Why Chivalry is Dead

To all my peeps out there, this is an old story which happened to me a couple of years ago. It would take place at the worst and piece of shit bar in Kalamazoo called The...wait...I'm not even gonna advertise. So enjoy a flash from my past.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day about how chivalry is dead. She told me that she thought that guys were jerks and for the most part they only think about themselves. I just kind of laughed at her but it made me think, “Is this true? Am I the kind of guy that only thinks of himself, that puts himself ahead of other people?” A week later I was presented with a situation that would answer that question.

Put yourself in my position. I’m at the local dance club on a Thursday night, having a great time. I’m dancing with a girl friend (see the space, it means we were just friends, not dating) of mine when a man out of control bumps into her. He’s 5’4”, skinny as a toothpick and is wearing glasses. I look to see if she’s ok and she has a, “I can’t believe that guy just did that,” look on her face. What would you do?

Jump five minutes into the future. The man gets up in my face and starts talking shit. I’m 6-1, 210, so to me this guy is a little Chihuahua, just barking at me with no bite. A bouncer comes up to me and asks me to leave. Feeling like I’m in third grade I tell him, “but he started it.” But it doesn’t matter at this time. Trying to figure out what is going on, the other bouncers start forming a wall. A wall of meat heads walking towards me, forcing me out the door. Walking slowly backwards the little man who bumped into my friend pops his head up from behind the wall. “Yeah, fuck you! You can’t mess with me! I work here!”

After a few words exchanged, my friend and I go to the car. Surprisingly enough, my friend is more upset then I am with the situation. Calming him down I see in the corner of my eye two guys walking towards us. The only thought coming to my mind is, “these guys must have had a bad night,” because they looked drunk and pissed off with life. Out of nowhere, I get blind sided by one of the guy’s fists. It connects to the left side of my face, and the other connects to the right. I started to go down to one knee but somehow managed to stay up. My buddy becomes Clifford Peache, from My Bodyguard, and gets the guys off of me. They run off into the night while we try and put our torn shirts back on. The bouncer from the bar is yelling from the door at us to leave the property. I yell back at him, “We just got jumped,” which his only reply was, “don’t worry about them, they ran off.” Was that a conspiracy in the works? Yes it was ladies and gentlemen. I was just a made man and these “enforcers of rules” turned the other way. I went into their clubhouse, I played by their rules but somehow I was the bad guy in the situation.

So what did I say to bring this upon me? What did I do to get kicked out and jumped in the parking lot? “Hey buddy, you bumped into my lady friend here, could you please apologize to her.” In reality, all I wanted was for this guy to say sorry to my friend and that would have been the end of it; Scouts honor, cross my heart.

“So what happened to the girl? Was she ok?” Of course she was, she saw what happened to me, but stayed in there and danced the rest of the night away. The real kicker was that I stood up for her, I took a beating in the parking lot and she continued to go back to that place each and every week because, “it is a fun place.” Each week she let me know how they treated me like shit but yet, she still went. So look what Chivalry gets you now a days; getting kicked out of a bar, a bruised ego and two sore cheeks. And adies wonder why Chivalry is dead.