On Sacrifice, Dartboards, and the Night J.D. Salinger Died
If you really want to hear about it the first
thing you'll probably want to know is that a bar isn't a place of sacrifice …
surrender, solitude, cirrhosis, sure, but not sacrifice. Unless you are the
bouncer. I'm the bouncer. And being the bouncer is a lot like being the
designated driver at a raging house party. It is part drug intervention and
part animal planet. The difference is that most interventions are well-planned,
emotionally sensitive ordeals, and say what you want about the late Steve
Irwin, but at least the wild animals he was pissing off were sober.
I don't know how I got
this fucking job. Well, that's not true, but I do honestly have to ask myself
what the hell I am doing in this line of work from time to time. Right about
now I should mention that I am roughly five foot seven, and a hundred
forty-five pounds. Normally, a person of my size would not be employed in this
type of profession because I don't look like some
Cro-Magnon-gorilla-Frankenstein-manbeast with tattoos on my neck and a head the
size of an industrial-grade microwave. But I am a martial arts instructor, and
the head teacher of my dojo referred my services to the bar owner.
I want to make it clear
that while I do sometimes enjoy physically harming people, I would never
actively pursue a situation where that sort of thing could happen, without very
good reason. Years ago I dedicated my life to the study/teaching of my
discipline, and though that sounds very romantic and all, the brass tacks of
the matter is that working a second job is the only way to sustain this
dedication. The dojo, though formidable, is a small establishment and working
there alone cannot fully financially support me. I make about one hundred-fifty
dollars a night while bouncing, and for only this reason, I hold this vocation.
It was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the love of something that kept me
alive.
My theory on dreams,
lifestyles, achievements, goals, etc, is that to reach them, something will be
sacrificed, regardless- and it is always better to choose what it is that will be
sacrificed, rather than allow the natural process of stress and striving to
choose for me. The latter is how things and people get neglected, pawned,
and/or unnecessarily damaged.
There are many other
things I could be doing with my life as an able-bodied educated single young
man in the heyday of my late twenties. My mother often chooses to remind me of
this, and how she gave up smoking, drinking, contact sports, recreational narcotics,
roller coasters, and any aspect of joy in efforts to bring me safely into this
world. One of the other things she loves to remind me of is the master's degree
I hold in literature, which was paid for in full via scholarship, and which
hangs above the old fencing trophies in my childhood room at her house,
collecting dust. Why I am not standing at the front of a college lecture room
in a collared shirt and Oxfords, teaching Dostoevsky to hung-over twenty-year
olds while collecting a professor's salary, is beyond her. That being said, the
irony of putting my body on the line in a seedy bar, to humbly sustain a way of
life that is devoted to a refined mastery of the body, is something I choose
not to think about - unless I am drunk. And I don't get drunk a lot, it hinders
my job requirements.
Usually there isn't
much trouble. The place I work for is a hick-bar in a folksy college town. The
locals are kind, and the drinks are strong. The University's football stadium
is located about three blocks from the establishment, so the only real ruckus
that occurs takes place in the Fall season- when home games get out. During
such occasions, the bar permits me to call in an extra man, just in case. I
always call in Haoa, a displaced Hawaiian local boy who also happens to be
another instructor at my dojo. He is about one inch and ten pounds heavier than
me, arms covered in beautiful Japanese-style tattoos of black bamboo shoots.
Before he came to the dojo we work at, he'd left Hawaii to become a successful
tournament fighter in Thailand. His fighting career was skyrocketing, as he was
one of the only foreigners to consistently hold and defend the championship
belt. But the higher up you go in the tournament bracket, the dirtier the game
gets on account of the gambling. His last fight there, Haoa was given a large
sum of money by a collective of gamblers and told to throw the fight. It was
his latest title defense - he hadn't lost to anyone in years. But instead of
doing as the gamblers had paid him to, Haoa knocked his opponent out in the
first round. As a result, he had to flee the country, or face potentially
life-threatening retaliation at the hands of that gambling collective. He has a
hard time explaining exactly why he didn't throw the fight, but I understood.
