It’s the classic cliched line. “There are two ways we can do this. The easy way (long dramatic pause) or the hard way.” And then either someone leaves the fight or guns start blazing.

But they never clarify which is which.

Because violence has to be the easiest way, right?

Not to brag, but I’m comfortable in my strength that I can pick up someone and carry them out of the bar. Up to 150 pounds? From the back of the bar, at least a foot off the ground. Two hundred? Maybe six inches in the air but half the bar length. Three bills? I might need some downward angles and ramps but I can still get you off the ground. Pushing people out of the way? Well, I’ve done that to five people at once already, so maybe 750 pounds with a ramp assist.

Now, talking, that’s hard. Sometimes … most times, I want to say at little as possible. I don’t like yelling. I’m not one for idle chit-chat, and I’m a huge fan of the Irish Goodbye. And yet, there are some nights where I don’t need an adrenaline spike at 9:15. That’s unnecessary. Plus, you can’t plan for crazy.

Bodhi

Steroid ab(use) is getting more popular. Especially for Millennials. My generation needs to tone it way the hell down at the gym. I can think of at least a half-dozen guys at the gym who I’ve overheard, or who have outright told me, that they juice with either steroids or testosterone. And these aren’t even the CrossFitters! Legality issues aside, if you see someone popping out of their clothes at the gym and they don’t have a protein powder sponsor and 100k Instagram followers, they’re on some shit.

And that shit will make your head spin. And who knows what person you’ll become once it stops spinning.

Bodhi’s head was still spinning because he tried to pick a fight with eight guys. That’s not an exaggeration. Eight people with varying fighting styles and training, all bigger than Bodhi, and with a lot more common sense.

So, why did he want to fight? Some half-assed bullshit, like usual. Bodhi was sitting on the bannister near our entrance ramp. Sunshine asked him to get down, and the surfer bro told him to fuck off. Sunshine was technically off-duty but only by minutes, and still wearing his work shirt. Sunshine comes outside and lets me know of this dude who won’t get down.

That particular place in the bar is an odd choice to sit. It’s where our trash bin goes. So, this random dude in a white muscle tank, board shorts, and designer fitted cap not quite covering long blond hair is perching himself above our trash bin.

I walk in, ask him to get down, and he does. But as he’s getting down, drink in hand, he calls Sunshine a little bitch. Well, we can’t have that attitude in the bar anymore. I take his drink and escort him out. Just out. Because he stops and stands a foot from the gate, turns and refuses to walk any further.

Back to those eight guys, and the hard part.

You all know me. I’m probably one of the biggest people you’ve ever met outside of that “one cousin who’s 7-feet,” which I’m pretty sure is all just the same cousin with an extremely complicated and delightfully salacious family tree. Anyway, I’m a unit. But now I’m not the only one. We have a new guy, HHF, who tops out at 6-5 and 260, plus Peanut, Sunshine, and Face (formerly Army, but the A-Team reference is always a better fit), Alias Brad and Chad - two bikers dressed down for the evening - and a cop regular peeking out from inside the bar. That’s a lot of heavy hitters Bodhi’s trying to intimidate.

And he was relentless.

“I don’t fuck with bouncers.”

“Well, you’re being kicked out because you fucked with bouncers.”

“Call your owner. I don’t fuck with bouncers. I fuck with owners. Only they can tell me what to do.”

“No. I’m not wasting anyone’s time tonight.”

“Why you even talking to me. I already told you to call your owner.”

This is a couple volleys in and he’s already repeating himself. Maybe the steroids give you memory loss, too. Why did we think it was roids? His muscle tank, the muscle man macho stance, the veins popping out of his arms and neck with muscle definition only in the parts he wants to show off. His muscle car in the background, parked illegally, of course. Everything about him was screaming “I want to be known for my muscles.” Nobody strong ever looks completely muscled out. Even the reigning world’s strongest man, Martins Licis, wears shirts that say ‘Kinda Fit, Kinda Fat.’

“Read the room, man. It’s time for you to go.”

“I’ll go when you call the owner and he tells me when to go. I don’t fuck with you, bro. I’ll dice you up and throw the pieces into Lake Michigan.”

“Dice me up? Why are you still here? You can’t win. I don’t even have formal fighting training like the the guys behind you, Army, Navy, Army. Plus this huge guy next to me, all these people watching. Are you going to fight all of us?”

At this point I start to really see his crazy. He wants me to step outside and fight him. I know it will end badly, for him. But it’s still 9:15 p.m. on a Friday night. That may seem late to you, but if given the option to fight someone or ease into the shift 15 minutes after clocking in, which would you do? Give me a warm-up first. Like a warm-gin puker, cocaine cowgirl, or a fence jumper.

“Yeah, I knew you were a bitch. Better back up because I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

“Have a nice night, sir.”

“Do you know why I wear this shirt?”

“To let people know you went to Hawaii?”

”It’s white. I wear white because I’m not afraid of blood.”

Funny, I thought the Crips wore blue …

“Yeah, I’m just gonna call the cops now.”

“Call ‘em, bro. I don’t give a fuck about you.”

I called the non-emergency line and spoke with the dispatcher. I told her about a potentially violent guy who would be coming back to the bar because, after leaving while I was dialing, he left without his debit card. The dispatcher wasn’t really feeling my story until I got to the dicing up part.

“And did he threaten you with a weapon?”

“Well, he did say he’s dice me up and throw me into the lake, so I’m assuming it was a large knife.”

(Audible Laughter)

Nothing might shame me more in this story than reading off Bodhi’s license plate to the dispatcher and forgetting what the Army’s phonetic alphabet was for W.

You know the phonetic alphabet. Alpha, Bravo, Tango, Foxtrot, Victor, Oscar, etc. But I blanked on W. And just said “ummm, double u?”

Whiskey.

W is Whiskey.

And I work at a bar.

And forgot about Whiskey.

Lo and behold the cops did come. Alias Brad showed the night patrol pairing video of Bodhi misunderstanding his ground, which elicited a short-man syndrome joke from one of the cops, who couldn’t have been more than 5-7 himself. The cops took the debit card and the saga ended. Bodhi came back a while later and we told him the cops have his card. He left pretty quickly, blowing through the stop sign.

All before 10 p.m.