The other evening I was at a party for the painter Jonathan Gent. The UK native’s work covered the apartment walls of a Wall Street banker, who had been gracious enough to support a live artist. His patron was a basketball player. They always have cred with me.
The mini-paintings sold fast and Jonathan was in a good mood.
I was too.
There was plenty of rose wine, the evening was warm, and conversation was easy.
Later in the evening the great B Movie actor Eric Mitchell showed up. We spoke about publishing a collection of my short stories. I have hundreds of them. Eric and I traded stories from the 70s and Jonathan joined us, as I recounted a tale of Eric defending James White, the sax player from the Contortionists, at CBGBs.
“It had to be 1978. A biker busted James’ nose and you protected him.”
“By getting my nose smashed.”
“The hardest punch I ever saw thrown in CBGBs.”
Jonathan has gone to school in Edinburgh. The Scottish capitol is renowned for its toughness. Somehow Eric challenged Jonathan to a duel. Jonathan whipped off his jacket and said, “Right. Outside.”
He was ready for a knuckle dust-up.
It wasn’t my fight and the wine was having too much an effect, but Eric was my boy. We went back in time and I took a couple of steps closer.
“I was joking.”
“We never joke about that.” Jonathan picked up his jacket with a left hand.
No one should joke about fighting around fighting men.
It always goes bad when they don’t get the punch line.
And I went back to my wine.
There was plenty of it.