16/09/07
Public putdowns -
Categories: I was heckled last night, and I wasn't gigging. It was in a pub car park, at 8pm. By a girl. She was pretty drunk, and I was dressed like a tool, but still. Thing was, in my olden days, I'd have put my head down and marched on, but I'm used to putting people down now, so I did, and nearly got in a fight. It turns out you can get away with more when you've a 200-strong audience on your side, plus a collection of bouncers working with you, plus a stage and lights. Pub car park during daylight - not so much.
Basically I was walking past my local dressed like this (http://www.moviemistakes.com/photos/2007/07-09-15%20-%20Zoe's%20birthday/IMG_2315.JPG), and this lass yells, "You look like a f*cking c*nt!" (to be fair, look at the pictute - she was right)
So I retort, "Well at least I'm not one." (Oh yeah, Comedy Store's finest...)
She returns volley: "Yeah, you look like a fu*king *unt and you are a *ucking cun*!"
I reply: "Ever wondered why you're single, you crazed bint?"
She waves her full pint at me and yells: "Do you want this down your head? Do you want me to glass you with this?"
I haven't had enough yet, so I fire back: "You're about 4 seconds away from getting yourself barred from this and every pub in Guildford." An empty threat, though I could probably have got her barred from that pub. I think I only said it cos I was dressed as Shakespeare and was going for a 'bard/barred' pun. Which needless to say went over her head. Like the pint glass nearly did to me.
By this point my brain kicked in and reminded me that I wasn't onstage, didn't have the support of several large bouncers, and should probably shut up before her big mates decided they needed to take a side in what was heading towards a bit of a scuffle. Thankfully at this point her friends intervened and bundled her back to her seat. I marched on and into a wonderful rest-of-evening, where me and 40 like-minded folks celebrated my girlfriend's 30th. It was great.
Several times that conversation in the car park came back to me - should I have responded differently? Or at all? Or decimated her with words? It's the same feeling you get after a rowdy gig where you've tried putdowns that haven't really worked. You end up questioning if you handled it best. I found it odd - and a shame - that it's the negative comments and conversations that you end up coming back to and trying to rewrite in your head. It's never the good things you say or the nice conversations you've had that replay in your mind so much - maybe because they're good, and they've gone right, and you don't need to rewrite those. Either way, I'm partly hoping to meet that young car park hussy again at some point so that I can ask her if her mum remembers me, or if her carer's got the night off, or if her neck's just vomited.
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