Why I am not Seinfeld

This weekend the Marquee and I went to Atlanta and almost got into a bar fight.

Well, I suppose, technically, we did get into a bar fight, but no one was arrested or came out with visible scars or missing teeth, so in my book, we almost got in a bar fight.


It started when I, being charming, tried my hand at observational comedy.

We were talking to a couple of guys, Matt and Jason. It was clear Jason was well-past ready to head home, but was hanging out because Matt wanted to. Fair enough. So we’re chatting with them and also with Jessica, a very nice lawyer from Seattle, when some guy with a lip piercing comes up and starts open mouth kissing Matt—right in front of Jason. So this seems like a good time for three-jack-&-coke’s Erik to try his hand at observational comedy.

‘Have you ever noticed how when someone’s waiting at a bar for someone else to be ready to head home there’s always another shoe to drop? Take these two for example,’ this part of the comedy, it is important to point out, only occurred in my head. I then said, out loud, ‘Matt clearly doesn’t care at all about Jason.’

Admittedly, this is funny more in a context of hypothetically saying something. Saying such things out loud isn’t terribly clever. Since no one laughed, I turned from the group and started talking Jessica.

What I didn’t notice was Matt interrupted his kissing to say, ‘you better watch your fucking mouth.’

So I’m blithely facing Jessica when I’m shoved into her and her drink goes down her top and I hear the Marquee say, ‘Get over it you stupid asshole.’ I hear Matt say something and the Marquee continues ‘You want to take it outside? I’ll break you over my goddamn knee, fucker.’

Everyone is suddenly shoving and shouting obscenities. Jason is pulling Matt away from us and I’m trying to shield Jessica from any further assault.

And then it was over.

‘That was kind of weird,’ I said to Jessica. Then, laughing, to the Marquee, ‘Thank you for defending my honor.’

So we head to the bar to replace the drinks that were lost in the scuffle and I see a drag queen and say, ‘That’s an enormous head. I mean, even for a man.’