The guy is easily six foot six, 325 pounds, intimidating, hairy, ex-college
football player- not someone people want to fuck around with. That's why he was a bouncer. When you're that fucking big there are not that many professions that suit you better than just waiting for some undoubtedly smaller, weaker person to step out of line and then pummel them into the cheap, cigarette-burn pock-marked carpet. Everybody in town knows him and he tried to use that to his advantage in painting an ugly picture of me. Getting his friends to talk shit about the way I conduct myself in the bar. Complaining to the manager and telling her that I wasn't doing my job.
Shmoozing with the
bartenders and starting convincing rumors about me. But I swear I never slept with that woman.
I don't really know what I ever did to cause all that, but I just kept my head down and followed the golden rule, no ex-paratrooper bravado or macho confrontation in front of a bar full of patrons. I just shut up and waited for him to wear himself out.
Don't get me wrong, I don't claim to be a saint or anything close, I wanted badly to follow him outside and break his kneecaps with the 18 inch flash-light I keep at the DJ booth, kick his fucking teeth out of his head, mutilate his corpse, dance on his dead body and show everyone that I was the bigger bad-ass. It's still all there, the hatred that has been a part of this old-looking young man for going on 15 years, the contempt for anyone with power over me, and the fantasies of revolt against the laws of normal human restraint. Teenage angst and all that shit, but I kept my feelings to myself, thinking it better to grin and bear it.
I wasn't surprised when I got a call from the manager last night asking me to come in an hour early and to not allow him inside, that he was no longer an employee. I was not elated or dancing the wobbly legged touch-down strut, I just accepted what I knew was going to happen anyway. He apparantly offered her an ultimatum between my being fired, or his quitting. She told him to hit the fucking road.
I don't know what I ever did to offend the guy, maybe he had mustache envy of my foo-man-chu or maybe he was racist against Irish boys.
I don't know and am far from understanding and even farther from caring. I am just glad to have more hours on the schedule and be making a quarter more per hour.
Today is going to be a good day.
Tonight will be even better.