The Police Protect You

To celebrate the completion of my first very important scientific grant proposal, Liz met me after work last night for some half-priced happy hour tapas at a place we'd read was good. Turns out it was closed for a special event so we settled on grilled cheese at a place that has interesting and hard to find beers. It's called Bukowski's Tavern, and like it's namesake, has a reputation for being the tavern equivalent of a jerk. Their special of the day was "Beef Stew, Big Fucking Bowl Of." After a great IPA and an even better scotch ale, we headed home on the train. As we sat on the bus waiting for it to take us from our train stop to our neighborhood, a rotund, acne faced Hispanic gentleman, possibly intoxicated, got on and started talking to no one in particular:

"Can I get a fuck the po-lice?"
"No? Ok then, you guys must all LIKE the police."
"Because they protect you."

The bus pulled away and he proceeded to loudly eat a bag of Doritos, crunching and MMM-ing. I though it was pretty funny, he wasn't being particularly loud was more creative than your average obnoxious drunk. Things took a turn for the worse, however, when he asked the guy across from him what he was looking at and told him:

"I'm going to eat you for breakfast, and I'm not even going to finish my meal."

I don't really know what the not finishing the meal part meant, but the general message was clear, and the other guy wasn't pleased. To the probable drunk's "credit" he actually took the first swing at the minding-his-own-business guy, as opposed to being all talk like most other public nuisances. The other guy took the next 15-20 swings however, as the bystanders scrambled to avoid the scrum. The bus stopped, the beater got off and the beatee sat bleeding in his seat. Apparently familiar with this kind of situation, the other people told the beatee to get off since the bus couldn't leave until either he left or the police arrived. The police arrived after a few minutes and tried to persuade the bleeding man to exit the bus. Also to his credit, I guess, he refused to admit anything had happened and stated that he didn't have a problem with nobody. They finally got him to leave by promising him a free ride home, and we made it home with no further excitement. Maybe next time he'll ask if he can get a hug the police. Oh, and if you are sensitive to f-bombs in blogs, please stop reading two minutes ago.