We were kindred spirits of some sort, and the fact that our dojo's head
instructor often paired us together on weeknights to teach the intermediate
students strengthened our friendship. The only time we ever talked about what
happened to him in Thailand, he simply said "Some tings bra, you no can
give."
Football season was
over, but it was January and apparently the University's basketball team was
undefeated, going into a huge game against their biggest rival. It was a weeknight,
which was weird in terms of bouncing but the bar was expecting a heavy turn out
once the game ended. I'd been deeply depressed all day after learning that J.D.
Salinger had just died. I wasn't really in the mood to work, but hey, when you
live hand to mouth on a shoestring budget, one hundred fifty bucks sounds good
all the time - no matter who dies. When I got the phone call, I was cleaning
the mats in the dojo with Haoa. We barely had time to go home, shower, change,
and grab a mouthpiece. As a bouncer you always carry a mouthpiece. You carry it
in your front pocket and you make sure that nothing else is in that front
pocket but the mouthpiece. You also wear a protective cup, because people like
to think they can end a fight quickly by kicking you in the scrotum. This is
not the case when one uses such foresight.
By the time we got to
the bar, the game was almost finished and given that the home team was losing
by a landslide, there were a great deal of fans who'd already forsaken the
court side contest and begun to drown their disappointment. The whole joint was
filling up fast.
My own morose demeanor
was difficult to contain, and in an uncharacteristic show of angst I took my
shift drink within twenty minutes of being there. A bouncer gets only one shift
drink, meaning that he can obtain a beverage of his choice, on the house, once,
while he is working. I usually wait until my shift is over to take mine, if I
take it at all. But goddamn it, J.D. Salinger was dead, and I couldn't fucking
deal with it. The man wroteCatcher in the Rye! He had been at D-Day and
survived the Battle of the Bulge! He'd given up fame and notoriety to disappear
into seclusion and write stories that he refused to show to anyone and kept
locked away in a safe (so it was rumored, it is also rumored that he burned
them all). He was a legend to me, the last of the old foul dudes, and part of
the reason I fell in love with literature at a young age. Now I would be forced
to place him in the ranks of my posthumous pantheon - with Bukowski, Hunter
Thompson, and Fitzgerald. All of my heroes were dead. Some part of me inside
was being siphoned away, slowly.
The fact that I was
thinking of literature at a time when I should have been scanning the bar for
potential threats, irked me. Taking the burning double shot of Crown Royal
whiskey and chasing it down with a beer-back of Heineken was my protest against
this lack of discipline. The bar was loud, rowdy and growing like the reaching
leaves of some wind-ripped jungle; Haoa was on the outdoor porch near the other
exit staring at me strangely. He motioned with his thumb to my left, and it was
then I realized that there was a small troop of college kids waiting in line
with their I.D. cards in various forms of presentation. Startled out of my
distant state, I did my job - carefully inspecting driver's licenses hailing
from all over the country. Most of the line consisted of girls, but towards the
back of that entering group were some very drunk, very large young men.
I've found that the
average person, when presented with a situation that does not coincide with
their perception of the world and its workings, will receive this disconnect
with caution. There is usually a moment when they realize that there is
something very strange about the circumstance they've just encountered. In my
world, it goes something like this:
Me: Hey can I check
your ID please?
Patron: Sure.
And then there is the
inner monologue that goes on during the period of time when I am using a small
handheld flashlight to check birth dates on shiny plastic rectangles. I imagine
it sounds a bit like:
Patron: (The little
man here, who is paid to beat me up and drag me out if I get too drunk, doesn't
look like any of the other men who are usually paid to do this … either this
bar is laid back, or this man is very dangerous. There is something unnerving
about how calm he is and it makes me feel strange inside. Avoid eye contact.)
Most folk act
accordingly and my night goes on without incident. But alcohol is a powerful
drug, and when mixed with the type of unabashed personality that enjoys
vocalized self-expression, problems manifest instantly. On that night, the
night J.D. Salinger died, when Haoa and I were working the place, the very
large, very drunk men who stumbled in were of the former disposition.
