Bar Fight at the Chopstick Inn

Full Moon in November 1989

Bartenders know more shit hits the fan when the moon is full, and on that cloudless night, the shit that hit the fan was Roxanne Johnson’s beer.

The Chop was packed. No open stools, all the tables full, standing room overflowing beyond the lounge, past the hostess station, down the hall to the cigarette machine and payphone by the restrooms. Mike and I stood behind the bar, arms folded. Paul, the bar manager, who looked like the Fine Young Cannibals lead singer, leaned at the waitress station, smoking a cigarette and expertly cracking pull-tabs. The sound system was cranked. The glassware was gone—evidence in that calm moment that people were drinking. It happens sometimes: Without ever feeling busy, glassware evaporates. Three lonely margarita glasses hung in the rack—unlucky, since it was always two-for-one at the Chopstick Inn. We anticipated the eye of the storm’s inevitable drift.

Craig and Sharon were there. They’d stopped in to say hi and have a quick one after dinner at TGI Friday’s in Roseville. “The place is full up, but you don’t look busy,” Craig observed. There was still a little glassware left when he said that.

A guy asked for White Russians. There were no lowballs left, so I used the last pair of margarita glasses. The woman with the guy held hers up. “That looks bigger!” she marveled.

“Because it is,” I explained.

Craig and Sharon could have auctioned their stools for money when they left. Behind the bar we waited.

And then. Empty glasses and beer bottles instantly blanketed the bar top. People competed to shout drink orders. Across the crowd I saw Roxanne, just beyond the pull-tab booth, her pretty face now angry and contorted. She was telling someone off but good. I couldn't see who she was angry at—a gorilla of a guy was standing in the way. He wore a white breaker that looked like a military parachute. Roxanne waited for a long second or two, listening. Her mouth dropped open and with a flit of her wrist she fired the beer from her mug. It made a missile-shaped wave, disappeared behind Gorilla’s profile, then reappeared in a fountain of sparkling yellow spray above the crowd. Beer rained down on everyone nearby.

Gorilla spun around, one hand feeling his suddenly wet hair, and I got a look at the guy whose face had deflected Roxanne's beer. Early twenties, my height, stalky, athletic. He had a beer mug, too, and he quickly emptied it at Roxanne. Roxanne tried dodging, but she caught most of it in one ear.

Mike, busy loading dirty glasses into a wash rack, shouted my way. “Where's Alen?”

“Don't know.” I was already around the bar, pushing through the crowd. At least a couple of people lost their drinks when I shoved by, but none complained. Paul was closest to where the fight was breaking out. He wasn’t looking to get involved. He stood at the opposite side of the pull-tab booth on tippy-toes, hands on hips: An expert witness.

When I got to the guy who’d provoked Roxanne, he was yelling red-faced at her, brandishing his empty mug. I pressed my palm to his chest, said, "Hey, you gotta go."

I don't know what happened to his beer mug. I don't know why he didn't break my jaw with it. Instead, he tried punching at my face. I dodged the punch easily. (He'd been drinking a lot.) He started slugging at my stomach, without much force. His lame punches and slugs came with protesty noises about me wanting to kick him out instead of Roxanne. I put an arm around his neck, got him into a headlock.

I was thinking about how this was something that should have been included in the curriculum at the Minnesota School of Bartending. For a moment I had a feeling like when someone would order a drink I’d never made before, and I’d recall the recipe from bartending school, or I’d ask someone. But there was no helpful recipe for this situation. I recalled being advised at the School to “let the bouncers do their jobs.” Bouncers—ha.

The angry jerk leaned hard into me and burst forward. We slammed solidly against the pull-tab booth. Ex-varsity lineman, maybe?

I crashed to the floor but didn't lose my hold around his neck. I recalled something from Heywood Gould’s way-better-than-the-movie novel, Cocktail: Never box with a drunk. Wrestle. So I started rubbing his face pretty hard against the carpet (an effective if not classy wrestling move, I realized). He was still pushing against me, but he was mostly trying to scramble away. Gorilla and a couple other guys grabbed him by the waist and pulled him off me, but I didn’t relax my lock on his head. Gorilla had him by the back of his jeans, and the jerk’s feet were off the ground, tennies flailing all directions. One guy caught a sneaker pretty hard in his crotch and withdrew from the situation.

Like a turtle, Paul poked his head from behind the pull-tab booth to shout. “Are you okay?!”

“I'm fine.” I turned my face aside to avoid getting clawed by the jerk’s nicely manicured fingernails (an odd detail that I remember). “Just call the police.”

Paul went to the hostess station and lifted the phone but did not dial. He looked around, I guessed for Alen. Alen preferred no calls for police from his bar.

The jerk’s limbs still flailed aimlessly, his strength waning. I was afraid I’d hurt his neck if Gorilla didn't let him go. It seemed his feet had been off the ground a long while. I let go. The jerk and Gorilla and two other guys crashed backward into a table. On the floor, spilled drinks all around, Gorilla lost his hold and the jerk jumped at me again. Some guys intercepted and restrained him.

“Get him out,” I said.

Alen appeared as the jerk was being escorted toward the door. The jerk tried once more to break away, shouted to Alen about what an asshole I was. Alen, I knew, was not practiced at listening to reason, so I suspected he might listen to something else.

Back behind the bar, the fight was all anyone wanted to talk about. I avoided engaging, trying instead to just make and serve drinks.

Half an hour later the jerk was among a group of people sitting at a table near the bar. Mike silently pointed him out to me.

“He'll be okay,” Alen said, after I pointed the jerk out to him. “He's with his girlfriend.”

“I don't care if he's with his grandmother. I kicked him out.”

For a moment Alen considered this. “I think he'll be all right.”

“It makes me look bad. I kick a guy out and half an hour later he’s back in.”

For a moment Alen considered this. He didn't say anything.

A while later, Alen brought the jerk behind the bar. “Shake hands. Apologize,” he said and stood near us to watch.

While shaking my hand, the jerk said, “I'm sorry, man, but if you knew what a slut she is, you wouldn't have done that to me.”

We were standing beneath the boom box that fed the bar’s sound system, and it was cranked way up, so only Alen could hear what we said. To everyone in the bar it looked like we were playing kiss and make up.

I said, “You hit me, buddy. That has nothing to do with Roxanne.”

“But if you knew the circumstances—”

“They don't matter.”

“You're really an asshole, man, you've really got an attitude.” The jerk was still shaking my hand.

“Get out from my bar.”

The jerk dropped my hand, turned and walked into the crowd, shaking his head.

For a moment Alen considered this. He didn't say anything.

“Can I go?” I said.

Alen nodded.

I sat on the barstool nearest the table where the jerk was sitting, and Mike gave me a beer.

Outside in the parking lot, lampposts cast long shadows from the moon.