Fisticuffs for Festivus.

I don’t have anything against Wyoming, it’s got it’s nicer parts, they won their bowl game (Good job, Pokes), and without Cheyenne I’d never, ever be able to get an emergency beer on a Sunday, but, Holy Shit, plant some fucking trees or something, because the 60-mile an hour crosswind on the goddam interstate is even less of a good time than the thin sheet of ice that it gradually pushes you across.

I guess I shouldn’t complain about Wyoming, as Colorado’s going to get so fucking crowded that we’re just going to end up needing the extra parking up there anyway.

My Adopted Family and their collective brood were actually a pretty good time. It still kills me to see the row of exhausted, relieved faces when Uncle Judd shows up, slaps on a Montana Griz Football Helmet and gets gang tackled by 5 kids. It works out well, as the Parental Units get some well-deserved rest and I get my ever-rare Paternal Urges satisfied for another year. This usually happens about 3 minutes after I get there, when one of the 4-year olds WWF’s off the top of the couch onto my nuts.

“Oh, you should have kids, you’d make such a great father!”

“Yeah? Howsabout I just show up a few times a year and play with yours while still living my cherished Single Lifestyle? ‘Cause seriously, my nuts couldn’t handle that on a daily basis.”

Adopted Brother’s Wife and her family always have a Christmas Eve Poker Showdown at her dad’s place. I know I blow SlotMachine when it comes to Poker, but I don’t think it’s necessary for her father to visibly salivate when he hears I’m coming over for the game. I showed him though, I drank all his goddam beer while he took all my goddam money.

When I woke up Christmas morning in the middle of the living room, with Th0mas the Train running across the back of my throbbing head and my wallet empty, I wasn’t exactly feeling the spirit. Thankfully, I had a nice quiet afternoon of the Eskimo-In-Laws to look forward to.

I was actually friends with the middle Eskimo-In-Law, Monkey, early on in High School before we figured out that his older brother was dating my step-sister. I can be pretty fucking dense sometimes, but it still astonishes me that I never associated the only Inupiat (Eskimo) I knew from that High School with the only OTHER Inupiat I knew from the same High School. 8 years ago, StepSis and HisOlderBro got married, and me and Monkey were officially “family.” Much Good Times have ensued since.

That family is nuts though, and every gathering consists of constant attempts to out-obnoxious whomever is being the most obnoxious. Its kind of fun to watch, but to even attempt to participate is exhausting.

When Eskimo-In-Law-Mom darted her hand across the Christmas Dinner table, quick as lightning, snatched the turkey bone from off my plate, ate the knuckles off it, broke it open and proceeded to suck the marrow out, she took the fucking prize though. Hands Down.

I love those folks.


I got back last night in time for Gayb0y’s swanky Holiday Party.

Gayb0y and his husband, Rainman, live in a decent section of town in one of those old, renovated-to-way-past-the-point-of-reason homes. They are very well off, as Gayb0y’s family is some sort of Cheese Magnate out of Europe. This place was fuckin’ Posh.

While I admired the natural wood trim and furnishings, my inner RedNeck was chewin’ tobacky, spittin’, and sayin’ “Man, dem pillow-biters sher kin do up a place, cayn’t they?”

My inner HoityToit was mildly offended by this, but managed to keep quiet while he sipped Dom Perignon and ate caviar.

I’d never hung with that kind of pompous crowd before, and even though Flam and his friends were hitting on me incessantly, I spent most of the night hanging out in the kitchen, drinking Guinness and talking hockey (or lack thereof) with Bartender Hottie from Calgary.

I was not in the best of moods when I left.

The walk to Light Rail was a bit of a long one and about halfway there I heard my bladder screaming at me, berating me for not going at all earlier while drinking 5 Guinness at GayB0y’s. I stepped into a bar that was on the way.

While I am used to hearing any manner of things yelled at me from strangers while wearing the kilt, almost all of them are said somewhat tongue-in-cheek and I rarely take any offense. There are some though, that irk the fuck out of me, and “Hey Faggot, Nice Skirt!” is one of them.

3 guys and a girl were sitting on stools at a table along my path to the pisser, and as I stopped and turned to them, I could tell right off who had said it. He was the biggest, or at least the widest, of the 3 men, about my size, and had one of those smashed faces that makes him seem shorter while turning his eyes into glittering, mean little slits. His eyes and his sneer were what set him apart, and I looked him in the eye and said, “Now, that’s not nice.”

I could tell he was drunk, but his speech wasn’t terribly slurred as he retorted, “Whassa matter, faggot? Panties in a bunch?” This garnered laughter from his male friends at the table, but no one else.

I’ve mentioned before in this diary, that I’m a big, fat, sissy, pussyMary, when it comes to drunken confrontations. I am always the guy that talks his way out of things, and usually ends up buying beers even after getting beat up. I just wasn’t in the mood to take any shit though, and I leaned in and told him, “Hey, I don’t appreciate being called, ‘faggot’ okay?”

I’d painted on a smile but my eyes said, “Fuck with me, and I’ll pound a bar stool through your fucking chest.”

His reply to this was a well thought-out and lucid, “Only queers where skirts, faggot.” He sneered and again looked around, pandering for laughter from his buddies.

I’m not sure why, but I decided to puff out the Peacock feathers as well, and in my best Drunken-Scottish accent said, “Well lad, we’ll see shuir enough ‘oos the ‘faggot’ when yuir gerl’s heed is a-bobbin’ underneath mah ‘skert!'”

