Post #636044 by tiki mick on Fri, May 11, 2012 3:52 PM

Late Summer 1993, ‘round about midnight and I was 23. Heading home from a party with an old friend. He drove there, but had a few too many, so I grabbed the keys for the return trip. On the way back he suggested we make last call somewhere. At just about this time a dingy little bar came up around the bend. It was a typical ‘townies’ bar; small, dark, ill-kept, but we’d stopped there before a few times with no troubles.

As usual, there were a dozen or so hogs in the parking lot; nothing particularly noteworthy. So, we bellied up to the bar and had a couple of beers. It seems my friend was a bit more drunk than I had noticed before ‘cause the beers really seemed to be getting to him. Still, I was nursing my beer in what I thought was a responsible manner.

Almost inevitably, as it seems looking back on it now, some dude sidled up to us to ‘chat’. My friend had just gotten back from training in the Marine Reserves. He had trained on an anti-tank weapon called a ‘dragon’, so he and some others had gotten dragon tattoos. Well, I guess the tat looked too ‘new’ or something to the fella at the bar and he sort of started to give my buddy shit about it. He was testing, for sure. My friend was sort of oblivious at this point, but I brushed the guy off without making anything of it. All seemed well enough, but I felt it was a good time to go anyway. I hit the head for a last ‘deposit’ before leaving and when I came out of the bathroom I noticed that where there had been a moderately full bar there was now no one but the bartender. I didn’t need to ask him what was up.

Sure enough, when I got to the parking lot there was my friend squaring off on a group of 7 or 8 guys, most of whom were pretty large, rough-looking fellas. I was more exasperated than anything else, as this sort of thing had actually happened more than a few times before. Well, I could see where this was going, and it wasn’t anywhere good. So I stepped in to try and keep some distance between the shit and the fan.

I told my friend we had to get moving and started corralling him across the parking lot toward the street. This would take us away from where the car actually was, but it would avoid having to work through the group of dudes. I was willing to take the long way around, but my friend wasn’t ready to leave just yet. He wanted to have a few more words with them. My idea, as I recall it now many years later, was to focus on talking to my friend (making like I was really pissed at him) and keeping the focus off those guys as much as possible. Let them feel their part in the whole scene was over. It seemed to be working for the most part, but just as I thought we’d clear the ‘event horizon’ of the group, the biggest MF took a big step out and smacked me in the mouth. Unwise though it was, I had been trying to keep my focus off them to ‘sell’ my flawed little strategy. Well, I thought, that’s it then. I started toward him and he took maybe two or three steps back before producing what in my memory has become a pretty damn big knife. I was pretty pissed, but hadn’t completely lost control. I could see this was a level of crap I didn’t need. “Ok, you win.” I said. He actually seemed taken aback, so I repeated it and there were a few seconds of stare down before he said something like, “so, get the **** out of here” or something. I can’t remember most of what was said exactly. It was a pretty long time ago and the adrenaline was flowin’ and all that. Anyway, I was happy to do just that, wounded pride and all. So I took a good hold of my friend’s shoulder and started across the street to resume my original roundabout route to the car. We were almost all the way across the street when I noticed that a few of the group had half-heartedly followed us; doing the kind of “yeah, you better run” thing. I thought the scene was just about ready to wind down, but when one of those guys made one last comment, my buddy (he’s always had a sort of short temper) broke off and turned back toward them. At this, the group formed up again and all moved across the street toward us. It didn’t seem likely that there would be any simple way out of this now, but as I was thinking of how we should spread the group out and improve our chances, my friend just set off right at all of them. He put some space between us before I really reacted and they were all over him in a second. By the time I had closed the distance he was already covering up. I caught the first one I got to with a straight left right on the button and he went down. While this was happening, that big MF said something to one of the other guys who produced a blade and came right at me. I don’t suppose he was in any way skilled with the knife; he was slashing pretty wildly. But he was slashing pretty wildly at me. That’s enough. He sure seemed determined, as I recall.

