You Know This Guy?

Cass,

I think you might know this guy.

There was, briefly, the appearance of trouble out in front of Oxford's Pub the other night. But the trouble was never some how real.

You know how I am about smiles, how that's always the first thing I notice about someone and all - and, for me, it was the smirk, the sneer this young guy wore the whole time I watched him that made the thing no trouble right from the start.

It was that hour around closing and a weekend night and there was a pretty constant traffic on the street and sidewalk, as there always is. The crowd in front of the pub grew and faded and grew again in the usual way over the better part of an hour. And the particular smaller gang of ex-patrons and casual customers that got my attention, changed in number and faces, too, over that time. Most of the folk smoking their cigarettes and talking their parting conversations barely noticed that anything at all was happening.

A young guy with a lean and close-shaven jaw and a hard grin was the center of that little gang's attention and its attraction for me.

He had been ejected, asked to leave the Pub and he was objecting to that - at least ostensibly. His objection was occasionally persistent and amiably hostile. I'll call him, for the moment, the Ejected. I could call him the Objector but, perhaps, he'd object to that for reasons of political connotation.

Given your background and recently deployed status, my guess is your attention would have been drawn to him, too. He'd be familiar to you, you'd have singled him out, too, while others might only see a good looking young guy if they noticed him at all. Part of it would be his physique. You'd have spotted the over all fitness of him and his attitude, the way he presented himself. We get a lot of young guys coming to Oxford's who work out and, weather permitting, like to show off what they've accomplished in gyms and health clubs. They bare their biceps in tee-shirts ignoring the sharp winds of April. They don't dress sloppy casual like most of the rest of the guys who turn out on the avenue evenings. They wouldn't care for the comparison but they are the male equivalents of the girls who bare their shoulders and show off their thighs in short dresses while there are still traces of snow on the ground.

There are usually one or two or more every night there is a sizeable crowd.

But, out there, you'd have known the Ejected One's form as different and, to you, familiar. There was an overall perfection to the young man's build and set up. His torso and hips and arms weren't honed by a two or three times a week hour or two at World Gym and he wasn't fit just for evening appearances in the bars Friday and Saturday night. Nothing about the guy was just for display. He had been trained more purposefully than that.

I guess you could say this guy was uniform. And I think you'll know what I mean.

In the crowd he was with, none of the others were that or anything like that.

Most were, likely, new friends he'd made while drinking in the bar or guys who had seen him inside and gravitated to him, now that he'd been asked to leave. Some one or two may have been old friends of his one old friend who wasn't out there until later, till after closing, well after closing and with whom he eventually went home.

By that time, he had been deserted by the rest.

At first, the Ejected and those who went out with him were tight on the sidewalk just out in front of the Pub's doorway.

"I said, 'I just want to finish my drink,'" the Ejected One was saying, stating his case. "'N'at fat-fuck wou'dn' let me! What the hell's'at?"

But, like I say, he was grinning when he said it. He said it like it was a good joke, after all.

The others were in a swirl around him. They were grinning, too, enjoying the joke. They were all sympathetic to his cause and someone or two were urging him to go back inside.

"They shouldn'oughta!"

"Yeah, man, should call'em on't!"

I have said it before - one night when the cops swarmed in front of Oxford's and took away a slight young drunk who got into it with another and was put out by the bouncers. And I'll say it again - in all these situations there is always one guy who thinks he's Mike Tyson and at least one or two more who think they are Alan Derschowitz. Nine times out of ten, the fighter is the one the cops have the least trouble from. The fighters lose what ever animus motivated them with the one punch they throw. By the time the cops arrive they are already wondering what all the fuss is about. The cuffs go on and they take a seat in a squad car looking a little lost and puppy dog staring out the rear window wondering who'll take them home. Unusually, no one hears another peep out of them. The lawyers all want to argue with any cop who will listen to them for a time and 'no,' 'get out of here,' 'leave,' mean nothing to them. Even an officer pointing a finger in their faces saying, 'I've told you three times; you're one second from goin'!' won't get them to more than go up the street a ways dragged along by friends and still arguing about rights and their knowing the law over their shoulders. Even at that, they'll be back at least one more time - just wanting to ask, again, about how bail works. They know all there is to know about the law but bail procedures have to be explained to them two or three times more before calmer heads can get them to a car and away home. It would be interesting to know how many of these Legal Samaritans actually show up in the queasy morning after at the lock-up with actual check books in hand.

This occasion, fortunately, there was this young woman who was with these guys for a time but about to leave with another group. She put her arms out and somehow moved the lot of them out away from the door almost to the curb side before going off with her other friends. She was saying things like,

"It'll only get the cops here!"

And,

"The guys, the bouncers are just doing their job!"

She wasn't as high or as wide as any one of the guys in that crowd, and they weren't the equal of the Ejected One whose chest she barely came up to. But she did good work out there and, then, followed her friends to Gitsis' Diner where they were going to get in ahead of the after hours crowd.

On the curb the Ejected stood and smirked with the Avenue and the after hours traffic behind him and his admirers ranged around him. For the longest time, as closing came and went, they were in that one spot and the conversation took a turn that introduced the expression I now know the Ejected One by.

Perhaps the young lady's several times repeated words in favor of bouncers put him off, for a time, talking trash about the fat-fuck who'd put his hands objectionably on him. At least, his objection to the fat-fuck was reduced to one point.

"That guy's no bullet-stopper! 'At fat-fuck'd never make a bullet-stopper! Not ever!"

