Fagnum.)
"I didn't bump into you." (Maybe I did, but after the way he approached me there was no fucking way I was going to admit it.)
"Yes you did, and around here we don't do that."
"And who are you? Kid Manhattan?"
"What?"
"Look, I'm sorry if I jostled your Eurotrash glasses. I'm sure if you take them back to Chelsea they'll be more than happy to do a free adjustment for you."
At this point someone stepped in and apologized to the guy or just told me to shut up -- Alex, I think. And he was probably doing me a huge favor, because I was drunk and this guy, like most people, could probably beat me in a fight. But that's not the point. That's never the point. I've had my ass kicked by plenty of barroom fuckholes, and this guy wouldn't have even cracked the top five. I woke up the next morning angry that I hadn't hit him when I had the chance, or at least been more abusively sarcastic with him to the point that he wanted to hit me. ("Yeah, I was wondering who was playing all that Maroon 5 on the jukebox.") I would've derived real satisfaction from that. But I also probably would've had facial bruising for my interview the following Monday, and that would have been bad. So on that level Alex did me a very big favor. And Emilly, too -- she also told me I was being stupid. But next time someone in a bar has something to say about me or Ohio, I'm going to straight cap a bitch.
