“You like hitting girls, bro?” he asked, rhetorically, before throwing me to the ground. Honestly, he was a good guy. But at that moment I wasn’t happy with him, and I was confidently drunk and buzzing from the new adrenaline.

So, from the ground I replied, for some ungodly reason, “big boy gonna hurt me?”

In hindsight I think this actually bought me a few seconds. I had enough time to think about gripping the bong again, which had fallen when the beer was dumped on me. Tommy said something like “I’m gonna fuck you up, man,” which, to be fair, he totally was. He kicked me in the ribs and came down with a heavy blow that I sort of blocked with my left arm. When I saw the side of his face wide open for a half-second, I swung my right arm up and busted the bong over his head, sending ashy water and glass all over the room.

Nicoletta, who was screaming the entire time, finally was able to put those screeches to good use and say, “what the fuck!”