Lady, Hold Your Liquor

I never thought I would one day say this: “Gentlemen, if your lady loses composure due to alcohol inebriation and starts to make a fool of herself, kindly extract her from the scene promptly. If she puts up a fight and, in the process, creates an even bigger spectacle, go ahead and drag her out of the room by the hair, caveman style.”

I have been championing gender equality for a long time now and am intolerant of any form of manhandling: aggressive, rough, or violent physical contact between the sexes. But I witnessed one incident that almost had me sidling up to the gentleman across the room, whose wife clearly had one two many drinks, and whispering to him, a la M to agent double 0-7, “Initiate immediate extraction process!”

It was around ten o’clock in the evening in one of the reputable country clubs in the metropolis. A successful culinary event that started in the afternoon had just finished and the waiters were cleaning up the day’s mess: rolling away table tops to the storage area; clearing out used plates and cutlery; changing table linen; and resetting plate service in readiness for the following day. Only a couple of tables remained occupied by patrons who lingered for nightcaps. The club’s chef and manager, both foreigners, graciously came out and thanked the remaining guests for their support. Naturally, the generous folks from one table invited them for drinks to which the two gentlemen obliged.

After several minutes, I noticed that the chef, who was difficult to miss because of his height to begin with, plus the extra inches that his toque added, moved to another table across the room. The manager had stayed exactly where he was seated and everyone else carried on with their business.

From out of nowhere, a scream erupted! All heads snapped to the source of the sound—the table from across the room, where the chef was now standing in confrontation with a woman. It was learned later in the process that she was the Filipina wife of one of the expat guests. She was clearly drunk and incoherent and was shouting at the chef, demanding an explanation for why he had chosen to sit with the guests from another table and not with them. She was relentless in her ranting, verbalizing her scorn at the top of her voice. She was alternately drumming her palms on the chef’s chest and collaring his shirt. She was a runaway train.

The manager then walked across the room and tried to pacify the woman. Her husband, who, by this time, was also in the thick of convincing her to stand down, did all he could. The other guests on their table did their share as well but their pleas for her to stop were drowned by what seemed like a child’s extended temper tantrum. Nothing worked. When she espied the manager approaching, she turned away from the chef and redirected her ire on the manager instead, who, sadly, suffered the exact same fate as everyone else who tried to help. It was a toe-curling, nail-biting experience for all of us, witnesses, who had to sit through the fiasco paralyzed by a potent cocktail of embarrassment for our countrywoman, fear of the situation escalation into total chaos, and disgust for someone unable to control her liquor.

Both gentlemen handled the sticky situation as best as they possibly could. They maintained composure throughout the entire debacle. Their voices remained properly modulated and their demeanor was not altered in any fashion even as the scorned woman drummed her palms on their chests and screamed at their faces. Something must also be said about the club’s service staff who carried on with their tasks as though all were fine and dandy, resisting the very human urge to stop, eavesdrop, and gawk at scandalous situations. They completed their duties without losing the smile on their faces and the graciousness and courtesy with which they treated every guest.

In the end, only the woman’s fatigue had gotten her to quiet down. No amount of non-violent, pacifist tactics employed by well-meaning people in her circle to neutralize her meltdown were successful. She worked herself up in an alcohol-induced frenzy and tired herself out as we, the bystanders/spectators sat in total disbelief.

I am sure that most of us have witnessed this kind of scene at least once in our lives. While it is not rare for a woman to make a fool of herself in a drunken stupor in a society like ours, where we have been inured to various types of bad behavior as a consequence of bars and night spots mushrooming downtown, it is damaging, and not only to the woman herself. Forget her! She, who can’t control her alcohol, deserves whatever comes her way. I refer to the people who get trampled on in her wake.

Most of the time, it is waiters who become the object of any drunk’s unleashed subliminal anger, simply because of proximity. By profession, a waiter will be within the frontlines of drinkers at any given point in an evening, so they are the closest targets. Others may say, “So what of that? That’s their job. That’s collateral damage.” To which I say, “I don’t think waiters get decent wages so if they get verbally abused by a patron, they better get tipped well.” Maybe there ought to be strict fines for people who lapse into unbecoming behavior and not just for property damage but for disturbing the peace as well. And this fee should go to the servers’ pot at the end of the day for aggravation and humiliation.

What of the youth who take to the town, drown themselves in drink, and commit similar disorderly acts? I am somehow inclined to be a little more tolerant of them because of age. I would like to charge such behavior to the folly of youth and expect these youngsters to mature eventually. What to my mind is intolerable is an out-of-control middle-aged person, who should have learned his or her life lessons much early on.

Going back to story, I take my hat off to the two gentlemen, the chef and the manager, for their handling of the incident. The foreigner husband, who remained a gentleman throughout, may have been the bigger person for behaving the way he did, but what do you think would have happened if her husband were a Filipino?