Tonight I’ve had the misfortune to experience a tirade of homophobic, transphobic and drunken abusive behaviour from somebody on a night out in Manchester’s, Gay Village.
This was directed firstly at me, then my friends and also the gay community at large in the village in Manchester.
What happened?
Let me start by saying what actually happened to get to this point.
I am sat with some friends of mine outside one of the bars in Manchester and two of them had gone to the toilet leaving two empty seats at our table.
Along comes a man in his 30s who’s with 4 women.
He just comes over and sits at our table. No, “Are these chairs free?”. He just sits down!
We politely say to him that those seats were actually taken. His response was “I don’t fucking care that they’re taken I’m sitting here now”. He gestures for one of his party to sit on the other empty seat.
First of all these seats are already taken but secondly, there’s also a queue of other people waiting to sit down at this particular venue and he just turned up and sat down where he wanted to sit.
The abuse starts
He’s very drunk and when we asked him to move he became very abusive toward’s me and my friends.
I politely asked him again to move explaining the seats were taken by my friends who’d gone to the toilets. His response was ‘that’s their tough fucking luck because I’m going to sit here”.
He then spilt out a tirade of homophobic and transphobic abuse directed at my friend Antonio and myself and cast aspersions on our parentage and our sexual preferences.
Bring on the Door Staff
Bouncers engaged.
Yes, I went and got the bouncers. I’m not going to engage with this bellend when I know full well having a fight will more than likely get me reprimanded as well.
Also, when I’d gone to get them another member of his party had sat down on the seat I had vacated.
The door staff asked them nicely to leave and explained if they didn’t move bad things would occur.
They then lied to the door staff and said that he’d been sat there all night and the drinks on the table were theirs. She called their bluff and asked what they were. They didn’t know!
I’ve known the door staff at this particular venue for nearly 2 years and had been talking to them on and off all evening. He was asked nicely to leave again, which he did after the other two members of his party stood up, verbally abuse me and then walked off.
Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back, no more, no more, no more!
His parting shot, as he was leaving was to threatening me time and time again, to which my response was “Whatever, you’re drunk. Go home” this seemed to make him angrier.
However, something happened which completely surprised me in a positive way.
As he walked past the customers at the next bar down lots of people jumped to my defence giving him and the others in his party lots of abuse, telling them to “piss off”, “go home dickhead”, “you’re an idiot”, “how dare you bring your attitudes down here”. While other people actually got up and herded the group down the street.
Others from the bar came over to our table and asked us if we were okay?
The police had also been called and about 20 minutes later came round to chat with us and said they had evicted this group from the village and had given them some advice on their actions this evening.
Community Love
Seeing some abuse this weekend hasn’t shocked me. To be honest I’d expected to see some but not have it directed as me. There were some very drunk people out in Manchester at weekend.
Loved the reaction and support from the village community. You folks are amazing and despite this slight blip, I’ve had an awesome weekend.
