Unfiltered Story #344520

A few years ago, I had gone to a bar that had recently opened, mostly out of curiosity since it was advertised as a locally-owned business with craft beers and “humble roots”, themed much like an Old West saloon, but obviously with more modern conveniences. I went alone, not expecting to pick up anyone, just wanted to hang out, maybe drink one or two beers.

The crowd was pretty big, the bartenders were professional and friendly, and I struck up a conversation with the manager who described the bar’s owner as a love of John Wayne and similar old Western movies, which explained the decor of the bar. I was three beers deep – and credit where it’s due, they /were/ good beers – and had just pulled out my cell phone to call my brother, who only lived about a mile away, to pick me up because I didn’t want to risk driving and I’d walk back to pick up my car in the morning.

It was then that someone bumped into me from behind, and I dropped my cell, though managed to get both hands on the bottle before it fell. This is an important detail. I turned in my barstool to look at whoever bumped into me, only for a blonde, and clearly absolutely blasted woman fell face-first onto my lap, and awkwardly wrapped her arms around my waist to try and keep herself from falling all the way to the floor.

Still with both of my hands firmly on the beer bottle, I stuttered for a second or two as the drunk woman climbed up to my chest, until she was eye-level me. Her eyes slowly focused on my face, then she blinked, and looked down at where she was, which was all but straddling my legs.

I don’t know for sure how drunk she actually was, but she seemed to sober up very quickly as she started screaming at me, calling me a pervert and a r*pist, hitting every inch of me that she could reach while I just held my arms over my head and slid back out of the stool.

It went from bad to worse as three large Good Ol’ Boys started advancing on my position, clearly reacting to the woman’s screams and accusations, and I could see them coming through the flailing limbs as the woman kept screaming over my protests.

I was, thankfully, saved by the manager, the bartender who served me and happened to see everything that happened, and three security guards who planted themselves between myself and the Frontier Justice Trio. The female bartender pulled the woman off of me, who had not stopped screaming the whole time and was growing steadily more hoarse, and the manager lead me away behind the bar and into the back office, locking the door just in case any of the people in the bar got past security.

It wasn’t until I was safe in the office that I realized that I was bleeding from a cut on my face, I still hadn’t let go of the bottle, and I was shaking from head to toe. The manager assured me that I wasn’t in trouble, and told me that if I needed to lie down, there was a couch.

I took his advice and curled up on the couch, where I lost track of time until the noises finally died down. At some point a paramedic had come into the office, and apparently I needed stitches; Evidently, the screaming woman had gotten a lucky shot in and hit me hard enough that her diamond ring left a pretty nasty cut on my right cheekbone.

The woman, and the three men who had made moves to beat me up, had all left the bar when police and paramedics were called, I was patched up and I gave my statement to police, and I was sent home.

Some time later, I was in court for sexual assault.

Once again, I was lucky: I had two separate witnesses and the bar’s security camera pointed at the bar where I had been sitting, and the woman’s claims that I had “forced her head down onto [my] lap” and “grabbed her chest with both hands” were refuted when the video footage showed that I had both hands firmly on a beer bottle, and if anything, she had pulled /herself/ into me, and I was trying to pull away.

Then, of course, the court was shown that she hit me dozens of times and left an injury on me bad enough to require stitches.

The case was, thankfully, dismissed, and I got off relatively easy; The word spread that I was the victim in the matter, especially once the camera footage went public, and the woman became the defendant as I had her charged with assault. I even got an apology from the three men who had almost jumped the gun.

As far as I’m aware, the woman is still in jail, I have a somewhat nasty scar on my face as a reminder, and I still go to that Western bar.