Some of you may remember a recent Sordid Tale about an encounter that occurred outside my favorite neighborhood slaughtering hole, The Tilted Stick, during which a guy named Scotty and several of his friends ambushed me because it was his opinion that I wasn’t local enough to patronize the establishment.
Well, two Sundays ago, Scotty and I crossed paths again.
I’ve dreaded our imminent reunion, largely because I didn’t want to be in the position of having to accept or reject his apology: I didn’t want to accept his apology because, well, how rotten-to-the-core must you be to gang up on a person over such absurd matters as his place of residence? On the other hand, I’m not a grudge-holder. I don’t give a crud about Scotty, except for the comedy of him, which I enjoy sharing with you. So, no, I didn’t want an apology, though I always assumed one was forthcoming.
Imagine my surprise to learn that not only was he not going to say “sorry,” but that this jackass would actually try to instigate another melée—“jackass,” incidentally, being the perfect word to describe him, as he is not quite a tool, not exactly a douchebag, nor hoodlum, hooligan, thug, punk or pissant, but, rather, a raging jackass with whom—on a lazy Sunday evening—I once again came face to face.
As it happened, the same two bartenders were present, as were several of the same regulars from the night of our first altercation. We were drinking and having a good time when Scotty came in. He made his rounds, hugging and shaking hands with everyone he knew. At first, he was oblivious to me, thankfully, as I enjoyed covertly observing him mingling about as if he were The Man, utterly ignorant of how not The Man he really is.
Everything went fine until about midnight, when I casually swiveled my head to steal a glance of my archenemy and—sure as rectums don’t like rolled tacos—Scotty was glaring at me with sweltering, red eyes.
“Is your name Ed Decker?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said, gearing up for a teary-eyed apology that I did not want.
“Are you the guy who writes lies in the newspaper?”
Wait, wait—what!? I thought. This is supposed to be the part where he tells me how drunk he was that night, how he acted like a jackass and that he is sooo sorry, followed by a slap on my back and an offer to buy the next round.
“Everything I wrote in that article was true, dude, and you know it!”
“Not the part about my mother having ‘scotch-sopped titties,’” he said, eyes glazed and burning red.
Oh, comedy gods, I thought, thank you for this gift you have given, the gift of the great giant jackass who brings joy to my otherwise joyless existence.
The passage to which Scotty referred came in response to his initial accusation about my not being local enough to be in The Tilted Stick: “I’ve been boozing in this bar since before [Scotty] was sucking on his mama’s scotch-sopped titty-milk” was the exact quote.
“Dude,” I said, “that wasn’t a lie, it was a joke—a yo-mama joke.”
“You don’t joke about my mother.”
“I wasn’t joking about your mother. I was joking about yo-mama. I don’t know your actual mother.”
“That’s right, you don’t know her, so you don’t talk about her.”
“I wasn’t talking about her!” I spat again, trying to explain what a yo-mama joke is. “I was talking, in essence, about you!”
I really get a kick out of these Yo-Mama-Joke-Over-Reactors—the ones who become enraged at the mere mention of their mother. I never understood this response. If you never met my mother and know nothing about her, any insults to her character will carry zero weight. You could say my mom fucks baboons in Taiwanese whorehouses to support a $300-a-day huffing habit, and I wouldn’t blink. I happen to know, for a fact, that my mom is sweet on Sumatran orangutans and nitrate poppers. Point is, you don’t know my mother any more than I know Scotty’s. Like my mom, I’m sure his mother is very normal and nice. It’s hiz-mama that’s all messed up.
You following this, Scotty? Your mother probably doesn’t drink at all. But yo-mama is a lush! See the difference? Let’s try some more: Yo-mama drank so much when she was pregnant, she thought you were a beer belly. Or, yo-mama was so hammered when you were born, when her water broke, it was 90 proof.
In her defense, yo-mama wanted a natural childbirth—Natural Light! In summary, your mother is probably a sharp, grounded woman, but yo-mama musta been a stumbling rum-whore to have given birth to a jackass like you.
Anyway, being that Scotty was never quite able to grasp the concept, he reacted the only way a one-dimensional jackass knows how to react when confronted with even the most mildly intellectual premise, and that is to kick back his stool and challenge me to fisticuffs. And, being a bit of an un-intellectual jackass myself, I kicked back my stool and accepted the challenge, at which point everyone in the vicinity rushed to separate us. The bartenders ushered Scotty toward the door as he shouted that I should join him outside, while two or three of the regulars held me sternly in place saying things like, “It’s not worth it,” and promising to buy me a beer if I didn’t follow Scotty outside, which sounded like a great deal for me since I didn’t want to fight in the first place.
When he was gone, we drank and laughed about the comedy of it all. Thankfully, no one jumped me when I left the bar, though I was pretty skittish on the walk home—and I guess, in that sense, the jackass-orists always win.
