Bouncers
Once, whilst queuing for my local cheesy, 80’s themed disco, I was taken aside by the head bouncer and asked in a hard to place, east European accent if ‘I thought it was funny’. I don’t recall what had made me laugh at the time, probably some silly, innocuous comment from one of my tipsy pals but I’m pretty sure it didn’t require a grilling from the head of the KGB’s security. It was hard to know what to say to him especially as I was instantly reminded of the famous scene from Goodfellas where Joe Pesci asks a bemused Ray Liotta ‘do I amuse you?’. I knew that my face and possibly my life depended on me staying deadpan and so I answered the Neanderthal with a very serious ‘NO’. I was lying of course. HA! Of course I found it funny you big goon, that’s why I was laughing. After staring at me from under his mono-brow for what seemed like three minutes he said ‘Ok, you can go in.’ He made it seem like I’d escaped punishment for some minor misdemeanour, like Oliver giving a rozzer the slip after pinching an apple but no, I was well behaved, I paid my entrance fee and I got into his crappy club.
There is a phrase which is so perfectly apt for the bouncer: ‘Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Give any meat-head the chance to use his considerable girth and talent for throwing people around and they’ll bite your hand off, literally in some cases. Nobody aims to become a bouncer; they are failed army men, failed police men, failed security guards but most obviously they are failures. They can’t even do their one job correctly. They are paid to STOP trouble not to make it. Most of them (and this ejit I just described is a perfect example) are actively looking to invite trouble. They’re the kind of people who when unemployed would get tanked up and head into their nearest pit looking for fights. Now they’re on a payroll and need to at least try and pretend to be responsible, they can’t look for fights but they’re very good at making people want to fight them. It’s the only thing that they’re actually good at, other than bashing people of course. They prod at you over and over until you snap and then they’ve won because you snapping means that you’re gonna get your head kicked in. This means that Mr Gorilla has stopped a potential trouble maker entering his domain and so he is a hero, he’s THE MAN, so powerful and brave.
I feel I must make a distinction here between what I feel are the differences between a doorman and a bouncer. Essentially, a doorman is a person that gets paid to stand outside a pub doing nothing but mumbling ‘alright mate’ to everyone who walks past. A bouncer talks in grunts and violence and you can only get past one if you are deemed worthy. It’s very much like comparing a pet chiwawa with a pit-bull guard dog.
I was once told by a bouncer that I could become a bouncer if I wanted to. I’m a big fella you see and so perhaps to some people I look like I can handle myself and maybe I can, I don’t actually know having never been in a fight in all my life. This hulk should have realised at the time that I wasn’t the right kind of person to turn my hand to bouncing for I was doing something no bouncer in the history of bouncing had ever done; I was reading a book.
There is a phrase which is so perfectly apt for the bouncer: ‘Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Give any meat-head the chance to use his considerable girth and talent for throwing people around and they’ll bite your hand off, literally in some cases. Nobody aims to become a bouncer; they are failed army men, failed police men, failed security guards but most obviously they are failures. They can’t even do their one job correctly. They are paid to STOP trouble not to make it. Most of them (and this ejit I just described is a perfect example) are actively looking to invite trouble. They’re the kind of people who when unemployed would get tanked up and head into their nearest pit looking for fights. Now they’re on a payroll and need to at least try and pretend to be responsible, they can’t look for fights but they’re very good at making people want to fight them. It’s the only thing that they’re actually good at, other than bashing people of course. They prod at you over and over until you snap and then they’ve won because you snapping means that you’re gonna get your head kicked in. This means that Mr Gorilla has stopped a potential trouble maker entering his domain and so he is a hero, he’s THE MAN, so powerful and brave.
I feel I must make a distinction here between what I feel are the differences between a doorman and a bouncer. Essentially, a doorman is a person that gets paid to stand outside a pub doing nothing but mumbling ‘alright mate’ to everyone who walks past. A bouncer talks in grunts and violence and you can only get past one if you are deemed worthy. It’s very much like comparing a pet chiwawa with a pit-bull guard dog.
I was once told by a bouncer that I could become a bouncer if I wanted to. I’m a big fella you see and so perhaps to some people I look like I can handle myself and maybe I can, I don’t actually know having never been in a fight in all my life. This hulk should have realised at the time that I wasn’t the right kind of person to turn my hand to bouncing for I was doing something no bouncer in the history of bouncing had ever done; I was reading a book.