Hey! You! Get Out of My Way! Enter the 9th Circle Part 16

Don goes through the various gins he has behind the bar. I resist the urge to order a glass of warm piss to dump on this patron’s head. The bar is packed to overflowing, naked stripper boys are dancing on the bar, the basement door has a steady stream of people heading in and out of it and the women’s room has a line waiting to get into it. In my experience the women’s room in gay bars is usually the place where people go to do their drugs without fear of a female actually needing to use it.

Suddenly, I hear a loud screaming match starting between two patrons. This quickly escalates into the pushing of each other and chair throwing. The whole room seems to be moving with the chaos as the bar crowd is pushing back and forth, now punches are being thrown. I see an old blue haired queen stand up on his chair, afraid of being caught in the middle he flutters his hands in the air. “Get Brian,” Don yells to me.

I climb up and kneel on the bar and begin searching the crowd for our bouncer. The fight is so out of hand at this point that people are ducking for cover as the crowd is pushing back and forth. I spot Brian in the corner, he’s on the pinball machine. 

 

“Brian, Brian!” I start screaming. Brian is clearly involved in his game and can’t hear me. The fight is only about twelve feet away from Brain, but he doesn’t even notice or seem to care.

I squeeze through the crowd all the while ducking punches and push my way over to the pinball machine. Yelling to be heard I scream “Brian, there’s a fight and we need your help,”. Brian’s eyes are glassy and he mumbles, “I just put a quarter in the game.” “Brian, I say, did you hear me? There’s a fight going on and we need your help!” “Did you hear me? He yells, not looking at me “I just put a quarter in this game and I want to finish playing!” I look at him and I can’t believe what I am hearing.

Reaching behind the machine I find the cord and follow it   to the wall. Grabbing it firmly, I give it a snap. The plug flies free of the socket, shutting the game down immediately. Brian pauses as if caught in headlights and begins flicking the flippers, then turns and looks at me. “Fucker!” he screams, his face immediately turning crimson. He lunges and I duck backwards into the crowd. As I run towards the fight, I am again ducking blows. Brian is right behind me and, as luck would have it, Brian gets punched squarely in the face. That’s all he needs to release the rage he has inside. Suddenly, bodies start flying around. Its like watching a Popeye cartoon.

People are flying through the air and I can see Brian in the middle. I head for the safety of the bar. Directly in front of me on the other side of the bar is Bob. “I heard that there was a fight, I came to make sure that you were okay,” he says, adding a smile and slips his hand over mine. In the middle of all this chaos, I am frozen to the spot.