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Our rowing club dinner Friday night at the Tap Room was incredibly fun but marred by an incident at another table.
A man and woman were at a 2-top about 15 feet to my right. The woman had her back to me, and the man faced me. He appeared to be a typical 50-something, overweight white male found on any golf course; as a result, I made no note of his looks.
As a group of us joked at our table, I could hear the man's voice grow louder and louder. At first I tuned it out, thinking maybe he was acting out a story. Then several of us heard his voice get malevolent. A hush fell over our table as we were jarred from our joviality. "You fucking BITCH," the man yelled, with contempt in his voice. He continued to berate the woman -- I did not care to hear exactly how -- then slapped her on the back of the head. We flinched and gasped.
By now, our table and a group at another table on the veranda were watching the incident and quietly hoping the woman was OK. N., who is a supervisor at a county family welfare service, said he could go to jail. The man quickly stormed off, but not without loudly calling her a bitch one more time as he yanked open a door. The woman slunk out a side exit; I did not see her face.
L., sitting next to me, noticed that the woman had forgotten her keys. L. grabbed the keys off the table, hoping to quietly pass them to the woman as soon as she reappeared. Soon, several of us were discussing the incident and had forgotten about the keys. We did not notice that a waitress had come by and taken them. L. later said that according to the waitress, the man frequented the restaurant, and this was not his first incident. Why would the management continue to allow him in? He might very well be a rich and influential member of the club, but that's no justification for allowing someone to be an asshole, cause a scene and treat someone so horribly.
If he had no problem slapping the woman on the back of the head in public, it scares me to think what he does in private.
Later, my BF said he thought that any man who witnessed the incident should have stood up and confronted the man when he hit the woman. I suddenly felt a terrible guilt at quietly watching the events unfold and not doing something, almost as if I had turned a blind eye. "No. The women should not have gotten involved; that man could have turned his anger toward you," my BF told me. "But a man there should have stood up and defended the woman." I mentally noted that there were two husbands at our table, but I don't know how much of the incident they witnessed, since they were sitting at the opposite end of the table. I still wish I stepped in and confronted that horrible man. There were 12 strong women there to back me up.
Current mood: Regret