Hollywood Bar Fight

A Couple of weeks ago this happened'�

I'm sitting in this bar in Hollywood. I forgot the name of it, the one across the street from that frosty monolith they call the Highland Complex on the 'famed'� corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland, just a block down from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Nothing complex about the Highland though: cold, eerie, pricey, and just recently the scene of a particularly nasty sexual assault in a public bathroom. So much for planned urban dwelling

Anyway, this bar, a hold out in the area, now soon to be shuttered and swallowed by the boys taking souls up and down the boulevard, is no different than any other small dive bar in America.

No AC is hooked up unless you count the dust encrusted oscillating fans taking their last spins around the block. And you got the ripped up booths you'd expect to find too, along with the wobbly bar stools, tight, narrow quarters, and it's very smoky despite the fact that you can only light up outside while the homeless hit you up for cash.

Freaks from all kingdoms litter the place: drunks lucky enough to get old, heavy metal rockers stuck in the 80s-now that's a disturbing sight- the prerequisite group of histrionic poseurs dressed like a casting call from the Brady Bunch, dudes in their very late 20s who still skateboard, 909 escapees, supremacists, bikers, service men, protest marchers, debaucherous writers in their mid-30s, scornful harlequins, wannabe actors/actresses, midgets, hookers and amputees. No, sorry. No hookers. Those are at the Frolic Room up the road. My bad. A bit of a shit kicker joint, but you know, it's Hollywood: it's all bullshit.

Rip a few pages out of 'The Day of The Locusts'� and you have the perfect picture.

More importantly though: cheap booze. $5 bucket glasses full of the Jameson. Three-buck-Buds. What more could a man want?

A few minutes ago before I came in I had a confrontation with some drunk breathing booze in my face at the front door. He was playing doorman while the real one was in back taking a piss.

His eyeballs sweated alcohol, his face bloated red, his wife-beater T-shirt was stained with mustard, his short frame trembled with paranoia, and his speech stumbled right along with his one-foot-in-the-grave gait. 'You can't come in,'� he shouted at me. 'YOU CAN'T FUCKING COME IN!'�

I looked behind him, thinking it was full: it wasn't. 'You need ID or something?'� I asked. 'I'm about as old as you are, man. What's the problem, pal?'�

'YOU CAN'T COME IN!'�

'Goddamn, boy, I can smell it way over here,'� and I waved my hand in front of my face.

'Wh-wh-what you say mudderfucker?'�

Just then three lost on holiday tourists walked up, IDs in hand, they tried to enter. You could tell they were tourists; they were smiling, and looked happy. The one fat dude escorting his two female friends said, 'Hi, what's the cover?'�

'FUCKYOUTOO!'� the asshole screamed.

'Hey, you want me to throw you in the fucking street?'� I asked as I stepped into the bar. He grabbed my arm, I yanked it off, was about to push him against the wall, when the real doorman came up. 'What the fuck's going on here?'�

'This asshole,'� I pointed at the asshole, 'was giving shit to paying customers!'�

'Is that true you'�'� but before the doorman could finish his sentence the asshole turned and ran into the bar. The doorman took chase. I shrugged my shoulders and we all went inside.

I ordered a double Jameson, had a seat, fucking blazing hot in there, and settled in. The music was loud, very 1974-1984. Think the old KMET. Anyway, I looked about the place: sometimes you get lucky and there's a drunk woman who wouldn't mind some action, and, pretty soon you have the hand holding and the baby kisses and then the compliments that turn into an invite to take the party elsewhere. So I look. And look.

Just then the doorman came up from behind me and slapped me on the shoulder: 'Sorry about that, brother. I lost him. And I know you're a regular so you have my permission to drag him out back and beat the fuck out of him if you have to.'�

'Thanks, man, that's really nice of you. Get you a beer?'�

'Naw, gotta work the door.'�

I look around some more but it's sparse tonight. A few, yeah, but they're hooked up already in the corners with multiple dudes for some reason. Does she take them all on? I always wonder. Who knows? Lucky bastards.

Suddenly next to me is a man, white, mid-40s: jeans, work shirt, drunk, leans over and says, 'You from around here?'�

Oh God, please don't let him be hitting on me.

'Yeah,'� I say, take a drink, look away.

'Hey, don't worry about me, pal, just chatting is all.'�

I chuckle. 'It's cool, man.'� We clink glasses and start up this rambling, stupid-ass, inebriated conversation about this and that. Shit that made sense at the time but can barely be remembered days later. All you remember is that it was pleasant, cheerful, and you seemed to get along just fine.

I forget the time, I order another; he sticks with the beers. I think he said he was from San Antonio. Said he was on probation for possession and distribution but swears it was all for him. Whatever, he seemed like a nice guy.

Now, my back is to the entrance, so I have to turn at an awkward angle to peek at the people coming in, or to see, through a narrow gaping hole what is going on outside. I turn every so often as I'm talking to the man from San Antone and the next time I do I see a young man, maybe 19, 20, coming into the bar.

The right side of his face is covered in streaky, dark blood: from the forehead down to the neck. He's upright, dazed and confused, he looks on the verge of crying, and I wouldn't blame him if he did because that's what really happens in bar fights; guys scream and cry and call out for their mothers sometimes if they're hurt real bad, nasty business, but anyway, he waltzes by me, down the length of the room, the music cranking, drunken laughter bouncing off the brown walls, and he has a seat at the end of the bar, as quiet and as calm as can be, like's he's sitting a spell to pass the day with a cold beer and to bitch about how Kobe fucked L.A. out of the Lakers.