"Hey can I see
your ID please?"
"You're the
bouncer?"
"Yes sir, can I
check your ID?"
"Shit, I could
toss you clear across the room if I wanted to!" he laughs to his friend
behind him while reaching into his back pocket to produce his wallet/ID etc.
"Well, it's
unfortunate you feel that way, sir, you have yourself a good night." I
said, waving him through and handing his ID back to him.
Right then I knew the
evening would end with violence. Haoa came over and asked me about the
interaction. I told him to keep an eye on that guy and his friend. The game was
over and the place was getting about as full as it usually did during the Fall
when football fever was in effect. I continued to visually check in with Phoebe
and Jess, the bartenders - this is another one of those things particular to
the job of bouncing. Paying attention to the bartenders and who they cut off.
Phoebe has seniority back there and it is her that I take my cues from. It is a
subtle sort of affair. Last weekend, some jerk tried to reach across the bar
and slip his index finger down her exposed cleavage - I didn't see this, and it
wasn't a game night so Haoa wasn't there. Phoebe slapped this guy across the
face, with a smile on hers, then reached into the register and removed a crisp
green bill.
"Hey I'll give you
twenty bucks if you go start a fight with that little guy sitting by the door
over there." She said, pointing at me. And naturally, with signature alpha
male bravado, the guy takes the twenty and comes over to where I am sitting at
my post.
It was fast and ugly
and this was mostly because the guy wound up to punch me from about three feet
away. This made it easy to see the blow coming. I elected to jump in and
head-butt him while he lumbered at me with his fist cocked back, trying to
throw his punch like he was hurling a baseball. And yeah, it hurt. Slamming the
top of your forehead into the bridge of a man's nose is not a painless process
for anyone involved in the matter. But it is here that my theory on dreams,
goals, achievements, etc, directly corresponds to my theory on bar fighting.
Something willbe sacrificed, one way or another- bones, blood,
teeth, pride, chairs, tables, cue sticks. Better to choose what will be
sacrificed than have this thing be chosen for you- in the above case, I chose
my forehead, because it is hard and I don't have to use it the way I have to
use my other body parts throughout the course of the day … try eating breakfast
with a broken hand. Anyway, this is a good example of what I am sometimes
required to do when some jerk steps across the line of civility in that
particular establishment. And this was about to happen again, the night
Salinger died.
Phoebe was pouring
drinks like a champion, working the requests from all angles of the crowded bar
counter. Jess was doing her part too, wandering the floor and collecting orders
from the tables full of drunken fans. Sweet Home Alabama came
through the jukebox speakers again, murdering the airspace for the fourth time
that night, and I was swearing under my breath at this awful reality. There was
no one coming in the door, and so I took my hourly stroll through the place,
eyes darting back and forth while collecting empty pint glasses off the tables
for Phoebe and Jess. When I started to walk the glasses I'd collected over to
the bar, I heard the telltale sound of an angry Hawaiian.
Though I myself am of
Blackxican descent, I feel comfortable speaking for my Hawaiian associate and
his people in this one regard - you don't mess with an angry Hawaiian. They are
warriors. It is customary for young men of the islands to engage in
street-fights as nonchalantly as we on 'the mainland' attend a movie theater -
ask any Kaneohe local boy. Drive-bys, shootings, stabbings, these things do not
often occur on the islands- but rather an old-school code of conduct concerning
confrontation is upheld…picture S.E. Hinton's Rumble Fish with
less white boys and no switchblades. That is the cloth from which Haoa is cut.
He is an inherently reserved and gentle young man until a certain point of
contention is reached.