The expression delighted the rest of them. To a one, they were the familiar Oxford's clientele in their baseball jerseys and caps and Hollister tees. They asked questions of the Bullet-Stopper with admiring smiles and quickly wanted to know if this one or that one among passersby were likely bullet-stoppers or not.

One look and the guy could tell the ones who weren't combatant material and never would be (nearly everyone) from the one or two who might have been at one time or someday might be. It was the game of a few minutes and got the subject off the Bullet-Stopper's having been asked to leave Oxford's before he could finish that final beer. The evaluated ones were guys walking back home with sacks of dinner from Gitsis' or going off to cars parked along the avenue, dashing out into traffic for Rookie's Express pizza parlor over on the corner and there appeared to be no particular reason for any one of them to be singled out.

I was drawn into it.

I'd passed near by the gang of them on my return to my stoop beside Oxford's from a walk down through the zone while they were just out of the bar. Standing in my place in 640 Monroe's doorway, I'd watched them being moved out to the curbside. I'd heard Iraq and two tours mentioned and had admired the young man's self-confidence and had taken in the looks of unadulterated man-love, guy crush on the other pasty faces around him from that perch. I saw this game of evaluation and the kind of impromptu recruitment talk that followed it as all a part of that starry eyed male adulation for the one who has been where the action is.

"'At fat-ass, he'll never stop a bullet," the guy was telling the bright shining eyes after barely glancing around at one of the guys going off with a crowd.

A couple of the others had their heads together, I noticed, just then, and they were whispering and grinning in my direction. To the majority of young guys out of Oxford's I'm marked down as a Monroe panhandler, some gray bearded never was.

"Him?" the Bullet-Stopper considered when one of the two of them pointed in my direction and asked.

"He coulda been in the day!"

I was flattered by the assessment, however inappropriately.

There was talk of combat pay and the probability of his being rotated yet again over there, or somewhere. There was some back and forth between the Bullet-Stopper and a girl and her girlfriend who were leaving with a party. It was a conversation briefly funny and hostile, the sort of thing that is always going on between young guys who have asked and been turned down and the 'Lesbians' they have approached in the crush of Oxford's.

Eventually the changing faces of the small clump of guy-crush friends around him dwindled and the Bullet-Stopper was left making cell calls to someone who wouldn't come down to the Pub this time of night. I got the sense that it was some other young woman, like the young lady who'd moved him away from Oxford's door, and that she was saying some of the same things to him about the bar staff and its treatment of him.

After he put up his cell, at any rate, without his crowd of admirers about him, the Bullet-Stopper took his hands out of his pockets and casually swung up to Oxford's doorway for the first time since I'd been watching him. He reached his arms wide, as though about to embrace the place and, still grinning, leaned in and addressed the occupant of the chair that is always set just to the inside of the door.

There were no hard feelings.

Soon after that he was joined out on the street by his old friend whom he'd told to stay when the bouncers told him he, himself, would have to leave. His old firend was tall and slender and the two of them dodged traffic jogging over to Rookie's. There he remained outside and made a couple of last calls on his cell while his old firend went in and glad handed the counterman. One call repeated the urgings and suffered the rejections of the previous call and ended with the same brief angry spate of words. A little later the Bullet-Stopper was inside Rookie's, in the tight well-lit scene in the pizza parlor, grinning his now familar grin and offering his hand around.

Ordinarily, it being the weekend, I'd have already moved on from Oxford's by that time. I was late, now, for the after hours scenes developing down at Gitsis' and beyond on the corner of Goodman. But I hadn't been lured away by the sight of any cop cars gathering with swirling lights out front of Mark's or the congregating of a jumbled mass of tricked-out cars totally crowding the front of the closed Gulf Station. I hadn't heard any angry words break out over the traffic as young gangs coming in to Gitsis' crossed one another on the street as things turned dramatic.

I was sticking with this guy, I guessed.

Eventually, a taxi van pulled up before Hunan Wok, next door to me at 640, and the Bullet-Stopper and his old friend dodged traffic back to this side of Monroe to get in it. The usual is that cabs arrive and, maybe, there is a discussion between those piling in as to where they are going now that the bars are closed. Or, with a cab secured, there is a late conferral on matters of finance - hands digging into pockets and thin wads of the left over bills of a night out counted and compared. Either the would-be fares get out, again, and start walking home, or, the cabs depart with them.

I was getting ready to pull up roots and walk, myself, at last. But the Bullet-Stopper got into the front seat of the cab and sat with his back to the passenger side-door with the pizza box on his lap and a party ensued. The driver, one of the Nigerians, I suppose, smiled and accepted a slice as did the pal in the back seat driver's side and the conversation was warm and friendly having little to do, immediately, with a destination.

They were parked out there the whole time I was down at Gitsis' and didn't leave until the pie was gone, I imagine.

I liked this guy and I liked him long before he mistook me for a possible former Bullet-Stopper like himself. I liked him the instant I saw him freshly ejected from Oxford's door and grinning over being put out before he could finish his drink. I liked him despite his denigrating the fat-fuck whom I suspected is really a guy I know for a very decent bouncer who is never more agressive than he needs to be and is liked by one and all. I liked the ease with himself he had and the fact that he was laughing at his situation and, maybe, a little, at those around him who were so worshipful and warming themself in the reflection of his glory.

I just liked the guy. He was okay.

I think you'd have like him, too, having, yourself, been where he was.

Perhaps you know him.



May 30, 2009.