The Fist Fight

I’ve been in a fist fight exactly once in my adult life, in Austin, TX on October 18, 2020

It might be a bit generous to call it a “fight”, though. It was basically just a guy wailing on me while I stood there & took it, yelling "HIT ME” (seriously).

This probably doesn’t sound like a great tactic for winning a fight - and it wasn’t. It did exactly what I wanted it to do.

This is the story of the best night of my life.

A group of my friends & I pooled together some money to rent a halloween party bus to head to a “farm” with a bunch of haunted houses out east of Austin, TX, where I lived at the time.

We met in the parking lot of a Chilis shortly after sundown & loaded up onto the bus. A pleasant surprise showed up, in the form of a girl I knew & had been crushing on. She was a brilliant, beautiful software engineer working in big tech at the time, and exactly my type.

Right as we were about to leave, two guys none of us really knew showed up & got on the bus - the guy who organized the trip put an event up on facebook to sell tickets, but we weren’t expecting any takers.

Ah, well… the more the merrier, right? So, we set off, and after 45 minutes on the bus, drinking & playing party games, we arrived.

The time we spent at the haunted houses was fun but mostly forgettable, except for a quiet moment over some mac & cheese with the girl I was into.

When it was time to head back, about half past midnight, we were all sloshed but happy - me in particular. I had my arm around the girl, a cold beer in my hand, and for the first time in a while, everything seemed right with the world.

That ended when I heard shouting & scuffling at the back of the bus. I turned around, and one of the strangers was in Andrew’s face - clearly mad. My friend - recently out of the marine corps - was already running back to intervene.

I wasn’t far behind. Andrew’s a really friendly guy, but he had drunkenly made some joke about the duo of strangers. Never found out what, exactly, but I bled for it.

We were able to get them separated before it went any further & put Andrew in the front of the bus, with the strangers at the back. We figured we could get Andrew off first & into a car before the angry guys got off.

We forgot about the emergency exit. They did not.

As soon as we got back to the Chili’s parking lot, we shuffled an inebriated Andrew off the bus, then heard a door slam open & in seconds, the two guys were on us - looking to get another piece of Andrew.

What followed were the most exhilarating & satisfying moments of my life.

We pushed Andrew back onto the bus, and I still remember the first punch that caught me in the jaw as I was turning back around to face them.