Punch Out

You don't have to be a driver to know that the closer to 2am it gets, the crazier the bar crowd clientele tend to become. The same people that began the evening with polite and quiet conversations can easily become raucous patrons kicked out of their local joint for bar fights and lewd behavior. Or at least that's what happened to Michele.

I pulled up to the Minneapolis corner to find Michele, a classic 90s-style Lilith Fair kind of beauty in her mid-thirties, along with her similar-looking girlfriend loudly discussing their night over cigarettes and exaggerated hand motions. The slurred high volume conversation continued into the car.

"BaaaaaAAAAaaabe," started Michele's slightly shorter and blonder girlfriend, "I can't BELIEVE they kicked us out!" she said slightly dejected, but mostly drunkenly annoyed. I nudged them on to get details on their night with a casual "OMG, what happened?!"

"What happened is that I have the best. Girlfriend. EVERRRR!" She went on speaking with honest-to-her hyperbole, "So get this: we're at the bar and this guy kept hitting on me. I kept telling him: No, I'm gay. No, I'm here with my girlfriend. No, even if I WAS straight, I wouldn't be into you, and he won't fucking listen. So I go get Michele like for proof or whatever and he STILL kept hitting on me." Now, why she didn't just walk away from the guy at some point during this obviously annoying conversation is beyond me, but asking rational questions to incredibly drunk people usually yields minimal understanding and just more confusion.

"And like, not JUST hitting on her," Michele interjected to clarify, "but like, rubbing her arm and totally eye fucking her up and down and so I finally come over and see it and it starts to piss me off. So I said 'Back off my girlfriend, man' and he thinks it's cute to make some joke about how she'd probably like a threesome or whatever with both of us like most straight guys do....so I punched the fucker in the face."

"I mean..." the girlfriend slowly responded, "it probably LOOKED way worse than it was cause of the bloody nose, we didn't need to get kicked out, but dude still totally deserved it." She was dozing on and off at this point, so my concern turned from their well-being to worries of vomit in my car, but there's only 2 minutes left per the GPS, so I didn't make a big deal out of it.

"He was fine." Michele said definitively. "And I mean, even if it wasn't cause I love her or cause I might be kinda drunk or whatever, I think more guys at bars need to get punched in the face more often. I hope the rest of them took that as a warning to quit fucking with strong women," she clearly stated as a defiant feminist who has probably grandstanded these kinds of causes sober on more than one occasion.

Michele had to wake her girlfriend when we got to their uptown apartment, and as I looked back to make sure they were good, I caught a smile of admiration from her as she awoke and slid out of the car and into the arms of her knight in shining armor.