Loyalty

There aren't a whole lot of times in the course of a friendship in which you are able to prove, without a doubt, that you got your friend's back.

One I remember was at a party a few years ago. We were all standing around outside, drinking beer and having a cig break from the noise inside. Two guys started fighting about some BS, something about one being Mexican and one Brazilian, and they got all macho on each other and started swinging. Tere got popped in the face, and my first reaction was to jump on the guy who hit her. P grabbed me, picked me up and carried me inside where B was getting ice for her face.

Now I understand that B wanted to take care of his girl, it's sweet really, but I wasn't about to let someone walk away without getting hit back for punching her like that. And I didn't care if it was an accident, I didn't think, I just reacted.

Last night was another one of those nights. P got into an altercation with a restaurant manager. The manager started shoving him around, and without thinking my first reaction was to jump in the middle of them and try to get the guy off my husband. P was trashed. He wasn't thinking straight enough to defend himself, and none of his "boys" were doing a damn thing either.

The manager shoved me out of the way, grabbed P by the neck and pushed him down an outdoor flight of stairs. So I, in all my unthinking glory, jumped on the manager's back, holding onto his arms so he wouldn't go after him again. P was stumbling to get up, and the manager was a lot stronger than me and shook me off. He shoved P again, knocking him into a table and he tripped over a chair and fell. I grabbed the manager's face and was shoving him away from P, the guy kept raising his hand to hit me, and I dared him to do it, knowing he'd never make it out of a crowded bar alive after hitting a female in front of a bunch of drunk men. Finally some big guy from the bar came over and held the manager back while I calmed P down who was ready (haha) to kick the guy's ass.

And I was pissed. I couldn't fathom why in the fuck all these guys would stand around and let P get beat on, knowing how drunk he was, and not even stepping in when I was the only one trying to break up the fight. I don't want to be racist, but is it a thing with only minorities that we will defend each other no matter what? I knew P probably provoked the guy, but I also knew P couldn't fight him off, and I think his friends knew that too, but they would have let him get his ass kicked.

I wasn't even drunk, because if I had been I might have started swinging on the manager, which is not the right thing to do. But since I had stopped drinking probably 3 hours before, my only thought was to protect him from this guy who was raging. I'm so disappointed not only in how P was acting, but the lack of reaction from his friends. And maybe it's misplaced anger, but I would hope that my friends would jump into a fight with me if they thought I was getting my ass kicked. At least step in to help break it up.

And I'm not talking about high school, hunting some chick down and jumping her for some stupid reason. I'm talking about seeing your friend in a situation in which they could potentially be seriously hurt (like being shoved down a flight of stairs) and not remaining a bystander.

But whatever. That's how I feel about my friends. I'm loyal. Even if you've pissed me off recently, I'm still going to be the one to jump into a bar fight with you, or lock you in the trunk of my car so the police don't get you while you're still drunk. And I'll be the one to admit to the police that yes, I jumped in. So if you're going down for assault and battery charges, I'm going right with you.