In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say, I can see that now.

I heard a shout of encouragement to my right and turned to see who my ‘fan’ was. As I turned my head back, I saw that WideHead was halfway out of his stool, and his hamhock-sized fist was on a path straight towards my face.

In the brief milliseconds before impact, my brain had some curious thoughts.

“Is he seriously going to hit me?”

“He really is going to hit me.”

“Why is he going to hit me?”

“This is probably going to hurt.”

WideHead got in a pretty good shot, and it knocked me back, but it did 3 other things as well.

1) It caused him to stumble up against me.

2) It left him off-balance.

3) It pissed me off.

4) It apparently ruined my ability to count.

Since WideHead’s wide head was right next to mine now, and I was already into the whole Scottish-bit, I head-butted him.

I’ve never tried that before, and it hurt. Not a good move.

While I’m usually one for the whole kick-’em-in-the-nuts-then-run-away-screaming fighting style, WideHead’s angry eyes told me I wasn’t going to be able to run away from this one.

I realized this, and I wanted it over quickly, so instead of employing the whole wind-up-to-Colorado-Springs-roundhouse punch and risking getting hit again, I grabbed his collar, cocked my fist back a foot or so, and started rabbit-punching him in the head as fast and as hard as I could.

From a foot away, a fist doesn’t pack much behind it, especially when your punching someone’s incredibly thick skull. But, if you land enough blows and work a certain area, you’re bound to get results. WideHead turned to try and square up again just as I was shifting my focus to his face.

When you’re at the Carnival and you swing the over-sized hammer at the “Test Your Strength” booth, it’s a highly satisfying noise when that little bell *Dings* because you know that you can now claim your stuffed Teddy Bear and go home.

During a fight, the wet, crunching, noise of bone and cartilage has a similar effect. I landed a good one dead-on his nose, and the lower half of WideHead’s face was instantly splattered with his blood. He went down quickly.

In lieu of a stuffed Teddy Bear, I headed to the bathroom as I still had to piss insanely bad.

I went into the pisser, walked straight up to a urinal, hiked up the kilt, and listened as my bladder thanked me profusely.

I don’t know why, but I thought that WideHead’s blood was the end of the whole deal, but the reflection in the plastic ad on the wall showed me that one of his friends, a big one, had followed me in and was now standing in the doorway, staring at me.

I pretended not to notice, groaned loudly in relief, and tried to think what Jackie Chan would do in that situation. If he got rushed, he’d probably yank the urinal off the wall, jump in the air, kick 5 ninjas in the face, and then flush one of their heads on the way down.

He probably wouldn’t turn around and try to pee up the guy’s nose, which was what I was planning on doing.

WideHead’s buddy finally walked across the bathroom to a urinal about 3 down and took a leak. I tried not to sigh audibly as I hurried my way out.

I walked by WideHead and his remaining entourage as they were swabbing at his face with a terry-cloth towel they must have garnered from the bartender. They took little or no notice of me, so I was walking briskly toward the door when a short, skinny, Weaselly-looking, guy jumped in front of me. He was dressed like the bartender, so I figured him for the manager. Plus, he had a nametag that said, “Marlon — Manager.”

“Where you think you’re going?”

I gave him a confused look and said, “Um… home.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Again, confused. “I’m not?”

“You’re in real trouble here.”

Then, it occurred to me, I’d just been in a drunken, bar brawl. I was in real trouble here.

“You’ve got some things to answer for. You broke that guy’s nose.”

I had some things to answer for. I’d broken that guy’s nose.

“Clint! Call the cops. YOU stay right here.”

I assumed Clint was the bartender, and he looked like a guy I wouldn’t want to fuck with. He was all the way over at the bar though. Marlon, who was about 5’6″ and couldn’t have been more than a buck fifty if he’d had a brick in his pocket, was the only one preventing me from leaving.

Still agitated, I pushed past him, telling him that WideHead started all the trouble, I had just finished it, and that he could ask anyone that saw it, including Clint.

I blew out the front door and started walking quickly down the street.

And by “started walking quickly,” I mean, “ran like a retard during a kickball game.”

I didn’t hear shouting behind me, but that didn’t really slow my pace much.

I kept nervously glancing over my shoulder for either the cops, the bartender/bouncer, or WideHead’s revenge-seeking buddies.

I got to the Light Rail station with my heart pounding, and hid behind a Schedule Kiosk any time headlight’s flashed across the platform.

See, this is why I’m not a fighter.

Wasn’t I the big, bad, nose-breaking, tough-guy?

Why was I so damn scared?

As I sit here at work and type this, my jaw is slightly bruised, I’ve got a scratch down my right cheek, and my knuckles are red and swollen. If I’d have just kept my mouth shut, I could have avoided all of this. The worst thing I may have had to endure was some ridiculing, and possibly just the sore jaw.

Now, I can barely type with my right hand, my cheek looks like it lost a fight with a Drag-Queen, and BossGuy and VPGuy keep calling me “Bruiser McKnuckles” all day.

That’s all I have to show for my idiocy and subsequent “victory.”

The lesson in all of this?

The offer-to-buy-beer or kick-to-the-crotch-and-run-screeching approaches are still preferred in any confrontation.

Because Pride isn’t helping me fucking type today.


Oh, I forgot to send out the bestest of Holiday Wishes to all of you from the ‘Hole, and a sincere hope that 2005 brings you nothing but the best.

Frankly, 2004 can kiss my fat, hairy ass.