Tonight: True Story, Names Changed

"You can't hit a girl," Andy was saying out in the parking lot, "you just can NOT hit a girl. Not only," he slurred (we'd all been drinking), "Not only is it inexcusable, even if she deserved it as much as any guy, you can't do it. There's no winning." We nodded our heads in agreement.

"Seriously," Murph piped in. "Women can get away with a lot more than guys sometimes, just because normal guys won't hit a woman. She can needle and needle and drive you nuts, but the minute you hit her... you know, stuff that no one would care about with a guy, you just can't do when it's a woman. And that's totally cool by me. It's just wrong, hitting a woman I mean. It's scummy."

"The best thing to do," Andy went on, "is to walk away. "Just get out of the house, go to a titty bar or something. Anything. Just get out til she calms down. Listen," he said, "I'll tell you a story.

"This was like 8 years ago, I was living with this girl, living with her, it was at leat a year, I loved her, when we got a call from an old girlfriend from high school who I hadn't seen in like a decade, but was in town for the weekend. So we make plans to all go out to dinner together, the three of us.

"That week, I get my wisdom teeth, which were totally impacted, pulled out," Andy went on, rubbing his jaw in memory. "That shit hurt like hell. It was oral surgery, my mouth was all swollen and stitched up. So there I am, all stoned out on percocets on the sofa recovering when my girl slams in the door around one in the after noon.

"WHERE IS SHE she starts shriekin' and yellin', WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE I KNOW YOU BEEN FUCKING HER! Meanwhile, I'm lying on the sofa with my tongue hanging out of my mouth half retarded. huh? Wha...? Guys, I never even slept with this girl, you know? I hadn't seen her since fuckin' high school and she knew I lived with my girlfriend.

"So I pull myself up from the sofa saying "I just don't wanna get into it, I'll come home when you calm down," and start to head for the door, but we have this weird lock that you can lock from the inside, which she does then she grabs my keys and throws 'em out the window. Now I can't fuckin' leave. She slaps me across the face, and the stitches come ripping out. Blood starts gushing into my mouth and she slaps at me again, but this time I put my hand straight out to hold her back. It's like the Three Stooges or something, where I'm holding her at arm's length and she's flailing away uselessly. And you know I hadn't even done anything to deserve this. I loved her!

"So anyway, I kinda smirk because I'm holding her off, and that's when she leaned back and kicked me square in the nuts. I went down and she began kicking me, and more of the stitches ripped out, all I could taste was blood. So finally, just as she's about to kick me in the face, I just hauled back and swung, and bang, right in the eye, which immediately goes all purple as if I'd really given her a full-on punch.

"And then I jumped out the window, a second story window, and I fuckin' ran. I just ran, got the fuck out of there before she could catch me, I was so scared. I wound up in the park, I sat on a bench in the fog and took the rest of my percocets and fell asleep. I woke up around it musta been 6:30 am, like some kinda bum, and my face was in a pool of blood, kinda pasted to the bench. I had dried blood stuck to my face. My whole lower jaw was swollen like a fuckin' watermelon and I could barely open my mouth.

"So I go walking up the street toward home, and everyone I see says to me Man, I saw Kathy, who the fuck do you think you are beating her, you son of a bitch!

"Dude, that chick coulda killed me. Seriously, I was terrified.

"Walk away. Go the titty bar or something, but walk away."