"What, you boys
like jump? Come then, you fuckaz!" he barked, his voice raised above the
general noise and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The dispute involved
one of the young men who'd entered with the large group I'd carded earlier. His
sour-faced friend with an opinion of how far he could throw me was there at his
side. It was near the bathrooms, a narrow space crowded by vending machines and
an ATM. The women's bathroom was full but the men's was not. A young woman, who
had to relieve herself urgently, asked Haoa if he would guard the door while
she ran into the men's room to take care of business. He agreed to do so, as
this is a common occurrence at the bar. The young men from the big group who
came in earlier seemed to take issue with this, and even though the young lady
had finished up and come out, the guys insisted on making an issue of it. Why?
I don't know. I will never understand why people will exacerbate any minor
occurrence into an excuse to fight. Why not just tell someone that you want to
fight them if that's what you really want to do? Why the posturing? Just be
yourself. The arguing was escalating even as other people came in and out of
either restroom.
I put my mouthpiece in
and surveyed that this was going to be more difficult than usual, on account of
the confined quarters in the highly trafficked passageway. Haoa and I met eyes
only briefly as he returned his gaze to the aggressors. His mouthpiece was in
and I could see the black rubber covering his upper teeth while he yelled. The
rest happened very quickly. Decisions were made and more terrible things
happened.
Haoa snaked his neck,
dodging the first punch and then dropping the guy who threw it with a perfectly
timed punch of his own. I heard the crack of flesh and knuckles, accentuated by
the flopping thud of a body hitting the ground. At that point, another guy who
apparently happened to be friends with the now horizontal man's group, popped
out of the men's bathroom. I saw him eye Haoa, who was engaging with the
unconscious man's buddy, and I knew what had to happen. All of these guys were
big, wide and thick, like two-legged bears. Haoa and I, though muscular, are
slender and wiry, we had the advantage of movement - we could slip past each
other and the soon to be flailing bodies with greater ease than our opponents.
The vending machine, the ATM, and the bathroom doors would be impartial
friends/foes, depending on where the rest of the fighting spilled. I jumped
over the downed man and dove at the guy exiting the restroom who had already
extended his arms to grab Haoa. Stuffing him back through the swinging door of
the bathroom, we fell onto the white tile together. The fall knocked the wind
out of his lungs and I was on top of him. My first punch hit him where I
intended it to, in the throat. He coughed loudly and I rained punches down into
his face until his teeth cut his lips and his eyes went dull. His blood was all
over my hands and wrists; some of it had splashed up onto my face. Jumping up,
I turned and ran back through the swinging bathroom door only to find a very
similar situation. Haoa was attempting to put the mouthy young man I'd spoken
with earlier face first into the vending machine. This was not a martial arts
technique, but this was his second try, and he was using the cowl of the man's
hooded sweatshirt to accomplish this feat. The awful sound of cheaply
reinforced glass being smacked loudly was met with a series of shouts and calls
from surrounding bystanders. But Haoa didn't see the other two young men coming
at him from behind. He couldn't have, he was invested, in the Hawaiian sense of
the word.
I slipped past Haoa and
the downed man behind him who was rolling over onto his stomach and clutching
his lower jaw. The first guy tried to punch me with a somewhat educated form.
He'd probably been a boxer. His jab landed on the right side of my face and it
stung, but I was ready for his right hand which I broke using the tip of my
elbow. I knew it was broken because his hand and my elbow met at full force,
him coming at me and me going at him. He stumbled off to the left, clutching
his hand and swearing profusely. I kicked him in the liver to make sure that he
would not return to the fight. He slammed into a table and his head hit the
wood on the way down. I finished this just in time to gain bearing on the
second man, who was running towards me with his eyes focused on Haoa. Raised
over his head with both hands was a freshly removed dartboard. No darts, but
still, a dartboard. He blew past me and it was then that I knew that I was
going to eat shit. Not for a bad reason, for my friend. But nevertheless,
eating a heavy blow and knowing it is coming is never a pleasant understanding.
I did as I knew I must, it was the only way to save Haoa from receiving all
that momentum and that entire dartboard. Were he to take a hit of that
magnitude in the back of the head, he could have been severely injured. It was
a calm decision, thought out quickly and peacefully resigned to.
