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they were going to go hit the cowboy bars and I thought that was a really bad idea. There was no way I was going to change their minds, so I watched them head out.
Well, I was dead wrong. They had a wonderful time drinking with the cowboys and there was no trouble at all. Later I saw the movie, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and it reminded me of those tours. It's a classic and if you haven't seen it you owe it to yourself to find it. Trust me.
End of Digression, back to the big fight.
Brian and I plus four others piled into a car and headed to the party in Butte. It was in a house, and at the time I handled parties by getting drunk and passing out. What better way to avoid social interaction? So I sat in an easy chair with a bottle of Jim Beam and pounded it down while people partied.
Then a guy I'd never seen before came up and said, "You're going out with my girl."
I'd gone out a couple of times with a really great woman in Billings named Julie but there'd been no mention of a boyfriend and she wasn't with me that night. I guessed that was who he was talking about, so I looked up and said, "Okay. I'm going out with your girl".
I'm an agreeable drunk.
He said, "We're going to fight."
I never fight. Fighting is stupid. And when do you do stupid things? When
you've downed half a bottle of Jim Beam. Suddenly I was John Wayne and said, "Okay, let's fight."
I got up and staggered outside, because in all the movies that's how it's done. The two fighters walk outside, the crowd gathers and the hero (me) beats the crap out of the bad guy. Well, he hadn't read the script. I walked outside and it was a blizzard, snow coming down sideways, and really cold. The bad guy didn't come out! No one did.
After awhile I thought screw this, and went over to the car, climbed in the back seat and passed out.
What I didn't know was that Brian had leaped into improv action when he saw this fight thing setting up. When I walked out, he announced, "That's no fun! We should all fight!"
Then he went around the room pairing up people. "You fight him! You two fight! You two girls fight! Everybody fights!" Apparently it was quite funny. Then he went up to the biggest guy in the room and said, "You and I are
going to fight". It was a great comic moment, because Brian was small, and had lost his hair at a young age. So this little bald guy was going to fight the biggest guy in Butte, Montana. It should've been a crowd-pleasing, fun moment, but the big guy had no sense of humor and clocked Brian.