Is it ever OK to hit a woman?
I mean, I know the answer to this is no, unless she's about to shoot you in the face with a harpoon (only in this exact circumstance and no other), but sometimes I wish this social convention did not exist. OK, so men are stronger than women and it's thus unchivalrous to punch them in the face, but what if they are being really annoying?
I had a big Christmas poker party tonight. It was a tournament for my regular poker guests, a couple of whom brought friends. Perhaps a little self-conscious about being amongst a big group of strangers who didn't know them, both these women got quite drunk. This was OK to start with. It was after all a party and although poker is a game best played with a degree of sobriety this was meant to be a fun occasion.
As time progressed though and inhibitions broke down things started getting a bit embarrassing. One of the women suddenly recognised the quite famous comedian (not me, a proper successful comedian) she had been sitting across the table from all night. She told him his name, which he already knew and seemed excited to meet him. Everyone laughed it off at this point, even though this wasn't the kind of behaviour you really expect in a private situation involving grown up peers, where generally people tend to at least pretend to be cool even if they aren't. But the drunken lady continued with her crapulous monologue and then started to ask him what he had only done one thing and what had he been up to recently. He patiently pointed out that he's been pretty busy with his TV work, books and world tours, but she didn't seem to hear any of this, still asking him how he would ever hope to follow up his early stuff. She then told him that the show she'd seen had not been funny and was a rubbish idea.
Now this is the kind of thing comedians sometimes have to put up in a pub, but it was a shame to have it occurring at what was otherwise a rather enjoyable party. The comedian was slightly irked, which was understandable, though I don't think he was stung by the criticisms, coming as they did from someone with little control over her mouth or brain.
I tried to make light of it by pointing out that I was glad that someone else was being subjected to this kind of treatment for once as people often ask me what I've been up to for the last five years, with more justification because I haven't done all that much high profile work. "I don't even know who you are," she told me. Which was at least funny and momentarily took the heat off my friend who had had to put up with half an hour of this rubbish for no greater crime than sitting in a room and having his own face.
Unsurprisingly the drunkard was knocked out of the poker game fairly quickly, but kept coming back every ten minutes asking if she could buy back in. Each time I would tell her no she couldn't as it was a tournament and each time she would complain for a few minutes, then go away. Then she'd come back and say, "I must be able to buy back in now!" And so it would go on. The friend who had brought her along tried to get her to leave, but she was insistent on staying to the end. In hindsight I should probably have told her that she had to leave as she was freely insulting and annoying everyone. Once I was out I played her heads-up to keep her quiet and annoyingly she beat me with fluky cards and won £20 in the process. Which clearly annoyed me more.
At the end of the night she was still hanging around, but I called her a cab which was woefully a fifteen minute wait away. A few stragglers were drinking in the kitchen, where the annoying woman found a child's badmin(g)ton set that had been given to me as a jokey Christmas present by one of the other guests. Old drunk=o wanted to play badmin(g)ton and started knocking the shuttlecock back and forth with someone else, but aware that there were lots of glasses around that would definitely get broken I asked them to stop. The others started drifting away as the shouting harridan continued burbling rubbish. She then thought it would be amusing to hit me on the bottom with the badmin(g)ton racquet. BANG! She hit me quite hard and it made an impressive whoomping noise that she seemed to enjoy. "Wow" she said, "Did you hear that?" and hit me again.
"Could you stop doing that?" I asked.
"Oh come on, it's fun."
She hit me again. Hard. It didn't hurt, but was immensely irritating.
"No, it's not fun. Stop doing it."
She somehow saw my opposition to this assault as a reason to continue it. But when a man says no, he means no girls, so don't follow her example. She hit me again. Perhaps she thought this was flirtatious. I prefer the fluttering of eyelashes or a slightly suggestive remark to be being whacked hard around the buttocks with a child's toy, but maybe she'd had some success with this before. I could see it might work for some men.
My voice raised in anger a bit now, "Really stop doing that. If you do that again I am going to have to ask you to wait for your cab outside."
"Oh stop being so square," she protested, hitting me again.
"I am not being square. I don't like being hit in the bottom with a child's badmington racquet!" I hissed.
She hit me again.
I was angry now. I tried to grab the racquet off her, but it was clamped very tightly in her claw like hands. She held on to the weapon of assault and hit me again, still laughing.
It was at this point that I considered punching her. I was not entirely sober myself and was being sorely provoked. If this woman had been poking a tiger with a pointed stick then no-one would have been surprised, but if I had responded to this continued assault (on top of everything else) by knocking out all of her teeth, then I would have been the one in the wrong. Is there any justice in this world?
Of course it would still be wrong for me to have done this. But surely there should be a lesser punishment for attacking an annoying woman. No, of course there shouldn't. You should never hit a woman, unless you are a woman yourself and the other woman has wronged you or called you a slag.
I managed to control my temper and got the racquet off her and went into another room. She still felt I wasn't joining in with the fun of the occasion and protested to the others that I was being an idiot. The others seemed to have already decided who the idiot was.
Thankfully the cab finally arrived and I was able to eject my guest into the Christmas night, leaving the driver to have to cope with whatever wheeze she was going to come up with next.
