Barroom BRAWL!!!

Last night I went to the Black Dog Tavern in Fort Worth (right at Throckmorton and 8th).

Thursday nights it's Confusatron.

What a great show! The sound wasn't quite as good as at the Wreck Room, but the crowd and ambiance at the Black Dog make up the difference, easy.

After they got going, the place filled up and there wasn't a head that wasn't a bobbin'. (The music is a great sort of... jazz-funk-fusion). It wasn't too long before the front was full of people dancing--and not that obnoxious bump-and-grind and "freakin'" style dancing. No, it was just a bunch of people who couldn't help but move with the groove.

I saw a friend of mine there who I hadn't seen in a while and it was good to catch up, she needed to leave a little early and asked me to walk her to her car... which wasn't a problem, because--no cover charge, I could walk in and out all day and not think twice about it.

When I got back the groove was just too much for just sitting there with a little head bob and foot tap, so I decide to make my way up to the front where I saw someone I wanted to talk to. And right as I'm two steps from my destination--BAMM!!!

Intense pain in my left eye!

The girl I was just walking past, was way into the music, she may have even been doing interpretive dance considering how much she was using her arms... and in one of those arms was a beer bottle... the very beer bottle that had just collided with my eyeball.

And it wasn't like, near my eye, or around my eye, it struck nothing but cornea and white, spongy flesh.

And it wasn't like she tapped me with her bottle, and was like "oops". No, the bottle was knocked out of her hand... by my eyeball. With sufficient force to disrupt its contents enough to give us both a pretty good beer bath.

It was apparently not her first... or even sixth... drink because she seemed to watch the entire event with a certain level of confused awe.

I quickly scooped up her much reduced bottle from the floor and handed it to her while apologizing for the clumsiness of my eyeball.

I had to put the bottle in her hand (I'm not sure about the ethics there) as she continued to just stand there looking dumbstruck. [The following is not true.] Right then a guy wandered over who looked himself like he'd had six or twenty to drink, and said, "Hey! I think you owe the lady a beer!"

So I looked at "the lady" and said "Are you okay? Do you need another drink?"

I may have been shaking my head as I asked this, because she seemed to be following and copying every movement of my head, with particular interest, and she was shaking her head as I asked the question."

Confident that she did not need anything else to drink I said, "She's fine. But thanks." And turned to go back to my seat (I'd had enough of the dance floor). As I was turning I felt a hand on my shoulder and knew what was coming so I ducked... but it was at that moment I realized I no longer had any depth-perception. So, though I successfully dodged the flying fist, when ducking I head-butted this small woman who couldn't have been taller than five-foot-nothin'.

"Oh no, sorry."

"Whouch! What happened?"

"My fault, this guy was trying to hit me and"--SMACK!! Right on the side of the face. It wasn't that hard of a punch, but it was enough to knock me off balance... I knew before I hit the ground that I wasn't the only one going down.

Poor five-foot-nothin' broke my fall.

"Sorry, again. This is really embarrassing."

"That's okay. Could you get off?"

Conveniently, I was being hoisted to my feet right at that moment by the offender.

I quickly rotated to the left to face him... and swung my fist right into that spot below his solar-plexus. Yep, right into a stomach that was much harder than I was hoping he'd possess.

I quickly changed tactics and rotated my shoulder and arm so that I could bring my elbow right into the side of his jaw.

It worked.

He went down like no man has since a certain David slung his sling.

That's about when I noticed that the dance floor was still moving, but it wasn't to the rhythm of the music.

The brawl had begun.

Matt Skates was looking at me laughing and acting like his bass was a machine gun and he was mowing me down... all while playing (like I said, he's very talented).

There were a few unfortunates who thought it had just turned into a mosh-pit. They jumped in for fun and had to claw their way out for their lives. I took that opportunity to slug, push and hurdle my way out of the mayhem. [The following is true.]

When I got back to my seat I realized my left eye was not only in pain, but wasn't focusing. I went to the bathroom to see if my contact lens had shifted off center. But there isn't a mirror in the bathroom, so I have to grab one of my friends and ask them to look into my eye for the contact. They see that my eye has looked better... but no contact lens.

I go back to the scene and find one half of my contact lens on the ground. Bummer.

I say my goodbyes and head out.

The car wouldn't start. I'd left the headlights on.

I have to go back to the bar, the bartender finds me somebody with cables and that extremely nice person acted like it made their day to get to help me. They certainly made my day.

It was an interesting and exciting time. But I'm glad I didn't have to go to work this morning.