Good Will Hunters

Five guys are holding me.

I grit my teeth and struggle as a mild weightlessness hits me. Someone is holding my legs; I’m being escorted out of a club. Angry voices escape the premises and rocket into the night air. Brazilian guys are barking at me in a mosaic of words I can’t understand.

“Mi amiga y amigo.” I say in broken Spanish.
One man, with thick eyebrows furrowed into an angry gaze shouts: “He punched a girl!”
“Really?” I reply.
He was talking about Eric, one of three people I came to the club with. The night didn’t start like this.
Like most Fridays, this one started at 7-11. I grabbed a few beers for the walk to downtown Hamamatsu. By the time I reached Yuraku-gai, I had a nice buzz. I was wearing a light purple shirt and an age-old accessory; the man tie.
Yuraku-gai is crawling with people, and I entertain myself by saying hello to cute girls walking by. I make a pit stop at the video arcade and lose a few games playing with my current Street Fighter character, Guile. I bounce into 7-11 and grab another drink. I run into a friend, Ten. I chat to some cute girls with red hair. Behind them a few girls say, “Konbanwa.” And disappear into a building called Cote d’ Azur. I wince a little. Japanese girls rarely say unprovoked hellos. I should have chatted to them, but they were gone.
A heavy hand lands on my shoulder. It’s Will. He is beaming a bright smile, almost goofy. He’s drunk. That’s when the man-grabbing ensued. I tried to grab will and we tussled. Ten grabbed him from behind, and he was momentarily suspended in the air.
We go to 7-11. “Can you get me a drink?” he says. I say sure. He tells me that my favourite drink (Suntory Strong) is stronger than a regular beer. I look on the label. Sure enough, its 8% when all the beers are 5% alcohol. We buy a few and head to Liquid Kitchen. Somewhere along the way, we lose Ten.
At liquid, we go inside like a hailstorm. A few girls are inside. Two of them are cute foreigners. Will zeroes in on girl number one while I entertain her friend. Her face intrigues me, and I like her lips.
“You’re too hot for me.” She says. “Why do you like my fat?”
She’s a little chubby, but not obese. I poke her stomach and tell her she’s adorable.
Inside Will is doing shots. Marty (the owner of the bar) give me free shots. The ladies aren’t biting. (plus my chick has a boyfriend). After standing around in fuzzy, smily-faced daze, we head out. We both have passes for the Brazilian club, Hunters, and decide to go there.
Back on Yuraku-gai,  I see two familiar faces; redheads in a sea of Jet black Asian hair. “Grab?” I say to Will. He smiles and nods. Will lunges after Stephanie, and whirls her around like a ragdoll. We laugh and make jokes. Everyone is going to hunters.
Will has been wilder than normal. He’s usually the king of cool. For some reason he seemed distracted. In a few weeks he’d be leaving Japan after living there for several years. It must have been messing with his head.
With Stephanie, Me, Will and Eric, we went to Hunters. It was some sort of traditional Brazilian folk music night. As always, I saw the same faces. I danced a little with Stephanie, stepping horribly to the Brazilian music. She was all smiles and rhythm, getting so close I could smell her shampoo. She occasionally gave Will a furtive gaze, and I wondered what it meant. Somewhere in this stream of thought, I see Eric being dragged away by a beefy guy. The guy had him in a headlock. Oddly, he was smiling. Stephanie stretched out a pale hand towards him.
Nooooo… he’s my friend.” She said in a strange voice.
I reached forward, getting a good hold on Eric and that’s when I felt arms behind my neck and bodies around me. I surged with strength to no avail. As the guys clamored around me, I wonder what happened. This is when I heard that Eric punched a girl.
This seemed strange (Eric is gay). No one could figure out why he would do that. I was near the entryway. Behind me, a short bouncer with thick sideburns had my left arm twisted upwards behind me. I didn’t struggle. As I learned more about what happened I just nodded. He let me go.
Later Will told he that he was the person that grabbed me initially, protecting me from a beatdown by guys behind me that I didn’t even see.
With a smile, Will said. “I told them “nooo!” that’s my friend! Then I grabbed you. I got two punches in the face.”
This was interesting.
“They said, “Get the black guy! Get the black guy!” Will said excitedly.
I laughed this. “Really?” I asked.
“Yes. Because you are bigger and taller and you have muscles they thought you would fight. They were ready to beat you up.”
He told me this as we were walking Eric home, somewhere nearby. He was being a diva, not wanting to go home. Eventually, through a lot of cajoling he went inside his apartment, which wasn’t too far from the club. As the three of us walked away, chatting about nothing in particular, we hear a voice behind us. It was Eric.
Will walked up to him and spoke in a calm voice. “Go home. Seriously, if you go back there they will kill you. Go home.”
This seemed to register in his mind, even through his inebriation. He nodded and still smiling, walked back home. We walked some more and Stephanie commented on our bodies. She called us “threesome material”. I wasn’t sure how to take this, and I didn’t say anything. We went back to the club. One bouncer told me that’s the third time Eric has been kicked out of hunters. He was officially banned for life.
I went back inside and danced a little. Stephanie went home alone. “Call me later eh?” she said. I followed Will to KK house where he met up with a friend. It was around five a.m. I hopped on my bike, and went home.