Apr 102012
 

In the unlikely event I ever become a martial arts master with lightning reflexes, hands of steel and situational awareness so acute I can tell how many fillings my opponent has, I promise that I will use my formidable abilities with all due ethical restraint and honor.

There is, however, one exception. There is one particular type of person in one particular situation I would beat the crap out of on general principle, without hesitation or mercy.

I am speaking, of course, of night club doormen.

I fantasize that I walk up to a nightclub in some downtown in some city, stride up to some oversize, shaven-headed guy with a black t-shirt, a headset and clipboard, being told, “Back of the line,” and do my full Shaolin Temple-Muay Thai-Savate-hybrid  spinning-drop-roundhouse-coup de pied kick to deliver my size ten-and-a-half straight into his temple. The guy goes down –just temporarily, no brain damage or anything– and I just stroll into the nightclub. If a few attractive women in the now liberated line ask, “Who was that guy?”, so much the better.

I don’t even like nightclubs, but I resent the institution of the doorman on general principle. He is the modern example of the concept that you can always pay half the poor to keep the other half in line, a traitor to his class. His authority sole derives from his employer, and that tiny sliver of power goes straight to his head. The nightclub doorman exists solely to drive up demand, to create an artificial barrier, to con the rest of us into standing outside in the cold and rain for hours and then pay for the privilege of paying for overpriced drinks and chicken wings that manage to be both dry and greasy. He is the embodiment, the willing executioner, the face of this system of inequality and exploitation. He is DRM in human form, the instrument of socio-economic privilege, powered by Red Bull and creatine.

I’m not going to bother this guy at home or anywhere else. But put him in a black t-shirt next to a velvet rope and a glass door, and he’ll be spitting out teeth. This is my own act of asymmetrical warfare against the system the doorman represents. Bring down the doorman, breach the arbitrary border that he enforces, and the whole system crumbles. What might seem to be a petty fantasy of revenge or taking out frustrations on some minor functionary is, in fact, a revolutionary act, a blow for justice.

I will look the doorman square in the collarbone, say, “Sorry, bruh, nothing personal,” dispatch him, and proceed on my mission of liberation.

 Posted by at 23:32