It was the end of the fall semester 1998, a full year before I would be tossed in jail for DWI and the rugby team had formed a loose alliance with the WSU Hawaiian club which for all intents and purposes meant that we spent a great deal of the free hours between classes hunkered down in the campus apartments or private housing eating mushrooms or getting in bar fights.
The owner of Shakers, the cleanest of two filthy campus bars told us that we were consistently the best group around at attracting negative attention. We were universally despised by Alumni, the Greek system and the football team alike for our unblemished record in the bar fighting arena.
So in the winter of 98, on a Friday night when the snow blew so hard that not even four layers of flannel could prevent frostbitten nipples, with finals looming over an increasingly tense institution of juvenile delinquents, Shakers was packed to the ears in a mosh-pit standing room only throng there to witness what to this day need only be remembered as the Kiss.
Ryan Leaf had blown off classes his senior year, poised to go #2 in the upcoming NFL draft. On any given night he could be seen bursting into a room screaming how he could buy and sell each person present and anyone who didn't like it could suck on the knuckles of his 6'1" 390 pound right guard Ryan Mcshane, always at his side like some kind of fat pit-bull terrier drunk on the power of the hand that fed him.
We all stood at the bar in the narrow corridor leading to the pool tables we had affectionately labeled The Gauntlet, with our red-headed step child Joe Schnerr perched atop a stool he had earned the right to stand on after becoming the only man to escape three to one odds from on top of a stool after the results of an organic chemistry lab had gone horribly wrong. Schnerr was ordering a round of Long Island Ice Tea when Mcshane bulled his way in the room, cutting a swath to the bar and sending Schnerr toppling over the wrong side like a coin over the edge of a bulldozer arcade game.
The bartender, a dropout from
The Bass and I were the only ones in between them as Schnerr flailed his arms trying to get a grip of Mcshane who looked over at him and snorted, ordering two pitchers of Coors light on Leaf’s dime.
"Calm him down," Mcshane advised us with all the confidence of a evangelical preacher used to the subservience of a compliant and sterile flock. He got his pitchers in each hand and toasted one in Schnerr's face taking a frothy pull off the top, spilling it down his chin.
"Let me get that for you," I said to him, grabbing a napkin off the bar and dabbing the Coors off his chin like a sloppy infant before he hand time to react.
"What the fuck!" he spat. "Don't fuckin' touch me!"
This was not a warning. His face elevated to a fire-engine shade of red almost instantly the inevitable explosion only seconds away. The bar staff and Tony moved as quickly as they could, knowing the ugliness about to unfold as Mcshane calculated whether to set his beers down before killing me.
In a split second, I took the decision away from him as my hands shot up to his ears. I yanked myself up to his level and recognized in his eyes and in the deep pit of his soul a level of genuine terror that I am positive he had never encountered before as I smiled and planted the sloppiest kiss in the history of inappropriate public displays of affection on his mouth.
The collective groan from the crowd was quickly eclipsed by the noise of the two 64oz pitchers of glass shattering on the floor as Mcshane closed his fists in a double axe handle and smashed me off his chest. He got one good shot to drop me with a right cross but I slipped in the beer, letting it sail harmlessly over my head. I was up in an instant in time to see the bartender doing his best to subdue the brute with the Bass yelling that it was a Polynesian cultural sign of respect.
I wanted no part of this lie making it clear to anyone within earshot that this was nothing more than the kiss of death. Mcshane roared in protest but Leaf came up and stuck his million-dollar hand in the chest of his lineman. He threw $200 down on the bar saying something to the effect that we weren't worth the spilled beer on the floor and that he'd see us all in the drive through.
With a final yelp of protest like the gingerbread witch 86'd by Hansel and Gretel to her fiery hell Mcshane was forcibly ejected and Tony eyeballed us, pointing to the opposite end emergency exit, the exodus point he'd become only too accustomed to sending us out when as now, things got out of hand.
Knowing it was too much, Schnerr pocketed one of the $100 bills and lead the procession to the back. We all tumbled into the snow giggling like Japanese schoolgirls on a three-day sugar high listening to the howling storm mixing with the degenerate wailing of Mcshane making his way up Colorado street in the distance in a dejected display of outright defeat that must vividly haunt his redneck nightmares to this day.