I look at the dude from San Antone; he's ordering another beer, then, looks at me. He shrugs his shoulders as if to say, tough break, kid, and I do the same, and we continue blathering but this time he brings up the Illuminati and it gets really fucking weird from then on out and I want to see where this hiss madness goes and pretty soon we're clinking bottles again, sloppily, violent, and cursing the president and his evil empire.

San Antone then motions to me to look out the door. I turn and see flashes of white shirts, see legs and arms dashing by the door, but no real definitive shapes. My vision is a bit blurry by now, but I do see the doorman, well, half of him anyway, as he reaches into view for the wooden bar stool he was sitting on. I see him snatch it up and then step out of view.

Hmmm. Interesting. I look over at the kid, and he's being attended to by one of the bartenders. Ice bags. Cold beer. Bloody towels. Sympathetic nods. He seems all right, the bleeding has stopped. He's just shaking his head trying to figure out what the fuck he could have done to deserve this. Yeah, you and me both, kid.

I look back at the door and see one of the bartenders, there are three of them, and she runs outside, makes a hard left, and disappears. I see other shirts, bodies, fluttering back and forth, distorted by eyes that have seen far too goddamn much in the past 8 years, now sleepy and with bags that won't go away and then San Antone slaps me on the back and says, 'Goddamn, you people from L.A. are all right, let me get you another beer.'�

Well, hell I'm not going to pass that up. 'But make it a whiskey,'� I say and turn back. The doorway is empty, but thankfully not my glass. We chat some more. The tunes holler. Way too much Journey for my taste and then it's after 1am, last call is announced, a pinprick to the heart, and San Antone gets antsy. Starts to look around like he's expecting trouble to find him on his bar stool, in the middle of Hollywood, shooting the shit with a native.

'I'm out on bail actually,'� San Atone blurts. 'Crossed state lines, and the last thing I want is some cop pulling me over for DUI. Think maybe I'd better leave now before they start rounding up their quotas for the night.'�

'Hey great chatting with you; be careful, man. Give the finger to W for me back at the ranch.'�

'Always,'� he says. We shake hands. He darts.

I settle back in and another one of the bartenders is there washing glasses in front of me. He wants to tell me something. He motions me closer. He says, 'You know that asshole from before?'�

'Which one?'�

'That one you and Paul had a run-in with earlier.'�

'Oh, that asshole. What about him?'�

And he tells me this:

'So this guy, right? He's all fucked up. After he gets into your shit, and after Paul chases him out back, he climbs the fence and runs off. Good, he's gone, we think. Bit later homeboy comes back around, he's out front on the sidewalk saying how he's gonna kick Paul's ass, getting all belligerent and shit, but he's on the curbside, away from the doorway, we can't chase him off, you know?

'And he's getting more stupid, now he's on the street yelling at the cars going by, scaring people. At that point some dude comes down the street, on the sidewalk. That dude over there,'� he thumbs the kid at the end of the bar, 'He comes up to homeboy and he says, get this, he has balls to say, 'Hey, man, be cool!' Well that just set off the homeboy. Nobody saw that he still had an empty beer bottle in his back pocket. So he whips that fucker out, charges the dude, I mean, the dude didn't even hear him coming until Paul yelled LOOK OUT and the dude turned just as homeboy cracked that fucking bottle across his head. BOOM! Blood all over the fucking place! Wow, man! I've never seen that shit before!

'Now the dude is screaming, he's on his knees, but he won't go down, just like he's frozen or something, and homeboy is jumping up and down like a fucking monkey, I mean this guy's fuckin' nuts, no way is it just the alcohol. And he's yelling 'Come on motherfucker! Let's go! Be a man! Let's go!' Fucking lunatic. And that's when Paul had enough. Even though legally he wasn't in harm's way, he goes and gets his fucking chair, runs up to homeboy, and from behind just cracks the fucking thing over homeboy's back.

'And you know, these chairs are all old and shit, so it really breaks, like in the movies, but instead of putting homebody down, he's thrown back into the street where he's fucking hit by an SUV. Goddamn! It grazes him, spins him around, leaves a big 'ol burn mark on his arm, and now homeboy's screaming, he's bleeding, in the middle of the street, the dude he hit came into the bar for help, and somebody is yelling 'Call the cops! Call the fucking cops!'

'So now everybody is just standing around, like what the fuck? The shit happened, now what? You know? Well, Lorraine comes out, says, 'I called the cops you asshole, you asked for it!' She's got balls. Anyway, all homeboy hears is 'cops', so he turns and starts running across the street, dodging traffic and shit, and he's about to reach the corner when Lorraine comes running up and puts a tackle on him. They go down, hard, wham! But she pops back up, starts dragging homeboy by the arm, dragging him back over here, like she's scolding a kid or something, cussing him out, 'I've had enough of your bullshit!' and you know homeboy's all fucked up, so she manages to get him back just as the cops pull up.

'But homeboy's still got some fight in him. He pushes away, takes off running again, but the cops chase him down quick. Tackle him, hogtie the fucker, throw him in the back of their car and they're gone. The kid didn't want to press charges, but they got homeboy on other shit. Goddamn! It was over in seconds. Sucks the place is closing though. Lotta good memories here.'�

'It happened in seconds? Really?'� I say.

'Yeah, man. So, you want another or what? Last call.'�

'Sure, why not?'�

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