Hungry Drunk Fighter

I was supposed to play badminton with my brother last night but the courts where we played were crowded. Hell everybody must have felt like playing that night too and they all got ahead of us going to the badminton courts. I hate waiting for my turn in these places, there are always these cro-magnon show offs playing around and when they see you sitting in the corner waiting, especially when you’re not talking with other good players around, they’d know that you’re not too good yourself, and they’d check if you’re carrying some cheap racquet and a water jug, which shows you’re not into buying fancy drinks at the concessions stand (I would rather buy beer later), then they’d ask you to join them and beat the crap out of you.

Getting some beers was the next thing on my mind, my brother had classes the next day so I just took him to the coffee shop some blocks away and bought him some coffee and sent him home. Then I called up ariel, he just got home from a seminar in cebu and I felt he was up to some beers himself. We heard live music in this little bar by the river, had some booze and got out of the place drunk around midnight.

We were walking about two blocks or so when ariel asked me if I wanted to go have another beer, I turned his offer down because I swear I was close to throwing up if I’d still go on drinking. We walked a couple more steps when ariel then told me he was such in the mood to go beat up somebody, he’d always say senseless things when he’s drunk but this remark wasn’t something to get amused with, this nut has been to a lot of street fights and when he says he wants to fight, he's up to any match anytime, drunk or not. I’d swear he could use street fighting as a living if only he gets paid for knocking down every fight club freak he beats up. Hell he even has a lot of false teeth in his palate as trophies from his fights. I told him it was the dead of the night and there was nobody up the road at this hour that he could pick a fight with, I was drunk myself and I knew I should have kept my mouth shut because I sounded like his agent or coach backing him up for a fight. Ariel paused, pulled out his palm top and feigned browsing the thing like he was surfing the net in the middle of both the night and that road. He told me he’s going to wait there til somebody holds him up for his gadget, then he’ll stun the crook with some flashy Jackie chan maneuver, beats the hell out of the guy and go home happy, sounds like a great idea to him though. I wasn’t going to join his martial arts script tonight but something told me he can’t pull this one out, I had to come up with something to stop him, I told him.

“Let’s go, I need to throw up”

“Throw up over there, nobody’s watching”

It wasn’t convincing him to leave, so I thought of something else.

“You still want to go get those beers?” (though I know I was going to throw up if I drank, but it was better than seeing him get beaten up)

“Right after I beat up somebody”

“You know, you could get flanked by a gang and they can outnumber you the least five is to one”

“I can take down five armed guys your size”

Now maybe that’s what makes those drunken kung fu stance in the movies so powerful, the more drunk you are, the more people you think you can take down. I finally told him.

“You want to go grab something to eat?”

“Good idea”

This one worked and I should have figured that grub was one thing that calmed him down, we walked to the next block where some street vendor was selling eggs. Ariel offered to buy me some, though I kept an eye on him if he would take out the vendor out with his fists. We ate, we went home and saved his fighting match for some other day.

If somebody picks on you for a fight, buy them dinner, it might just save your skin.