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Spring has arrived in DC and with it the optimism of attraction has risen like sap among the city dwellers. People start to preen in the streets, crowing and flashing bits of clothing at members of the opposite sex who strut by, revealing areas of flesh only dreamt of in the winter. Suited gentlemen can be found growling at each other on street corners before prowling off to spray their scent on the nearest coffee shop.
No one is immune to that heady mix of bus fumes and manured garden plots on a hot spring morning. In an act only slightly less accurate in its predication than the legendary groundhog, I marked the start of spring this week by shaving my legs.
That same day my old university, S.A.I.S., provided a vent for pheromones and testosterone by holding a competition to decide which manly man was most deserving of the title Mr SAIS. After the crowning and general bathing in glory, the winner and several others, including me, trotted off to the first of the outdoor parties for flirtatious drunks that was being held by a friend of mine.
I climatised my skirt clad legs by sitting on the sidewalk watching my friends fluff their feathers at various crooning ladies. Drunken flirtation is a dangerous affair since there invariably comes a point where alcohol ceases to be a relaxation aid and starts becoming a personality crisis. My friends achieved various levels of drunken success. Their tactics varied from the bear like - a slightly disoriented seductive stare accompanied by a heavy absentminded patting of the girl’s legs as if they were the family labrador (Tiernan); to the peacock initiative - dancing intently and flamboyantly with the lady of choice to hip hop music, spinning them out and then forgetting to hold on (Raji); to the pigeon technique - pinning the girl up against a pillar, flirting intensely and briefly before getting distracted by another girl passing by and strutting off after her (Alex).
The night was young, (or very old and up too early depending on your perspective), when the third element of spring fever arrived. The competitive agressive male. He was a gate crasher who turned up in the sort of state where one is drunk enough to think of oneself in the third person. He had achieved this enlightened state to the point where, as he fell sideways into the bushes he steadied himself with the fence and murmured reassuringly "be careful there, be careful". As he meandered round the garden he left a swathe of damage behind him, ranging from pained expressions on the owners of the feet he had trampled over to small oceans of beer from the glasses he had knocked out of people’s hands. As I rose and ventured indoors to the dance floor this large alpha male was in the middle of challenging some Turks to an arm-wrestling match.
Time passed, by this point I was dancing indoors with Raji when Alex, who usually makes a point of being sardonic and self-possessed in social situations, came charging in looking frantically around him. After spotting the logs by the fireplace he grabbed one, hefted it, shook his head and then settled for another longer thinner one nearer the wall and sprinted out again. Bemused I continued attempting to keep my balance, dance and keep up with Raji before again someone came running in, went up to Onur and cried out " Your friends are in a fight outside."
The natural reaction to hearing a fight is occuring is to assume an expression of concern while racing as fast as possible to get to a good vantage point. When inebriated concern is usually replaced with hilarity. The fight had been started when the large aggressive alpha male had lost at an arm wrestling match and had taken affront at the whole situation. Onur’s friends, rightly so, had taken this opportunity to mock him, pointing out that he had lost and to all intents and purposes ought now to fuck off. At which point, after carefully weighing the merit of their words, he had attacked them. The fight would have probably ended there, since Onur’s friends were in the sort of fighting shape that requires the tactic of running as fast as you can in the opposite direction, had not Mr SAIS, in full regal glory, still bearing sash and crown, stepped in to their defence.
It was at this point that we, the spectators from inside, arrived. Mr SAIS, to all due credit to the university, was as large as the aggressive alpha male and almost as inebriated. They were evenly matched and very likely due to do each other damage. It was because of this that Alex, after carefully assessing the situation, had decided that something needed to be done. As he later explained he reasoned that since he was not a fully antlered dominant male his input in the fight would have been reduced to a bloody byline were he not to fully use his initiative and his god given opposable thumbs. So with careful choice and hurried heart he had found the nearest available fire log and was carefully poised near the fighting duo waiting for the right moment to conk the agressive alpha male on the forehead.
Who knows whether Alex would ever have hit his target or who would have won that spring battle, events were not allowed to unfold. It was at this crucially poised moment that the most dominant males of all turned up and made wise use of their authority and a pair of handcuffs. As we all reluctantly trooped back inside at the insistence of one of the police officers the last drunken howl of the pinioned alpha male resonated across the street and over the rooftops, "I’m going to kill you all" was his mournful cry.
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