Foul Mouth

April 1992

Spring Break. Capitola, a town along the northern California coast. A batch of friends and I had been toiling away the evening at a club. A dance club and bar, not a nudy joint (just to clarify in case Mom Klem is still reading this tripe). I was making my way through the crowd to reengage a pair of friends. We’ll call them McGettigan the Elder and McGettigan the Younger. Brothers they are by blood, not the kind made so by theological study.

From my vantage point I saw them talking to someone. The guy doing all the talking, a chap I knew not, was very animated. They were 25 feet away from where I stood and the club was loud, I couldn’t hear at all what was being discussed. As I got up close I saw that the talker was actually cursing, and doing so loudly. The man’s ire was being brusquely directed at these McGettigans. They were both facing the fellow listening but not yet showing any physical signs of being fired up or riled.

Upon my arrival I exhibited poor etiquette by shoehorning myself into the fray.

“Settle down, foul mouth,” I said now standing between the brothers. My build, we’ll say, is slight, though not waifish. Regardless, I didn’t seem to inject any noticeable intimidating effect into the unknown prospective aggressor.

“Foul mouth! Foul mouth! I’m foul mouth? That’s it. That’s it,” said the guy now stepping back to take off his back pack. I don’t know why he was wearing a back pack in a social club when there’s dancing and socializing afoot, but he must have felt it would impair his next move. Thus, taking it off.

Anticipating fisticuffs a couple of bouncers intervened at the moment and kicked me and McGettigan the Younger out of the club.

I don’t know the instigating event that got this whole brouhaha underway, but we spent a good deal of that night outside the walls listening to the sounds of a buoyant social evening that was transpiring within.
-klem