Back in those days I was powerful fast on my feet, and we were right out in the middle of a road (a very sparsely traveled road at that time of night). Plenty of room. I moved off at angles and kept a good 4-5 feet between the two of us. No way in hell that dude was gonna get close enough. Good for me, but not so good for my friend, who was taking a serious beating by now. Other than this one guy, they were all focused on him, so he had a good 4-5 guys tearing into him. Now, my friend is a fearless MF, but not the greatest fighter that ever lived, so I was really worried about him. Nevertheless, I had to give my full attention to the guy trying to cut me open. For what seemed like the longest time, but was probably no more than one or two full minutes, this guy came charging after me trying to slash at me however unsuccessfully. Just out of the corner of my eye I occasionally saw my friend on his feet swinging at someone or trying to run off, but I knew he had to be getting a bad beating by now. The guy coming at me began to tire, and I remember taunting him, telling him how there was no way in hell he’d get close with that knife (I’m sure I called him a pussy or something as well). There was something from him like “stand still and fight you pussy” and something from me like “get rid of that knife and I’ll kick your ass like you won’t believe”. In retrospect it seems kind of unlikely, but he at least pretended to agree. He put the knife back in the sheath or whatever on the back of his belt and put his arms out to show how he was ‘unarmed’. Even at 23 I wasn’t that stupid, and told him to toss it away if he really wanted to fight. Of course, he wasn’t going for that and just repeated over and over something like, “look, I got nothin’ now, come and fight you pussy”. Of course I knew what he was up to, but was really worried about my friend at this point. I said, “Ok, asshole” (or something along those lines), and moved gingerly closer. When I was about in arm’s length, I stopped and moved a bit like I was set to shuffle out of range again. He started to make his ‘hey look, I’m unarmed’ gesture again, and I made my move.

He was moving his arms out and up as I moved in. We both knew what he was about, but he was too slow. Too slow for me at any rate (I was mighty quick in those days). He stepped back to his right and put his left hand out toward me as he reached back with his right for the knife. I was on him before his right hand had gotten past his middle, so I trapped his right arm in front of him, as well as his left arm to his side as I wrapped him up. He was all but done at this point. I used the momentum we both had in that direction to step around to his right, wound him up, and launched him in a kind of modified belly to belly suplex type throw. The first part of his body to reconnect with the earth was his head, and he was out cold and painting the pavement. He was a wet rag as I kept him turned to his stomach and took the knife off him. I held up the knife so it could be seen and yelled to the crowd now leisurely taking kicks at my friend who was balled up on the side of the road. I don’t remember what I said, but it was something along the lines that if they didn’t get off him, I’d open up their friend. I made like I was holding the knife to his throat, but it wasn’t really all that close (I remember being afraid I’d actually cut him). I suppose it was because they were done with him anyway, but they started moving off back across the street to the bar parking lot again. Bleeding-pretty-badly-from-the-head-boy was conscious and moaning by this point so I got him on his feet and walked him over until I felt I was close enough to my friend to get him up and moving before the group could get back across the street, at which point I pushed my would-be slasher sprawling out in the middle of the street and threw the knife as far as I could down the road.

By the time I got to my friend, he was struggling to his feet, so I was able to hustle him further off the road toward a condominium complex set off a nearby side road. At the first place I saw a light on, I got someone to open up and asked them to call the cops. Then my friend seemed to remember he had a friend who lived in that complex. The person we had bothered was able to help us figure out which unit he was in. When we got to his place, we banged on the door until he got up. At one look at my friend, he dashed back inside and came back with a handgun, eager to go to the bar and make bad choices. I convinced him to take care of my friend and let me handle the other stuff. I made back to the bar, taking another route out of the condo complex that gave me a better view of the parking lot before I got to it. As I neared, I saw that there were two police cars in the parking lot, but few other vehicles. When I got to the parking lot, I spoke to a police officer and told him our version of events. It seemed like they knew who these guys were and had had dealings with them before. He seemed uninterested in us beyond recommending I take my friend to the hospital to make sure he wasn’t hurt worse than he looked. So I hopped in his car, picked him up at the other guy’s condo and took him to the nearest emergency room where he got a few stitches and cautions about a possible concussion. Another cop met us there and asked a few questions, but that was all.

Last thing we really heard about it all was that some mutual friends happened to find out who these guys were and that the one biggest guy came to a bad scene owing to some unrelated issues he had.