My left hand shot out
behind me and grabbed the back of the attacking man's jacket, pulling him off
balance and stopping his forward progression. There was no way I'd be able to
get a punch off in time, I knew this, but tried anyway. Then the man with the
dartboard wheeled around and brought it down on my head. The world went away in
a single black snatching, I felt my legs buckle as my face met the floor. I
went down with a grunt of pain, and a half groaned swear word, hoping I'd given
Haoa enough time to finish it all.
When I woke up the bar
was mostly empty. It was darker than usual, as the house lights had been
completely shut off and only the stale white light of the kitchen illuminated
things. My head felt awful and my first thought upon realizing that I wasn't
dreaming was that the world would never be the same again because J.D. Salinger
was dead. Goddamn it.
"Can I get my
shift drink?" I murmured to no one.
Phoebe was sweeping a pile of broken glass from
the shattered frontage of the vending machine, and Jess dropping a bag of ice
onto the counter in front of me snapped me to attention.
"Did it go
okay?" I asked Jess.
"What do you mean
did it go okay? Look at you!"
Haoa was outside the
front door talking to the cops. When he came back in the bar, he was all smiles
and slapped me on the back. "Oh bra, I heard you took one fada team
huh?"
"Did you get
him?"
"Yesi
bredren!" he laughed, nodding his head in the direction of the shattered
vending machine. I could see the flashing lights of the squad cars blaring in
through the windows.
"I oughta charge
people to watch you guys do this shit!" Phoebe spoke from the corner while
she used a dustpan to collect the fragmented glass. "It would turn a
profit and cover damages!"
I came in and out of
consciousness a few more times there at the bar counter. Tiny dancing lights,
purple and gray in color, circled my field of vision. Jess slid a small bottle
of hand sanitizer towards me and I took the tiny thing and squeezed the
gel-like liquid into my palm. Rubbing it over my knuckles, I felt the familiar
burn where skin used to be. Hitting people in the mouth always sucks, because
in the mouth exist teeth, and teeth by default are meant to cut and tear. I was
caught in a drifting blackout, and at the same time determined to drink myself
back to life. Someone placed my pay wage of hundred and fifty dollars down on
the counter in front of me and I asked for a shot of Crown. I shoved my arm
forwards slowly and palmed the wad of bills. My head kept pulsing, that
dartboard had been heavier than it looked. For some stupid reason, I couldn't
get Holden Caulfield out of my mind.
"Goddamn money, it always ends up making you blue as hell." I said.
And I kept hearing his words splintering through my wrecked brain. Someone, I
think Haoa, fed me the shot of Crown and when the throbbing in my head went
away, I started to remember pieces of the fight. They were obscured by my
thoughts on Salinger and how perhaps it would be more appropriate to take some
stupid job at a high school or college rather than potentially eat dart boards
to the face while fighting large drunk men in efforts to make monthly ends
meet. At least then I could assign the books of all my heroes to a new
generation who would otherwise never know of them.
"J.D. fucking Salinger died! Someone bring me another drink!" I
bellowed, thinking the stupid thoughts I only think when drunk. Thoughts about
why I still insist on living the way I do as opposed to listening to my mother
and not risking my physical health. I slid the clean pressed bills into my
pocket with a raw scabbing hand.
"Who?" Jess asked, wiping down the counter and taking the now melted
bloodstained bag of ice from in front of me.
"He wrote Catcher in the Rye! Nine Stories! Franny
andmotherfucking Zooey! Didn't you people go to school?"
Blunt force trauma to the head and alcohol produce a certain type of
belligerence that I was richly exuding.
"No, why, you like teach us bra?" Haoa asked, laughing and tossing an
onion ring at me from across the bar where he was pouring himself a beer.
"No!" I shouted out, taking the shot that Jess put in front of me and
letting it fall into the back of my throat. And I didn't want to explain any of
it - literature, heroes, starving martial-artistry in the name of selfhood.
Some explanations you shouldn't give. Sometimes it's better if you just don't
ever tell anybody anything.
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