The Luv Doc: Always Exploring Boundaries

Art by the Luv Doc

Dear Luv Doc,

Today I was at a brewery with some soccer/drinking friends and we had all been at it for a while and we were getting a bit rowdy as people do when they are drinking. Anyway, as I was in the middle of a "your team sucks" argument with my friend at the other end of the table, a woman came up and scolded me for cursing in front of her kids. At first I was like, "What? I wasn't cursing and besides, even if I was, who cares? We are at a bar." This place isn't a restaurant, it is a brewery with outdoor seating and a food truck. We have never really had any trouble at this place because my crew always sits outside. There are sometimes kids around, but I figure if people want to bring their kids to a bar that's fine with me, but I am not going to change my behavior just because somebody doesn't want to pay for a sitter. Anyway, I told the woman I would tell my friends not to use profanity while her kids were there – just to be nice, but it still bothers me that we had to change our behavior, which wasn't abnormal for a bar, just because that lady decided to bring her kids. What do you think? Should I have just told her to fuck off?

– Loudmouth

I am not going to fucking lie to you, Loudmouth, I am no stranger to four-letter words. Perhaps it's because I grew up with a last name that would generally be frowned upon in genteel company were it spoken out loud and with undue emphasis on certain consonants – and it often was, with ruthlessly dramatic effect, from sometime around kindergarten on. Kids are little miracles, aren't they? Always exploring boundaries. Anyway, the end result for me was that I developed a certain animosity for those delicate flowers who furrowed their brows at coarse language. I know this is on me but I always felt like those people were more judgmental than the drunken asshole who was busting my balls from across the bar.

So yeah, I don't get on too well with churchy types – and I'm not just talking about those fundamentalist, snake-handling, gibberish-babbling, spazmotic holy apostles of the crucified Jesus, I am also talking about granola crunchers, grammar nazis, Ted Cruz voters, the fucking assholes at the gym who feel the need to give unsolicited advice on lifting technique, and, well, pretty much anyone who feels personally ordained to criticize or censure other people's behavior in much the same way I do in this column every week. It's really fucking annoying.

In other words, regarding your run-in with the mom who felt inspired to regulate your bar chatter, I feel your pain. Goddammit, Karen, if you didn't bring your children to a brewery to learn how to cuss, why the hell did you bring them in the first place? And no, teaching them to distinguish the subtle differences between hops varieties is the WRONG FUCKING ANSWER. Just say it. You wanted to take your kids someplace with booze that doesn't feature an animatronic rat band and a teeming mosh pit of screaming, psychotic, sugar-crazed rug rats with runny noses and sticky fingers (WHY ARE THEY SO STICKY?). More importantly, you don't care who has to suffer because of it. This is why, even though your language might be unsullied by profanity, you DO NOT HOLD THE MORAL HIGH GROUND. Wow. That was a lot of caps for one paragraph, but sometimes mere profanity doesn't get the point across. I guess it's true that profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate.

So, Loudmouth, while generally I believe it is good policy to be respectful of other people's sensibilities – even if those sensibilities don't align with my own – I do feel that like harried, exhausted parents, coarse and profane people need sanctuary too, and traditionally that sanctuary has been drinking establishments. That said, Austin has a long tradition of allowing children into unseemly places – Eeyore's, for instance ... or Barton Springs ... or any ACL ... and the children of Austin have always been better for it. Nothing shocks them. They have that thousand-yard stare. You can throw an Austin-raised kid into a depraved leather bar in the Castro and they'll just give you a bored look that says, "Is that all you've got? I was catching impetigo dirty-footing it in the Eeyore's drum circle when I was still in Pull-Ups." So, in answer to your question, no, you shouldn't have told that mother to fuck off. Instead, you should have told her, "You're welcome."