Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [22]
As I continued to spend more time with Jimmy than with my own family, he had his worries about me and my fights, always telling me I was one punch away from jail. His biggest fear was that I would hit someone and kill them. That was never my intent, but once I got into a fight, I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible, to hit my opponent hard and not end up rolling around in the street with him. There were a lot of tough kids out there, and I often had my hands full, trying to leave no doubt as to what would happen to anyone who fought me.
But not every fight I got into enhanced my reputation. Or involved tough guys. One night, in the late 1970s, a bunch of my friends and I went into the Saints, a bar near Faneuil Hall. When we walked into the bar, nothing stood out to us as unusual or different. But the bartender, a woman, greeted us with, “Gentlemen, I can’t refuse to serve you, but I want to tell you that this is an establishment where women prefer the company of other women. I suggest you have a drink and move on.”
My friends and I looked around and, for the first time, noticed that the bar was filled with just women, lots of them in leather jackets, holding each other, dancing with each other. I ordered a Michelob or a Miller and so did most of my friends. But one guy, who obviously did it on purpose to screw the bartender, ordered a screwdriver. “I’m sorry, but we don’t serve orange juice,” she told him. “Because of Anita Bryant.”
My friend understood that she was referring to Bryant, a 1959 Miss America runner-up and spokesperson for the Florida orange growers, and her antigay crusade. “Hey, what are you anyhow?” he yelled. “A bunch of lesbians?”
He had barely spoken the words when they were on us, at least 125 hard-fighting women on eight guys. Suddenly it was a full-blown brawl, and we weren’t winning. The women were going after us with chairs and beer bottles, glasses, everything. We were hitting them like they were guys, but they weren’t backing down. They really wanted to hurt us. We ended up fighting our way out of there, laughing once we got outside, but feeling lucky that they hadn’t killed us.
But Yogi Cummings pretty nearly made Jimmy’s fears that I was one punch away from jail come true. Yogi, who came from Andrew Square, was one of the tougher guys at Triple O’s. Around five-ten, stockily built, and strong as an ox, he was about four years older than me. One October night, Kevin O’Neil wouldn’t let Yogi in the bar and the two of them had words. Outside the bar, as they continued their shouting match, Kevin punched Yogi in the mouth with a right hand. Yogi fell back a step or two before going after Kevin. Immediately I went after Yogi, and before we knew what was happening, the two of us were having an old-fashioned fistfight in the street in front of the bar. It was a weekend night and Triple O’s was packed, as were the other two bars within twenty yards of Triple O’s. It didn’t take long for all three bars to empty, and a crowd of over 150 people had gathered to watch the two of us.
As Yogi and I squared off, I was getting the better of him. But he hit me some hard shots and staggered me a few times, keeping it a fair fight. As the fight went on, I kept knocking Yogi down and he kept on getting up. At one point, I had hit him so much that he was bleeding from his nose and his mouth and had cuts over both eyes. Every time I hit him, blood would fly from someplace on his face and splatter over the people watching us. But Yogi would not stop and kept coming straight at me. Once, he caught me one shot in the throat and I found myself unable to swallow for a few seconds. The guy could hit. Finally, when I knocked him down for the fourth time, I figured that was it. I couldn’t believe it a few seconds later when he got back up and said, “Is that all you got?” That infuriated me so much that I started hitting him mercilessly.
Again he went down and I said, “Fuck this,” and got ready to end it for good and kick him in the face. I’d had enough of this crap. Suddenly, out of the crowd,