Another mark

Yesterday I got into the first fight of my life. I won. Now that all the suspension has been drained of the situation let me give you a short account to the circumstances that led up to this life marking confrontation.

It all started at 7 am in the morning, when I picked up my mate from singers at the airport and we had our first beer. Things pretty much went down hill (sideways?) from there. After a bit of light grocery shopping to allow that merry Christmas feeling (and the fact that the shops were supposed to be closed) we wandered into, drinking, smoking and enjoying the occasional cup of phenomenal coffees. We proceeded through the day, touring the city and enjoying it from the insides to the outsides. As you might well imagine things went slightly pear shaped, though in a good, positive and above all happy manner.

You can only get a few friends in your life that you can spend literally hours rambling on about nothing in any way important and still think that your time is being terrifically spent. After a while it blurred together a bit, into a rich tapestry of colours, sounds and feelings of contentment.

Others got to (and seemed to) share in our enjoyment. Good moods are contagious and we had numerous little interactions with bar people, tourists and locals. All very positive, but they were what set me in the mood for intervening in a matter I had nothing to do with at about four in the morning (yes, we had almost gone full circle).

What happened was that this bloke started harassing these two young girls at the bus stand while we were on our way home. He tried chatting one up, she told him she was lesbian. Then he tried to force her to kiss her friend. My gregarious mood had me up and saying that that was enough before I was fully aware of it.

He said I shouldn’t touch him. I told him that was great and that if he wouldn’t touch the girls I would have no need to touch him.

He walked away, turned around and spat a huge gob on me.

I was – to put it mildly – enraged. I don’t know what he was expecting but when I went for him he certainly wasn’t expecting that. His friends actually laughed as pummelled him and brought him to the ground, where others had to pull me off him.

I guess he thought his friends would help. They didn’t. I guess he thought his image as a member of a troubled minority would protect him. It didn’t.

I’m not sure why I stepped up, but I don’t regret it. Hopefully he will think twice before he does it again. I imagine if people – all together – stood up to this kind of nonsense more often, it wouldn’t be half as common.

So I can cross ‘fight for the right reasons’ off of my ‘to do’ list. What’s next?