Baby Birthday Card.  2011  &  Massachusetts Liquor ID.  1986. 

 

It was 1986, and like virtually every other kid from the Northeast, I was going to school in Boston.  In October, my friends and I decided that this was going to be the year that we made it to the annual Halloween party at the Cask & Flagon, a somewhat gritty two-shots-for-a-dollar college hangout on Huntington Avenue.  Though I've never been one for dressing-up on Halloween, I summoned enough mirth for one night to put on a costume and bought a pair of extra large diapers, a rattle and a bib and went as a baby.

When we got to the Cask, the mood was upbeat with the music alternating between nineteen-eighties hits and Halloween favorites that played throughout the evening.  Inside, there was the usual array of people who came dressed as ghosts, clowns, superheroes, and, since this was 1986, a few showed up as fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  As surprising as that choice may’ve seemed, it paled in comparison to the guy who arrived made-up as Corazon Aquino, the newly elected and first female president of the Philippines.  Once he arrived, many of the other guests felt more at ease dressed in whatever they were wearing.  I know I was.  But only slightly.

It didn’t take long for us to settle into the evening, taking the large round oak table situated in the back near the restrooms.  Our proximity to the men’s room would come in handy due to the frequent trips I had to make to fix the cheap Velcro fastener that held up my diaper, a problem that was aggravated by strangers who thought it was funny to tug on the flimsy strap all night.  I would also find myself spending time in the ladies room as a result of a contest my friends were having:  whoever could stay in their bathroom the longest without being kicked out would be the winner, and the loser had to buy the next round.  I don’t have to tell you how distressed a group of ladies become when they find a man-baby in their powder room trying to convince them how he only needed “twenty more seconds” to “beat the pirate.”  In any case, I must have come in with the worst time at least once because, at some point, I remember buying drinks for the whole table.

It was while making good on this debt that I found myself in a situation that matched the idiocy the evening perfectly, made all the more ridiculous in light of what I was wearing.  At the bar, while waiting for my drinks to be served, I made what would become the mistake of the evening by saying hello the person standing next to me.  She was a girl of about my own age, by all appearances not drunk or insane, and to whom my friends would later refer to as "the baby hater."  After making my greeting, the girl roundly told me to “shut up” in a blunt and contemptuous tone of voice.  A little stunned, I explained to her that I was merely saying hello when, she again, told me to "shut up," this time adding her wish for me to “go die,” among a bevy of other insults.  In an effort to diffuse the situation I chose to take the high road and offered to buy her a drink.  She only used this opportunity to inform me that her boyfriend was the bouncer of the bar and that he would gladly “kick my ass” if I dared speak another word to her.  She then picked up her drink and threw it in my face like we were on the set of a Joan Crawford movie.  I could feel my blood begin to boil as its contents slowly seeped into my diaper and down my leg.  The concoction felt sticky, like it was a Tom Collins or something—maybe a Madras.  Anyhow, by the time my drinks had arrived, I was one pissed-off baby!  I tried to summon my friends over to the bar to restrain me from what I was about to do next, but by the time they got there, it was too late.  I had already called her a c**t.  

Now, you might think that I take the use of that language lightly, but owing to the circumstances—especially the matter of the drink, which by this time had begun to congeal within the seat of my diaper—frankly, I was glad to have had it in my vocabulary.  As we headed back to our table, I filled my friends in on the details of what had just happened at the bar.  I expressed the thought of going back to apologize to the young lady when I was reminded that a person who throws a drink in your face after you say hello and then tells you to go die after offering to buy them a cocktail, probably didn’t deserve one.  To this we all agreed, then resumed our merry-making at the table where we found ourselves laughing about the whole thing.  

It was about this time that I felt three hard taps on the back of my shoulder.  I was half-hoping it was the Corazon Aquino guy, because if it was who I thought it was, I would be in BIG  trouble.  I turned my head slowly and looked up.  It was the girl’s boyfriend and he was the bouncer of the bar!  He was a monster and had two other goons with him. 

“What did you say to my girlfriend?” he snorted.   

 “I called her a c**t,” I said.

“Oh, she is, is she?  Listen pal,”  he continued, rolling up his sleeves, “we don’t use language like that around here.”

“Oh, you don’t?  Well, that’s a shame, because not only is your girlfriend a c**t,” I went on to say, pointing my finger at each bouncer in turn, “but you, you and you—you’re all c**ts too!”  

They beat my lights out.

I don’t know if it was the booze or the lingering vitriol I had for the girl at the bar that possessed me to say what I did, but one thing was for sure:  it was the dumbest thing that has ever come out of my mouth.  Out on Huntington Avenue, I shook off the remains of a well-executed beating and after convincing my friends that I was okay to walk home, began the long journey back to my apartment.  Wearing nothing but a pair of diapers and a bib (I must have lost my rattle in the melee), I suffered the jeers of passers-by, many of them quacking in salute to the three little ducks that were embossed on the front of my bib.  Serves him right!  I can hear you say.  Perhaps.  But it wouldn't be the end of this story.

Five years later, I was waiting to get into yet another bar.  This time it was Molly Malone’s on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles.  At the door, I presented my old, but still valid, Massachusetts Liquor ID and, to this day, I'm still amazed at what happened next.   

“Hey, you from Boston?” said the bouncer while checking my ID.

“Well, sort of—I went to school there.” 

“Oh, really?  I used to live there!  Where’d you used to hang out?” 

I rattled off a few places that I thought he’d know and when I got to the Cask & Flagon, he stopped me.  

“The Cask and Flagon?  Wow!  I used to work—hey, wait a minute...you called my girlfriend a c**t!”  

(Gulp)  It took several moments for me to realize that the person I was talking to was, in the flesh, the same bouncer from that fateful Halloween night in Boston. 

“Um, yeah,” I said, my voice quavering as my memory relived his reign of blows upon my body.  “And you…kicked my ass.”  

A few hard seconds passed then, after checking my ID,  he handed it back.   

“You know what?” he said, without a hint of irony.  “You were right.  She was a c**t!”