School concert, The Hold Steady, and a drunken jerk

Tonight was packed. I left work early (for me: 6:15) to head to a school concert. Sarah and Scott were violinists with the strings ensemble and the symphony orchestra, and I greatly enjoyed hearing them play. I also had a good time listening to the other groups that performed, but I can't help but be biased toward music my kids make. They're talented musicians, and I'm incredibly proud of them.

Immediately after the show ended, four of us--Sarah, her friend, Jennie, and I--headed to the Lincoln Theater to see The Hold Steady, a band whose most recent CD all of us have liked. The opening act, Art Brut, was better than I expected but not quite good enough to entice me to buy any of their albums.

After the usual club delays, The Hold Steady took the stage. Despite the typical club bad sound mix, I was having a good time listening to the music and shuffling my feet in place in what for me passes for dancing.

Then the problem began.

A drunken man in his twenties or thirties hit on all three of the women in succession. Jennie said she gave him a mean enough look that he moved right past her. Sarah looked away and didn't respond, and her friend did the same. The jerk unfortunately fixated on her friend and kept bumping into the girl. And we are talking a girl here, someone well under 18. I explained her age and asked the guy to stop it, but he kept finding little ways to be annoying, so we all moved to a position against the wall far away from him. First rule of conflict: walk away if you can.

That should have been the end of it.

But it wasn't. On his way to buy more beer, this idiot stopped to talk to Sarah's friend. I quickly put my body between the two of them. He explained he would always stop to talk to a sad face, and I explained that he would not, at least not this particular one. When he kept trying to get around me and would not listen to what I was saying, I used my body to move him a few yards away, where he continued arguing and started yelling at me. I told him to back off and leave the girl alone, but he persisted in moving toward her.

If you know me, you realize what a bad idea this was. If you don't know me, all you really need to understand is this: if someone is under my protection, I would die before I would let them get hurt--but first, I would do violence to any attacker. (If you think I'm being melodramatic, you don't know me.)

The jerk saw an overweight middle-aged man, so he pushed.

The next thing he saw was my arm squeezing his throat and jamming him against the wall. I explained to him, rather less calmly, that he would stay away, or I would hurt him a great deal more than I was already doing. He fussed for a moment, then went limp--his first smart move of the night. I released my grip, and he left.

A bit later, he approached her again. I intervened, and he immediately began apologizing. You might think this was his second smart move, but it wasn't, because to make the apology he again intruded on the girl's space.

Unfortunately, by this time, Sarah's friend was scared--she did not know she was safe with me, and she did not know the guy was apologizing--and went to the restroom in tears, Jennie and Sarah in fast pursuit. I followed them and waited, quivering from adrenaline, outside the restroom. What I wanted to do was pummel the jerk who made her cry, but I have enough self-control to stop myself from doing that.

We enjoyed the rest of the show from the upstairs balcony. The guy came up one time to use the bathroom, but he swerved around us and did not make eye contact--his second smart move.

Being a dad, I couldn't help but use the experience to impart some lessons to the girls on the drive home.

I hate that those lessons are necessary, but they are. Men can be jerks in many circumstances, but when they're drunk, the probability of bad behavior goes way up. So, too, does the likelihood of stupidity, because only a stupid man picks a confrontation with no data about his adversary.

I should end by noting that I'm not writing this because I'm proud of my behavior, nor because I enjoyed it. I'm writing it in part because I'm a writer and it's what I do, and in part because I'm still buzzed with adrenaline and draining some more of it from my system by relating the story is better than many of the alternatives. I couldn't communicate to that idiot that I would not let him hurt anyone with me, and I came perilously close to hurting him. I hate that I did, I hate that I ended up at a violent solution, and I hate that I'm paying for it, but words alone would not get him to stop bothering Sarah's friend, and letting him bug her was never an option. Yeah, we could have left the show, but we'd paid to attend, and we'd been enjoying ourselves, and frankly I'm simply not that good a pacifist.