By Paul Staller

I lived in Pittsburgh for a few years before flushing my life down the toilet—I mean, before moving to Los Angeles.  Something you probably don’t know about “da ‘Burgh” is that it has a large blind population.  Well, I didn’t, anyway. I knew there was a school for the blind near my apartment, but didn’t realize that most of the alumni stuck around after graduation.  I guess being blind lessens the need to get out and see the rest of the world.  Regardless, I’d never seen a blind person at a club or bar or amusement park, and thought they were confined to the campus of the Blind Institute For The Blind—or whatever it was called—yes, my ignorance is almost staggering.

One late afternoon, I walked into my corner bar for Happy Hour after finishing an exam early, awaiting peers a bit more thorough than I. I nodded to the patrons—there’s always a crowd in a Pittsburgh bar, regardless of the hour—and took a stool with my back to the door.  Within 5 minutes of ordering my first pitcher, I heard the familiar sounds of a drunk stumbling in behind me:  A stool knocked over, greetings from the other drunks, palms hitting the bar…etc.

Suddenly, I felt hands on me, slapping my arm, shoulder and neck. I interpreted this as some kind of assault and battery, instead of a blind drunk feeling his way to his favorite barstool; it made sense to me. I’ve had my ass kicked enough to live in the fear that it might happen again at any time, so I reacted quickly without asking questions.  I spun around, creating space with my elbow while leaving my stool for a defensive position.  The elbow caught my “assailant” in the jaw, sending him to the floor and saving him from the haymaker with which I followed the elbow.

He flailed around, slapping at the floor, perhaps reaching for the leg of a nearby barstool… or the walking stick commonly associated with the “visually impaired” that I noticed a bit too late.  I kicked the stool away from him—and, yes, the cane, too—and was promptly tackled to the ground by almost everyone in the bar.  “What the fuck is wrong with you!?” I heard someone yell.  The rest of the chatter clued me in to what had just happened.

“You’re okay, Charlie.  Here’s your cane.  C’mon, get up,” said the bartender, as he helped Charlie to what had been my stool.  When I finally settled down and looked at my opponent, he was so fucking blind-looking that I felt sick to my stomach.  It was as if I’d just wailed on a little retarded kid for bumping my ankles with his wheelchair.  The look on my face let them know I wasn’t a threat, but the looks on theirs told the story:  Shock and disgust. I had just sucker-punched a blind man who was just looking for a seat at the bar.  Looking… well, you know what I mean.

I’m not proud of myself, but I do count it as a victory on my lifetime fighting record.